StarShot

Sunset on Patong Beach

What does it mean to look into the soul of a place?

I am sitting on a boat on the Chao Phraya River running through Bangkok, on a tour, with other tourists.  The boat moves along at a moderate pace, various buildings of interest pointed out in a static-laced English recording, barely audible over the roar of the motor and the wind.  My eyes are instead drawn to a dead dog floating in the water, garbage pooling around it beneath a pier.  A few minutes later, a dead cat.  After that, swimming and splashing in the brown murk, a child, probably no more than 12 or 13.  I feel uncomfortable, and the feeling is familiar.

I am sitting quietly in the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, on the grounds of the Royal Palace in Bangkok.  The room is the kind of quiet that can only be found in crowded rooms, when every person there has miraculously made an unspoken agreement to exist in silence.  The occasional shuffle of feet, muffled cough, or brief protest of a baby are the only sounds, easily ignored.  I take in the gold, the scent of sandalwood, and the silence of people’s prayers, and feel a current running through the room, the same current that I find traces of in the small shrines erected in streets, squares, nurseries, and even on the dashboard of every taxi cab I’ve climbed into.  Sweat beads on my forehead, and my legs twist uncomfortably beneath me, and yet I feel the living breath of spirituality raising the hairs on my skin.

I am talking with an 18-year-old Thai girl.  I am listening to her talk about her studies, her hobbies, her interests, and her ambitions.  She is like any other 18-year-old girl.  In my head, I keep coming back to how excellent her English is, and flashes of all my struggles to communicate with my own students in Japan keep jolting through my mind.  When the language barrier is torn down, it is easy to see the person concealed beneath it.  Yet I understand that the satisfaction I feel from getting to know her is a gift; she learned English without ever stepping off Thai soil, and I did nothing but show up and talk.  I can’t help but feel impressed.

I am standing on a bamboo raft drifting down a river in Chiang Mai, smiling.  A Thai man stands nearby, also smiling, watching me struggle with the long pole he was using a minute before to effortlessly direct the raft by pushing it along the riverbed.  It’s a lot harder than it looks.  We pass another raft marooned in the river, its guides wading up to their waists trying to free it.  My guide makes a joke about bad captains.  I make a joke about good captains, gesturing to my own struggle with the steering pole.  All of this is spoken in minimal, broken English.  Still, we both understand, and we both laugh.

I am sitting on a beach in Patong, eyes closed, hot breeze on my face, listening to the unending lull of the waves, a mere hour before leaving this place.  I’ve been here before.  For four days, I’ve found memories lurking in every sunset, every grain of sand clinging to my hair, every cheap sundress waved in my face, every neon back-lit beer.  I’ve created new memories, too, but it was more like putting a fresh coat of pitch over a worn-out road.  Still, something has changed.  Maybe something about the place, maybe something about the way I see it.  Maybe something about me.

I’m walking to the train in the Bangkok heat, now alone; the group departed today.  A car pulls up in front of me, and I’m addressed by my name.  It’s a man named Jackie, one of the two brothers that work the concierge at the hotel we stayed at, who helped us extensively in our touring.  He asks where I’m going, and I say the mall.  He says it’s on his way home, and offers to drive me.  He makes pleasant conversation about his relationship with his brother on the drive there, relating how his younger sibling has taken care of him most of their lives.  It’s only a 10-minute drive before I’m deposited at the door of the mall, and yet I leave marveled the sense of duty in taking care of people that came through his story.  I also make a mental note at how above and beyond the typical duty of a concierge that brothers went for us to make sure we did and saw interesting things in Thailand.  He drives away, having committed an unprovoked act of simple kindness in giving me a ride.  Again, I’m impressed.

*    *    *

I’m sitting in a Starbucks in Hamamatsu, Japan, drinking a green tea frappaccino and watching people pass on the street outside.  Even after a year of living back in America, revisiting here still feels like coming home.  In fact, even after a short week and a half, it feels as if I never left.  Everything is exactly where I left it: my friends, my favorite restaurants & businesses, the streets, the culture, the vibe.  It’s all here; it’s all familiar. Coming here after three weeks of traveling in Thailand is just as refreshing as going back to the States would have been.  Thailand may also be in Asia, but this is my Asia, in the way that I have come to understand it.

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Welcome to the new StarShot! I’m finally happy enough with the site to make it public.  At this point, it’s nearly the same as the former blog, but with re-organized categories and pages.  The old blog, at http://starrah.wordpress.com/, will be going down soon, so bookmark this site in its place.

I still have plans to add to the site, the most important bit being the Galleries section, where I’ll try to create a decent and polished portfolio of photography.  That’s a big project, so it will take some time.  Other things will be tweaked along the way, so please excuse the construction.

Thanks for visiting.

-Sarah

It’s another mercifully overcast day in Bangkok, and I find myself alone for the first time in weeks.

All my classmates have departed. One half of my hotel room is empty. I paid an extra 10 bucks to keep it until 8:00 tonight. I have private space–I’ve almost forgotten what it’s like. I’m on no one else’s schedule, either. No tours, no school visits. No one is asking me what I’m doing today, where I want to eat, if I want to meet up with the rest of the group. Other than the maid mistakingly thinking the room was empty this morning, no one is going to spontaneously enter my room at any point today. It’s just me, my solitude, and my freedom.

A passenger train runs through the middle of the huge car-clogged intersection outside my window. Almost two of the three weeks in the country I’ve been staying at this hotel, and I haven’t once seen that train. This city is so massive, so crowded, and in such perpetual motion, that’s it’s easy to feel lost, even when you know exactly where you are. It’s not like Tokyo, where everything seems laid out on the surface to see as you move through it, large and shining. Every time I step out the door in Bangkok, I feel swallowed, muted. This is a city where things lurk in the corners, and collect in the cracks. It always feels like there is more around you than could possibly be observed in any moment, so it’s difficult to feel like your wits are about you at all times. A city that could take years to get to know. I only had a couple weeks.

I spent four days in Chiang Mai, four in Patong. They were nice reprieves from Bangkok. A crack of emerald jungle, a splash of neon beach. Patong in particular was difficult to leave, for personal reasons revolving around my last and only previous visit to Thailand. But even despite the battles of memories that it brought on, at least I felt as if I had something carved out for myself there. I could keep my head above water, feel as if all my movements and decisions were mine. I walked the streets enough to know the layout, visited enough restaurants and bars to have favorites, deflected enough merchants not to falter when they approach me, and to walk the streets as if I belonged there. As a result, the tiny beach town actually began to feel familiar to me.

Tiny beach town. Hundreds of miles from Bangkok, both literally and figuratively.

I dragged my ass out of bed early to wave off my classmates this morning. I know myself; I’ll feel like I’ve missed a step if I don’t get goodbyes. To just wake up alone one morning after weeks of flocking with 26 other people would have unnerved me. So I went down to the lobby, hair sleep-tossed and eyes still sandy with dreams, ate a steamed custard bun, and gave out hugs with all my nice-meeting-you’s, keep-in-touch’s, and have-a-safe-flight’s. And I meant them. Through a summer of group travel, I’ve come to appreciate the value of experiencing new places with new people who are doing the same thing at the same time. You have someone to share it with. Not in the way you share travel with a lover, where the focus is really on each other rather than on the place, carefully crafting an experience as a pair. No, this is building an individual experience, but at the same time being able to turn to the person next to you and discover that they happen to be going through the same thing. Neither of you planned it that way. It’s just a beautiful coincidence. I appreciated the group and what we could lend to each other in these last few weeks. When I felt swallowed, they were my only point of reference.

After saying goodbye, I went upstairs, joyfully dove under my blanket in what was now my own room, and slept a few more hours. Only a brief interruption and rapid apology from the maid. When I went downstairs the second time to eat breakfast for real, I was greeted by Mimi, the concierge that had helped the group plan things through our whole tour. He shouted from across the lobby the moment I stepped out from the staircase.

“Sarah! You still here?!” His eyes were wide with alarm. I crossed the lobby.

“Yeah, I’m still here.” I smiled. He continued quickly.

“I thought everyone fly together! Only you?”

“Yep! I’ve got a late flight. I’m here all day.”

“Ooh. What you do all day?” His English is really quite good. He only ever misses a couple fluency words. It’s nothing like the three-word conversations I usually encounter when I step out the front door of the hotel.

“Oh, maybe get a pedicure. Go shopping. Buy some cheap shoes.” I paused, then smiled again. “Pack.” He smiled too. He asked me about the zip-lining trip he had set up for me the day before, and then bid me a good day in the city. One of my favorite parts about traveling, that’s really had me hooked since that first cross-country road trip in college, is meeting people who are so kind and so helpful beyond all expectations anyone could have of strangers. It’s kept me moving for years now.

So. A whole day to myself? Really, that’s all I want to do. Have someone touch my travel-worn feet and make them pretty again. Follow up the act by buying my heels a new outfit. Then tame the chaos of my suitcases, and relax in silence with a book.

One day before Japan. One day before I go back to sharing space, back to making plans. One day before I’m back to familiarity: a place I’ve lived, people I know, I language I speak, a country I’ve had a good, long while to get acquainted with.

One day to feel swallowed. One day to be mute.

The massive intersection outside my window is completely empty for exactly two seconds. Haven’t seen that before. I smile.

Just a back alley on Phi Phi Island in Thailand.  I finally finished putting all of the Thailand photos up on Flickr; the full set is there if you want to take a peek.

My goal for this month was to work more on cleaning up my photography and getting more of it on Flickr, but travel and fun kind of got in the way.  I spent only one day on it, and this is what you got!

My trip to Thailand was so brief, so I’m really pumped to go back this summer with my grad program for 20 days.  I’ll get in more cities, more sights, and definitely more photos.

As you can probably tell, I’m on a bit of kick of looking through old photos right now.  Here’s just a sampling of some of the more bizarre things I happened to encounter while holding a camera.  Enjoy.

Tokyo store front, July '08

Misakubo Disguise Festival '08

Osaka, November '07

Osaka local New Year's festival, January '09

Sign for a closed bar in Hamamatsu, unknown date