Adventures in South East Asia

1~There's no place like home

"Tourists don't know where they've been, travelers don't know where they're going." – Paul Theroux

Bangkok, Thailand

March 2013

The barbeque sizzled as an apron-clad woman turned sticks of saucy pork satay. She turned around to dig in the cooler for some sticky rice that she scooped into a bag.

"You go holiday?" she asked in reference to the big olive green shell I had on my back. Its weight, despite all the things I had left in storage when moving out of my apartment this morning, threatened to reacquaint me with the sidewalk.

"Chai ka!" I agreed with one of the few Thai phrases I had picked up during my ten months teaching here.

Cars roared behind her on the busy major route. Street breakfasts had become such a custom that I hardly batted an eye. It would be sad to start each day without these sweet, salty satays and the sauce-coated rice. My smile grew as the skewered meat was placed in a bag, which was placed alongside the bagged rice into a third bag to hold them all. While plastic was on the decline in the Western world, it was thriving in Southeast Asia.

I waved goodbye with a smile to a woman who had supplied me with the protein to chase around two classes of energetic twelve-year-old Thai children for assignments, exams and all around crazy behaviour. March signaled the end of the school year and the start of my holidays. I was off to explore Myanmar, a land recently released from the hand of a dictator. The country had a sad but interesting history.

The adjacent street was busy enough to build an overpass that really tested my balancing skills. I was almost certain gravity would topple me back into an unsuspecting commuter, but not today. I sighed seeing that the family who usually asked for money up here was absent.

Private school teaching left a bitter taste, knowing that I was widening the gap between rich and poor by refining the skills of those who already had an advantage in life. I fingered the bill in my hand. Maybe their situation had changed for the better. Unlikely. I placed the bill back in my pocket and waited to catch a cab on the other side of the street.

Ten minutes went by without a single cab agreeing to my destination. Most were full of passengers and flew right past. A sea of neon pink, blue, yellow and green cabs rushed down the opposite side of the street. I had wanted to avoid paying for the U-turn, but if I wanted to go anywhere I'd have to switch sides.

Another overpass waddle later, I was back where I started. I waved down a bright orange cab. "Don Muang," I tried to say in my best Thai accent.

He echoed back my words, which sounded like the name of Bangkok's Northern airport.

"Chai ka," I confirmed and climbed inside the air conditioned cab. It shouldn't have been too hard to figure out that the foreign face in a Thai neighbourhood with almost half as much baggage as body weight wanted to catch a flight.

The man gave me a friendly smile instead of conversation. He drove past the first U-turn and I frowned. I caught myself seconds later. If living in this city for ten months and flying so much I deserved a stamp card had taught me anything, it was the alternate route to the airport.

But he drove past that too.

"Don Muang, chai mai?" I tried to clarify for the destination.

"Chai, krap," he confirmed.

I sat back, a little more relaxed, probably just paranoid. In thirty minutes, the city thinned out, free of the mold coated, three-story apartment buildings, street vendors, 7-elevens and overpasses. Fields, roadside canals ran along the dirty roads. But in terms of geography we were, in some capacity, heading North toward the airport.