Hello, friends.
I haven’t been blogging much lately. I spent those weeks on the road, and ever since I’ve been back in Bangkok I’ve been living at BJD, a lovely campus ministry in my neighborhood in Bangna. It’s community living, which means that the internet shuts off automatically at 10:30. This has unintended consequences for my blogging, because I work best when it’s really late and I’m sleep deprived and I turn off my filter and wing it and just do the writing equivalent of vomiting awesomeness. (I don’t think that’s the first time I’ve used this phrasing.) It’s an awful tendency I have when I’m fully awake, to play literary softball and just hope I end up with something that makes people think highly of me.
but I’m tired now, and so I don’t really care what you think of me. The internet has indeed shut off, so I’m mashing it into a pages document and if it’s any good I’ll throw it on in the morning. I guess I’ll just say how things are going and inevitably it will spiral into my own hokey philosophy-theology. Also, my grammar might get worse and worse as this thing goes on.
ok, fine, you win. a few stories from my wanderings.
I prayer walked in the ancient hindu temples in Siem Reap, Cambodia. It’s a weird thing prayer-walking in such places, I don’t mean that in a bad way though. I don’t feel weird about it in a spiritual sense, because, let’s face it. Temples aren’t really about worship. They’re about one-upsmanship. We need to have bigger temples than the neighbors. even the people who give offerings at such places aren’t offering true worship. they believe in a god, so they go and give it stuff that they think will make it happy. Not because they love it, but to “make merit”. In order words, there’s something in it for them. I’ll give you incense and orange fanta, and you will bless my business and help me conceive a child. it’s a business transaction. As christians, we can look at this as phoned-in idolatry, but wait: often this is what we do with our worship. We give god portions of our time, perhaps enough to feel inconvenienced, and then we look for the tangible benefits. I’ve learned in the past few years to get away from this with the God I believe in. If we really trust God, it means that we trust him to provide us with what we need. In my prayers, I often say, “Hey God, I think this is what should happen”, but I’ve gotten away from all the demand-making like when I was a child. and I don’t mean I found a proper balance, I mean all of it. Who am I to dictate orders to God. It’s me who follows him, although often I need to be reminded of that. I’ve found that the more I rely on him, the more joy I have, even though I have less than I would otherwise. Occasionally I’ve thought about what my life would look like if I did the pragmatic thing and got a job and started climbing ladders. I could own my own car at this point. I might have a promotion or two under my belt, and a budding resume that could attract some better salary options. But the conclusion I’ve come to is that my life is filled with so much more joy without all of that stuff that I would choose this again without much thought. Joy, perhaps, in spite of the tangible benefits. Since the end of DTS, I’ve spent nights in some of the seediest places in the world. I’ve eaten on about two or three dollars a day for the most part and lost about somewhere between 5 and 10 pounds pounds in a few weeks. I’ve been alone for the vast majority of my time, sometimes hundreds of miles from the nearest person who would recognize my face. I’ve gone weeks on end without legitimate fellowship with anyone other than God. I’ve felt alone, at times as though more than ever before. By all worldly standards, I’ve given much and gained nothing. And yet, I have this joy. This stubborn light that refuses to go out. And in a way, it affirms everything. All the hardships chip away at all my imperfections, and I manage to learn from everything.
Umm, what else happened? These many weeks feel like a blur. Time passes faster when you’re alone. Oh, I saw my lovely friends in Phnom Penh. Thearith and Angela are kind people, and introduced me to even more kind people. I’m not allowed to return to Phnom Penh as a single man without being prepared to marry one of Thearith’s cousins. I ate a handful of duck eggs, the kind where the egg is fertilized and the fetus is allowed to grow a bit before they boil them. Not bad, better than a regular boiled egg.
...Saigon. a city that aches, and my heart aches for it. I stayed in a small dormitory on the walking street, the kind of place where a child can be starving and sleeping in the ledge in front of the closed entryway to a building, and across the street tourists can be drinking 4 dollar mixed drinks and soliciting prostitutes. And yet there is hope. I can’t tell you why here, I started to write the next story, realized I couldn’t. I’m not being elusive, just protecting some friends of mine. I bought the child a meal, by the way. I’m not trying to bring light to my good deeds, I say that to make a point. If you see someone starving, give them something to eat. That’s what separates us from the lower primates, and, well, Mitt Romney.
I then went to Nha Trang, which is where young men who have dignity and self-respect go alone to - no wait, I lied. I am the only young man with dignity and self respect who travels alone to ever go to Nha Trang. It’s a place one can go to turn down offers for prostitution to build one’s own self-esteem regarding such matters. Travel note: if you find yourself in southeast asia alone and you’re a young man, wear long dress pants and wear collared button-up shirts, and show an even remote respect for the culture. eat at the restaurants where only locals eat and order what they’re ordering. The locals will like you, and try to set you up with their daughters.
I took the bus to Hue. Oh, did I mention that I had to completely reorganize my entire itinerary because there’s no way to get from Saigon to Hanoi directly during Tet without booking weeks or months in advance? the mental notes are stacking. anyways, picture this for me. You’re laying down. There are two iron bars on either side of your knees. if your sleeper-bus chair is laid flat there’s about two feet of clearance between the ground and the peice of plywood above you, which has more people on it. There are two people lying directly on your right side. There are two people lying directly on your left side. As though you’re sharing a king sized bed with four other people. There is no air circulation whatsoever, and after about 15 minutes you and the other four people are all sweaty and emit all sorts of awful smells and heat. Now imagine the bus ride is 12 hours long. Yes, I’ve done that. Special thanks to the lovely australian couple on the right side of me for being sociable and good sports. The weird thing was that it didn’t phase me at all, I never thought to complain. It was another in an endless succession of ridiculous things to go through. Shake it off, move on, get stronger.
Hue is a nice place, as far places go. there are ancient walls made of the most wonderful crumbling bricks that have slums and gardens on top of them now. The locals will let you walk through and even smile at you as long as you aren’t a jerk about the way you use your camera and you wai at everyone who’s an elder. Also, wear collared shirts and dress like an adult with respect and dignity. you’d be surprised at how many western people miss this memo, and stand there shell-shocked, entering into non-touristy neighborhoods wearing flip-flops, swimming trunks, and a beerlao t-shirt. On behalf of all self-respecting people with white skin who get treated with suspicion because of your self-disrespecting behavior, “This isn’t Bonnaroo. Please leave Asia.”
halfway through the 12 hour bus ride from Hue to Savannakhet, the poor lao man behind me began projectile vomiting all over my seat and got a good splatter all over my back. Remember how I said nothing shocks me anymore? I’m dead serious, nothing shocks me anymore. All I could think about was how bad I felt for him, as he lost some serious face. The kind woman across from me donated several of her wet wipes to clean me up. Lao people are so kind.
I spent 6 nights on the Mekong: 2 in Savannakhet, 1 in Thaklek, 1 in Pak Kading, and 2 in Vientiane (pronounced Wiang Chan). Met many lovely people. Pak Kading was my favorite, as I was perhaps the only barang in the town the night I was there. In a sandbar along the Nam Kading I got to play football with some kids, and the next morning I had breakfast with the town primary school’s english teacher. Lao people are among the kindest, most welcoming, and most considerate people I have ever met. That is perhaps the best summation of my time in Laos, so I will leave it at that. There are other stories you can ask me for, though.
..And now I’m back in my lovely neighborhood, Ramsong. Being here makes me miss my friends, but I am glad to be here.
I’m sitting in on a week of the Applied Principles of Communication school this week. It’s very good. We’ve been talking about basically the way we as humans process information and come to assumptions about the world and derive conclusions and meaning from that, and in that context asking what it means to learn and to improve, and to break out of our patterns of false thinking and to break away from false masters.
I’m also working on my resume, and I’m in the process of applying for both the SBS in the fall and internships for my time in america. I need something to do, might as well do something constructive. If anyone has any ideas shoot them my way.
OH MAN YOU GUYS. so I was writing all of this late last night, as I said, and whenever I write like that I reach this point where the brilliance just takes a dive and I just go off in a completely tangent direction. It’s a way of knowing that it’s time for bed. The stuff I wrote from this point on is pretty good, but it needs a good editor and I need to add to it and clearly define a thesis and turn it into something else. So I’ll fix it up and post it later.
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