A Lack of Mindfulness and a Lot of Good Luck

Full disclosure: apparently the retreat didn’t work—at least not in the short term. I have displayed an impressive LACK of mindfulness rather than focusing my mind on the present moment it would seem.

Exhibit A, stubbing my toe hard (really tear-springingly hard) on a meditation bench as I raced to snap some last minute photos of the retreat center. Of course, everyone around me took the opportunity to weigh in with a “now that wasn’t very mindful” chuckle. The toe turned a shade of purple and me wincing as I walked out of the retreat center. What a way to go, ha!

Exhibit B, at the Songkran Festival (more to come on this!) I took my camera and cell phone with me wrapped in a plastic bag, not quite acknowledging what a true deluge my future was sure to hold. Both are presently functioning a various degrees of “not so much” at the moment.

Exhibit C, a ferry boat fiasco. After an awesome couple of days on Koh Phangan, unwinding from the stern rigid meditation schedule that had become my life, I made plans to finally leave the lovely beaches of Southern Thailand and head north to Bangkok to deal with various travel plans and visa issues for Vietnam and China and get the rest of my pan-Asia tour underway. I purchased a ticket for a 12:30 ferry to SuratThani with a connection to Bangkok on an overnight bus that would arrive at 5am on Tuesday morning. After some a final swim in the high tide and packing my bags, the travel agency taxi picked me up and shuttled me to the port. I was trying to convince the driver to allow me a quick stop for some mango and sticky rice (an old, but recently revitalized obsession that I’ve been feeding almost everyday—I’m sure the monks would say that was greedy, craving and not mindful in the least. Craving leads to attachment, attachment leads to dukkha. Woe is me.) What can I say, I adore the stuff. He claimed there was not enough time (honestly, there was, you know I’m better about time now). Feeling unsatisfied I boarded the ferry boat and got out my books to entertain me during the 3-hour ferry ride.

All of a sudden I had a sinking feeling: where was my blue wallet? Had I seen it the last time I had unzipped my backpack? I looked again. Nothing. Panic welled up. I stood up and could feel the boat’s engine beginning to turn over with a low grumble. I raced up to the top deck from the cabin below, and (I’m fairly sure) started frantically crying out,”I don’t have my wallet, STOP THE BOAT, I don’t have my wallet, I need to get off!” Yes my friends, I was THAT crazy girl, that’s for sure. I would love to see a video of me at that moment—or perhaps very much not—but I wonder what I looked like to all the other sunbathing backpackers patiently waiting for the boat to set off. I lay my bags on the deck, ripped them open and was searching fully panicking at this point. The boat had pulled away from the boat at this point, and so I hollered, “Okay, I’m getting off the boat! Please, I need to get off the boat!” at which point a nice and hurried ferry worker rushed me and my bags of the boat and plunked all my possessions on the wooden dock and off the boat sped.

And here came more loving kindness: a fellow farang (that’s Thai for “foreigner”—the muzungu of Asia!) asked if I needed some help, kindly pretending the answer was not obvious. Yes, I explained, and probably flooded his ears with run-on sentences about my wallet, and how it was gone, and where could it be, and my boat, it was gone. He had just dropped a friend off at the boat (the reason the boat had left late in the first place) and offered to give me a ride back to my bungalow. First we dropped my large bag off at the boat office and then he drove me back to my old place which was completely out of his way home—so very kind. I thanked profusely and ran towards my bungalow hoping my friend would still be there. She was, and was wondering why on earth I was back there. I gave her the same rambling answer. Nope, she hadn’t seen a blue wallet, nor had the lodge and restaurant staff. A new level of panic had arrived. So I took off for the travel agency to both change my ticket for the next day and give one final go for the wallet. The woman at the travel agency was also quite surprised to see me as she thought that I was finally out of her hair! I tried to explain “wallet” and “change ticket” and when she understood she gave me a very sympathetic look and asked the taxi driver to go check the truck. I had low hopes at this point, but when I saw his face light up across the street and his hand hold something up in the air, I literally started jumping up and down cheering, and shouting thank you, then shaking several hands and wishing a happy new year! What a farang I am…whatever. I was on an adrenalin high for the rest of the afternoon and went back to tell my friends and celebrate with a good day of nothing—just eating from the good restaurant at the lodge and lounging in the hammock by the beach looking out at the water. So I had to wait until the next day to take the boat, thereby missing the last day of the New Years festivities in Bangkok. But I was in no position to complain—I mean, what luck!! Phew.

And aside from these frustrations (mostly with myself!), I had a really great time in Koh Phangan for all my hesitation on what to do after I was released from the silent retreat. There was lots of beach and hammock lounging, eating mango and sticky rice (gosh is it good!), watching lovely sunsets, and going out dancing at night, the first night to the Half Moon Party which was pretty insane, so I can only imagine what the Full Moon Parties are like. The next day was definitely the highlight of my stay as it was Songkram, the Thai New Year, which was celebrated on April 13—basically with lots of water as an excuse to cool down in crux of the brutal hot season. But this was full on water warfare—a kid’s dream come true. I started out the day in the back of a pickup truck with other guests being driven by the lodge owners towards the ferry port. We were soaked in no time, both from the water sloshing out of the massive cooler which we used to refill our buckets for assaults on passing mopeds and taxis, and the numerous counter attacks. After arriving in town and grabbing a bite to eat in the safety zone of the market, I ran into some retreat (dhamma) friends and we somehow ended up in the back of a pickup truck with a random Thai family that had two cute little girls. After circling the town and even visiting a Buddhist shrine to pay respects (and chat some Pali for the impressed family!) we returned to the main street to dance to blasting music (at one point on top of a passing and participating fire-truck!), and, oh yeah, and throw more water. Anyone looking the least bit dry was attacked anew. All in all a great afternoon, which was followed by more dancing that evening which required just about all the energy I had left to muster. So it wasn’t all bad to have that extra day after all to relax and recover.

So on Tuesday midday I set off for the second time on my long journey to Bangkok, and what a pilgrimage it turned out to be. Of course this time the taxi driver forgot about me until I came hurrying up to the office with all of my bags as he was just arriving at the office on his moped. Thus followed a “catch the boat nail-biter part 2,” and we still had to go collect my bag at the boat office where it had remained stored for 24 hours (yes, I wore the same clothes, I was at the beach after all…). I made it, this time with all my belongings, and settled in for the 4 hour ferry ride, and then were shuttled in bus station of sorts. After waiting an hour and a half there we were then shuttled into town in pickup trucks quite literally hanging out the back only to have to wait again for the final bus to Bangkok.

After 7pm we finally boarded the bus, but there was a momentary scare of a lack of seats so a handful of us were placed in the bottom (clearly less used) section of the double-decker bus. Thus preceded the most awful movie-viewing of my life. The TV screen was directly in front of my seat, so like a bad accident, I just continued to watch the horror unfold. I have so sadly assume it was American though I still don’t know the name and probably never will. It was a truly dull, tasteless attempt at a scary movie with E-list actors and the icing on the cake was the subtitles which bore almost no relation to the horrible dialogue being spoken. Myself and the Danish guy sitting next to me could not stop laughing. After a 1am rest-stop, I slept until I was woken by our announced arrival—it was 5:45am and still dark. The Danish guy had a flight home that night at 1am after having been traveling for six months, so I said he was welcome to leave his bags in my room for the day so he didn’t have to pay for a room he wouldn’t use. So we walked around looking for a guest house and trying to figure out where we were. I finally found a good one and had to wait to see if a single room would open up. In the meantime we headed to sightsee at the Grand Palace and its impressive monastery with the famous Emerald Buddha and Wat Pho, with a humongous reclining Buddha, something around 44 meters long. After moving in and some street food lunch, we hit the massive commercial district of Siam Square before returning exhausted to the west corner of the city.

Today, aside from multiple panics about what I am doing with my next few months, I managed to fit in a visit to the National Museum for a guided tour that illuminated some of the endless Buddhist and Hindu beliefs and art that proliferate nearly every aspect of life in Thailand. After a midday thunderstorm, I set off on a canal boat trip across town (the no-traffic bonus) to see the old teak house of Jim Thompson, an American entrepreneur who became an incredibly successful exporter of Thai silk only to go missing mysteriously in the mid 1980s at his vacation house in the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia (so I had heard this story before). I ended the day with a trip to Chanlongkon University and its impressive and beautiful campus to see where my mother had been an English teacher for a year when she was around my age. After a brief tuk-tuk trip to Lumphini Park to observe the evening aerobic classes that are a daily occurrence there (and quite a riot), I headed to a river boat pier and took a lovely night tour back to my guest house for a mere fifty cents! All the wats lit up along the river are a riveting sight. Last but not least, I committed to a plan: I bought a ticket for a minivan to Siem Reap, Cambodia—the launch point for exploring the great temple complex of Angkor Wat. Tomorrow’s going to be a looong day, complete with visa application, quite possibly some corruption at the border, and what I’m told are pretty awful roads once we cross into Cambodia—have any of these people ever been on a bus in Uganda—how does it compare on that scale is what I want to know…