Rewriting Sukhothai

I had finally found the courage to come back and write. I have been living and living the last year and life took much away from writing, but certainly not thinking. I wrote frequently in my journal as a way of documenting myself. I have decided to rewrite the last year here as I write the present, to clarify my own life story, one that has been a series of dreams in my fatigued head.

Its hard to imagine that one year ago, on this very day, I was on board a 3rd class train from Bangkok to the ancient city of Sukhothai. I can still hear that 8 hour train ride to Phitsanoulok rattling as I travelled northward to Sukhothai...

"The 7th of July,2008
Bright yellow cracked seats, pastel green window frames and peeling blue floor boards. I'm on board an open air, one way hobo heartland to Phitsanoulok to stay for the night at some $4 hostel before continuing my journey to the old kingdom of Sukhothai. The scenary outside is pastorally pleasant - fertile green rice fields, withering shadows of slow moving men bent over at work, the occasional buffalo. The scene inside, however was a different story.

I miraculously dozed off for the first hour but woke up abruptly to the smell of dried fish. The food vendors with their big straw hats had come on board. The people sitting across the aisle looked at me warily - they knew i was not local. My back pack was dubiously placed on a broken luggage compartment and its straps were loosely flapping in the wind outside the window. A kind middle aged lady with her old blind mother smiled at me from the aisle. And then there was the drunk lady sitting across from me, who has mumbling to herself since she came on board.

I was very unfortunately placed across from the drunk lady (should her body finally decide to reject all that alcohol) and so I moved closer to the window. Holding her empty Chang bottle, she moved to the seat next to me. The smell of alcohol and sadness hit me in one moment. She didn't look dirty or homeless. She just looked very drunk, but she was properly dressed and had a pleasant face. She tells me that she has been drinking for 2 days, since her husband left her with nothing, for another woman. She had a story to tell. In between yelling obnoxious jokes in broken english and tearing up while saying " i love him so much", I felt a surge of compassion at this genuinely helpless sight.

Some moments like these, she would break into a drunken song and apologize to me for being like this. I asked her about the huge scars on her arm, they were large and evil looking like tentacles chaining her arms. She kept silent and smiled. Then she cried and told me rather irrelevantly that she was working as a construction worker to support her husband. She was on her way to look for him to see him for the last time, because she hated him and she loved him at the same time. I told her that she could be better than this, she spoke english and she knew that she was in a sorry state. "But I love him so much..." she trails off falling asleep.

I realized that love, even obsessive and unfair love was the greatest thing she could achieve in her small world of pain. Love makes the smallest person feel noble and immortal, even if there was nothing heroic about how things have turned out. This one lady who simply could not let go of the one thing that made her feel closer to humanity.

Just before I get off the train, she wakes up and tells me humbly that she was glad to have met me and to go to the temple to pray for her because she was going to end her life. She was going to leave this world, unwilling and unable to let go of her past and I found it that some sort of hidden message for me. I was more determined than ever to move on from my own past. "

when ash becomes gold.

I haven't had the heart to write for what feels like the longest time. its the process of thinking, absorbing and accepting that we humans go through. I find that i am quick in discovering and learning truths, but so very slow in absorbing and accepting them. a part of me has died with acceptance that can only be true because of its finality. i know the half heart that once stirred recklessly has beat itself to death. for awhile i was mourning, some times i still indulge in that heavy hearted feeling. but yesterday, as i stayed up meandering through my books, i saw the sun rise. i had never seen the sky with so much clarity - the perspective was so intense i felt must had been noon white light, only the cool breath of dawn reminded me that it was only 7 in the morning. it was moment where my past, present and future intertwined to a point of purity, distilled to a mere drop of happiness. I'm done with the past, and i've found peace at least. some quiet contentment, aligned with a strange source of strength. all fear melted then. it wasn't just the sun's tendrils that were caressing me, it was peace and silence. i never felt true-ness like this before, where everything was dissolved into a moment of stillness. that was truth. the light of it, in one moment the darkness had left me behind, abandoning the home it loved for years leaving me hollow and blank like a child in the withered bark of a tree again.

Angkor revisited

All that stuck with me 2

Vietnamese tea!


The traffic at Donc Khoi Market


Ho Chi Minh War Museum





NYE at Lan Kwai Fong


Causeway bay from the tram


Hong Kong Bay


The Three Hostesses!

All that's stuck with me.

Since 2008 started, i feel like i've stepped in a whirlwind - and been enjoying it. In less than 3 months I have travelled to 5 countries, started 2 work projects, made 2 new friends, caught up with 4 old ones and lost 2. Of all that's past and present, here's a quick recount on how 2007 ended, how 2008 started and all that I remember.

December this year was really the best end-of-year I had. I randomly decided to have a christmas party with my 2 new friends, Amandae and Sin Yee aka my All Woman Empowering Solidarity Group and it was amazing! Somehow about 50-60 turned up during the course of the night with over 20 bottles of alcohol not including beer into a mid sized apartment on Kiliney rd. The police were invited to join us, lots of laughter, wine spilling, good music, hook ups and one friend's shirt caught on fire. It was such a good party.

The rest of December was history - i spent christmas having a nice quiet dinner with the girls and spent the 28th dancing wildly in 4 inch stilettos to David Guetta and shouting along with the French crowd. The next day i almost missed my flight to Hong Kong. I didn't like the place at all but it was nice catching up with old friends. Too many people, buildings and it didn't help that the apartment i was staying in was filthy. Completely uninspiring. I welcomed the new year, barricaded away from the main street (thank god) at Lan Kwai Fong and toasted to vanilla ice cream while my friends had beer.

January was getting back into serious mode and alot of my time was spent working on my dad's project. I made a trip to Ho Chi Minh city for some business and the weekend after I went to Phi Phi island. I really liked the scenary - limestone cliffs, turqoise blue waters, black tipped sharks... not the sound of long tail motrs though.I had a room with a hammock at the balcony and it was well decorated. Couldn't help but feel a little creeped out thinking about the tsunami, but the feeling certainly isn't as strong as the time i was in Prey Veng province in Cambodia.

February is here. I'm about to turn 23. Just before the family holiday to Burma i went to Bangkok and it was great being "home". I did the usual circuit and I was happy to see that prices did not increase. The number of annoying ang mohs have. I was particularly peeved at this one guy staying on my floor at My Mom's Guesthouse who kept wearing shoes into the bathroom when the rule was to leave them downstairs. By midnight Khao San is a jungle full of chimpanzees and chickens, to the great relief of the women selling tribal hats and bells as they cajole one drunkard to another into buying their goods. The hair weavers by the sidewalk too, realize that after midnight there is a sudden increase in people who suddenly want corn rolls and braided hair. Bangkok does most of it's selling at night, and I always look forward to the morning after when they start playing Jack Johnson over and over again.
It is so different from Yangon. Everyone smiled quietly, ran their little stalls selling roasted corn or junk and occasionally looked at you as they grinned widely with red stained teeth. I met a monk at Shwedegon Pagoda, who spoke french to me and told me to look at the 76 carat diamond at the top of the pagoda. then he told me i was born in the year of the lion according to the burmese calender and then left. I'm still wondering why he told me that.

I've lost some weight recently - physically and mentally. Perhaps thats why I've been writing less, and doing more. Somedays I automatically slip into sentimentality and nostalgia as if pulling my mind and body back, afraid to lose all that I used to hold on to.

postcards from an ancient world of wars, lanterns and pagodas

updates.

It's been close to 3 months since I wrote. Those happy European days left me behind as I returned to the murky waters of school. Time went by faster than I thought, and here I am with the exams to deal with. I travelled a little, most recently to Japan while the rest were weekend breaks to Thailand and Malaysia. I feel a little of me dying everyday.

in the last few months, i've been virtually immobile. i researched and wrote 2 papers on Cambodia, both revolving around the Khmer Rouge period. Other than that, i've barely found inspiration elsewhere. I've decided to start writing again. The last few months of silence were heavy and draining on me. i need a voice.

2 days in Paris

here I am back in Paris with 2 days left and a ton of writing to do on the rest of Italy and London. I spent the last few days meeting friends in Paris on bicycle, racing before any impending rain. Surprisingly, the French are kinder to cyclists than to their fellow drivers. Yesterday i was back in Montmatre, along the Rue de Abbèsses, a really charming street full of cafes and restos and had dinner at the Relais Gascon, a southern french restaurant serving huge salads with foie gras and chervrè chaud( hot goat cheese)and in the evening i visited my friend Berengère at her new apartment in the Latin Quartier near Sorbonne. I watched Paris, Je T'aime, a 2006 film about love in Paris which featured a bunch of big names in 5 minute stories. not very original, but it is really potent in showing the randomness and going ons in Paris, with those 18th/19th century facades as background. the film made me feel like i was part of all that, desptie all the strangeness, it made me feel like i belonged with all these people buying their bread, falling in love, arguing, smoking, feeling lonely, being alive.