Son, Things Get Worse, Before They Get Better
Leaving paradise is always a difficult business.
No matter how hard we try, (as if we try at all) we allow ourselves to slip into a blissful naivete about our lives when we get to these beaches. We side-step our problems choosing wisely to focus on all the details that make life worth living, AKA: eating, drinking, sleeping, climbing, laughing. Its a good life, but after weeks of this living in the now business; waking up to monkeys swinging through the trees, taking deep. self-fulfilled breaths of humid morning air, and making the tough choices about where to have breakfast, lunch and dinner, after all this, "relaxing" business, exposure to real world beyond our little Pra-Nang peninsula is pretty goddamned intense.
I'm sure making the border run through the tiny Thai town of Ranong and over the river to developing Myanmar and back is a challenging ordeal by itself, but when you throw a slow-moving mind and body into the mix, the journey takes on epic proportion. Regardless with no days left on our Thai visas we fought our way out of Tonsai, surviving endless longtail waits, bumpy rides in the back of trucks, ladyboys undressing me with their eyes, and bus rides involving hours of endlessly repetitive Thai pop. We slept whenever possible, then rammed our way through customs, hired a real son-of-a-bitch Thai boat driver to take us to Myanmar, baking in the sun like chicken satay while he tried to push counterfeit American greenbacks on us. We made some enemies, won some friends, and manged to procure the necessary stamps and drink a Myanmar beer (its no Budweiser). We cooked the other side of our satay skin on the way back, making it to the bus station in time to endure the slow, rickety, twelve hour ride to Bangkok.
I've recently learned that my beloved Plushmobile is dead. Yes dead. She's filled with mold won't start even with a new battery. I do believe I would start crying if I wasn't so high on Thai iced coffee and mango stick rice. Leaving paradise is not for the faint of heart.
We're in Bangkok for the next few days waiting for the Vietnamese embassy to have their way with our passports,then with luck, karma, and a few more coffees we'll be off to Vietnam to meet my friends Michael and Chris on this, the last leg of my current adventure.
No matter how hard we try, (as if we try at all) we allow ourselves to slip into a blissful naivete about our lives when we get to these beaches. We side-step our problems choosing wisely to focus on all the details that make life worth living, AKA: eating, drinking, sleeping, climbing, laughing. Its a good life, but after weeks of this living in the now business; waking up to monkeys swinging through the trees, taking deep. self-fulfilled breaths of humid morning air, and making the tough choices about where to have breakfast, lunch and dinner, after all this, "relaxing" business, exposure to real world beyond our little Pra-Nang peninsula is pretty goddamned intense.
I'm sure making the border run through the tiny Thai town of Ranong and over the river to developing Myanmar and back is a challenging ordeal by itself, but when you throw a slow-moving mind and body into the mix, the journey takes on epic proportion. Regardless with no days left on our Thai visas we fought our way out of Tonsai, surviving endless longtail waits, bumpy rides in the back of trucks, ladyboys undressing me with their eyes, and bus rides involving hours of endlessly repetitive Thai pop. We slept whenever possible, then rammed our way through customs, hired a real son-of-a-bitch Thai boat driver to take us to Myanmar, baking in the sun like chicken satay while he tried to push counterfeit American greenbacks on us. We made some enemies, won some friends, and manged to procure the necessary stamps and drink a Myanmar beer (its no Budweiser). We cooked the other side of our satay skin on the way back, making it to the bus station in time to endure the slow, rickety, twelve hour ride to Bangkok.
I've recently learned that my beloved Plushmobile is dead. Yes dead. She's filled with mold won't start even with a new battery. I do believe I would start crying if I wasn't so high on Thai iced coffee and mango stick rice. Leaving paradise is not for the faint of heart.
We're in Bangkok for the next few days waiting for the Vietnamese embassy to have their way with our passports,then with luck, karma, and a few more coffees we'll be off to Vietnam to meet my friends Michael and Chris on this, the last leg of my current adventure.
posted by Michael J.P. Hall at 10:11 PM
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