Laundry
The following was written 7-15, in Sukhothai
1:30PM I’ve done the unthinkable!
Turned in a garbage bag full of clothes for actual laundry.
I cannot prance around naked, so not everything will get washed, but the clothes I wear most.
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Pop-ups, virri, and spyware
I walked to the halo Buddha’s Wat a little bit ago. It was much closer than the map made it appear. It is, I think, the most impressive Buddha I have yet to see.
Afterwards I stopped by an internet cafe I had seen while walking to the Wat. I’m hear now, in the loud room, on a computer that is getting constant pop-ups and virus warnings. A far cry from the Debian machine I had last night.
Speakeasy claims I’m getting 774k down and 364k up, but it feels much slower.
I’m almost out of time, but not looking forward to leaving the AC.
Power Down
The following was written 7-15, in Sukhothai, partly by flashlight
7:30PM I went out to an internet cafe this evening to type up these entries, but before I could get much done, the power went out.
What worries me most is that this is the first time I’m unable to clean the computer. No cookies were deleted, no cache cleared. Though I think it will be alright. The cafe ran Debian, and if you can’t trust a Linux admin, who can you trust?
The power was out for the whole city, but walking back to the guest house, every window was lit with the glow of a candle.
It’s back on now. Was out for about 20 minutes.
My laundry isn’t dry yet, which means there’s no point in taking a shower till tomorrow. I hope I don’t sleep in and not give myself enough time to shower and pack before the 11AM check-out time.
Let’s hope the electricity remains – the prospect of a fan-less night is not appealing.
The Bed in the Attic
The following was written 7-14, in the attic of an old lady in Sukhothai
8:30PM The bus left Chiang Mai at noon and arrived upon Sukhothai at 5:30PM. From the station, I caught a tuk-tuk to the Baan Thai Guest House. They were full, but I was told there would be a room for me tomorrow night and another solution for tonight. A home stay, she said.
And so tonight I bed down in the attic of an old lady (she must be 80) who speaks no English. The bed is quite hard, but will do.
Tomorrow I will leave the room to the spiders.
The French
The following was written 7-16, in Phitsanulok
1:45PM Before I left for Thailand, I heard from a few people that, by the end of their trips, the Thai language got to annoy them – it’s so tonal and can sound very much like whining. That hasn’t happened to me.
But the French!
I’ve discovered that if you see another white person in Thailand, there’s something like a 97% chance that they’re French. As such, you hear the language all the time around guest houses and the tourist strips. I have no idea why, but it’s really begun to annoy me.
And it’s nothing else about the people. Sure, they’re a quirky bunch, with their attention to manners and being so proper, but it’s only the language that has grown to annoy me.
Nothing against the French. Only an observation.
Beat
The following was written 7-13, in a windowless room in Chiang Mai.
8:54PM Back in Chiang Mai.
The bus ride over played Tears of the Sun. Bruce Willis shouldn’t be dubbed in Thai. It doesn’t work.
I must be staying in the Italian quarter of town. Pizza and other Italian restaurants abound. I found a tasty one for lunch. Homemade ice cream, too.
Even in Thailand, I’m told I look like a pirate…
Today marks day 1 of 7 that I must take Malarone out of the malaria zone.
Found another used book store and traded
- Shopping for Buddhas
National Anthem
The following was written 7-12 in an alley in Chiang Rai.
6:04PM Chiang Rai is one of the few cities in which the bus station is actually near the center of town. Within walking distance, even with a huge pack.
I didn’t have anything to do this evening, and ate dinner just a block away, so I decided to wander on over and buy a ticket to Chiang Mai for tomorrow.
The bus station is a noisy place, already hard to hear each other speak. As I was talking to the guy at the ticket window, this loud music started blasting. I thought to myself “Cut this horrible racket! I can barely understand this guy as it is.” The music stopped as soon as I finished at the window, and I turned around in time to see the whole station sit back down and return to business.
Oops. It was the National Anthem. Hey, at least I was standing.
The Book of Runes
The following was written 7-12, in the garden of my Chiang Rai guest house.
3:45PM Ralph Blum’s The Book of Runes I found faded and worn, buried deep in a used book store in Chiang Mai. It is “a handbook for the use of an ancient Oracle: the Viking Runes”. It tells of their meaning and ways of their use. They are not so much a form of divination, of future telling or fairy-tale magic, but a challenge to look into yourself. By using the runes in search of an answer, you find your own interpretation and project what you already know, but perhaps do not wish to express, onto the stones. Their symbols, sounds, and arrangements seem almost arbitrary. Still, I must question it.
In The Spell of the Sensuous (which I will have to comment more on later), David Abram spends a great deal of ink on the impact of writing, particularly phonetic, with our experience of the world. He proposes that systems such as ours, where the sounds and the symbols themselves bear little to no resemblance to anything of the sensuous world, serves to cut us off from the that world – he assaults (with the alphabet, of course) this the same way Daniel Quinn assaults agriculture. Seeing the runes through these animist eyes, one wonder why they’re to be used as an oracle. Question their validity. Their symbols have no reference to the natural world, nor do their sounds. This unlike, for instance, the Hebrew aleph-beth, the first letter of which meant ox and looked like an ox. Indeed, Odin happened upon the runes one day while torturing his own body – attempting to transcend the sensuous, and thus the whole of the natural world. From my limited understanding of the runes and their origins, I must be skeptic of their use, even if it is unimportant. I would prefer a more natural gateway within.
Still, a good read. Recommended for those who are interested in a Western version of the I Ching or Tarot cards.