Back to Bras

Its amazing the stench you acquire after marinating on a plane for 13 hours in the same clothes and a hangover. My eyelids look glossy and greasy and my hair is matted in Bangkok smog. The wine I ordered on the flight from Tokyo to compliment my Ambien spills down my white jeans. Now I sit amongst business people I assume, on the connecting flight from Seattle to San Diego and I’m wondering how horribly I wreak to the nicely dressed woman next to me. My leather beaded bracelets and tan weathered hands look awkward next to her silver ones accentuating her nicely manicured fingers. I sense I’m returning to reality. I haven’t been surrounded by this many Americans in 25 days. Although its refreshing knowing I’m able to have a full on conversation with anyone around me , it twinges a feeling from deep inside somewhere. A empty sort of feeling, the feeling of being part of the crowd again, the feeling of normalcy. 15 or so hours ago I was drinking Singha in a Thai strip club. Sleeping before a flight is overrated anyway right? Especially when it leaves at 3 in the morning. Now I’m hours from San Diego. And the flight attendant asks me if I would like ice in my glass.

Surreal.

A sunrise looks amazing from the sky. Its going to be a beautiful day.

I'm going to miss:

Buying fresh Papaya from the street vendors.

The sound of the school children across from my hotel on Soi 8

Black sesame soymilk and Genmai green tea from 711

The challenge of turning each hotel room into a gym

Techno music and seafood dinner on Leela’s Beach

Fight club is Amazing

Tyler Durden: From now on, all those with shaved heads: "Space Monkeys".

Tyler Durden: We're consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don't concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy's name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra.

Narrator: Martha Stewart.

Tyler Durden: Fuck Martha Stewart. Martha's polishing the brass on the Titanic. It's all going down, man. So fuck off with your sofa units and Strinne green stripe patterns.

Tyler Durden: Fuck off with your sofa units and string green stripe patterns, I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say let... lets evolve, let the chips fall where they may.

Marla Singer: Your whacked out bald freaks hit me with a fucking broom! They almost broke my arm! They were burning their fingertips with lye, the stink was unbelievable!

Marla Singer: My God. I haven't been fucked like that since grade school.

Tyler Durden: Now a question of etiquette; as I pass, do I give you the ass or the crotch...?

Only Experiences. Last Day in Bangkok

finally made it back to Bangkok from Koh Pahgan. Soi 8 in Sukhumvit almost feels a little bit like home. We check into the ol' Stable Lodge after a 15 hour trek across Thailand. 3 hours on the ferry, 8 hours on a bus, it was a decent bus this time thank god. Guess you can only hope for the best, for you have no control. Couldn't sleep again, milled around the room till 4 in the morning, something about this city makes me unable to sleep.

The time alloted to you to think while traveling is almost scary. What else do you do on a 8 hour bus ride or a 20 hour plane ride? After the Ambien is gone, the Ipod has died, and you can recite the lines from every movie you have. You have even resorted to playing Mash, I Spy, and 21(which was actually a new one for me).

I couldn't help but think how small and meager our existence's are on this planet. Something about transferring from hotel to hotel, from bus to train, from train to ferry, from ferry to car, from car to airplane. Something about the millions of people you sit next to, to the thousands of places you stand, to all the ticket stubs, to the cheap cart food you buy... something about the whole entire process just makes you feel very. small. All the effort it can take you, a small person, with millions of other small people to get from a simple point A, to a simple point B makes you feel like your drowning in a pool of water.

To Move around a dozen times, pack, unpack, and repack in 2 days at a time. To open a new hotel room, the sheets are clean, the towels are folded waiting, small servings of shampoo and soap set aside, little keys and room cards. With no remnants of a previous party. A previous soul. Then as your give up your key and your towels they are discarded and stripped, everything is refolded, re pressed, re done.

Your existence was nothing.

You take only your experiences with you.

The Eye of the Beholder

be it asian, british, german, or african women we are all the same. some want our ass as tan as our face, some want those nice breasts, slender waist and accomidating hips. Some want there face as white as their ass, here to Thai woman that is beauty. Some relish their small breasts and small tummys. seeing a beach full of racially mixed women every morning sprawled out topless soaking in all the tropical sun they possibly can has given me a glimpse. No matter where you are we all want to be beautiful.

they buy whitening cream, we buy tanning packages and darkening creme.

others lift there dripping bikini edges to make sure there tan line has changed a significant amount.

some lay topless and exposed with no shame.

In the Name of Paradise

some 2 or so days ago i attended a rave in the middle of the jungle, slept the almost the whole entire next day on the beach, tops are optional here. then ate steamed snapper on a glowing strand of white sand lit by the setting sun, with no one around besides the Thais cooking my fish and a small group of backpackers shooting the shit in some language i couldn't make out.

I am woken last night by lightning, thunder and pounding rain that sounds as if it might break through our shitty bungalow roof. The price you pay for stepping out your front door into aqua sea. the coil springs from the mattress seem to be implanted in my spine and Zach has pulled off all of the sheet we use as a blanket, not that its cold, but for the sense of security.

8:00 AM

we open our bungalow door to sheets of rain. Today we ned to find a 4x4 vehicle that will take us to the eastern side of the island. There is a secluded cove we are trying to find for the remainder of our stay. With our bags packed we head out into the rain

12:00

by the time we get our arrangements to the east we are soaked, but we've found someone to take us. I hop in the truck and it reeks of pot, which actually makes me a bit homesick. a small Thai man with long hair and a mustache sit behind the wheel, he looks too small to reach the pedals. we winds through dirt roads and jungle foliage that brings us to the cove we've been longing for. Nothing like the Trashed Had Rin. A cluster of bungalows line the white sands and speckle out onto the cliffs. The storm has rattled the cove and the river that runs into it has turned it a murky brown that then fades into aqua in the horizon. our bungalow is amoungst the cliffs overlooking the cove, built into it, boulders line the back wall.

Present.

Im still in a dream. I sit in restaurant style dig, under a coconut lined canopy. I am the only american everywhere i go. Most speak french or hail heavy accents from South Africa and beyond. Nothing i fluently understand. The cove is churning and the rain still falls in sheets. people sit on platforms littered with pillows and low tables sipping Singha and fruit juices waiting for the sun.

I am waiting for the sun, this is the second day of heavy rain. I've grown so dark here i dont recognize myself as i look down.

bummin

so not all vacations are all good, all the time. I told myself i was going to completely embrace the experience, and I'm seriously trying. sometimes you get homesick, and bummed and you just want to stop living out of a suitcase and a strange bathroom and just pee on your own toilet. And not have to sleep in overnight ferries next to european backpackers or sit on squeaking bumpy sweaty sticky busses for two and a half hours. But you know what, thats what its all about. its all about the journey. and i need to remember that.

tomorrows a new day

Dreams

in thailand, or perhaps in the greater asia area, on new years eve thousands of people light a paper lantern, and as it fills with hot air its set free into the new years eve sky.

As far as i can see across the black horizon it is speckled with tiny flickering lanterns. small children and adults alike push there lanterns up into the air. there is a quietness... a universal calm across the beach as people whisper there wishes to themselves. Its almost like a dream, the strangeness of it. i wake in the morning wondering if it was real.

i feel that often here.