Today’s back-to-America culture shock: going to the grocery store.

First, the place is HUGE - much bigger than it actually has to be. (Korean grocery stores have tons of food, but are much smaller affairs.)

Second - the choices!

Third - you can get anything you want, even if it’s out of season!

But I can’t help but think it’s a little over-the-top.

We have eighty five different selections of dish towels, but we don’t have basic healthcare provided for, like Korea and many other countries do.

While I love being able to get thirty seven different kinds of peanut butter in a jiffy, I don’t love the fact that going to the doctor is now out-of-the-question - whereas in Korea, and even Thailand, quality health care was so inexpensive.

When I made peanuts in a media job in NYC a few years back, I went to Planned Parenthood for basic health care needs, because it was on a sliding scale and affordable. Yet the catch-22 is that even PP access is now contentious - and dangerous. While the risk is relatively small, it makes me uncomfortable to think that a wellness exam is at the cost of being heckled by a gauntlet of old white men - and possibly violently.

I wonder about American tradeoffs.

Trip post-mortem

Back home in the US. Had an amazing month putting Thailand and Cambodia in the tapestry of my life experiences. It was - almost - regretless, but for one thing.

I loved my trip, but it helped me remember something: don’t do stuff because you feel like you “have” to; the crossing of an item off the list.

I liked Phuket a lot. It was gorgeous. Ko Phi Phi - even more so.

But I’m simply not a beach person. Beaches are gorgeous, calm, relaxing. But I’m a city girl. And that’s OK.

I was told I should see Phuket. I kind of wish I’d seen the north of Thailand, Laos, and possibly even a bit of Vietnam instead.

But those regrets are OK, too - they’re the fuel for future trips, the itineraries of which I’m already daydreaming.

Impressing fellow backpackers is a fool’s game. Buy experiences, not things - and buy the experiences you actually want to have.

I wake up every day pre-dawn, so on Sunday morning I got up at 5 and made the hour-long trek to the summit of Ko Phi Phi, viewpoint three.

I was not unrewarded.

Today was my last full day here. Spent it with a dude from the hostel, hanging out at Kata Beach and then Karon. It was an idyllic, lazy day, re-reading A Feast of Crows and watching kids play in the surf and eating a surfeit of banana pancakes. The perfect conclusion to a holiday.

Back to reality… but this will be, as Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock has it… “my mind palace.”

Currently: in paradise.

This place must be seen to be believed. 

Phuket beaches: beautiful.

Phuket sex tourism: not so beautiful.

I could write a long post about the nuances and intricacies of what I’ve observed about the Thai sex work industry, but it really boils down to this: people will do what they have to do to survive. I have zero interest in blaming, shaming, or psycho-analyzing the young women who are doing what they have to - nor do I want to be the White Woman swooping in screaming exploitation when the players involved don’t necessarily identify that way.

But I will say this - sex tourism doesn’t happen magically in a vacuum. Without the buyer, it wouldn’t be here. And while I can’t imagine what it might be like to be in a position where sex work is one of your only valid options to survive, my respect level for the creepy old guys and the bachelor party bros who should know better is nil.

#soapbox

Anyway, the go-go scene of Phuket is really just on Patong, where I’m staying… I’m told there’s less of that on Kata and Karon, so I’m going to check out all the beaches while I’m here. Rough life, huh? Tomorrow, an overnight on Ko Phi Phi including a tour of Ko Phi Phi Leh… again… hard life. :P

Again, this is a “believe the hype” kind of place. Crowded? Yes. Beautiful? Even more so. The clearness of the water and the dense jungle-y hills overlooking the bay is taking my breath away. The spring rolls and coconut water on demand helps too!

Gonna go watch the sunset over the beach and eat some street food. Ciao!

Back in Bangkok.

This is not a city you can be lukewarm about. You either love it, or you hate it. There are no in-betweens. Like the Sith, you deal with this city in absolutes.

A seven-hour bus ride from Siem Reap and then a tuktuk after haggling with the guy who wanted to charge me a farang price of 400 baht, getting another offer for 150 - and now I’m on a bumpy ride through back streets from backpacker haven Khao San Road to Silom, where my guesthouse neighborhood is.

The ride:

Monks in saffron robes walk past street vendors selling Chinese-style noodle soups, pad thai, curries, sticky rice cakes wrapped in banana leaves, Thai-style ice coffee, chicken and pork hotter than a Mexican barbecue on skewers. The tuktuk lives up to the onomatopoeia of its name as you whir through alleys, narrowly missing soi dogs and alley cats, and then you’re passing over a 1000-year-old canal only to find yourself next on a perfectly paved street with slick banks and high-rises posher than London’s best, their surfaces maddeningly shiny despite the ever-present heat and dust.

Turn the corner and next you’re trailing behind students with their white pressed shirts and blue pants biking home from school (often with younger siblings teetering precariously on the same seat) followed by the businessmen pacing towards the Skytrain. A seven-story shopping mall - only Fendi, Balenciaga, and Marc Jacobs tastes need apply - hovers over the golden gleam of a temple nearby where monks beg for their daily bread, with seemingly no cognitive dissonance whatsoever. Somehow, a girl in sky-high heels balances perfectly on the back of an autobike with nary a wardrobe malfunction in sight. Yet there’s no anxiety in these streets. It all feels perfectly natural - the rhythm of Bangkok. There’s no other way this place could be.

I love it here.  Forget the circus - Bangkok is the greatest show on Earth.

Top:  The Visitor’s Center at the Angkor Hospital for Children. Founded by Japanese photographer Kenro Izu, the hospital is a valuable resource in a country where infant and child mortality still claim as many as 1 in 20 lives. (The statistic was more like 1 in 5 in the 90s, before hospitals like this one were started.) The pool in the middle of the center collects rainwater to use as “grey water” for toilets and the like so no resources are wasted at the hospital. 

Bottom left: Kid’s art in the blood donation room at the hospital where I donated today. The hospital offers free pediatric care to children of Siem Reap province and I saw many families waiting outside for their children to be seen. Up to 400 or 500 families are served each day at this fully-staffed medical center. 

Bottom right:  Bathroom signage at the hospital explaining how to use a Western-style toilet. Most toilets in Cambodia are squat toilets so the kids getting free medical care there don’t always know how to use them! Tickled me. 

Goodbye, Siem Reap and Angkor Wat. You are a beautiful place. Leaving tomorrow for Bangkok, and then a flight on the 16th to Phuket/Ko Phi Phi for 5 days… then home! Well, home being Boston, to see some graduate schools in person.

I’m really glad to have taken an extra day here to see the temples one last time after absorbing a lot of the rich mythological history at hand. The temples stand on their own without any context - Angkor is awe-inducing without it. But having a brief grasp of Khmer cosmology makes Angkor even more of a wonder.

I am definitely coming back. 

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I have been conscious not to take too many photos of people here because I think it is disrespectful when people act like the locals here are zoo animals and Other-ize them. I’m sensitive to that because I remember how it felt realizing someone was taking my picture in Korea or when the kids would record me on their camera phones because of the novelty of a monkey foreigner teaching them. 

However, I kindly asked permission to take photos of these sweet kids. 

I was walking around the market this morning at Kompong Phluk, the fishing town on stilts outside of Siem Reap. (The stilts come in handy when monsoon season turns the houses into house boats!)  The little girl in the red shorts toddled up with her little brother. She came up to hug me! It was so sweet and unexpected. 

Then she did something even more meltworthy - she told her brother to hug me too, and hold my hand. She took his hand in hers and then touched mine. 

I can’t explain why but it was very sweet and real, possibly only matched by the monk on the train to Kanchanaburi giving the dehydrated little girl in front of me a cola, and then blowing on her head - a gesture her father explained to me, is like giving his spirit or karma or good luck to the little girl.

The sights are great, and the reason why we travel. But sometimes the little random moments that no tour guide can sell you are even more memorable.