SE Asia - Part 3: More Thailand

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After the first adobe building project, I attended a meditation retreat in Southern Thailand. I then headed back up to the Northeast and helped with another building project. After that I spent christmas on an island in the gulf of Thailand with some friends before heading to Cambodia.

Nov 26 2002

Hello everyone,
Well I’m still alive and breathing thinking feeling here on planet earth. I’m in transit from the building project to the Cambodian border and onto a meditation retreat in southern Thailand. I’m too sick to write more. I believe I’m experiencing another recurrence of Giardia. Other than that things are good. Love you all, Steve

Nov 28 2002

Left it I did, my guitar, at the Cambodian border. I gave it, indeed, to one of the many begging Cambodian girls who followed me around the border area and shaded me with an umbrella as I walked. No matter how awkwardly I turned or how fast I walked those little girls kept their little friggin umbrellas directly over my head. I tried all the Thai I knew with them, who probably spoke Khmer, to make them go away. Nothing worked.
Never have I felt so uncomfortable around the touts, the beggars, the amputees and the deformed children as I did today. Never have I felt so wrong to be so lucky, never have I felt so helpless to help others. Not that giving my guitar up was a noble act, far from it. I had thought about throwing that damn cumbersome thing over many many bridges and cliffs in the last two months. I'm surprised it made it as far as it did. On buses, trains, trucks, taxis, tuk tuks, bicycle carts, and motor cycles I carried, shoved, threw and stuffed the friggin thing all around Thailand. I enjoyed playing it many times and was glad I had it when I did. At this point though the strings were rusty from the tropical moisture, the high E broken, and a thick layer of dirt engrained in the wood.
It was a good guitar, given to me in Sedona, Arizona by my late friend Beau Alexander. Well I'd be excited, and I'm sure Beau would be too, to know where it ends up: which children fight over it, who learns their first chord with it, which one legged man hawks it in which alley, who steals it, throws it, breaks it, and which family cooks a meal over its burning splintered remains.
Well my guitar is somewhere in Cambodia, traveled far already I’m sure, but I'm in Bangkok, the decrepit capital of Thailand. It's a wonder that the rest of Thailand has any connection to this place. It's unfortunate I must keep passing through in order to get to the rest of the beautiful country.
So I’ll be silently meditating for 10 days starting on the 1st, and then attending another natural building project in northeastern Thailand. Nothing left to say, but.....so long mi guitarra, adios my good friends, thanksgiving is past or coming( I have no idea), and I hope that we see each other again, yes I hope......that we see.......each other....... again.(We will)


Dec 22 2002

And if the cycle(s) ended, the universe ceased to expand, the planets no longer revolved, the earth stopped its rotation, the moon froze in orbit, and the last drops of menstrual blood are dropped. Life dies, the universe dies, existence is no more.
Riding the magic carpet, colorful oriental patterns of thread, spun by old toothless Thai ladies, weaved on old teak looms, under stilted bamboo huts, I am. The soaring rug, the true fabric of my fleshy existence as a glob of organic materials arranged by DNA, it's a chemical process of continual rejuvenation, but yet aging towards a death all along. Towards birth from dying, flying over golden rice fields in green fertile valleys and mountains of lush jungle watered by monsoon rains.
Through time, gliding, swimming through its liquid substance, rising to the surface to gasp for the precious present. Here in this land the past can be seen, ancient civilizations, societies evolved, ruins still standing, the history, the culmination of past events below all wrapped up in the nowness of it all, everything thinkable and everything unthinkable. All that exists owes its existence to all that does not.
It's the same earth only now I stand on the other side, for centuries isolated; only now truly meeting. Here I am, watching the sun rise, the full moon set, and the stars fade over Thai rice fields and banana tree groves. At the same time some where else, others witnesses this same event as the sun setting, the full moon rising and the stars brightening. Continually actually is the sun setting and rising somewhere somewhen at opposite ends of this spinning life giving orb. Infinite sunrises and sunsets at every stage, from infinite angles, always and forever as long as the world turns and breaths are breathed.
First beams of Asian sunshine lick me with its electomagnetice tongue, bathes me like a siamese cat with its rainbow tye-died saliva. My eyes taste the sweet colored candy of a day beginning. Standing its aura, my bare feet touch the 6 billion year old dust of the East. Magic Dust, Star Dust..............and so on....................

Hello fellow life forms, to those who receive this message, Merry Christmas!!! To those who don't, Merry Christmas!! The last I wrote in one of these mass e-mail blabberings, I was in Bangkok off to meditate. That I did, lasting 7 of ten days in the peace of a quiet mind until It was time to go back into the world and function as a social being, or at least learn how. Back through the Bangin' male chicken, the capital of this land of Thai, I went, and bussed my way back to Isaan, or northeastern Thailand, where traditional Thai culture is strong. In this region walking through villages and towns you feel like a transvestite Martian on acid, with the way people look at you. Here are the friendliest most generous people I have ever encountered. They are eager to help you and excited to see you.
I stopped for a couple days to visit some friends at an Ashram. This ashram is a little intentional community heavily involved in social programs throughout Southeast Asia. After, I made my way further into the heart of Isaan to meet up with some other foreigners and build an adobe structure with a self reliant, self sufficient Buddhist community. They call themselves "Sante Asoke" and they kinda do their own thing, growing all their own organic food, eating only vegetarian and producing as much as possible from natural materials. They also don't take donations, unless you know them really well. We were received with an extremely warm welcome and pampered with love and kindness. We had to obey their rules, keeping knees and shoulders covered at all times, not killing even mosquitoes, no consumption of caffeine or cigarettes, and only eating twice a day. The food was utterly amazing, every meal a big feast of a large variety of dishes.
So for a week we all got muddy, monks, children and all, and constructed a large adobe building. It was many of the same wonderful western people from the first project I attended.
I decided not to attend the second half of the project, building at another site, and instead decided to spend Christmas on the beach on a small island near the Cambodian border. So I left today and spent all day on different buses rolling through crazy Thailand to the eastern gulf coast. I’m gonna meet a couple fellow mud builders on the island of Ko Mak tomorrow and then on the 27th head into Cambodia and travel with them for a couple weeks.
Tough times have come and gone on this trip. I am learning much about my crazy old self, wandering lonely, and being with others. I’m finding my balance. Much is the balance between being alone and being with others, that and between working and sightseeing. Traveling isn't always so easy, especially on your own in a foreign land. In the end it's all worth it. You learn to deal when there is no one and nothing else to rely on. Your problems are more evident when your surroundings offer nothing to blame. At least that’s how I feel now. Take care, Steve

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