This One Time, I Ate Southeast Asia WHOLE

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Chao! Sa-wat dii ka! Hei!
(These are languages in which I can now say "hello." They include Vietnamese, Thai, and Norwegian, which is oddly enough what I learned in Cambodia. On the other hand, I can say "I love you" in eleven).

So! I am now a world traveler. I wanted to write you all an update, now that I am (tragically!!!!) nearly done with my wanderings. I am currently in a town called Pai in the far north of Thailand, a tiny, ultra-laid-back little hippieville where people come when they're burned out on life...or just to get burned out. Needless to say, of course, this is not why I came: Pai is in the mountains. I came for the trees.

Actually, on the way up here, the view was so unbelievably breathtaking...up and up through the most gorgeously dense, verdantly forested hills...I had the highest hopes of some little town emerging from the greenery, rather like Alaska...until we emerged into a valley, completely deforested, fields as far as you could see, with the destruction clearly inching further and further into the surrounding hills with each season. I was so heartbroken I wanted to cry. Just absolutely crushed. And when the bus finally stopped, and I could see the mountains in the distance, I was suddenly angry. I was angry at being disillusioned with my vegetative fantasies, angry at being sick and having no energy. (Oh yeah, in other news, I have walking pneumonia. That's why I"m here in Pai rather than hiking through Chiang Mai, as originally planned. When I didn't have the energy to do anything but stare into space for the last three days at my guesthouse in Chiang Mai - admittedly a fabulous place to stare into space, but still - I figured hiking probably wasn't the best thing for me to do. SO here I am in the mountains among the crickets and the Rastafarians, convalescing and waiting for the antibiotics to kick in. But anyway...). I didn't want to eat. I didn't want to find a place to stay. I had enough water to stave off imminent collapse. Pneumonia be damned - so help me, I was going to shoulder my whole backpack (good thing I pack light) and walk until I found some trees, even if it took me hours.

Well anyway it all worked out okay in the end. Eventually I found some trees. Then I found someplace to stay: a little hole in the wall called "Wonderland Guesthouse" - complete with rainbow-painted sign, thank you - in the middle of nowhere with little bungalows for rent by the day or by the month (I wasn't kidding about this place. People come here to just chill. Indefinitely. There are more expats than Thais, and more organic-falafel-bakery-coffeehouses-with-hempen-furniture than you can shake a stick at. It's hilarious. I highly recommend it. Except that it's also way contagious. Maybe it's something the air. I'm already staying longer than I was going to. Today I sat in a wooden lawn chair in front of my 'house' with trees and a field stretched out in front of me, no one else in sight, stared at a butterfly on a leaf and wondered whether I really wanted to go back to Chiang Mai and go hiking after all... Or go back to Hanoi after all. Or actually leave Thailand ever again). Then I found some Thai coffee (yes, Jason, it's like Vietnamese coffee - but Vietnamese coffee is WAY better. It is in fact the best thing on earth. There is nothing else like it, anywhere. Dear Lord I'm going to miss that coffee). Then I found hot scones with butter and jam. Then a nice man found me ecstatic with life over my coffee and scones and jam, and he told me I smile too much but gave me music recommendations and bought me a Times Sunday Crossword puzzle and showed me the bakery with the best banana muffins in town anyway. Then I fell asleep listening to frogs and crickets.

My life is so amazing.

Hmm, so that intro was way longer than I had planned, but it segues appropriately, because here was my ultimate point: I clearly can't give an accurate summation of all the places I've been, all the things I've seen, all the glorious people I've met, all of the spectacular, unbelievable, otherworldly fabulous things I've eaten. So in lieu of such an impossible description, I will give you a list of places I have visited, and then a desultory smattering of memorable moments along the way.

Here are places I've been: Nha Trang and Saigon in Vietnam, Phnom Penh (but just for the night) and Siem Reap (Angkor Wat) in Cambodia, Chiang Mai and Pai (so far) in Thailand.

And here is a random assortment of observations, descriptions, and experiences, in more or less chronological order:

(1). I discovered early on that my style of travel simply doesn't match that of most people. Fundamentally this has a great deal to do with money: I simply don't have the financial resources to do the things that most tourists do. And really, in most cases I'd much rather just walk around a place, get a feel for what life is like there, talk to people if I can. And during these circumlocutions, I inevitably pass countless delicious-looking things to eat.

Well...that's what I tell myself anyway. The reality of the matter is, I go places, I walk around, and I eat things. In fact in most places I've stayed I've actually had to compose mental To-Eat Lists, because often at the time I pass some certain delectable deliciousness, I'm not hungry enough/have already spent too much on food to justify getting it. So I wait like an hour and go back.

This particularly struck me one evening in Nha Trang, which is known primarily for its beautiful beaches (it poured rain nearly the whole time I was there. I know it as hands-down the best food I ate in Vietnam). I was in the midst of walking 9 blocks from my hotel to Item #'1 on my To Eat list for that day, some (of course) unidentifiable thing prepared about a foot off the ground by a woman under a tarp in the middle of some random sidewalk somewhere that I had passed earlier. This hunt consumed me so thoroughly that although I had been walking beside it for some time, I didn't even notice the ocean. When I did, I felt obligated to pause and admire it. The twilit bay was a matte, pastel turquoise against the iron grey blanket of the darkening sky.

I threw a token glance.

But who are we kidding? You've seen one ocean, you've seen 'em all. I ducked down the side street I was pretty sure would lead me where I really wanted to be. (And that whatever-it-was on the sidewalk under the tarp changed my LIFE, by the way).

(2). I wasn't going to write this, but that last note reminded me : I have NO sense of direction. I mean NONE. I mean it's actually ridiculous. I once spent 2 hours in a town between bus rides. The town had ONE MAIN ROAD. I was lost for more than one of my two hours there, having walked the wrong way down said SINGLE street. It actually baffles me - and amuses others to no end - how impossibly, improbably lost I can get. I tell you, it defies logic. But anyway, I"ve discovered that despite my truly APPALLING lack of spatial orientation, I can, one way or another, find my way back to something wonderful I've eaten, or something wonderful I wanted to eat. I even just wrote an email to a new friend describing in detail - entirely from memory of landmarks I saw on my way to food - how to find all my favorite things in Nha Trang. In another example, at the night market in Chiang Mai, a bazaar-like relic of the town's days as a trading hub between Thailand, China and Laos, I ate three or four just unbelievably blowing-my-mind fantastic things. Later I ran into my buddies from the bus ride to Thailand/train ride to Chiang Mai, three hilarious guys from Ohio who were generous with their Valium, and undertook a quest to lead them back to these things with no actual idea of where I was or where I was going. My monologue went something like this:
Dude...I have no idea where we are. Wait, I had a taste test of that dried pineapple! Don't try that weird-looking fruit, it's not very good. Oh, and I wanted to eat that mango and sticky rice but it was too expensive (a whole dollar? please)....Then I think went this way...oh yeah! That's where I ate the pancake thing with jam and sweetened condensed milk, YUMMMM...Oh and there's the restaurant with the live prawns that they fish out with a net, and oooh look I found it, you HAVE to try the chicken curry and sauteed vegetables here!

Frequently I take a step back and I look at my life. And then I laugh. And I think that if you were me, you'd laugh too.

(3) A moment in my life:
It's my second day in Nha Trang. It's pouring rain, but I don't particularly care. I'm sitting on a tiny chair at a tiny table under a drippy umbrella, far from the touristy area of town. My empty coffee cup sits in close company with the cup of iced jasmine tea that I'm still savoring, courtesy of just the most gracious, most adorable woman behind her cart - when I complimented her nail polish, she pulled it out and offered it to me but - tragic! - I had just gotten a manicure! I'm sitting here watching the world go by, the 71-year-old Vietnamese man sitting across from me is laughing as he refills my tea and tries to get me to drink a cloudy white liquid from a dubious looking shotglass ("This thing, #1! Ha ha!"). The table next to me is filled with 3 or 4 young men, talking to the old man, trying to talk to me, everybody laughing, me understanding nothing and at the same time everything. A raindrop falls on my nose, the taste of jasmine is on my tongue, and at this moment my entire world is under this leaky umbrella, and I am completely, sublimely happy.

(4) Another moment. It's 5:15 in the morning. It's still dark. My two exploring-Cambodia companions - Johan from Norway and Harry from England - and are I quiet, sleepy (read: nearly comatose). We're on the top step of a small addendum-like temple flanking Angkor Wat, overlooking a deserted courtyard in front of the back wall. Slowly a reluctant sun peeks out from a cloud, illuminating the palm trees, the mist, the ancient stone with its darkened halls and its regal, whispered secrets, my two taciturn companions and me. And suddenly I'm thinking, through the lightheaded haze of too little sleep: It's five in the morning, and I'm in Cambodia. In a temple. A thousand years old. Like...what?...Dude....Awesome.

(5) Now, it's about a zillion degrees, and I'm plodding like the persistent tortoise toward a border crossing, my whole life on my back. A man walks by dragging a wooden cart laden ten feet high with massive bundles; a woman holding a baby pats my arm in passing for some tender unknown reason; and everywhere, from all around me, the air is rich and thick with the evocative scent of coconut milk.

Thailand. I'm here.

(6) Nop, the proprietor of my (BEAUTIFULLLLLLLL) guesthouse in Chiang Mai, is an unfailingly good-natured, unfailingly persistent businessman: his enterprise is clearly a fledgling one, and he is intent on seeing it succeed. Thus, in the interest of making my stay as pleasant as possible, one evening he offers to drop me off at the night market in town; but we have to make a stop first, he says, to get food for his family. We disembark from his motorbike at a little restaurant/butcher shop in a nondescript, dirty little back alley, clearly far from the tourist quarter, where I am instantly at home because it reminds me of Vietnam.
"This, local place. No tourists come here. Local food," he explains to me.
"What kind of food?" I want to know.
"Um...Soups, beef salad, sticky rice. You know sticky rice?"
"Yes. Hmm..Could I get some?"
"What?"
"Some food. Beef salad. Can I get some?" This is clearly not a common request.
"Um..But...You sure? Is very spicy for you!" (VERY common litany in Thailand).
"Yes."
"What you want?"
"I don't know....what's good?"

And so proceeds my first meal of actual local Thai food - beef "salad" with sticky rice that you eat with your fingers, and some spicy soup with meat. The whole time, Nop is just cracking up. He just can't take it. "This is the first time I EVER see foreigner eat local food! First time! See, everybody, they looking! They can't believe it too!! All other foreigner, they would say 'UGH!' ....First time EVER!!" (Oddly, although Thai people are arguably the nicest, friendliest, most easygoing people as a whole I've met, even more so than the Vietnamese, they seem a lot more surprised by any foreigner's interest in going local. Not sure why). But he just can't get over it, and I just keep eating, because the food is in fact delicious, but OHMYGODOHMYGOD it's SO SPICY my mouth is on fire and my ears are on fire and my eyes are on fire and my stomach is on fire and I don't think I have any taste buds left on my tongue but I"m not showing it because I told him I could take it and ten minutes later we're at a cart on the street with his brother and his friends and I'm not sure why we're stopping here but then I'm taking shots of Thai whiskey chased with ice water and slices of green mango in chile oil and wait, what?

Life cracks me up.

(7) Lastly, a note on my persistent malady. I've had it since before I left Hanoi, but it took a marked turn for the worse here recently (hence the changed diagnosis and antibiotics). But I would like to mention that if you have to haul such a particuarly awesome case of walking pneumonia through three countries in as many weeks, there are infinitely many worse places than these:

(a) A country which, though frequently wet, is never actually cold, and whose national signature dish is about as solid a comfort food as ever existed, with infinite local variations. The best bowl of pho I ever had was in the late afternoon in - of course - Nha Trang, wet and bedraggled after a day of traipsing about town, somewhat depressed at my lungs' ostensible desire to be violently parted from my body. I stopped by the whitewashed side of a run-down, unremarkable building, where a woman sat with a large pot and a few dishes, and two men were hunkered down on their kindergarten chairs eating soup. "Delicious?" I queried (this is the first word I learn after "thank you" in every language). They nodded. I sat. Forthwith I was presented with a beautiful bowl of steaming pho: thick rice noodles, perfect broth with just the right savory-spicy-sweet flavor combination, fresh fish, fresh chicken, with a few hard-boiled quail eggs thrown in for good measure. Some black pepper, chopped red chiles, cilantro and chives on top, a squeeze of lime and a spoonful of garlic water stirred in - delicious, delicious, delicious!!

(b) A country with enough stop-you-cold-in-your-tracks-fascinating ancient (and recent too, if that's your thing) history to make even the sickest individual scurry up and down and over and around thousand-year-old temples from dawn until dusk, where beautiful Scandanavian young men teach you new vowels and carry your bag so you don't have to and take pictures for you when your camera runs out of space....Wait, isn't that everyone's Cambodian experience? If it wasn't...er...your loss, man.

(c) A country so full of exquisite food, beautiful scenery, crickets, birds, butterflies, and laid-back, friendly people that you honestly couldn't be stressed out if you tried (well...maybe in Bangkok? But I'm steering clear of Bangkok). A country so hot and so humid that sometimes the breeze feels like the first breath of air when you open the door to a sauna - in short, a climate in which your upper respiratory tract couldn't get cold and dry and scratchy and sore even if you theoretically had pneumonia and your lungs were trying their best to kill you in your sleep. And DEAR GOD DID I MENTION THE FOOD?!?!?????!!!!

And that's that.
Here is the bottom line: Pneumonia and all, rain and all, haggles and hassles and endless movement and all, I don't know how to express it in better words than this:
I. Am. In. Heaven.
Heaven.

So if someone comes to pick me up at LAX on June 4th and I'm simply not there...well, at least now you'll have the slightest inkling of why.

Love,
Katie


PS. I'll have you all know that writing this has cost me as much as an extravagant dinner, and you all owe me. Also, sorry for any typos, this keyboard is terrible. 😊

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