Recently I was on a bus to Chiang Mai, my head swimming with
thoughts of what a beautiful place
and I love it here and there are so many opportunities to really enjoy
life here. Here's 13 seconds of my happy place:
I realized that I’d been swooning for weeks, constantly vomiting
mental rainbows of pure joy.
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| OMG THAT RICE PADDY IS THE GREENEST GREEN I'VE EVER SEEN! |
The heaving has subsided.
Right now it’s the worst time of the year in northern
Thailand. People are burning crops to make room for the next growing season (I
think?). It’s supposed to be illegal to burn open fires here, but it’s
Thailand, so illegal-shmegal. They’re everywhere, and so is the smoke. It’s
also coming in from Myanmar and Laos. Couple that with a long lack of rain, and
today’s air quality index was 258. In the US, people are advised to stay
indoors when it’s over 50. It’s not fun. Apparently, last year was worse.
We got an e-mail from our former landlord a few days ago
detailing damage we supposedly left in the Miami Vice pimp house. No proof as of
yet, so I don’t feel defeated, but we’re kind of legally adrift here as
foreigners. The upside is that we’ve had people coming out of the woodwork to
help with promising local legal advice, so we might be okay. [Passage removed pending legal action... ours, not his.] Nothing angers me more than injustice, so
needless to say, I am livid.
And remember the crappy car, sold to us by the woman who
hired us (and no longer lives here)? The currency won’t mean anything to you,
but the numbers will. She said they paid 110,000 baht for it. We paid her
90,000 baht. When I questioned her about the price, she gave me a slightly
scoldy e-mail about how used car prices in Thailand are higher than they are
elsewhere. I’d read this in a few other places too, so we paid.
I just found out this afternoon that she did not buy the car
for 110,000 baht. She paid FIFTY thousand. And now we can’t sell the albatross
for more than 30. I was so angry I couldn’t breathe for a few hours. It blows
my mind that there are people out there who are that deceitful. I know that
makes me naïve; I accept that. There is not a single thing we can do but share
our revenge fantasies and wait for karma to burn their house down. (Again.)
There is a small part of me that is actually grateful for
these blights on our experience. I’ve spent months feeling a little twinge of dread
about having to leave next year, a panicky fear that I will go home and be a
miserable gray blob again, wrapped up in monotony and stress and cake. That
twinge is fading. Nick and I talk about the genuine, honest, scandal-free
straight-talkers we know and love back in New England. We laugh about their inappropriate
senses of humor, a kind that we have yet to encounter here. We are left to
mumble offensive Bill Burr quotes only to each other.
I’ve started to keep a list of things I miss. Most is food:
IPAs, artichoke hearts, dolmades, cannolis, good Caesar salads (the ones here
are always green leaf lettuce, mayonnaise, hard-boiled egg & bacon… nope),
good seafood (it’s mostly funky-smelling river fish here), good cheap wine,
frozen waffles, and string cheese. Man, our kids lived on frozen waffles and
string cheese. I’ve gotten used to living without them, and we are eating
plenty of good stuff we won’t be able to get in the US. Besides, I can’t
complain about the weight loss that has resulted from not being around my
favorite foods. I can make a great Caesar salad, but anchovies are hard to come
by. I found a jar in one store for about $18… I think I can wait. I also miss
my Water Pik. Jeopardy. NPR. I used to listen to NPR every morning in my
kitchen. I could probably stream it, but it’s not the same.
I miss clean public
bathrooms. Toilet paper is not really a thing here. Nor is soap at the sinks,
or paper towels for drying.
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| Over it. Especially when taking a handsy five-year-old to use it. She has touched far worse than what's in this picture. |
I can’t say I don’t still love Thailand, because I love it. In so many ways, this place
is a dream come true for me. There are cheap massages, constant travel
opportunities, and a chance to avoid most holiday hype and responsibilities for
two whole years. St. Patrick’s Day came and went without a single peep. No
leprechaun traps at school or gaudy green glitter or any of that malarkey. No commercials on TV screaming about
holiday-related sales of crap. Easter is this Sunday, and I feel no awkward
pressure to do anything for it in spite of my complete lack of religion
(although we are planning to surprise the girls with little baskets on Sunday,
because, candy). Decorating for anything? That concept has vanished. Some people
thrive on all of that, but to me it’s always been Just More Stuff to Do. I
could not be happier. Call me Captain Buzzkill. No gifts to buy, no parties to
attend, so much less celebrating. It is a Pinterest-free world, and my
underachieving behind is breathing a big lazy sigh of relief. I am excused. Squatting over a hole is worth it.
And? Since we’ve moved into the cheaper house, we changed
our vacation plans for April. We only have 15 months left here and I want to
make the most of every trip, so… we are going to Bali. You guys. BALI. We’ll spend two nights in an Ubud
villa with our own private pool that costs about the same as a nicotine-stained
Days Inn on the New Jersey turnpike.
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| I'm going to get vitamin D in places where the sun don't shine. |
Then for three nights we’ll go to a big
resort with an over-the-top kids’ club to thoroughly wear out the girls. I had
to buy the tickets in person at an airline office (credit card issues with
their site), and when I walked out of the building I was surprised to feel an
involuntary tightening in my throat. Tears of joy and disbelief threatened for
a few seconds. I have over two decades’ worth of pent-up travel jones. Back
home we couldn’t even afford to go to a Florida strip mall on vacation, and now
we’re going to Bali for the same price it used to cost us to go to Omaha.
The amount of money we’ve lost from the bad car rip-off and
the landlord extortion might have covered a trip to Bali from Boston. Well… at
least a week in Florida, eating at the Tampa Chili’s instead of the Lowell
Chili’s. But we wouldn’t have had zero credit card debt. And we wouldn’t have
had all this time with each other. Besides, the wisdom we’re gaining is
priceless, and that’s the whole reason I wanted to do this in the first place.
We’re taking the girls to Chiang Mai this weekend to have
some fun. We’ll ice skate, maybe see a movie, go to the aquarium, eat at a
robot restaurant. We just didn’t do this stuff back home. On the weekends we
were too exhausted, had to work on the house, had too many plans. Driving three
hours in any direction would require an expensive hotel stay, something that
was hard to enjoy when ¼ of our income was going to daycare. So yeah, the bugs,
fuzzy air, car rip-off, and landlord situation? They suck. A lot. And they’re
making my mental tantrum of I never ever
wanna go home everrrr turn ever-so-slightly in my head. Hopefully those
feelings will manage to balance out in the next 15 months.
Post-script:
On the way back from Chiang Mai now. It’s very hard for me
to blog, because I really only have the chance to do it when the kids are
leaving me alone. If they are leaving me alone, it’s because they’re using my
laptop. I can type in the car, but there’s no internet.
Anyway, the robot
restaurant super-sucked, and Sophie
puked all over the hotel room last night (I’m surprised this doesn’t happen
more often considering how many things she puts her mouth on… she would turn a
germophobe to stone), but overall it was still a great time. We swam in the
hotel pool, gorged ourselves on Indian food, and had a mini-adventure on our
way to breakfast walking down a side street peppered with drunks and bleating
prostitutes left over from the night before. I introduced the girls to
gardenias, which were growing fresh all over our hotel grounds. Sascha got to
ice skate. I got to run. And the girls were totally cool with their new little
Easter purses full of chocolate!
