Holiday

I’m back in Kabul physically, but that’s the only way. My mind and heart are still a couple of thousand miles away, in Amazing Thailand (that’s their ad slogan -- Malaysia was first, with “Malaysia, Truly Asia.” Then came “Amazing Thailand.” Now there is “Incredible India” and even “Uniquely Singapore.” I am waiting for “Charming Cambodia” or “Bucolic Burma,” but we may not see those for a while.) I left on May 25 (almost did not make it -- my connecting flight on our local charter service told me they could not pick me up because it was too cloudy -- they told me this while I could see their plane from the runway, but that’s par for the course with Insh'allah Air, i.e. God Willing Air), flying Air India to New Delhi for the quick stopover before flying on to Bangkok.

Delhi Airport reminded me very much of my first taste of Beijing (a Beijing which has changed remarkably since that time I would add) -- tons of people scrabbling over one another trying to grab whatever small advantage they could find, and foreigners constitute one of those advantages, since we all obviously have money, right, right? My cab driver tried to convince me to allow another passenger to ride with me, never mind that I had used the airport’s booking service specifically to avoid subsequent haggling. I then had to wait a good half hour in the sweltering heat (and Delhi is HOT -- try 109-115, and humid) while he helped the drivers in front get their cabs out of the way (they tried to lash a broken trunk shut, never mind that a vehicle that size should not be carrying 250 lbs (no exaggeration) of luggage and a family of 7. By the time I got to my hotel, a good one, (not on my tab) the Taj, I was drenched in sweat, clothes all sticking to me, just nasty -- Louisiana in the summer after the rain, but about 30 degrees hotter. Unfortunately, I was only at that wonderful hotel for a few hours, and then straight back to the airport. Ordinarily, for six hours, I would just ride it out at the airport in the transit lounge, have a meal, buy unnecessary things in duty free, maybe get a shower at the day rooms. The Delhi airport does not have these options. The Delhi airport does not have power, consistently, so other amenities will drop way down the priorities list. Given the choice, I would brave the no A/C 90 minute cab ride (roundtrip) again, no question, to minimize my exposure to that airport. They say India is an emerging giant. I believe it, but wow, I hope they emerge some more and build a new airport at some stage.

The flight was a classic redeye -- depart at 1:30 am for Bangkok. As luck would have it, I get surrounded by teenage, or pre-teenage boys who don’t know the drill on redeye flights. For the ENTIRE flight, all I hear is the lilting voice in front of me, head bobbing incessantly, “Mother where is my Gameboy, mother I need my Gameboy, mother, where is the Gameboy.” OMG. After my flight to Shanghai on Emirates, I thought that Arab travelers had surpassed Indians as the most demanding/high maintenance travelers, but the Indians have taken the pole back, and with a flourish. On the flight back two days ago, somebody rang the bell for the attendants’ assistance every 60-90 seconds for the ENTIRE flight. As bad as my hearing is, you would think that this sort of thing would not bother me, but ugh, I’ve got a low tolerance myself for this stuff. I think I need to invest in some good quality noise-canceling headphones, for everyone’s sake, not least my own.

Anyway, Bangkok! 5 days of traffic jams (I skipped that, to a large extent, relying on the elevated train -- nice, easy, cheap), spicy food, spa treatment (ok, massages -- spa treatments are more expensive, and I already know a place where a 2 hour Thai massage is $12, and they don’t do “extra.”), shopping, movies (X-Men 3 was decent, the Da Vinci Code was dreck -- Tom Hanks should be mildly embarrassed. You have to stand up for an opening sequence honoring the king at movie theatres in Thailand -- Thais seem to take this very seriously) and relaxation. No jumping at the slightest noise, no body armor, no rioting over cartoons or traffic accidents. It was great.

I went to Chattachuk (no idea how to spell, Thai spellings are perhaps the most bizarre of any translated into our alphabet) Market, the Weekend Market. It is THE superbowl of fleamarkets, with everything from antiques to fake brand clothes to plants, pets, toys, real estate, cars, knives, swords, all kinds of stuff. Last time I was there in 2004 I stocked up on everyone’s Christmas present for that year, but not this time around (so don’t get your hopes up for cool stuff this year -- it’s mail order and the internet, just like everybody else). I just bought some jeans and a couple of shirts, and a Buddha statue, 19th Century Mandalay. Completely random, but a wonderful place to shop until you drop.

Five days of big city decompression go by, and it is time to meet the wife and travel on to Phuket. She’s the big, hi-powered executive, so she was coming direct from meetings in Paris. I get to the airport and waited an hour and a half for her to come out of the airport, only to realize that I was at the wrong terminal. **sigh** So I find her at the other terminal, and we are off to the beach!

Phuket has really bounced back. MaLan and I visited there in April 2005, a few months after the tsunami, and reconstruction was the order of the day. Now? The only way you know something happened is that all the buildings, hotels, shops along the beach are new -- everything. Tourists are back, from the young couples, to the Euro backpackers, to the older German men with their long haired rent-a-friends in low-rise jeans and shorts ("Hi my name Lon -- you like me?" is something guys can count on hearing). We did our stroll of the Patong beach strip, and had ourselves a seafood feast. Lobster, grilled jumbo prawns, squid, the works. The seafood is cheap (relatively) and excellent. I eat well in Bamyan, the Kiwis do a great feed, but it was not like this (not to mention I could have alcohol at dinner -- you miss that after a while).

Great meal, nice night at the Holiday Inn (it’s not like Holiday Inns I’ve stayed at in the States -- very upmarket), and then we are off to Koh Phi Phi, an island a good 2 hour ferry ride from Phuket. A couple of years ago we found a wonderful resort, beautiful white sandy beaches, nice big pool with a poolside bar, and did our first dive there. I was hooked, and have wanted to go back ever since. This time, it was open water dive certification time! Took a lot of work, actually. MaLan and I had to read the PADI dive manual, a good 300 page textbook, doing homework, even taking tests (they weren't that hard, so long as you actually read the book)! I get the impression after that most folks just watch the video and skip the bookwork, but I’ve been a nerd too long to walk away from those habits now.

At any rate, we got to do some spectacular dives. Our instructor worked in Egypt on the Red Sea, and at KowTow (spelling, again I don’t know) in Thailand, and said the best stuff she had seen in 3 years of diving was in and around Phi Phi Island. One of the reefs was a vertical cliff going straight down some 25m into the water. I was doing great, and wanted to go straight to the bottom, but my instructor held me up. Open water certification is good to get you to 18m, no further. I’ll have to get more certification for that. The coral and sea life were astounding. Tons of jack fish, clams, clown fish, anemone, all over the place, in clear blue water. We managed to see a trumpet fish, a moray eel, a leopard shark, a sea turtle, a cuttlefish, all kinds of stuff. It felt like we were living an old Jacques Cousteau video. I guess that’s why I did not mind us having a French woman as our instructor (Delilah) -- the French pretty much invented recreational diving, so give them their props, they know scuba.

Like I said I was hooked before, and now I’m really a fan. Scuba and exercise are now both mild addictions. Problem is I have no idea when will be the next chance to do any diving, more’s the pity. Kitting up is not going to be cheap -- first the prescription mask, good fins and a snorkel, a wet suit (even in the tropics, it starts getting chilly at 10m or below), and we will need to rent tanks, perhaps the regulator and the BCD (an inflatable life vest/buoyance device), and then you have to get out to the dive sites. Not a cheap hobby, but certainly a rewarding one. Swimming scuba is easier than swimming on the surface, once you get used to the apparatus. I recommend it for just about anybody.

MaLan had a harder time of it, at least at first. For one, she was pretty nervous, mostly because equalizing was a real challenge for her. By our fourth dive, though, she seemed to relax and really enjoy what was going on around us. She managed to take some pictures with one of those waterproof disposable cameras -- I hope they came out ok, we’ll see. She was a real sport, trying the diving out, at least initially, because she knew how much I wanted to dive. I think she’s as hooked as I am, now, although she’ll still have more of a challenge getting her ears equalized.

With a week, we managed to get certified and still take it slow and easy at the same time. There was plenty of beach time involved, lots of drinks in big coconuts with fruit involved, a glorious sunset at a viewing point in one of the resorts’ restaurants, lots more seafood (hey, Afghanistan is landlocked, gimme a break), chilis, fresh mango, papaya, dragonfruit, dragoneye (“lung an”), jackfruit, pineapple, and lime, lime, lime. Can you tell I missed tropical fruit? ;)

Not as much sitting and reading by the pool or on the sand, since I lost my glasses. Yeah, moron me completely forgot I had my glasses in my pocket when we went out kayaking/snorkeling in the reef. At some point I dove into the water, and completely forgot about the glasses, only remembering after we got back to the beach, a couple of clicks away. They were still in their case, so I bet they floated, but I just did not have the heart to go look for them, so I figured I could survive with prescription sunglasses for a week. It worked out ok, but I did feel pretty stupid having dinner in the evenings wearing sunglasses the whole time, humming that ancient Corey Hart tune from the 80s. Seems each trip we take, I manage to do something for MaLan’s amusement. This time, I because Sunglasses Man. I’ll have to think up some better theme music for that.

It was a really wonderful week. Nice to be reacquainted with a life where people are nice, friendly, not always trying out some angle in every conversation with you. I truly think the Thai people are the friendliest people, as a nation, I have ever met. They were in an even better mood than usual, celebrating the Diamond Anniversary of the Thai King Bumibol’s accession to the throne. I don’t know much about him, although I seem to remember some controversy when the Jodie Foster/Chow Yun Fat movie came out 5 or six years ago, that they would not show the movie in Thailand because the King was named second. I would do a tour in Thailand in a heartbeat, but it may be a while before I get that chance.

Nicer was the chance to get reacquainted with my wife. We both seem to do better together than apart, but we’re still careerists, so it will be a while yet before we are together permanently. By this time next year, for certain, but exactly when, that’s up to MaLan. I’ll be honest -- I did not really want to come back -- but with only another six weeks to go, I can make it through anything, I think. In the meantime, once I get back into this last grind, this last push, I will remember my time in the Land of a Thousand Smiles as an inspiration for whenever the going gets tough again.