I’ve been putting off making a blog entry because, quite simply, I haven’t been too sure what to report. So here it is. My final entry (or not?) for I Thai’d to Escape.
I arrived at Sathira-Dhammasathan on the morning of November 5th and stayed just over two weeks. My intentions were to stay for the weekend and if I was enjoying myself to stay the following week, but to return to Khon Kaen and start working on Monday the 15th. I didn’t get a call for work like I was exptecting, and not quite convinced that it was what I wanted to do anyway I decided to stay longer and changed my plans completely and often.
I spoke with my mentor Me Chee Ga Long (pronouncing the me like “memory” shee – meaning nun) and she thought it would be a good idea if I went to the Forest Monestary called Suan Mohhk established by the famous monk Buddhadasa Bhikkhu to participate in a meditation retreat for foreigners. I would stay a couple more weeks at the sanctuary until the retreat started at the end of the month. The idea that I had just finished reading what some would call the Buddhist “bible” written by Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, and that I was feeling like I was benefitting from the meditation I was already doing, I agreed that it was the next step in my spiritual journey. I knew that staying a couple more weeks would be challenging but at the same time rewarding. The fact that most of the nuns could not speak any English made things difficult and lonely, and although Me Chee Ga Long could speak English quite well her superiority at the sanctuary made her spiritual guidance in high demand and kept her very busy and she was not as available for me as I would have liked. I tried to consider these moments of frustration and lonliness lessons for me to reflect and to meditate.
Before the two weeks were up however I decided that I really needed to leave and go back “outside” and decided to sign up for the Traditional Thai massage course at the famous Wat Pho Thai Traditional Medical School. I left on the 19th of December and went directly to Wat Pho to start my course.
Practicing meditation and “mindfulness” which were much easier to practice inside the sanctuary and became less and less practiced on the outside. I can understand why some of the women stay longer and longer, prolonguing their return to a hectic and challenging civilization – the challenge being that, for me, it was too easy to fall back to the fear, anger, and anguish of being outside. I could have stayed and even Me Chee Ga Long tried to convince me to stay knowing what challenges I would face when I returned to the outside world. One needs only stay two weeks in the sanctuary before they can officially ask to become a nun and if I wasn’t married I think I probably would have done that, but at the time I didn’t think it would be fair to my husband to make such a commitment to the sanctuary – that was my thinking at the time, not to mention that I just wasn’t prepared to shave off my hair and eyebrows and as a foreigner who couldn’t speak or understand Thai I’m not too sure how fulfilling my experience would have been. I suppose, eventually, I could have copied the sounds of the words they chant every morning and night, but I wouldn’t understand the chants. What good, really, is chanting without understanding?
Aside from the nightmare with administration and accomodation at Wat Pho I was generally happy to be back amongst the public once again, at least for a short time. After two nights sleeping alone in a room full of bunk beds on an extremely hard bottom bunk I looked for a place to stay on Kao San road, the famous tourist strip. Unlike many years ago and in my more youthful years where this scene would provide many opportunities to meet people and make memories or not, depending on how much you could remember the day after, the crowds and loud music and mixture of locals and tourists in bars and pubs were more annoying than fun.
The people started annoying me more and more. I was losing my patience with the people from the “Land of the False Smiles” (something I overheard a foreign man say to describe the Thai people, who seemed quite veteran in the ways of Thailand and its people, not to mention it was such a perfect description). The constant sight of older-old foreign men with a young, or very young, Thai women depressed me. Were they oblivious to the forlorn look on the young woman’s face? Or did they see it and just dismiss it? Plus the money-hungry Thai people that would take advantage in every situation to make more money. I felt like they were charging me prices as if I had STUPID TOURIST written across my forehead. Oh, and if you did try to stand up for yourself, like demanding a price that you knew from experience was fair, then GOODBYE smiles and hello agressiveness and insults! I even got kicked out of a shop on Kao San because I didn’t buy anything! Not to mention the aggressive hold one lady had on me trying to sell me her wares – she wouldn’t let go and she was hurting me! I had a certain compassion for these people in the beginning, knowing that life is not easy for them and they make very little money, but their unfortunate situation has turned them all into seeing tourists as a weak lamb to be preyed on, and prey they do!! Survival of the fittest – right?
So, I knew it was time to go home. I had experienced this sensation before and it was my instincts telling me to move on.
My departure date was already set for December 15th after extending my visitor’s visa for another 2 months, so instead of changing it like I thought I would, I kept it.
I did a foot massage course at Wat Pho. Then I went back to Khon Kaen to collect my things and returned to Bangkok to do one final massage coure before returning to Spain.
The return home with overweight baggage problems and delays and lost baggage and losing my jacket (which kinda sucked considering I was dressed for the tropics but returned to a snow covered Spain!) was, well horrible. It was a very, very long and tiring journey home. When I got home the broken water heater was just another welcoming disaster! So was I glad to be home? Or just glad to be out of Thailand?
