Frame

Whoever named Thailand the Land of Smiles must have never visited Sri Lanka. In Sri Lanka I learnt how to lower my guard smile at people again. I didn't realize how closed off Africa and the Middle East had made me. There, smiles were interpreted as invitations to hit on me or sell me things. In Sri Lanka, a smile was just a smile. And the women smiled back. Interacting with women in Muslim countries was very difficult. I had two conversations with women in the several months we spent in Islamic countries, and both occured when I was alone.

But perhaps the person who named Thailand had traveled from Viet-Nam and couldn't believe how friendly the Thai people are. It's really all about where you've been.

This morning, we landed at Bangkok airport after 1.5 hours worth of delays on our 2:25am flight. We were delirious - still are - and trying to function on 1 hour of sleep. At one point I looked at the bus ticket in my hand and thought, I can't believe I never noticed that Thai is written from right to left, like Arabic. Then I realized that I was holding the bus ticket upside down. Yep, another brilliant moment.

I've been thinking a lot on this trip about how everything is relative. (While at UCSC, we had a comic on the Foster Ct fridge for a while that showed some hillbillies with snouts and pigs with noses hanging out on a porch. The caption read, Einstein's theory of the back woods: Everthing's a relative.) A person's reaction to a country or city depends on where they have been. This makes it very hard to get good travel advice. For example, folks I met who had arrived in Cairo from Europe were aghast at the insanity and couldn't wait to leave. One guy I met in Gonder (Ethiopia) had just started traveling through Africa and seemed to be having a great time while we struggled. And several people we met coming from India commented that the roads in Sri Lanka seem so calm.

Even with Cairo behind us, I wouldn't call the roads calm (whatever I may have said in earlier posts). En route from Kandy to the airport, our bus driver pulled out to overtake a truck. Shortly after we moved into the oncoming traffic's lane, the car between us and the truck pulled out in front of us, also wanting to overtake the truck. As it grew close to the truck, the truck pulled out to overtake a van. I think that I can safely say that I've never before been in a bus overtaking a car overtaking a truck overtaking a van. And I'd be content if I wasn't ever again.

Bangkok is strange. There are SO MANY FOREIGNERS. And there are things available on the street corner that we've been looking for for 5 months. I miss the quiet of Sri Lanka and the fact that we white folk were far outnumbered. For those who haven't been to Asia before, Thailand can seem so foreign and exotic. Right now it seems uncomfortably familiar and not like traveling at all. See? It's all about your frame of reference.

On our last day in Sri Lanka, we walked back around Kandy lake and saw two big black and yellow monitor lizards swimming lazily by. And an egret of some kind eating a juicy dragonfly. And a turtle. And a brilliant blue kingfisher doing the Sri Lankan head waggle - the one that means yes and no and maybe. And a really big fish that I named the biglip monkey faced damselcarp. (Fish joke - ha ha ha.) And we watched macaques pick lice off each other and eat them through our bedroom windows at a distance of about 2 ft.

As we walked around looking for a hotel this morning we realized that it's election day here today. It was election day a few days ago in Sri Lanka. And elections loomed large while we were in Israel. And Uganda. And of course, Zanzibar. It's possible that we are just completing a tour of countries that you probably shouldn't visit and that are having elections.

This post was all over the place. Must be the lack of sleep. I think it's time for a nap.