Travelers' Tales Thailand: True Stories (Travelers' Tales Guides) Page 34

  We had no sooner begun smoking than the son stood up, reshouldered the gun and strode off towards the river as unceremoniously as he’d arrived. Even Sin seemed surprised, looking down the trail after him as the underbrush swallowed him up.

  “He wanted to get back to Muang Ngai,” he said, almost apologetically. Now, I felt almost duty-bound to stay around for a while longer. But he surprised me by saying “Well, I guess you want to get on your way as well.”

  I had planned to pay each of my hosts for the food they had provided. Sin’s eyes lit up when I handed him a 50-baht ($2) bill. He seemed exceptionally pleased, hoisting my heavy pack to his thin shoulders and almost running down the slope to the river with it. As I lashed the pack to the deck, Sin said: “We met by accident and accidents are usually painful. This was a good accident,” he chuckled. I waved goodbye and pushed off.

  Steve Van Beek is a long-time resident of Bangkok who has written several books and films about Thailand, including The Arts of Thailand, APA’s Cityguide Bangkok, and the current edition of Insight Guide: Thailand. He writes regularly for the International Herald Tribune.

  The hunters also saw no contradiction between their Buddhist beliefs and the taking of animals’ lives. There was a clear understanding by all the hunters that what they did was not in strict accordance with the Buddha’s teachings, but being merely men, not monks, they had to live as best they could. The villagers also drew a distinction between killing in general and the killing of forest animals which were viewed as having been created for man’s use. Buddhism allowed for these kinds of discrepancies, the men said, by neither condoning nor condemning an individual’s actions. Still, the hunters observed special rules in the forest to indicate their respect for the Buddha.

  —Alan Rabinowitz, Chasing the Dragon’s Tail: The Struggle to Save Thailand’s Wild Cats

  BARBARA SAVAGE

  Could This Really Be the End?

  The risks of travel are manifold, but so are the laughs.

  WE HAD RETURNED TO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. AFTER EGYPT, India, and Nepal, the shocking sight of freeway overpasses, Mercedes and BMWs, modern buildings, computerized gas stations, swank hotels and restaurants, stores jammed with consumer items, and people dressed in the latest western fashions hit us like a sledgehammer. We spent our first few days in Bangkok feeling bewildered and disoriented. There were no warm, familiar manure piles sitting on the sidewalks, and the streets were free of cows, water buffalo, rickshaws, and men and boys urinating. Even Sally’s house, located in one of the classier districts of Bangkok, was modern and roomy. The air-conditioned master bedroom contained a queen-sized bed with pillows, a mattress, and box springs. And off it was a bathroom with a bathtub and a sit toilet.

  Doing anything more than sit or take short walks those first days in Bangkok proved to be a real chore. The humidity, which was 90 percent or more each day, seemed unbearable. Breathing felt uncomfortable, because the stagnant air was saturated. The temperature stayed in the nineties throughout the day, and swarms of unmerciful mosquitoes gathered in any unscreened rooms. I had no idea how we’d survive bicycling in the heat and humidity of Southeast Asia, since they sapped our energy even while we were sitting still. I figured we’d probably sweat to death pedaling south.

  That afternoon, on our way back to Sally’s, the curse of the Himalaya grabbed me, and I made a mad dash for the nearest restroom. After I’d finished, I gave the toilet bowl a quick glance before I flushed it. By then I’d learned to always check my bowel movements for blood or mucus, the telltale signs of dysentery.

  Oh My God! I thought, as I stared into the toilet bowl, I am going to die, and it won’t be from sweating to death or being riddled by bullets. What I saw in the toilet made my whole body feel weak. I flushed it and hurried outside.

  At first I didn’t say anything to Larry, because I couldn’t bring myself to accept what I’d just seen. But the mental picture of it kept flashing in my head. If my days were limited, and that seemed to be the obvious though dreaded conclusion, I should tell him right away. I knew he probably wouldn’t believe me right off; but later, when it happened again, he’d see for himself, and then we would rush to the hospital. But from what I’d just seen in the toilet, it was already too late.

  “Barb, how come you’re so quiet?” Larry asked as we continued walking back to Sally’s. “You looked kind of pale when you came out of the restroom. Everything O.K.?”

  “Well no…No, not really,” I stammered.

  “What’s the problem?”

  “Well, see…I went to the bathroom and…”

  “Yes?”

  “And I think I’m going to die!” I shouted.

  “So what’s new? You always think you’re going to die,” Larry answered calmly.

  “Yeah, well this time it’s the real thing!”

  “Why this time?”

  “Because I looked after I went to the toilet and there were these giant worms in it! Giant, huge, clear worms! Do you understand what that means?”

  “Yeah, you’re seein’ things.”

  “To hell with that. I am not seeing things! They were there. Big, giant worms. I saw them as clear as day. And that means my intestines are full of them, and as big as they are, that means I’m doomed with a capital D!”

  Larry didn’t respond right away. He kept walking, staring at me with an I-can’t-believe-you’re-really-that-dumb expression on his face.

  “Barb, it’s impossible for a bunch of giant worms to live inside a person’s intestines,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “But I saw them,” I shot back.

  Neither of us said much after that, and the subject didn’t come up again until we were back at Sally’s. We fixed a spaghetti dinner that evening, and just as the first bites hit bottom, the urge struck me again. I ran for the bathroom and prayed that Larry was right—that I hadn’t actually seen the worms this afternoon, that this time everything would look normal.

  I looked into the bowl after I’d finished, and again my body fell limp. There they were, just like before—the worms. Larry came into the bathroom and I stood back and waited for him to take a look. He seemed unconcerned when he walked in, and that calmed me. Larry will have a logical explanation for this, I said to myself, and everything’s going to be all right.

  “O.K., let’s have a look at those so-called giant worms,” he muttered. There was a hint of exasperation in his voice.

  I pointed into the bowl, and for a long, uncomfortable moment, Larry said nothing.

  “Can’t be,” he finally whispered.

  My hopes took a nose dive.

  “This just can’t be! Those worms are huge! An inch long and a quarter-inch thick, each one. Man, you should be dead by now! Nobody can live with things like that in their stomach. I can’t believe what I’m seeing. But look, there they are and lots of ’em. Get your passport quick! We’re going to the hospital right now!”

  The idea of entering a hospital in a strange country terrified me as much as the worms did. I thought about how the Australian fellow staying in the hotel room next to ours in Kathmandu had gone into the city hospital to be checked for dysentery and had come away with severely damaged intestines. The doctors had given him the wrong medicine. After that episode, I swore I’d never set foot in a foreign hospital.

  “Barb?”

  “Yeah?” I answered hesitantly.

  “Barb, come here for a minute.”

  I walked back into the bathroom. Larry had scooped a worm and stool sample into a jar to take with us to the hospital. He stood holding the jar up to the light, studying the worms.

  “Tell me what you had for breakfast this morning,” he said.

  “Tea, toast, and that weird grapefruit Ubon gave me.”

  “What was weird about it?”

  “Well, it’s hard to describe. Each section was made up of a bunch of these long, clear strands and—”

  “And I bet they looked a lot like these worms,” Larry sighed, and both of us
burst out laughing.

  “You’re saved kiddo!” Larry chuckled in relief. “Hey, imagine if we’d gone to the hospital with this stuff. They’d be laughing for months about the weirdo Yank with the grapefruit worms in her turds!”

  After biking around the world and writing Miles from Nowhere: A Round-the-World Bicycle Adventure, from which this piece was excerpted, Barbara Savage died in a cycling accident in California. Her husband, Larry, and The Mountaineers, her publisher, established the “Barbara Savage/Miles from Nowhere Memorial Award” for the best unpublished adventure travel manuscript.

  If you have the urge to pat a child’s head, don’t—it is considered the abode of the soul.

  —JO’R and LH

  ALAN RABINOWITZ

  A German Monk

  The unlikely appearance of an English-speaking German monk at a forest camp opens the door to understanding.

  OVER DINNER I WAS TOLD THAT AN ENGLISH-SPEAKING GERMAN monk and a novice Thai monk had arrived that day at camp. At least a dozen monks had come and gone since I first encountered them that day with Noparat [the camp manager], but I had done no more than jog or walk by their huts and observe them from a distance. By now I had finished reading two books on Thai Buddhism and I thought I had found answers to some of the technical questions that had puzzled me. I understood now how the forest monks who came through the sanctuary differed from the monks I had seen in the towns and cities. The town or village monks, characterized by a practice known as bariyat, or “thorough learning,” usually have their temples in more urban areas. Their daily routines include chanting, lessons in Pali, ceremonies, festivals, and counseling members of the local community. Forest monks, characterized by batibat, or “practice,” stay in temples on the outskirts of towns or in the forest. These monks lead more highly disciplined lives, with fewer interruptions. They place a larger emphasis on individual meditation. In the evenings, these monks often force themselves to meditate until sleep overtakes them.

  Although my readings clarified some things, they didn’t explain the contradictions I sensed. Attempts to discuss Buddhism with Noparat usually left me unsatisfied. His English wasn’t proficient enough to allow him to explain some of the finer points, and he often felt, like many Thais, that my questions stemmed from my Western mind’s inability to comprehend Buddhism within the Asian framework from which it was born. I, in turn, was surprised by the unquestioning acceptance by many Thais of the basic rules and assumptions of Buddhism. Buddha himself had felt that his teachings should be questioned, that they were not dogma, but basic truths, to be tested and discovered for oneself. There were many things I wanted to ask this new farang forest monk who had somehow merged his Western upbringing with traditional Buddhist philosophy.

  I was surprised when I encountered a Thai novice dressed in white, not the usual orange robes. I later learned that he was not a novice at all, but a khon teu sin, or a man who follows the eight precepts. He was trying out monkhood, so to speak, rigidly adhering to the more basic rules but not yet on the path to becoming ordained. Without questioning why I was there, he directed me to the hut of the German monk, which sat furthest back in the forest. No one was around, so I sat in the open doorway and waited.

  The monk should not solicit robes from a layman except under certain stipulated conditions; he should not accept robes in excess of his needs; without being invited to do so, he should not instruct the giver how the robe should be made or what quality of robe should be purchased on his behalf.

  —S. J. Tambiah, Buddhism and the Spirit Cults in North-East Thailand

  The belongings of the German monk were laid out neatly in a space that was no more than seven feet square. A little thatch sleeping mat was rolled up against one wall below a small opening that looked out into the forest. His baht, or bowl in which he accepts and carries food, was sitting in a dark corner, its orange lid blending in with the shadows. A toothbrush and tube of toothpaste lay next to a little portable alarm clock to the right of the doorway, placed in a groove between two bamboo slats making up part of the floor. That was it. His only other belongings, as I soon learned, were his robes, a small sewing kit to repair robes, a razor, a strainer to exclude small creatures from his drinking water, and a bar of soap that was currently with him at the river.

  I was daydreaming when I first heard his gentle chanting coming along the path that led to the hut. Then a tall, thin, pale-looking character came into view. When he saw me, his chanting stopped and his already large smile spread out into a huge tooth-filled grin.

  “Ahhh, so good to see you,” he said in clear Germanic English, as if we had long been friends.

  I couldn’t help but smile back, feeling the kind of immediate bond that I so rarely experience with people. His English was music to my ears.

  After that first visit, it became part of my daily routine to join him for coffee in the late afternoon. If I happened to come by earlier, he was usually away from the hut, meditating or exploring new areas of the forest. He encouraged me to visit whenever I could, and if he wasn’t there, to beat on the graw that was hanging by his hut. The graw, one of the oldest Thai instruments, is made from a piece of hollow bamboo with a small vertical slit cut between the joints at each end. When a wooden beater is tapped against the bamboo, its deep, hollow sound carries easily through the forest.

  This monk had been given the Thai name Supanyo, meaning “good thinking.” At first, we spent most of our time together discussing Buddhism, and he seemed to get great pleasure when I challenged him, voicing doubts or criticisms. I told him of my early encounters with the monks and how I had felt that some of them were just going through the motions, making them seem like little more than beggars. They were supposed to be humble, righteous men, I said. They were supposed to follow Buddha’s teachings, but many of their actions seemed hypocritical to me. And what about the rules that Thai monks allegedly lived by? I asked him. A set of 10 basic precepts was understandable, but why the additional 217 rules that told the monks how to hang their robes after washing, specified when a crack was big enough to justify replacing your food bowl, or said you couldn’t open your mouth until the rice reached your lips?

  Even when I did little else but berate Thai Buddhism, Supanyo just listened and gently explained.

  “Monks are not beggars. You must understand this first,” he said. He told me that when monks go on morning food rounds, they walk silently, often concentrating on meditation. Anything that is given is accepted. A monk doesn’t thank those who give him food or show either pleasure or disappointment at what is given, because the food itself is of no concern other than for nourishment. It is the act of giving and allowing to give that is important.

  “But if monks are just regular people, then why do Thais kneel and bow their heads to them?” I asked. “What is this ‘merit’ that is gained by giving to the monks? Does merit wipe out bad deeds?” To me it sounded suspiciously like the sins and absolution of Christianity.

  “A monk is thought to be elevated, set apart from the normal world. The title ‘Pra’ that a monk is given means holy and exalted. When people bow before a monk, it is simply a show of respect. It doesn’t have to be done. You thank the monk for allowing you to gain merit, which, though often misunderstood, means teaching you to be giving and compassionate. You are thanking the monk for helping to carry on the teachings of the Buddha. Such teachings can make the world better, even if some people choose not to be involved in them. And bad deeds are not wiped out so easily. They are a burden for you alone to carry.”

  “What about all those rules?” I pressed on. “Why should it matter if a monk’s cheeks bulge while he eats or where he goes to the bathroom?” Supanyo grinned broadly. “It doesn’t matter. The rules can be cast aside once you rise above them. But remember again, my friend, monks are simply men trying to do better with their lives. Most men need rules, they need something which defines their world and helps set patterns of behavior and good habits. Though you may think monks are abo
ve worrying about such mundane behavior, this kind of understanding can come only after much striving and meditation.

  “Buddhism is faith combined with wisdom. At first you accept certain practice on faith alone, and then when you come to understand the truth inside yourself, you attain wisdom. Many people get stuck on the rules and practices alone and do not attain wisdom. Not many monks are truly ‘noble’ and you cannot take ‘refuge’ from all monks. You should seek the real refuge within yourself.”

  He made himself another cup of coffee with the mandatory four heaping teaspoons of “medicinal” sugar.

  “Be careful of trying to think through everything or gaining understanding just from books,” Supanyo said, offering me the pot of hot water so that I could make my own coffee. (A monk doesn’t serve a layperson.) “Of course, it is good to question as you do. Buddha wanted people to question. But don’t expect understanding to come so easily.”