Welcome to the Jungle

Life would be boring without mishaps. If everything went according to plan, there would be no stories to tell, no adventures to be had, no mistakes to be made. Some of the beauty of life lies in the unplanned anarchy that takes over our lives now and then, burning our expectations, and from the ashes growing something surprising, something beautiful. As a foreigner in Thailand, anarchy is King, and I love it.

Every Friday our class has what has been cheesily dubbed “Fantastic Fun Fridays,” where we all pack up and head on a trip somewhere. In the case of this past Friday, we headed up to Crazy Horse Buttress to go rock climbing and spelunking. After taking the hour-long Rhot Dhang (the sketchy-ass red Suzuki pickup taxi) ride, we all piled out and split into our groups, mine heading off for the rock climbing portion first. I’ll be honest. This is the point in which language fails to convey adequate meaning, in that it is impossible to describe exactly how beautiful and mesmerizing the bamboo jungle was. One point I can accurately convey though with words: it was hot as hell. As a novice climber, climbing up the hundred foot jagged rock faces in approximately 110% humidity was a nothing short of a workout; adrenaline coursed through my every vein as my hands held on for dear life, trembling violently across the razor-sharp holds, slicing my hands in a few places. My pores were dilated as wide as they would open, pumping gallons upon gallons of sweat, trying to cool my overheated body down and not stopping short of sweating like a whore in church (thank my dad for that wonderful phrase). After drenching ourselves (having one of the best times ever doing it, might I add) we trekked up the mountain, everyone wheezing when we finally got to the top; even our guide had to put his hands on his knees and take a break. We squeezed into a tiny hole in the side of the mountain - tiny by my 6’4” standards at least – and proceeded to explore the internal cave system. Again, words nor pictures do it justice, although I did manage to finally find that Flickr lets me download my photos at a snail’s pace (http://www.flickr.com/photos/41999588@N08/). We ziplined across this deep crevice to a wall, hooked into a rappelling system, and rappelled the 120 feet down. It was unbelievable. Maybe when the onslaught of pictures are posted on facebook, I’ll try and upload some to give some semblance to how gorgeous it was.

One shower, meal, and thrashed pair of running shoes later, I was exhausted and passed out in bed for 12 hours until 9 the next morning. Saturday was spent doing laundry, reviving my shoes and clothes from the crypt. I washed my underwear by hand, because in Thai culture, it is forbidden to wash your clothes with your socks and underwear because they are seen as impure and personal belongings. I’ve actually become fairly domestic, seeing that I iron my shirt and pants for school every night in front of a rousing episode of “Love Trail, Sin Trail,” a melodramatic Thai soap opera that my family loves to watch while taking part in the ritualistic nightly ironing process. The show, at least as much as I can understand, follows a Thai village 1000 years ago and a bunch of women who try to poison, stab, or use a myriad of different ways to kill each other because they all want the same man. Kind of like a Thai version of Grey’s Anatomy, but slightly more violent and everyone’s pregnant.

But I digress. Later in the day, I asked my host brother what he was up to later that night.
“…Up to later tonight?” He asked, confused. We don’t realize it, but we have about no less that 100 different ways of greeting each other, especially if we use slang. After spending quite a while explaining what that meant, he asked,

“You want to go to the pub with me later?”

Now he explicitly said pub. Since I had had a fairly boring day, I decided why the hell not. I threw on a polo and he suggested I wear some jeans. Either it’s getting cooler, or I’m getting used to the sweltering temperatures, because I didn’t sweat the whole night. We drove an hour in some unknown direction and pulled up outside of a building, the neon yellow words “Monkey Club” glowing over top of it.

“Uhh…Thom…are we going there?”

“Yeah! It’s like my second home!”

I laughed. Clearly, there was a slight language barrier, and after explaining the difference between a Pub and a Club, we walked inside, people packed shoulder to shoulder like sardines. The smell of Johnnie Walker whiskey wafted above the crowd as they awkwardly swayed to the live band playing on stage and watched the Liverpool/Bolton game on the screens above the dance floor. I got more looks than Big Bertha at the freak show as I towered over the people, most of which who were about 5’6”. Now the Thai night out is different from our interpretation of a night out. Every group gets a small high round table and generally orders a fifth of whiskey, the type of whiskey denoting your status within the club. Most college-age people were drinking 100 Pipers or Johnnie Walker, so I’m assuming that’s the low end of the social totem pole. Our table got a fifth of Johnnie, and after that fifth, in addition to three 40’s of Heineken, our group was pretty relaxed to say the least. After the live band was finished, a DJ came in and got the place going with American music, mostly rap, although they slipped in Green Day’s “Wake me up when September Ends” randomly. We weren’t standing all that close to the speakers, yet I could feel my skin flapping from the bone-jarring bass, unable to hear anything other than the music as Thom’s friends tried to talk to me in broken English. I think I toasted no less than 72 different things, most of them being to my favorite Futbol team, which I randomly decided was Chelsea because it was the first team that came to mind, although it’s really Bolton or AC Milan.

It was an epic night, to say the least.

Just as a side note, I ususally am writing these posts when I'm horrendously tired, so I apologize if some of my sentences make absolutely no sense or my grammar is off. Just to clarify if you're staring at the computer screen trying to figure out what the hell I'm trying to say.