BRB, Gone to Back to Thailand

I’m going home. I’m not entirely sure why, but it seems like the right thing to do and since this whole adventure has been based on whims and sudden urges, I have to follow this one too. I found a beautiful oasis in the jungle on Ko Lanta, where I could potentially live out the rest of my visa time for next to nothing. But it’s time to go home, for now. Ironically, I’m going home just when I’ve figured out how to potentially stay abroad for a very long time. 

AsaLanta is an earthen village that was begun buy a young couple. Anke and Aoi. Anke is from Holland and Aoi is from Bangkok and here, with the help of volunteers and friends, they’ve built a small earth friendly village for themselves. There are a few mud buildings, a tea house, jewelry shop and a spa and natural sauna which is under progress. Volunteers are invited to live and work here for a small contribution in the first week, after which they are welcome to stay for free, working 4 hours a day and chipping in for any shared meals. During the first week we are only required to work 2 hours each morning, we share breakfast and lunch and sometimes dinner. The rest of the day we are free to do what we want -- go to the beach! 

It’s the perfect last stop on this short tour of South East Asia. The owners and volunteers are a wonderful group of people from all over the world. It’s comfortable, friendly, interesting, much nicer than staying in a resort alone or a cramped dorm. And I’m learning more things! 

This morning I collected and cut leaves from the beetlenut trees and the papery shells of bamboo plants to be used in repairing a roof. Fascinating. As much as I’m excited to be doing something new and interesting, my body is still exhausted and two hours of work left me needing a nap. I’ve been blessed with some sort of lung infection now, breathing is so fun. I get to cough up globs of yellow phlegm all day, lovely. It’s time to go home for a bit. 

I’ll spend my last few days here, working in he morning and beaching like a whale in the afternoons. Christmas day I’ll be on a bus to Bangkok, arriving early in the morning of the 26th, and I’ll arrive back in Comox that same evening. My Christmas present to myself is Rufus. If no ones going to bring him to me I’ll just have to go to him. Oh and maybe a bamboo tattoo before I leave, I’m in Thailand after all. 

Back home in Canadia, I spend my time in a dreamland bubble of denial and live my life as if I'm on vacation all the time. I lay around watching movies and reading, making art, going on adventures with my dog, all kinds of things that don't contribute to a stable and realistic grown-up future. However, I've somehow gone from pretending to be on vacation, to actually being on vacation. 

This would be okay if i could stick to the incredibly frugal lifestyle that other backpackers follow in order to travel for years at a time. They stay in the cheapest dorms, eat street food, don't go diving everywhere etc. They couchsurf and volunteer, they work a bit here and there. The thing is, I don't really want to do that. I like having a bed in a room without strangers. I’m too tired from being sick all the time to be motivated enough to move around looking for jobs and opportunities. I like doing expensive things. I'm a very fancy lady, you might not know that because you probably judge me by my leg hair. 

Volunteering is an option, I'm going to try that out. I still need money to live on though. This girls gotta' eat. A lot. 

If I could stick to my original plan and just get a job, that would work too. There aren't a lot of dive master jobs being thrown around though, everyone wants instructors. And I don't really feel like teaching english. 

Now, if I actually was the wealthy retiree that I seem to think I am, all of this would be fine. I could island hop and putter about aimlessly. Unfortunately I'm not, I'm pretty much broke actually. Before I left home I set aside some money and told myself that when I got close to having only that, I would buy a plane ticket home. I didn't really take into account paying for flights around Asia, diving, and of course the monthly student loan payments. Okay, if we're being honest, I didn't really consider my finances at all. I just felt like going to Borneo and diving for 6 weeks, and then it turned into this. I’m pretty much down to my ‘emergency-flight-home’ funds so I need to make some snappy decisions. Haha. Me, making decisions. 

The thing is, I'm not even content to putter about Asia accomplishing nothing. I'm bored of being a tourist, tourist is not the right career for me. Diving could be, but I like diving with a purpose. Like reef checking and garbage picking upping. Teaching could be, I enjoy teaching, but I don’t want to work in a school. Teaching diving would be alright, but I don’t have $3000 dollars to give to PADI right now, and I would want to work as a DM for a while first anyway. What I really want to do is go to grad school. School is good, school is comfortable and stimulating, surely my life will make sense when I have a masters degree. 

When I was in school, I had money deposited into my bank account every month just for being a student. Now I have money taken out of it every month, just because I was a student. I prefer the former, so if I go back to school, everything will go back to normal and I can face my quarter life financial and metaphysical crisis later. 

I guess where this is headed is, I kinda wanna go home. I’m tired of being covered in bugs and I miss my dog. The longer I spend frittering about, which don’t get me wrong, I am enjoying, the more I feel like I’m wasting time. I should be finding a grad supervisor, and working on my Ginger Goodwin novel/screenplay and becoming a infamous artist. That’s much more realistic and practical! As Jez would say, because of my creativity, getting a job is like torture. 

I could write something about saying goodbye to Bali and all the lovely things I saw and people I met here, but on the way to the airport I saw the most horrific thing ever so I'm going to tell you about that instead: 

I was sitting in the front seat of the shuttle bus and we were caught in a bit of a traffic jam. Cars were inching forward and motorbikes were slowly weaving between them, everyone was manoeuvring around something in the middle of the street. As we got closer to the disturbance I heard a horrible yelping and looked down into the street. There was a puppy, terrified and confused, darting back and forth trying to avoid passing vehicles. One of it's front leg was completely slashed open. I could see exposed bone and bloody flesh from high up in my comfortable seat. It cried and yelled, and everyone just kept going around it, no one stopped to help. It was a goddamn puppy! Our driver, like all the others, continued slowly past it, despite me gasp of horror and proclamation that we needed to stop. 

I feel like a terrible person. I can't handle this kind of guilt, my mental state is precariously fragile at the best of times. There was a puppy that needed me and I couldn't do anything for it. I just keep seeing it's terrified little face searching for some sort of escape. 

What a horrible last memory of a place. 

Guy that works there: Can I sit here?

Me: uh, sure.

Guy: oh you can keep doing your yoga I want to watch

Me: yeah, no. Yoga isn't really a spectator sport.

It's called The Happy Mango Tree, but a brightly painted turdtree is still a turdtree. There really is a big red statue of a turd outside. They actually describe it as a turd online.

I'm so glad I'm only staying here for one night. There's a hole in the pepto bismol coloured wall beside my bed and there is definitely a turdtroll that lives inside of it. Also, the toilets and showers are quite far away from the dorm and I have to go outside in the rain to reach them. I say toilets and showers because there's no real bathroom. There's no sink. As someone who thoroughly enjoys thoroughly washing their hands frequently, I find this quite disturbing. I bet the other guests don't all use the shower to wash their hands after using the toilet. It's not even in the same room. There's probably unwashed hands all over this place. They've probably touched everything. Thank the lord for Purell. It sanitizes my hands and my worries.

Worst of all, however, is that the ceiling fan is lower than the light bulb. I'm not a fan of fluorescent light to begin with, but with the fan whizzing around underneath it it's even worse. It's like a strobe light. I'm trapped in a brightly lit strobey pink room with dirty turd handed people.

Unfortunately I’ve reached that awkward point where I can’t remember his name and it’s too late to ask again...

He really wanted to show me his favorite snorkeling spot and I didn’t actually have to be back in Ubud for any reason yet, so I decided to stay an extra night here. Worth it. We drove up the road a few kilometers to a bay with a black sand beach. They call it the white sand beach but the sand is black, like really black. And it sparkles. The snorkeling was fantastic. Amazingly colorful, massive coral colonies and a butt ton of fishies. There was a lot of damaged/dying/dead coral as well, of course.

I was swimming around one particularly lovely cluster of coral when out of nowhere two finned feet came crashing down in front of me and landed on the top of the hard coral, and then just stood there. I raised my head out of the watery wonderland and said politely, “please don’t stand on the coral.” To which the owner of the intrusive feet replied, “this is not coral it’s stone!” Ugh. I couldn’t stop myself from explaining that it really is living, healthy looking coral and he was damaging it. Then he got angry and said, “I’m from here, I know it’s stone!” Uuuugh. I might be a dumb white girl but I do know what coral looks like. It really was coral. I am a certified reef checker. I checked, definitely coral.  

Later, my friend stood on the same type of coral. I instinctively did the underwater finger wag of disapproval and snapped at him. He thought it was stone too. However, after I enlightened him I noticed that he did make a point of only standing on sand after that. Good boy. We can be friends. 

My impression of South East Asian men is, well, not good. No offence guys but you're super skeezy. Not all of you of course, I've met some very very nice gentlemanly gentlemen, but also quite a few bad apples. I blame violent video games and American pop culture. And the patriarchy of course. 

The Bali women, however, are badass. They carry all kinds of stuff on their heads! Their heads! I was at a busy beach dive site today and the equipment all has to be carried from the parking lot to the beach. Who carries all of it? The women of course! The men are always busy laying on their little shady platforms. I saw one woman with two SCUBA setups on her head. Tanks with BCDs and regs, two! On her head! That's badass. Oh and a 5 kilo weight belt over both each shoulder. 

Okay to be fair, I did see one guy carry one tank. After the woman ahead of him took two and the weight belts.