Suzhou River Song

Thai Adventure #1

monk friend
Originally uploaded by sherryworld.

Did I ever tell you about my new monk friend that's an ex muay thai kickboxing champion?

Before I start though, let me share with you my enlightening experience at my first Thai spa. Everyone must, at least once in their life, go to a free herbal sauna in Thailand run by a Buddhist monastery. Seriously. Not only can you zen out and be beside oneself, its a perfect way to detox from the snake venom your friend dared you to ingest the night before. Once at Wat Pho, one can change into a fabulous sarong before drenching yourself with dirty thai water head to toe, and then proceed into an 6'x10' oven-like sauna that's infused with citronelle, lemongrass, ginger, lavender, jasmine, and other indiscernible powders stored in colorful nameless glass jars. The walls of the sauna are built with robust CMU blocks, worn by years of mileage, with a single frosted glass square that allows that the faintest glow of natural light to seep in. Once in the dark cavern, the potpourri envelopes you, and before you know it, fierce beads gather and slippery sweat spills through your happy pores. A bit more time passes and your lungs begin to fill with a heavy vigorous air, your nostrils clear, and suddenly nirvana kicks in at full gear. Maybe not nirvana, but you are certainly struggling not to pass out from the lack of oxygen flowing to your now-mushy noodle.

Which brings me to the Monk. Across the road resides a group of monks that maintain the monastery and surrounding grounds. By some feudalistic law, every Thai man is required to go through monk-hood at some point in his life. Soontun, on the left, has been a monk for 12 years and counting, and before that, a muay thai champion for five consecutive years in the thaiboxing town of Patong. After befriending Soontun on our way out of the sauna, he invites us back for lunch the next day. That's how Alix and I found ourselves repeating Buddhist chants underneath the canopy of an obscure temple one random afternoon in Koh Phagnan. Upon arriving, the first thing Soontun did was give me a small key chain of a naw (a thai instrument), and he points to me and says, through his broken English, "You, music. You music." (I'm a musician by trade) Then he gives Alix a seashell windchime which, although wasn't the EXACT one she wanted, was a souvenir she's been meaning to buy for herself. It's strange and inexplicable, as if he had spiritual gifts and was flexing his ESP powers. He then offers to "bodyguard" us to Chiang Mai via train, and invites us to pick oranges at his family's grove in Chiang Dao. But the story does not continue and we did not meet with him again. He did, however, call our cellphone nonstop every few hours for the duration of our trip. Was that monkish of him? We didn't think so. We figured either a.) he's a psycho undercover that enjoys hanging out at wats or b.) he's painfully bored, or c.) he's spiritually gifted, but still painfully bored. Upon returning one of his phone calls, he hands his phone over to another man, who turns out to be a Dutch friend Soontun befriended as well. Apparently he received calls at all hours as well. So, final answer, b.) painfully bored.

I'm still not sure if I can classify my experience with the monk as mystical or mad. Alix thinks the latter, but I am not fully convinced. I have a feeling this is not the last I have seen of this monk. When we left, I found the little dog in the picture chewing up my shoes. Too bad the monk didn't see that coming.

Fuzhou: Inopportune Opportunities

Recently a group of friends and I took a trip through eastern China before flying into Thailand for three weeks. Though not exactly remote cities, Fuzhou and Xiamen were definitely a different cup of tea from the fast, glamorous but slightly seedy flavor of Shanghai. In the past, my experience with the Fukinese is limited to the New York Chinatown street vendors, who have established an intricate underground system of selling knock-off merchandise without getting caught by the NYPD. Walkie talkies, an unintelligible dialect, and mad guts all formulate an impressive game of Dodge the Man In Blue. But bootleg gear isn't this community's bread and butter. Fuzhou, a quiet but prosperous city of roughly 6.6 million, is the major source of undocumented Chinese American aliens residing in the United States. This particular industry emerged in the 70's to atone for China’s political repression and policies of sterilization and forced abortion. Patrick Radden Keefe of the New Yorker wrote an entertaining piece about the exciting but infamous oddyssey of New York Chinatown's most notorious human trafficker- a short petite woman named Sister Ping who grew up in Fuzhou. Aside from illegal racketeering, however, Fuzhou also has some of the dirtiest and most ill-maintained zoos in the world. A recent article in the Speigel piqued our interest in Chinese zoos. It's a typical Chinese fallacy: Jump on an idea without fully realizing the actual overhead and maintenance it takes to run it. Many zoos are opened almost overnight, most privately owned, with a large inventory of animals with the assumption that it will undoubtedly attract tons of animal-loving visitors. Unfortunately the budget is often undermined, visitors never show, and ultimately the zoo falls into human-induced Darwinian chaos- birds are fed to alligators, alligators to the lions, and the lions sold to the Chinese black-market for food. The situation wasn't quite so dire at the Fuzhou Zoo, but I've never seen a more sad, depressed and luckless bunch. Monkeys in dirty square boxes. An orangutan, unflinching, unmoving, and spiritless. A whole pack of wolves, stuffed into a series of cages no larger than 10 ft by 40 ft total. The list goes on.

But I guess its all a bit comical, even absurd, my complaining of improper animal treatment in Fuzhou. I mean, just down the street, someone probably just paid $10,000 US dollars to be shipped on a month-long journey to be illegally smuggled to the states through some of the shadiest places on earth, with a likelihood of dying on the way, so that s/he can spend the next five years of his/her life paying off the debt of the cost of freedom. "But that's voluntary", one may argue in defense of the disadvantaged caged ones. A good rebuke would be to ask, "And who are the caged ones?" Hmmm...

Thai Boxing

Phuket
Originally uploaded by sherryworld.

7 fights, one bloody eye, and two K.O.'s... First thing I did in Thailand was watch a kickboxing match. Remember that game Street Fighter 2? That Sagat character? The hypnotic music that goes with it? This is the real deal, complete with a live eight-piece traditional Thai ensemble. The "girl match" was between two children, ages 15 and 16, both very capable of kicking my ass. Their under-aged-ness, however, isn't exactly what I would associate with proper child labor laws. That may soon change though, with the new military regime that recently ousted former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Is that wishful thinking? Perhaps, but in a conversation with my taxi driver from the airport, I found out that over 80% of the people approve of the new government. What does that mean? Probably not much to a seasonal tourist like me, who's only interest lies in beaches, girl-boys, thai boxing and food. For the average Thai, let's hope the change is for the better.