Bangkok Beginnings

It's Saturday morning in Bangkok and I'm getting ready to pack up and leave the hostel. I'll be staying with a Thai girl from couchsurfing for a couple nights before heading down to the beach. Last night I was over at her place hanging out with everyone who's staying there. Right now she has five (yes that's right 5!) of guests. Her family owns a building which has her mom's dentistry business on the ground floor and then her parents have let her have the run of the upper floors which she has turned into a massive couchsurfing spot. The current group is quite a cast of characters which include: two American guys, one a hacker training in Thai massage, the other an aspiring artist who is also practicing to be a muay thai kickboxer, a former Russian soldier who plans to stay in Thailand and thus studies Thai constantly stopping only to talk about planned economy and eat, a pretty Finnish dental hygenist, and a German guy seeking to do the cheapest trip around the world ever but loves to splurge on sweet drinks (of which there is no shortage in Thailand).

On Thursday I went to the floating market (pictures are below) with a friend of my sister's who happens to be traveling at the same time as me. It was certainly quaint floating in a long boat (a sort of wide canoe looking thing) between the rows of water level stalls selling handicraft style souveneirs. Other boats floated by selling fruit and sticky rice  - I tried some taco looking things that were sweet and crispy with some kind of sugary fluff and cooked coconut inside.

Then yesterday morning I relaxed by the world's greenest pool at a nearby hotel, wondering if it were some kind of Thai joke on tourists. Posted on the wall were the day's pool chemistry stats declaring the pH, etc. to be in the correct range and everything to be normal. Had they actually looked at the pool? In the afternoon I took a water taxi up to the grand palace area and walked around there. The word "beautiful" definitely sells short its gleaming golden domes.
 
Which brings us to this morning when I'm debating between going to the weekend market or heading up to Khao San Road to have mini-piranahas nibble all the dead skin off my feet. (yes, I'm serious.)

Welcome Back

Just wrapped up a couple of weeks in the US where I saw family, friends, did the tour of Virginia and then capped it off with a weekend of celebration in New York. It was a blur of a weekend - the kind of flurry of fun that you can only find in New York - a combination of brunches, shopping, dancing, and yes, one rodeo. It certainly left me plotting my eventual return to the city. And now I've been back in Shanghai for just a day and I've already noticed numerous changes - one new subway line open, another about to be (my subway maps are grossly inaccurate now! Never had that happen before...hmm think 2nd avenue subway 2014.) a laudromat just opened in front of my building, one of my favorite restaurants closed for renovations while two more new ones have cropped up to cover the market, and the stores are in full-on clearance mode. To say the least, business is booming here. And that's just after a 16 day absence. What will I find when I get back after six weeks of traveling?

Ambitions of ease

As someone who has the constant sense that she is "not accomplishing enough," I love this piece that Elizabeth Gilbert (the author of eat pray love) wrote about ease:

"We are the strivingest people who have ever lived.  We are ambitious, time-starved, competitive, distracted.  We move at full velocity, yet constantly fear we are not doing enough.  Though we live longer than any humans before us, our lives feel shorter, restless, breathless . . .

Dear ones, EASE UP.  Pump the brakes.  Take a step back.  Seriously.  Take two steps back.  Turn off all your electronics and surrender over all your aspirations and do absolutely nothing for a spell.  I know, I know  –  we all need to save the world.  But trust me:  The world will still need saving tomorrow.  In the meantime, you're going to have a stroke soon if you don't calm the hell down. 

So go take a walk.  Or don't.  Consider actually exhaling.  Find a body of water and float.  Hit a tennis ball against a wall.  Tell your colleagues that you're off meditating and then actually, secretly, nap.

My radical suggestion?  Cease participation, if only for one day this year  –  if only to make sure that we don't lose forever the rare and vanishing human talent of appreciating ease."

And this is exactly what I plan to do for the next month in Thailand!