Backpacker Lullaby

Khao San Road is a Grateful Dead show without the music. Slow-eyed people are gliding their way up the street in flowing linen clothing. A blonde woman is sitting in the street having her hair dredlocked. The unemployed, the on-leave, the never-employed move silently from vegetarian food stalls to Internet cafes. They shuffle through racks of bright colored clothing, they inspect dangly silver earrings, they debate whether or not they really need one more toe ring. The only indication that this is Bangkok and not the parking lot at the Fillmore are the steaming Pad Thai stands that dot the street.

I catch a glimpse of myself in a store window, my backpack towering ridiculously above my head, my Gap khakis dirty from travel, my neatly filed toe nails peeking out of my faux snake skin sandals. I am overdressed for this party.

The first people we meet on the road are a Danish couple. They have arrived in Thailand following five months of travel in India. We are sharing a table at a guesthouse near the Burma border, all writing in our journals. We have come here for a four-day trek into the jungle.

"Are you going on a trek?" Steven asks the couple. The woman inhales deeply on her cigarette and gives us both a tired look.

"No," she says. "We're not doing anything here."

"How much is the trek?" asks the Danish man, pulling a single Lays potato chip out of a bag.

"About 3500 Bhat," Steven says. It breaks down to about $20 a day, including meals and lodging.

"Wow," says the woman. "Expensive."

We are sitting in the back of a songathew, enduring the four-hour open-air ride from the tiny mountain village of Umphang, bumping along, grateful for the wind that helps relive our nausea. A British man with a shaved head and a mustachioed American sit next to us.

"Did you go on a trek?" Steven asks the Brit.

"Fuck no," he says.

"You didn't?" asks the American.

"Nah. I've just arrived yesterday, and I've had enough so I'm out of Thailand."

We all look at him.

"You're leaving the country?" asks the American.

"I'm out, yeah. I've given it two weeks, and it's full of fucking Thais in Man United shirts. No thanks." He shakes out a cigarette from a pack of Marlboro reds. "I thought maybe Umphang would be different, being in the mountains, but when I got here I saw sixteen Thais getting into a rubber raft at the river, and I thought, fuck, I'm out."

"Did you go on a trek?" I ask the American.

"Sort of," he says. "I met someone who used to work at the UN, and he told me about this guy he knew who knew about the mountains and he spoke pretty good English, so I hired him and he took me around."

"Where did he take you?" Steven asks.

"We hiked to this tribal village and spent the day there, and then I told the guy I wanted to see some elephants working, you know, doing logging, so we went to see that." He smiles. He has been resourceful and it is good.

"What did you do?" he asks us.

"Same thing," says Steven.

Pause.

“Did you look at the teak houses?” asks the American.

“The teak houses?” I ask. Nearly every house in the Thai countryside is constructed out of teak.

“I noticed that there were some really nice teak houses in Umphang,” he continues. “I was trying to take a picture of one of them, and I met this guy who lived in the house, who also really liked teak houses, so I hired him to show me the teak houses.”

I nod.

“I mean, I guess I hired him. I bought him lunch.”

"How long have you been traveling?" I ask the Brit.

"Since last August. I went to Pakistan and then to China, then went home for a while, and now I'm back here. But I want to get back to China."

"So you liked China," says Steven.

"Hated it," says the Brit. "But I won't let it beat me."

"What was Pakistan like?" I ask.

"Fantastic," he says. "Absolutely fantastic."

I wait for him to elaborate, but he doesn't. We bump along in silence for a while.

"So what do you folks do back home?" Steven asks.

"I work for NASA," says the American. "The, um, national space program."

"We're familiar with it," I say.

"I was designing this satellite camera that orbits Earth 18 times a day and it, um, it takes pictures, basically."

"Oh," I say.

"But I'm on leave of absence now." "Will you go back?" I ask.

"That's what I'm trying to figure out," he says. "The project I was on, it was, um, it was like anyone could do what I was doing."

"Hmm," I say.

"So where are you going next?" he asks.

"North to Chiang Mai, and then over to Laos."

"I'm going to Burma," the Brit offers.

"Can you go to Burma?" asks the American.

"Have to fly from Bangkok to Mandalay or Rangoon."

"It's not dangerous?" asks the American.

"The guerillas are only in the north."

We all raise our eyebrows together.

"Just gotta get away from these fucking Westerners," he adds.

"I'd love to go to South America some day," says the American, by way of nothing.

"I went to Colombia," says the Brit.

"Isn't there, like, a war there?" I ask.

"Yeah," he says, "but tickets were cheap."

"What was it like?" asks Steven.

"Fucking awful. Sometimes I was stuck in a town for days because they'd blown up the roads." He flicks his cigarette ash out the back of the songathew. "But the cocaine was great," he says.

"One would hope," I say.

He nods. "Very pure."

The songathew comes to a stop at a military checkpoint -- they are looking for Burmese refugees. The Brit gets off to use the bathroom, and the rest of us stand up and stretch our legs.

"Hey," says Steven, pointing at a small leather object that turns out to be a wallet. Opening it, I discover it belongs to the Brit.

"He may be able to travel through Pakistan," I say to Steven, "but he's not going to get very far in Thailand."

Two days later we are on another songathew in Chiang Mai, the second largest city in Thailand. Two Australian girls are already on board when we sit down, dressed in embroidered white linen shirts and sarongs.

"This looks familiar," says one, peering out to the street.

"Oh," says the other. "Now I know where we are."

A minute passes before the first one speaks again.

"Fuck. I have no idea where we are."

"It all looks the same," moans the other.

The first one leans over to me. "Excuse me," she says. "Do you know where we are?"

"Where are you trying to go?" I ask.

She gives me the name of her hotel.

"This is Tha Pae Gate," says Steven. "It's the backpacker area."

"Oh," says the first one. "We've been on this thing for an hour, and it all looks the same."

"It goes in a circle," says Steven.

"You're fucking kidding me," says the second girl.

The songathew comes to a stop near our guesthouse and we get out.

"Hey," calls the first Australian. "Is this area any good at night?" I look at the girls, look at the Irish pub sign behind me, remember the guys in Singha Beer shirts watching English football last night.

"Yes," I say. "Yes it is."