Go East, Young Woman

A really thoughtful and articulate post on the experience of being a foreigner in Japan over at 1000 things about Japan:

I simply don’t want to be objectified, defined, and prejudged at a glance. A lot of people don’t mind this as long as it gets them favorable attention. This is like being the prettiest girl in the class for the first time in their lives, and many people see nothing wrong with it. I think that’s an ego issue and is at the root of the “Charisma man” image and personality. Having that sort of validation without effort for the first time in their lives is powerful and addictive, but it is also hollow. For many, empty validation is better than none at all, especially when they don’t have to work for it and believe they “deserve” it. Is it any wonder Japan is such a magical place for many foreigners? It can bring about epic and life-long ego stroking and if you live in that head space long enough, you start to believe you’re as special as they think you are.

It definitely echoes my experience of being a white foreigner in Thailand. When tourists first come to Thailand, they love all the attention they get, but after a while, under the surface is the feeling that it’s like a dancing bear, or a treasured poodle….entertainment, not someone you have real relationships with or take seriously. In Thailand I never felt so much loved, as I felt in fashion.

With Thai friends from the working class, money was often an issue. Money is not taboo in Thai relationships the way it is here, but as a foreigner I had no idea how to navigate the minefield of what’s a cultural difference I don’t understand vs. what is someone just trying to rip me off. With upper class Thai friends, it’s like you’re a fashion accessory, a treasured belonging that adds to their international image amongst other Thais, along with the LV purse and the latest IPhone. But this show is turned towards other Thais, people who really matter, not you. It got exhausting, and I am sad to say I mostly gave up towards the end. Which isn’t to say there aren’t many Thai friends I’ve met who I remember fondly, and am glad to have spent time with, and still think of today. Just that it was tiring to so often feel that people’s reactions to me had so little to do with me: either they liked foreigners, so they liked me, or they disliked foreigners, so they disliked me. It was never anything much about me.

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Wakaren, a blog about living in Japan that feels like a mirror world of my experience in Thailand:

[how were things back home?]

My image is that people make a lot of eye contact, disenfranchised service workers expect tips, and all boys in their 20’s have ironic facial hair. It’s not a place I’d like to go without a concrete plan, that’s for sure.

My plan was stay here until I had a plan, but maybe that was what fucked me. Maybe it’s best to only live abroad for one year, two at the most. When you start staying in Asia because “your life is here,” it’s the point at which you’ve lost control of said life. When your home no longer feels like home- you’re on dangerous ground.

If you feel like I’m talking about you, maybe you should get out of Asia now.

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One thing I never experienced before I came back…being hungry. Telling myself “I better wait until I get home to eat”. Eating leftovers, planning what to eat ahead of time, carrying food around. In Bangkok there’s always food, food for sale, food shared by friends, by acquaintances, if you don’t mind playing the clown, Thai people will pretty much just offer you food because of your entertaining whiteness. It’s so rare that there’s not some tasty, nutritious, cheap, food available whenever you want it, it’s like a personal insult when it happens, like that hood of Bangkok has dissed you, failed you in the most elementary way.

Food is life….food is pleasure, just walking around and trying new foods, food is what people bring you when they come back from vacation, treats from a foreign place, food is what you enjoy trying when you go to a new place, every region and even tiny cities having its own delicacies. Food is bonding, friendship, sharing, a gift.

North America just ruins eating. There’s lot of tasty things to eat: croissants, good coffee, cheese, but somehow eating is too serious, too solitary to be truly enjoyable. In Thailand food is like a welcome friend that’s invited to every party, here it’s like an athlete whose performance you’re constantly evaluating: how many calories? does it have too many carbs? is it paleo? probiotic?

All the restaurant food is expensive in huge portions, and usually crap. Eating at home is best, but then you’re starving half the time when you’re out. You have to stuff yourself beyond the point of being full to have enough energy to last you until your next 3 square meal. No noshing. No snacks. No gin len (“play eating”).

Ironically for all their eating, Thais are thin, and North Americans are fat. I find myself fighting with frantic exercise the feeling that living here is making me fat.

Eating here is all wrong and I don’t know what to do about it.

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“There is no modern history of people “becoming Chinese,” in the way that so many millions of people have become American”

NYT article on the idea that Americans, that nation of immigrants, could become emigrants to seek better opportunities abroad.

Personally I do think that this will happen.

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A lot of people accused me of hating Thailand. I always felt that was bullshit, like to me Thailand was something beyond love and beyond hatred, something so intimate, above such petty judgements. It just was something huge in my life. Still, travel stories of people who love every single aspect of travel always annoy me. It makes travel into something like Christmas, were the occasion dictates you’re supposed to be feeling a certain way, and what if you don’t feel like that?

Besides the joys of travel are so personal, while its miseries are so universal. Everyone who has ever gone anywhere can sympathize with a funny story about taking a long-haul bus trip with diarrhea on a badly-paved, shitty third world road. That’s why most great travel writing is just witty complaining. Exhibit A: Paul Theroux: does that dude like anything, at all, ever? Exhibit B: Bill Bryson: champion complainer. But he’s funny, and that’s what’s important.

In that spirit, here are some pretty funny videos of a bunch of really hot guys having a horrible time in Tokyo:

http://www.jetsetzero.tv/season-2-episode-6

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One weird thing is how no one in Canada really takes pictures of things. You can go out with people, and no one takes pictures, except maybe for me. Of anything: people or food. Thailand + Japan are kind of big on pics.

Also you’re always walking into situations where there’s no chance to check your appearance, like interviews. How are you supposed to concentrate when you don’t know if your hair is all messed up? In Thailand it’s your SOCIAL DUTY to check your appearance.

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My current roommate who is majoring in math at McGill asked me “so, did you enjoy Waterloo?”

That’s kind of a tough question. I know a lot of people who went to Waterloo but not that many people who enjoyed going to Waterloo. My math degree is something that I’m glad I finished, and I feel really proud of it looking back, but I didn’t enjoy very much at the time.

How was the campus?, she asked. Totally shitty and bland and southern ontario and boring…the kind of place designed by people whose bodies are just station wagons for carrying their brains around.

Everything was ugly and exhausting and hard, assignment after assignment in these crappy yellow bunkers lit by fluorescent lights and corduroy couches, but what shines like a diamond in my memory is the people, the beauty of that place was the friends that I made and the people I met. To be in a place where everyone is smart and driven, where you’re tripping over high geniuses, and there’s interesting ideas and research all the time, that was really cool.

One summer I went to my friend’s advisor’s office, who worked in physics, high up in the upper floors, and he told us that the stars we see are just the picture of light how it was millions of years ago, that it takes a million years for that light to reach our eyes in the form of stars that shine in the sky.

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6 pm, Nana.

It was American food festival at Tops supermarkets diner, and sauce dripped from their fingers fat like sausages, these men with behinds fat enough to spill over two stools, men who gathered here in the land of curries fragrant with lemongrass and galangal to gorge on chicken steak and ribs, the kind of men who married a Thai hooker and took her out for Sunday dinner with the kids two blocks from where she used to work.

I passed in its weary tawdriness like a sail, stepping out into the street. All of my dreams inside, the city crowding around, electric in its districts of the night awakening.

I passed in the fever of the Arab quarters, the haughty Arabs and their fat, hidden wives, impeccable Nigerians on the scam, their bloodshot eyes, their calls of “my friend, my friend”. Gaudy restaurants mirror-plated like carousels, entire lamb carcasses, the smell of sisha, the smell of expensive wood.

I wound my way in this passage, touching no one with my eyes, wanting no answer.

These were not the kind empty landscapes of America, but dense and complex like jungles, the kind survival manuals warned you about, where travelling ten miles meant hacking for days with a machete. This was a beast carnivorous and ancient, quick to swallow anything shiny and new.

There were sad homesick Christmas lights drooping along the wall of a pool bar, drooping like the long lines of girls lining Sukumvit, their tired faces temporarily drawn into a smile, and as I passed by, like something out of a movie, this faint little song by the Everly Brothers floated on the air …

“whenever i want you, all i have to do
is dream, dream, dream…”
I can make you mine, taste your lips of wine
any time of night and day
only trouble is, gee whiz
I’m dreaming my life away…”

The beauty of this song, the clean hope of it, of crisp white dresses, and school dances in the gym, a boy’s hand trembling on the waist of his first girlfriend. It was a song so obviously written about a place that wasn’t here, with its ageing R&R comforts and nightly parodies of love, it shone even more brightly, the sweetness of it, in the night, almost unbearable.

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Today I was practicing my Thai with my cat, since there’s no one else to practice it with, and I don’t want to lose it. I realized it’s been months since anyone has asked me: “pai nai ma?” or “gin khao reuyang?”, Thailand’s two standards greetings: “where you have you been?” or “have you eaten rice yet?”. I felt strange.

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Boat ride on the Mekong river at sunset.

I lived for four months in rural Thailand, by the Mekong river. In the late afternoon I would go for bike rides down a road that meandered through many villages. This was my view.

My trusty bicycle. It was bright fuschia and had only one speed. I rented it for 12$/month from a family of Chinese merchants who loved Ottawa.

In Bangkok I found this little cat crying under a car close to my apartment. Her mother had just been run over by a car, my security guards told me. I took me hours to coax out from under the car. Later she went to live the rich life with my wealthy and kind landlord, who loves cats and had a huge apartment, including his own forest!

I had an art show in Bangkok with Andrew Jones about urbanisation and video games, Kijazz played music, I did these visuals.

Me at my favorite pizza restaurant in Krabi, Thailand.

A storm coming into the ocean in Krabi, the long-tailed boats rush to get home.

The most beautiful beach I’ve seen in Asia, Panang Beach in Krabi.

Baby and mother at street fair.

Petronus Towers of Kuala Lumpur in the mist, from window of five-star hotel.

Inner altar of the Teochew temple in Panang Malaysia, I believe it contains the names of the dead.

Islamic calligraphy at the Islamic arts museum, Kuala Lumpur.

A beautiful girl on the airport shuttle, Bangkok airport. She looks like a painting.

Funny indian family posing with birds at Bird Park, KL.

Nong Khai at night. A butterfly as big as my hand landed on my screen door, attracted by the light.

Nong Khai had a store that sold only two things: puppies and limes.

Lanterns floating into the sky over JJ park in Bangkok for Loy Kratong, a Thai holiday

Red fields in Kanchanaburi, riding the death railway.

Christmas decoration from Bangkok five-star hotels.

Lighting incense for New Year wishes at Erawan Shrine, Bangkok

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