After Bangkok Nicole and I find ourselves on a ferry to a small island in the gulf of Thailand called Koh Tao. Turtle Island. This spot is a popular scuba diving destination, so we commit most of our time to doing just that.
Oddly enough, I'm struggling to write much of interest about this place. I thoroughly enjoyed the dives, each one allowing me to become slightly more relaxed under water. We saw some amazing ocean life, too. I ate well, I met new people, and had nice, long conversations with Nicole. Nothing specific really comes to mind now, but it was certainly a great time.
I think the trouble is that I expect the juicy pieces of contemplative material to just arrive to me at my whim. Maybe I'm just hitting a wall in which the environment starts to feel ordinary and I have to dig deeper to extract any interesting insights. But I can't escape this feeling that maybe I don't really like traveling all that much. That's not to say I don't enjoy visiting other places, but I don't know if I like moving around for an extended amount of time. It's difficult to thoroughly assess my happiness before versus now, but I'm slowly weighing this out in my mind.
A lot of these thoughts are mood based. Sometimes the conditions just feel so miserable (long, sticky, neck-racking bus rides) that your brain can't escape the why-are-you-doing-this-to-me feeling. I like to think I'm getting in touch with my emotional side, but I've noticed that these particularly foul moods arise without much warning and make me less than amicable. My level of willingness to argue increases and my patience decreases, but I'm usually too frustrated,tired to actually articulate a point so it just turns into fruitless bickering. Then I feel like I'm being made to look like a fool (partially because I can't process humor temporarily and the jokes get personal). Then I start to want space (this is my side of the room) from my travel buddy, but you're stuck together until you arrive, so you have to ride out the tension for a while.
We jest that traveling together is like being married, but without the benefit of a sexual relationship. So... exactly like marriage, we conclude. As we've been roommates before, we're pretty familiar with the ups and downs of friendship as we endure extended amounts of time together. Fortunately we have a pretty good sense of humor about it (when not strangling one another). At some point you become aware of those trivial, self-defeating thoughts and take some distance to laugh at it. Well, it may not be laugh out loud funny all the time, but you've gotta take a moment now and then to pout and whine about how hard life is now that I've quit my job to travel around the stupid, immense Earth and stuff my face with food and indulge in pleasure after pleasure under the pretense that I'm becoming more cultured.
Just kidding, you know I'm already super cultured. What does that even mean? Does it mean I have cultural knowledge or sensitivity or that I just know how to pick a good wine? Does it mean I change myself and assimilate into the culture? When is it appropriate to hold your own and justify the culture you came from? Rhetorical questions?
When meeting other travelers we tend to slump down the list of the usual questions (where are you from, where have you been, how long are you traveling for, this place is amazing, well that last one wasn't a question but I'm gonna throw it in there anyway, etc), but occasionally you get some gems that stand out. For instance after hearing how long Nicole has traveled for, one man remarks, "Only that long? You're just a baby! I've been traveling for nine months."
Another example. A man in Koh Tao asks Nicole, "When you travel do you simply observe or do you try to change the culture?" A loaded question if I've ever heard one, but Nicole answers adamantly, "Change, if I could."
"Ah, so you're one of those people. Me? I just observe."
I don't fault James for this attitude, but we seem to be learning some less-than-useful ideas about world culture. We assume that if you're not merely observing a culture, you're meddling. Sure, we could think of it as being a guest in somebody else's house and that might necessitate a certain etiquette, but that doesn't preclude discourse and the sharing of culture on both sides.
It seems that the most dramatic shifts in culture are often external, perhaps from an invasive colonial presence. As an individual, I don't expect to have that sort of force behind me when I'm participating in this exchange. It's much more innocuous as we're naturally curious, so why should one be withholding while traveling around? I'm not forcing anyone to adopt my point of view. So going back to the question, I would answer neither. I'm not just observing, but I'm not actively trying to elicit change. Change is welcome, however, and I don't doubt that it's a two way street.
Although there are times when you want to just change it. When you read about all of the atrocious things done in the name of religion or family honor or anything, you really want to change the culture that produces such dysfunctional and violent behavior. The thing to consider is that this is not just our culture or their culture, but a global issue. The same is happening at home but we have just as much power to change it (and this power is not insignificant). But has changing a culture by force ever produced anything for the better? The United States sends its armies in the name of justice yet people resent the big stick attitude, possibly because the big stick affected so many innocent parties. I myself don't jibe with the horrendous sexism perpetuated by the Taliban, but if I go and quash a people's right to practice a religion, their way of life, I would be taking away more freedom than I could bestow. These changes need to come from communication and education.
The difficulty is seeing past how we lump groups together. Your brain does this all the time to attempt to make the world simple and containable, but we often fail to recognize when this automation works against us. There are indeed Muslims who are ethical and believe in empowering women with education, exceptions to everything, so we can't just write off a religious group altogether (going against everything we've been taught with since 9/11). If you keep looking and learning, you will find nuances that seem to shatter the previous thought, making you wonder why you felt that way in the first place. This might lead to a never ending spiral of realizations, but let's say it has an upward trajectory.
Every place you visit is rife with social context and unwritten rules, or a vibe. You get a feeling from its inhabitants about what you're free to do, but you also unknowingly project the vibe from your being. In your mind you might attribute it to a country or a city or perhaps a smaller area within each place. For instance you might be comfortable taking your shirt off at the beach but not a few hundred feet away in the cafe. You might feel more comfortable doing drugs in public in Amsterdam because nobody seems to mind, so there is also the question of what you're able to do. Are men and women able to do the same thing in the beach example? You might argue that nobody wants to see a naked body, but why is the woman naked and the man not naked? What if I say you're now in a tribal village. What if I simply say nobody minds, because nobody literally minds. It's an arbitrary social rule.
There are so many things that direct your behavior in public, but you've got to wonder what a public place is, in its essence. You could be alone in a public place, making it seem private for a moment. Similarly in large crowd you can feel as though attention is diverted from you entirely. Sometimes we seek solitude in open places and are disappointed when it's crowded. Sometimes we want to be around a large body of people and are let down when there's not much of a turn out. What would a music festival be like if there were no other people? Sure, you could go from point A to B without bumping into anyone (which might make you spill your beer), but who would you enjoy those moments with? As much as your enjoyment matters to you, belongs to you, other people are entitled to the same happiness. That's what makes it so special when you take somebody else's interests to heart and elevate their needs or desires before yours.
Altruism feels so good that you're not really sacrificing anything, but creating a sort of positive feedback loop. This is what I think to be an essential part of freedom: creating an environment in which people feel free. The city or the country is often of little consequence. Take San Francisco for instance, typically heralded as a safe haven for homosexuals. And that's not because the city protects them, but because the people there are capable of tolerance and compassion and create a feeling of protection. Everybody is contributing. The law is secondary (but unfortunately necessary when someone tries to violate this freedom). So what would it take for every city or country to be a haven for open expression of sexuality? Well we wouldn't need havens anymore, but just a simple consideration of people's freedoms. Gotta spread the good vibes and diminish the harmful ones, and that comes from changing culture little by little.
Circling back to travels, I finished writing this post back in Bangkok at our little hostel, VX the 50, after four days of diving. Nicole had what seems to be a reverse block in her left ear on the second dive, but she spotted an awesome little flatworm before she had to call it quits for a while. We're stopping in Bangkok for a few days to get visas for Myanmar before heading up to Chiang Mai. Also to visit our favorite restaurants. Home sweet home.
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