Phuket was a mental and physical trial. A steep hill with rocks and dangerous little slides, but one with a picnic basket of pride and reward in achievement at the top, although picking my way back down has also been a test. My hands shook as I packed my backpack to leave last Friday, as I realized that once again I would be completely alone with no one to bail me out, left with my senses and skills to reorient myself in a foreign environment just three weeks after I had gone through that ordeal. I couldn’t stand the thought of open hours stretching before me for six days like a macabre desert of the mind, so empty as to allow all the painful self-searching and doubting to creep back in. Relief came for 25 minutes as I bounced along the highway on the back of a motorbike to the airport, the dusty air rushing like the adventurous spirit coming in as I realized I was having my first backpacking experience. A chance to push myself to the limit once more, try my independence and will to succeed. I bought a copy of the Economist in the Bangkok airport, which soothed my nerves as it reminded me that world holds much bigger and weightier things. But the anxiety came back as I landed at 10pm and I paid 500 baht (about 15 dollars) for a taxi into Phuket, a beach town of bars and barely-dressed girls, reflecting on my lack of desire to see this scene and feeling a stab of all the money I was bleeding out to experience it. I had no idea where I was going, just the name of a hostel and luckily a phone number for my unnervingly disoriented driver. I made it. I nursed my fear with a salad and a strike of luck fell upon me—I met two Germans in their twenties who invited me to a lobster dinner the next night.
Saturday was filled with ups and downs, as I fought off sadness and the fast beating of my heart, trying so earnestly to find every silver lining possible. Once I found them, the silver linings calmed my pulse and the furious tick of my brain. I got to be next to the ocean, such a uniquely calming and universal place. I would be so appreciative to return to the life I’ve made in Phnom Penh. The time for personal reflection, while thorny, is too often ignored by my Western-cultured brain, and I could recognize an opportunity to examine myself even further. Meeting my German friends, while it took a leap of faith to trust stranger travelers in Thailand, proved to be a lifesaver. I spent time with them every day, giving me a respite from the sting of loneliness I still feel and the constant conversations with myself. I ponder again the power of connection, that sustaining power of human companionship, in a far different way from simply missing those connections I already have.
The nature of Phuket is stunning, once you get past the development and tsunami damage from 2005. Clouds appear in their every form in the rainy-season sky. Long and thin drafts drift past like snails; thick ones as substantial as vanilla ice cream scoops rise up and linger. Startlingly green hills fill every background, sloping to craggy cliffs that fall into a hungry sea. The water sparkles in good taste in the sunlight, never flaunting flashy diamonds, and mournfully reflects a darker sky. Sand is hard but appropriately mobile and rough, extending an invitation to dig toes in and watch tiny crabs scamper and scuttle as they scatter. I praised the heavenliness of fresh air that smells simply of creation and the sounds of birds once again circling my ears.
Surfing was a fight through the water and an adrenaline-fuelled victory slice back to shore. On Sunday I surfed all day during a rain storm that raged for hours. This meant blistering hands from vice-gripping the board, battering waves without their normal strait-jacket from the control of the wind, and smarting eyes and skin from whipping raindrops. I managed to sunburn like a fried egg on Saturday and my raw skin ached from the salt and chafing. However, I felt as though I was engaged in a duel to the finish, Emily vs. elements, and I was determined to triumph. And sweet the triumph was, coming from the paddling cave of a breaking wave to the clench of muscles swinging up to the sturdy glee of riding to shore on churning foam. I was reminded of the sport’s best lesson: go with the flow and you will make it well and far more easily. Something we should take and remember more importantly out of the waves.
During a break from the swells I met the local beach bums who were chain-smoking under the shelter of heavily pregnant palm trees and learned about their life. Your average Patong beach surf bum, it sounds like, makes about 1,000 baht per day (around $30) during the low season and 5,000 baht per day (almost $50!) during the high season doing random jobs like offering up their motorbike for taxi rides, teaching the odd surfing or beach-etiquette lesson, or renting out their boards. Compare this with doctors in Afghanistan who make $3 per day performing surgeries and saving lives. As one, who told me his name was John and looked about 23, said, “We work, work all day. Surf five hours, make some money. Then we shower, smell nice [mimes putting on hair gel and deodorant] and drink the beer and go to club all night. Every day for us. Good life.” I was shocked; first that they made so much money, and second at the easy life they led that had virtually no strings attached. No taxes, no bosses, no commitments. It sounded like a small slow hell to me because of its utterly vapid nature, but their Goliath white grins told me they were perfectly satisfied with their lot. One ran to an auntie-friend of his who ran a street food cart and bought four cartons of rice and general seafood and vegetables for all of us to share. I was surprised that I was included in such a communal exercise that signifies a relationship, but was happy the hand had been extended. I picked up my chopsticks and smiled through the chili powder burning a hole through my tongue and the rain pulsing the salt from my hair to my sore skin, feeling I’d found a thread of global brotherhood proving its existence as natural and right.
The Phuket culture is not that of a peaceful, cozy island town. Every facet of life is molded to cater to tourists, and the extent of personal Westernization is shocking from clothes to mannerisms. Prices were sky-high for me coming from Phnom Penh, which is thankfully not yet as tourist obsessed. Ladymen and Manladies, who knows which is which, poke up everywhere with hair heavily dyed and styled and modeling gaudy clothes. I once again had trouble stomaching the extent of the human-wares industry, meaning the countless girls wandering around in next to nothing smooching up to every white male that passed. Thailand’s prostitution industry is legendary, and in Phuket I understood why. Every other man I saw had a girl, more often than not two or three, laughing shrilly and constantly refilling his glass. The middle-aged matron of my hostel lamented the fates of the “foolish young ones,” who believed their buyers’ promises of marrying them and taking them back to Britain, Germany, Australia. The girls earn commissions from the bars and hotels they frequent with their men, on top of their own price that is dictated by their “talents.” I find it all sickening, especially when I imagine a price being put on my own head by a man as a farmer might appraise a cow.
The other wholly difficult sellers were a group I hadn’t run into before, a clean-shaven and well-dressed Indian community of men that run tailor shops and stand outside to find customers, all day and night. They physically reach out and grab the hands of those passing by, drawing them close and saying, “My friend, my friend you look so good already, but how much sexier are you in my clothes?” One in particular that operated down the street from my hostel grew so forward, kissing my hand on two occasions, that I took a much longer route to go anywhere. I was struck by seeing kids actually playing with nice plastic toys, all the young ones noticeably more rotund than any child I’ve seen in Cambodia. I found humor in noting that every little boy had an odd Kim Il Sung haircut. On the whole, I found it hardest to accept the absolute lack of traditions--except for a sole pagoda that had an entrance fee and viewing area so tourists could observe the monks going about their “habitual” behavior. It made me sad to see a rich culture dissolved to 7-Elevens and strip clubs by the tourist’s dollar, and it triggered a thought process about the true good of tourism elevating developing economies, a complex issue if there ever was one.
My bodily suffering during my foray somehow made my state of mind much stronger. I threw up violently two mornings (probably from my attempts to save money by eating the cheapest street food I could bargain for,) my face was heavily blistered from the sun, my knees, arms, and hands were rubbed bloody from my surfboard. The pain made me proud, now a physical marker that I was really going and doing and sticking my hands in totally. I thought about catching a motorbike ride back to my beach with one of the local surfers I met, winding up and down big cackling hills in a rainstorm at what felt like the risky speed of light, flying along through something I had truly made happen all on my own. In the end, sitting on my flight back to Phnom Penh, I contemplated the tender fact that I was coming home not to familiarity in Minneapolis but a much fresher “normality” that still feels alien. However, I think one of the best silver linings I discovered was actually a rediscovery, how crucial it is to live in the present. I was letting myself get sucked into a vision of time that ran past-present-future all at once, allowing me so rarely to let current experiences seep in as deep as possible. I know it’s because I was scared of that seeping, that somehow I would experience something too profound or intense to handle on my own, so I used those handy safety mechanisms of memories and dreams. On that flight, although my “normality” felt like going back to a well-liked hotel, I counted up and the fact sits that I have just eleven and a half weeks remaining to seep up this reality that we provide such excellent insulation against in the West. It’s a reality that is both paralyzing and stunning, but I am ready to open up and trust that letting the world in all the way will only make me a better link in it.
