Early morning, last day in Thailand

November 4, 2005

 

Wanted to keep sleeping but bladder pushed me out of the lazy ameobic bubble of fan-billowing mosquito netting that I strung up over the bed too late last night. I am sitting on the edge of my bed hunched over, forearms against my thighs, the weight of my head hanging like a medallion at the top of my neck, in the darkness of my curtained off room. Light leaks in from the gaps around the loose fitting door and from the curtain covered windows each time the oscillating fan visits this side of the room. I’ve got a cotton shawl wrapped around my waist like an Indian longi. This is a common way of dressing for men in South Asia – it’s the Indian kilt.

 

Every movement or shift of weight orchestrates a small symphony of spring creeks. So much sound for the size of this small instrument, this bed.

 

In old Bangkok, this more recently turned guesthouse, was built with the sprawl of urban poverty along the river. Houses here are founded on stilts in the muck. Wooden houses and corrugated metal fencing surround this flop. I must have the smallest room in the place. It was the last one available when I arrived. It’s only about nine feet by five feet – just big enough for a single bed and a floor fan. It looks like a partition that was pinched off from a large room. It’s got a thin grade of plywood as a wall between it and whoever is next door in the larger room. The wall bows into my room and it presses away with the smallest bit of pressure – this time, from the weight of my forehead as I sit on the edge of my bed. As if the occupants of the next room and I were playing with telephone cans on a string, the wall between is more like a huge membrane that amplifies any sound from one room to the other.

 

A French woman walks to the bathroom and back. Her presence is only marked by the clamoring bangles and bells around her ankles. I wonder if she studied dance in India?

 

Waking, just living, in a place that is as humid as this, things don’t ever feel dry in the way that I am used to something clean feeling. So the first thing I think of when I wake up like this is, “I need a shower.” Moving water somehow seems to clean away stagnant water, microscopic pools of molecules on my skin.

 

The last few nights have been erratic. In different parts of the country or in some form of transport trying to get here, Bangkok, by this morning so I can catch my Indian Airlines flight into Kolkata (formally known as Calcutta) in West Bengal, India. Now that I am here, I feel like I am still moving. As has been, I am on my way to somewhere else. My body and mind are in disagreement, sometimes directing my actions, other times, just along for the ride.

 

I am so tired that I can not pull the veil of netting over me and fall back asleep – so I am writing this. Maybe because of the stop and go, maybe the movement without rooting, maybe it was the eating of too many street foods yesterday, there is an uncomfortable feeling in my abdomen like someone slowly blowing up a balloon in my intestines. Except there is no release, there is no pop and I don’t feel like there is anything I can do about it but perhaps fast it off or flush it out with lemon or salt water. If I tune into it, the ache permeates down my legs and up to my head. It felt this way even minutes after I went to the toilet last night. I’ve got Delhi Belly and I am not even in India yet. Welcome back to the world of backpacking Sahib! These are a few of the things I (and maybe you too) conveniently forget about in non-ordinary states of wanderlust. Oh, did I mention the sneaky little mosquitoes that only attack in ambush when you’ve squatted over the toilet? I mean, come on, there should be rules of engagement here!