< Back To This Issue's Index >< Subscribe >< Send a Letter to the Editor >

What would you do if you had 6 months to change your life? Would you volunteer at an orphanage, take a dance class, write a novel? I find myself living six months in a country where anything is possible, from the sublime to the deranged. The narrow, blackened sidewalks with their treacherous cracks and crumbles uphold a teeming cultural soup. Beggars without legs hold a cup over their heads, hands pressed together in an attitude of humility or prayer. Occasionally, some beach-reddened Westerners —farang— fumble for loose baht to toss into the cup, but most, taken unawares by the maimed and ragged half-horror just hurry by. Thais on the grumbling dirty public bus lean out the window to escape the stifling heat trap inside, but hold scarves over their nose and mouth to combat the throat-burning pollution of the motionless traffic. Mini cafes line the already crowded sidewalks--mobile noodle, squid, corn, or grub and cricket vendors next to rows of card tables where the average Thais eat lunch.

Wonder Russell is a 22 year old college girl who recently moved to Bangkok with her family where she'll be for the next 5 months. Wonder was raised in Anchorage and Juneau, Alaska, and studied a year in England and Montreal. She says she's addicted to travel since she and her brother Levi accompanied her Dad, then a jet captain, on flights all over Alaska and down to Mexico. They've done road trips East-West and North-South all over the States, including from Alaska to Tiajuana in a summer. Her brother and she have also backpacked around Europe, and had the privelige of seeing a little of South Africa and Jordan. She's an avid writer and amateur filmmaker who is trying to lead a life less ordinary. . Additional Resources Living Overseas  Unique Lifestyles  International Jobs Marketplace  Living in Thailand  Contact Wonder Russell .

And it's hot! My favorite tennis shoes lounge neglected in my suitcase, too close and warm to wear. Loose jeans and even cargo pants would be uncomfortable in this humidity, though it is Thailand's winter. You know it's hot when you take the pads out of your Miracle Bra, just to wear less clothes;

you know it's hot when you stay under the covers all night to avoid mosquito bites the size of quarters, only to wake up wringing wet. While my makeup bag holds bronzers from the West, having been indoctrinated by the cosmetic industry that white is boring, here they sell the nut-brown Thai whitening lotions. Every recognizable brand guarantees "Ideal White" (more of a porcelain pink) or "White Brilliance Serum" to gradually lighten and whiten skin.  At the Bangkok Zoo, my brother, cousin, and I were the biggest attraction. I thought the group of young Thai women who stopped me wanted me to take their picture. Instead, they wanted a picture of us! When my brother Levi got his hair cut at a small local salon, a withered Thai woman, face slathered in algae and hair in foil, told him, "You look like a movie star."

The multitudinous hotel staff snap to attention every time we go in our out, or even use the elevator. They stiffen their spines, click their heels smartly like soldiers and salute as we walk by. In one average day we may be saluted a hundred times. One guard at the entrance always dons his helmet as any farang approaches, salutes, and breaks into a face-cracking smile as they pass. “Smiley the toothpaste advert,” a Bangkok expat fondly nicknamed him.
 

The legendary Thai food defies all expectation. Even the smells burst with chili and peanut. The famous coconut soup is headier than wine, blushing first lemon, then pepper, and then salty sweet on my exulting tongue. The flavors aren't just good, they're crave-worthy. Even when a dish makes your forehead gloss over with sweat from the everlasting chili, you can still taste the delicate lime that the sweet fish was broiled in. Yesterday, we tried our first street food; tiny pancakes with coconut cream and some sort of egg mixture, folded up like fans and selling for 1 baht apiece, about 2.3 cents. They were oddly sweet, unrecognizably tasty. We also bought 50 fragrant roses, wrapped in dirty newspaper for 50 baht, a little over 1 dollar. Manicures cost 3 dollars. Our favorite Thai food haunt, which is little more than rickety tables and chairs and plastic plates in an open-air warehouse, costs us around 500 baht for the five of us for several plates of tantalizing "homemade" Thai food...about 12 bucks.

By day, the filth on the streets and smoke of burning squid on a stick, traffic fumes, mangy dogs biting at their falling-out hair, and deformed beggars makes Bangkok look like a kind of Asian Tiajuana. The night mixes with the incense from the spirit houses on every corner, (decked with offering of flowers and fruit), and covers the terrible sights lurking in the city's corners. Then, under the electric glow of a million sleepless lights and neon skytrains criscrossing in the air, their tracks lost in the darkness, Bangkok looks like the setting for Blade Runner. The hawkers push calculators into your hands--"How much you give me? Best price!" and the "charming hostesses" and "White Lotus girls" petulantly call out to my brother and father as we walk by.

“What am I doing here?” an expat is forced to ask him or herself when confronted with so much exotic appeal and foreign incongruity.  Six months to change your life, something inside me whispers. Six months stretched between West and East, the Pacific and the Indian oceans, between the heaven of the hotels and spas and the hell of the poverty. It’s an adventure, and that’s what we live for.
.