They call us farang, and they say the worst thing about us is that we have absolutely no patience.  Perhaps the person I am most impatient with on this trip is myself, followed closely by my friend Melissa, who is my traveling partner.  Melissa is only half farang, and only half as impatient as me.  She introduces herself as a leuk-kreung, which translates literally as “half-kid”.  We are drawing a lot of looks out here in the northeast of Thailand, Melissa with her half-kid face and western clothes and me with my shockingly light hair and blue eyes.  We read in our guide books not to be surprised by people staring, but until coming to this part of Thailand, we had not strayed far enough from the beaten track to draw much attention.  The current reason for our farang –like impatience is that our bus is late.  We are traveling to the town of Bua-Yai, which is where Melissa’s mother grew up, within a stone’s throw of the Chinese border.  Her oldest sister still lives there, though most of her other siblings have since emigrated to the US.  Unlike the more touristed portions of the country, the northeast is brown.  There are no rolling green hills or rice paddies.  There are only bumpy bus rides, flat, brown earth, and children that look into my blue eyes with unmasked fascination.  Back home, Melissa drives a mini-van with a license plate bearing the name of her Mother’s home town.  We lovingly refer to this van as ‘boo-ya!’, and this will be the first time Melissa has seen its namesake.    There is really no reason for an ordinary tourist to visit this part of Thailand.  The northeast region is called I-san, and was once a center of civilization, during the time when the Khmer still controlled this part of Thailand.  Now it’s a sleepy backwater.  Having grown up here, Melissa’s mom sometimes refers to herself as an “I-san girl”.  Although she’s a successful physician, she still jokes about her simple country beginnings.  We arrived in I-san yesterday and spent the day and the night in the city of Udon-Thani.  Immediately upon our arrival, we knew.  It was going to be one of those days, the days when we cast about for something interesting to do, the days when we lose at our own game of Best Tourist.  We don’t call this game by name, but we know when we’ve won.  We win at Best Tourist when we find ourselves in a beautiful little town that seems practically undiscovered by other travelers but for a smattering of cute and clean guesthouses, perhaps along a lovely river or set against a backdrop of stunning green hills. We win at Best Tourist when we have dined exquisitely for only a few baht, and have spent the day snapping photos of cultural and natural wonders.  When we win at Best Tourist, we are pleased with ourselves, smug even.  But every once in a while we lose at this game.  Because every once in a while we land in an armpit.  I consider myself to have, if not an expert knowledge of geographic armpits, at least a deep familiarity with them.  All through high school my friends and I referred to our home state, Missouri, as the State of Misery, or The Armpit of America.  For my purposes here, I will define an ‘armpit’ as anywhere that a tourist has absolutely no reason to go, because (1) there is practically nothing noteworthy to see or do there, or (2) the place is just downright ugly.

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The Northeast: Thailand’s Armpit
Udon-Thani is the armpit capital of Thailand’s armpit province.  It fits the definition above to a tee. There is no reason for a tourist to go there.  The rest of Thailand is so gorgeous; I have never seen greens greener than those of the northern hills, nor blues bluer than those of the oceans that touch Thailand’s beautiful beaches.  But I have seen browns as brown as the dry dirt of the northeast.  I have seen grays as gray as the streets and buildings of Udon-Thani.  The city is surprisingly industrial, considering how rural the rest of the province is.  Our guidebook listed nothing to see or do in Udon-Thani, so we decided it would be a great opportunity to catch an American flick at the Cineplex at the mall.  But after spending a large portion of the day wandering through Udon-Thani’s crowded streets, navigating endless traffic circles, we were no closer to finding the elusive Cineplex.  We did, however, succeed in finding my new favorite fruit, rambutan, which is pink and spiky and looks like something that might have to be surgically removed from an internal organ, but is surprisingly soft and juicy and white on the inside.  Having given up on finding the Cineplex, we decided to try to make the best of a bad situation.  Big bag of rambutan in hand, we set out to cross the street to sit in a lovely park that happened to be inside one of Udon-Thani’s many traffic circles.  There was a bench inside this park and everything, leading one to believe that it was designed with intention of having people come to sit there.  Unfortunately, there was absolutely no way to cross safely into this park, the purpose of a traffic circle being to ensure that traffic is moving around it at all times.  But if impatience is our greatest fault, perhaps determination is a farang’s greatest virtue.  Undeterred by the whirling traffic, we risked life and limb for the pleasure of sitting on a bench in a tiny, circular park to eat our rambutan, then survived another near-death experience trying to get back out of the traffic circle.  Maybe it was my own life flashing before my eyes that made the rambutan taste especially sweet.
 

Bike Taxi

Mekong River

Since beginning my travels in Southeast Asia, I have seen my fair share of gnarly guesthouses, slept on mattresses whose history I do not care to know, and ignored the hideous sounds of cockroaches skittering across bare floors in the interest of getting a good night’s sleep.  The first of these was in a town called Fang, also an armpit in its own right.  Pronounced fahng, this town’s only tourism is accidental; people get stuck here on their way to Tha-Ton, where one can arrange a river tour down the Mekong to Chiang Rai.  We got in fairly late, as the sun was setting, went out for dinner, and grabbed a couple of Singha beers, which, as always, were given to us with straws.  Singha is actually not technically a beer. Rather, it is a beer-flavored malt beverage.  But it is cheap and available, and it goes great with spicy curry and hot nights under a ceiling fan with a deck of cards.  The guesthouse we found seemed to be the only game in town.  Our room smelled, as Melissa put it, “like my toothbrush”, dank and a bit like bad breath.  The room’s other occupants – some lizards and a cockroach as big as my thumb – came out to greet us as we walked in the door.

But Udon-Thani’s guesthouse was far worse.  We’d already learned that a bathroom down the hall is actually preferable to one right in the room. Unfortunately, at this guesthouse there were no rooms without bathrooms, and our experience there illustrates all too well why this is an undesirable state of affairs.  The room smelled strongly of urine, as the cubicle-style half-wall between the bed and the toilet did nothing to trap odors.  Even worse, there were cockroaches everywhere, not just one or two.  One was crawling up the wall of the shower as I stood in it.  I could hear them skittering around as I was trying to fall asleep.  Oh well, I thought, here’s one to add to the list. 

Moving your armpit from here to there
I have to say a word about transportation.  Melissa remarked early in our trip that modes of transportation that would be completely unacceptable at home are just part of our day to day here.  And it’s true.  I haven’t seen a seat belt in as long as I can remember.  In Chiang Mai they have ‘red taxis’, which are red trucks with benches in the back.  They drive around town and pick up passengers along the way.  You bob along, hanging on to a metal railing and hoping you don’t go flying out the back.  We’ve also traveled on the backs of dirt bikes, ridden rattle trap bicycles, and of course, taken dozens of buses and trains.  What I am struck with, though, is that regardless of the mode of transportation, the bulk of what we do is waiting, either in place, or on a moving vehicle.  As travelers, we mostly sit and watch the world go by.  In a way, traveling is pulling out of life and becoming a transient spectator.  There is a strange sort of comfort in knowing that what you do is not going to follow you from day to day, but it can also leave you lacking a sense of purpose and meaning.  I am constantly reminded of Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being.  Travel is the essence of lightness, but sometimes being so light can almost be too much to handle.  I get the feeling sometimes that if I continue to lighten the load on my back I will just float away.  We’ve seen that happen with some of the people we’ve met, people who have come loose from their lives back home.  There is something simultaneously thrilling and also terrifying about this prospect.  I am thankful to have Melissa here with me. S he keeps me feeling grounded, even as we bounce along in the back of a pickup truck. 

By far the most frightening transportation experience we’ve had so far was a bus ride in Laos.  We arranged a bus trip from Vientiane in the south to Luang Prabang in the north.  Because we had some extra time, we decided to stop into the American embassy to ask about the safety of traveling in Laos.  Big mistake.  For one thing, there is still a large amount of unexploded ordnance (UXO) in parts of the countryside, left over from the war in neighboring Vietnam.  For another, bus accidents are not uncommon.  While waiting for the woman behind the glass window, I read the harrowing account of a British woman traveling in Laos, who had narrowly survived a bus crash on a mountain road, losing her right leg and becoming paralyzed from the waist down.  I had just finished reading this article, which was posted prominently on the embassy waiting room wall, when it was my turn to approach the woman behind the glass.

Me: What can you tell me about the safety of traveling by bus in Laos?
Her: Oh, you’ll be fine.  Here (pulling out a map).  Just whatever you do, don’t get off the bus here (highlighting the entire route in red marker).  Or else you step on a land mine and you die. 
Me: Oh, okay. Thanks.

The bus ride, though nerve-racking, turned out to be almost enjoyable.  When I wasn’t imagining my own death in a catastrophic bus crash, my eyes were glued to the window, looking out on some of the most beautiful vistas I have ever seen.  Laos is absolutely stunning.  We had been told that Laos looks how Thailand looked 20 years ago.  We passed little villages along the unpaved road, with cows, chickens, small children playing, huts, rice paddies, steam rising off of mountains.  Honestly, until this trip, I had no idea that there were still places in the world that looked like this.  *The Laotian bus ride, however, does not really fit my definition of an armpit.  There is good reason as a tourist to take this trip.  It is certainly both unique and beautiful; it’s just also terrifying.  As you wonder to yourself how in the world your bus and the truck approaching from the opposite direction will possibly be able to pass one another on this narrow mountain road with a sheer drop off and no guard rail, the preciousness of life really comes into sharper focus. 

By far the most armpitty of our transportation experiences was an overnight train ride in third class seats from Thailand into Malaysia.  On a third-class overnight train there is definitely nothing to see or do.  Our trip started out nicely enough.  While waiting at the train station, we were approached by a group of young Thai girls who were interested in Melissa because she looked Thai to them but was dressed like a Westerner and was sitting with me and wearing a backpack.  Using the full extent of our limited Thai, we established names, ages, and where we were going on the train (Sungai Kolok).  They were so interested in our insect repellant that we sprayed their arms and legs, then wiped their hands with wet wipes and performed an elaborate pantomime explaining the dangers of ingesting bug spray.  They found this entire routine extremely amusing, but it is quite doubtful that they were able to glean any information from it at all. 

After the girls left we waited a few more hours in the station reading, playing cards, and sleeping on dirty benches.  We congratulated each other on our improved patience, and prepared ourselves for the train to be late.  For once, though, it was on time, arriving at midnight sharp.  The seats were not as bad as I had expected, but certainly not as good as I had hoped; which is to say, not wooden benches, but not padded worth a damn and without the capability of reclining.  We had been warned that people often bring animals on third class trains – chickens mostly - , but thankfully there were none in our car.  We were, however, each crammed in next to another person on a seat not built for wide Western rear ends.  We held our bags on our laps and rested our heads on top of them, trying in vain to get some sleep.  At 5 AM, the people next to us both got up, leaving Melissa and me each with our own entire bench.  After five more hours of fitful half-sleep, we arrived at the border, peeled our eyelids open, and joined the other sleep-walkers crossing into Khota Baru, Malaysia. 

The Gutter, or The Armpit of Malaysia 
Unfortunately, Khota Baru turned out not to be a destination worth the difficulty of the third class train.  One thing about Malaysia that has been instructive to my understanding of metaphor is the existence of an honest-to-God gutter, as in, an open drainage ditch running along the side of the road, uncovered.  The gutter not only smells, it is filled with trash and slime of all shades and consistencies, and is generally a breeding ground for filth.  Now I know what it means for one’s mind to go there, and trust me, it is not pretty.  Speaking of which, after checking into a guesthouse, we stopped into a nearby bakery that served strong coffee and a mean banana cake.  It was there that we met Larry and Eddie, two Nigerian engineers who told us they wanted to “be very close friends”.  We let them pay for our coffee, but decided not to invite them along for our trip to the museum of history and culture, where a sign under the portraits of the three most recent sultans proudly proclaimed, “GRANDEUR REPFATS ITSELF [sic]”. 

After visiting the museum, we quickly ran out of things to do in Khota Baru, so we figured we would do what teenagers do in the Armpit of America.  We looked for the mall.  At the mall we spent what would be a typical evening for many teenagers – we saw an American movie, we ate dinner, we went bowling.  Typical in every respect, except for the fact that we were in Malaysia.  I don’t think either of us will forget being the only Westerners in the movie theater laughing hilariously at American cultural references and jokes.  Nor will we forget the spectacle we provided as foreigners showcasing our skills in the Malaysian bowling alley, an environment at once utterly familiar and utterly bizarre. 

The funniest thing of all, though, was how similar the teenagers in the Armpit of Malaysia seemed to the teenagers I grew up with in the Armpit of America.

Bua-Yai, Thailand
We have saved Bua-Yai for last.  Our bus having finally arrived and delivered us to the town, we meet Melissa’s aunt, who runs a jewelry store. She kisses and hugs us, and presents us each with a set of tiny ruby earrings set in gold.  We thank her profusely, using the politest words we know in Thai.  We gather from sign language that there is to be a dinner party, and all the relatives will be there.  Like many Thai families, Melissa’s is ethnically Chinese, as is the feast we have that night at what may be the only restaurant in Bua-Yai.  None of the relatives speaks any English.  We intuit that our duty is to eat whatever is put in front of us.  Every time a new relative walks in, we stand and bow ceremoniously as Melissa’s aunt introduces us.  The relative exclaims over this or that aspect of us – we have no idea what is being said.  Under any other circumstances Bua-Yai might top the list of Armpits, but we are being shown the royal treatment and that makes all the difference. 

I started this trip a vegetarian, a dietary regimen I soon found nearly impossible to uphold.  One day I simply broke down in front of a sizzling skewer of pork, and I haven’t looked back.  It’s a good thing, too, because at this meal the meat keeps coming.  There are dumplings in broth, mountains of rice, fish that we pick from the bone, stir fried chicken, pork, and beef.  Over the course of this trip, I have discovered that I can eat and enjoy nearly anything.  Anything, that is, except for what Melissa’s aunt pulls out of the enormous pot of stew that has arrived at our table.  She holds it out to us, offering it.  My eyes grow large with horror.  I whisper to Melissa, “Is that a duck foot?!”  Melissa nods.  “Are we supposed to eat it?!” She nods again.  It’s all a little too much for me.  Only a few weeks ago I wouldn’t have eaten anything that had ever had feet, much less the foot itself.  Thankfully, Melissa’s aunt doesn’t press the issue.  She hands the duck foot down the table. 

The whole evening is not those I remember of family gatherings from my early childhood, during which I experienced a similar confusion.  Then, it was my grandmother who served as my interpreter, as people I didn’t know ooh-ed and aah-ed over me.  Then, as now, I ate whatever strange thing was put in front of me.  Then, too, people had funny haircuts and wore strange clothing and laughed at jokes I didn’t understand.  Gradually the realization begins to wash over me, This is it! This is what my trip to Southeast Asia has been all about!  The memories I will cherish are not those that involve panoramic vistas or fabulous ancient architecture.  Although I have enjoyed seeing these things, what I will really hold on to are the memories that involve personal interaction.  I will never forget when on a crowded bus in Bangkok, I tried to stand up to offer my seat to an elderly women encumbered with groceries, only to have her push me back down and shove a bag of vegetables in my lap.  I may not remember the name of a single temple that I have visited, but that moment on that bus will stay with me.  Likewise, I won’t spend my time describing scenery to my friends back home, but they will all hear about my trekking guide, Anorak, who led us through the jungle, hacking at vines with his machete and pontificating in Pidgin English.  Eating, walking sleeping, pee-pee, poo-poo, sex, you die.  That’s life!  That’s true! 

And really, these are the kinds of things you can’t plan to find just by looking for the prettiest beaches or the biggest Buddha statue.  The good stuff, the stuff to write home about, the stuff that makes you remember why you wanted to travel in the first place, that stuff happens when you least expect it, and it can happen anywhere, even in an armpit.  So if there is a lesson to be learned from an armpit, this is it.  Every one of them is an opportunity, maybe even the ones we ourselves live in.  So I make a promise to myself, sitting here at the dinner table.  I’ll try to take this lesson with me.  And maybe I’ll learn to be a little more patient in the process. 
 

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