This evening I watched a Japanese movie called Railways, a warm drama about a middle-aged corporate exec who gives up his lucrative Tokyo job to become the driver of a local train along the west coast of Honshu. Driving a train had been his dream when he was a kid, and it hit him after the unexpected death of a close friend that life changes could be abrupt and permanent, and if he wanted to realize his dream, there was no time like the present to be about it. So, at age 49, he applies for the job, and against long odds, he gets it. There is no happy Hollywood happy ending here, though; there will be laughter, sadness, intimacy, poignant moments and profound changes in the courses of relationships—in short, all of the things we expect from real life, whether we are pursuing our dreams or not.

Anyway, Railways got me to thinking about the nature of childhood dreams, and the practicalities (and impracticalities) of living them out in our later lives. Obviously, if we all did this, we would be a nation of cowboys, actors, firemen, astronauts, rock stars, and football
players, so I suppose it makes sense to temper our dreams to some degree. If at least some of us didn’t, how would positions like insurance underwriter, assembly line worker, used car salesman, drive-up window attendant, trash collector, middle manager and department store clerk ever get filled? I know in my heart of hearts that there was never, anywhere, anytime, a kid who dreamed of someday becoming a middle manager or an insurance adjuster.

My mother’s take on this was that I should learn to use a typewriter early on, pointing out that if things ever got really tough, I could always eke out a living as a typist. I read in Wikipedia that Leonard Nimoy’s dad, in a similar vein, wanted his son to learn the accordion—on the theory that a good accordion player would never find himself unemployed. I think Nimoy’s father and my mother, like a lot of people who grew up in periods of wartime privation, were exceptionally concerned about having a Plan-B, a fallback position, and thus more willing to sacrifice some measure of the dream to avoid having to suffer any part of the nightmare.

From the time I was a little kid, what I wanted most was to be on the move, to travel to the places I read about in the pages of National Geographic, which I devoured immediately upon its arrival each month. Later on, I wanted to write stuff: fiction; short stories; essays; book reports; you name it. Fast forward a bunch more years, and I am still traveling incessantly and writing about it. You could make a case for this falling into the category of “living the dream”, or if you were meaner of spirit, you might call it a midlife crisis gone seriously awry, a Peter Pan story about a kid who doesn’t want to grow up. There is some measure of truth to either of these assertions, and I can live with that.

The one part of it I hadn’t counted on was that each time I leave someplace to go someplace else, there is the deep sadness that comes of parting with people I love. And because I love people in such far-flung corners of the earth as Guatemala, Thailand, Cambodia, Poland, Japan, Canada, and the US (to name but a few such places), at any given time I am in the company of a small number of the people I care about, and far apart from many more of them. Because of this I am truly grateful for facebook, Skype, and other internet resources that allow us to stay in touch until the next time we can touch in person.

This got me thinking: just what did I learn in high school that was worthy of being carried forward into real life? And how much do I remember from that time that has no bearing on real life in any form or fashion, but nonetheless sticks in my mind like a splinter, mildly irritating but impossible to dislodge?

High school history, about which I remember the following, and little else: AD 1066, Battle of Hastings (cannot remember what it was about, who was fighting whom, and therefore, by extrapolation, who won; cannot forget the date, though, it was on the test); AD
1215, signing of the Magna Carta (I seem to remember a King John in this one, but don’t quote me on that); the Dark Ages (a time when fundamentalist religion gained a stranglehold on the Known World, and which, if things continue as they are going, will one day be known as the First Dark Ages); the Crimean War (which seems likely to have had something to do with the Crimean Sea, although once again, the players and the dates elude me; this is also the case with the Boer War, the 100 Years War, the Sino- and Russo- Japanese Wars, the Peloponnesian War, and a host of other conflicts which must have seemed much more important at the time than they do through the lens of history). There were all sorts of peoples, players on the World Stage, each of whom merited a footnote in my studies: the Picts; the Saxons; the Normans; the Visigoths; the Norse. I remember little to nothing about any of them, who they fought, how they died out, what they did when they were alive. The Norsemen had those cool hats with the horns, though; I quite liked those. Conspicuously absent from the teachings were such remarkable nuggets as: a) Alexander (the Great) was apparently flamingly gay, as were Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Michelangelo and any number of other men sporting only one name, all the way up to and including Liberace; b) the original version of the Pledge of Allegiance did not contain the phrase “under God”, skipping right from “one nation” to “indivisible”, thereby doing a rather better job of reflecting the supposed separation of Church and State than the current version; c) while Europeans were merrily beating one another to a pulp with studded clubs before returning home to their huts for their nightly gruel, civilization flourished in the FarEast: paper; the compass; the fork; arched bridges; a Great Wall; fireworks; gunpowder; playing cards; a complex written language; sweet and sour pork; the list goes on. And yet, we learned only about the achievements of the Picts and the Saxons, which were, um…?

A small digression: years afterward, I heard the quotation “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it…”, to which I would like to add: “…or, at the very least, they will have to take a remedial course in summer school, to ensure that the dates 1066 and 1215 are forever entrenched in their young minds”.

The sciences were once described to me thusly: if it is icky, it’s biology; if it smells bad, it’s chemistry; if it doesn’t work, it’s physics. I spent hours each week memorizing phylum, genus, stratus, nimbus, litmus, argon, neon, krypton (which I was very disappointed to find out had no deleterious effect whatsoever with regard to super powers), and countless other terms that had their origins in ancient Latin and Greek. This was mildly useful in later years, if only as a parlor trick: when someone mentioned, say, “hepatitis” in one of those passing conversations about hepatitis that one has from time to time, I could expound “Ah, ‘hepatitis’, from the ancient Greek ‘hepa-’, meaning ‘liver’, and ‘-titis’, meaning ‘you die from it’. My years of
science studies may yet prove their value should I ever succeed in my quest to become a Jeopardy contestant, but my hand-to-button reflexes are not as quick as they used to be, so it might be all for naught in the event.

Foreign languages were another pet peeve. In 7^th grade, we were subjected to introductions to four languages, one per quarter: French; Latin; German; and Spanish. At the onset of 8^th grade, we had to choose one of the four to pursue until graduation. Because our language teachers, almost without exception, were not native speakers of whatever language they taught, our pronunciation and intonation were informed (and I use that word very loosely) by a distinct American overtone. There were twice-weekly language labs, during which we all dutifully donned the uncomfortable four-pound (1.8 kg) headphones of the day, and listened to transistor-radio quality voices lecture us on the finer points of conjugation and vocabulary: “Esto es un libro” (“This is a book”); “Esto es una ventana” (“This is a window”); “Esto es mi pluma” (“This is my pen”). In all the years since, I have hoped (strongly), just once to meet a Spanish-speaking person who did not know what a book was, so I could proudly point to the item in question and proclaim to him (or her): “Esto es un libro”. I may be waiting for some time.

Literature. Heaven knows, Mrs. Dargan tried to make a writer out of me (kudos to you, Mrs. D), or at least a reader. She was hamstrung by the curriculum, which I gather (from her eye rolls and repeated tsks of exasperation) annoyed her as much as it did me. Together (I for the first time, and she for the umpteenth) we plodded our way through Red Badge of Courage, arguably the most boring piece of fiction ever written, one which could easily put a young person off pleasure reading for a lifetime. Rounding out the year were Moby Dick, The Good Earth, and A Separate Peace, respectively the Silver, Bronze, and Tin medalists in the Narcolepsy Olympics. Each was positively bursting with themes, imagery, motifs, characterizations, and motivations, all of which we doggedly took notes upon, outlined, and discussed endlessly in class. As you might expect, there were two or three bespectacled geeks who waxed poetic about the writing, and everyone else in the class wanted to kill them. Slowly. To my knowledge, none of them went on to a career in literature, which pleases me mightily.

Independent studies. By and large, the things that interested me back then (most of which still resonate with me years later), I pursued on my own time: learning to play the guitar (rather than the oboe, the bassoon, or some other orchestra instrument I would never touch again); writing (the basics of which I gleaned in primary school and at home as a young child, later honing my skills by reading countless suspense and sci-fi novels, then later still gravitating toward non-fiction and commentary); photography, which has gotten exponentially easier to be good at, thanks to the development of tiny and fiendishly clever digital cameras; and travel, which is, in my estimation, the finest course of study in the world, an unparalleled learning experience that requires no bells to signal the changing of classes, no set curriculum, and no pesky pass/fail final. Some math is useful for the traveler (not algebra, though), as it is forever necessary to be on top of how much you are spending when the local currency is 37 kroner (or pesos, or riel, or kip) to the US dollar. A few foreign language phrases are good to have at hand for each new country you visit: hello, goodbye, how much is that, where is the bathroom, do you have a boyfriend? Inevitably you will learn more about, for instance, Thai history, by visiting Thailand than you ever learned about Thai history in high school (hell, I learned more about Thai history from The King and I than I learned in high school…). When it comes to the sciences, even the most jaded traveler will be eager to learn more, in the interest of self-preservation if nothing else, for the world is full of plants that will try to eat you, predatory insects the size of small birds, and colorful snakes and lizards that will bring about instant, and excruciatingly painful, death (and let’s not forget about ice floes waiting to collapse underfoot, boulders just dying to trigger an avalanche, random gas flames erupting from a mountainside; the list goes on and on…). Forewarned is forearmed, after all.

So, my advice: blow off university for a year after high school, maybe two years, and take a trip to some unlikely place that you know little or nothing about: the barren coastline of Tristan de Cunha; the remote Hmong villages of northern Laos; the moonscape fairyland of central Turkey’s Cappadocia. Go by yourself; it will necessitate more interaction with the locals, as you won’t have the safety and familiarity of a traveling companion to fall back on when things get weird (and things will inevitably get weird!). Take a small camera and a journal. Also, a good supply of BIC pens; they will make great gifts if you don’t use them up yourself. Write in your journal every day, and take lots of pictures. Skip the computer and iPhone; they are annoying to keep track of and easily stolen, and there are internet cafes everywhere nowadays anyway. Remember the cardinal rule of travel: lay out everything you want to take with you on your bed, and next to it, put all the money you will take. Then, get rid of half the stuff, and take twice the amount of money, and you will be good to go. University will still be there when you get back, if that is the path you choose, and you will be much better equipped to deal with it than you were a scant year or two before. Also, you will have tons of street cred with your less adventurous friends, who will ooh and aah in envy at the exotic stamps in your passport.

Oh, and don’t show this article to your parents.

I'd bet good money there is no road with this name in the US...

How about some Life Saver-esque rice?

Leng's Isuzu SUV sported this curious instruction...

Leng learns that if you play in the waterfall, you're gonna get wet...

...as does Bruce!

Only in Thailand...

Gage and Allyson model one of Kimleng's Cambodian silk scarves

Chiangmai by night

Oh dear...

Pedal ricksha in Bangkok

Kanchanaburi, near the infamous bridge over the River Kwai

Kasem Island Resort, Kanchanaburi,floating room only $30/night!

No idea...

Boy, there is a mixed message, if ever I saw one...

Seen on a t-shirt in Khao San Road, Bangkok

Anywhere, anytime? How about Chartres during the Renaissance? (Apologies to Steven Wright...)

What do you suppose this means?

Thai trains are always late; "real arrival time" is a permanent fixture on schedule board!

Leng and Gage both have good UNO hands, but...

...as usual, Khae is the winner; note the subtle "W"!

And then there was this unusual sweatshirt...

Were was the profreader?

Alongside the Bridge on the River Kwai

The River Kwai, upstream and upscale...

Trellis bridge on River Kwai "Death Railway"

Saki, looking quite alive on the "Death Railway"

Bangkok taxis (all three vehicles!)

A bit of automotive history in historical Chiang Mai

This toothpaste used to be called "Darkie", back in the day...

Light fixtures on display at shop in Chatuchak Market, Bangkok

Michal, from Poland, channels his inner Polish ham...

"Slimming, sliming"-- so close, yet so far apart!

Why?? Because you are not allowed to bring real fruit back into the US...

What could I possibly add to this?

A week ago or a bit more, in Chiang Mai, Thailand, I met Kam. She was sitting outside the men’s dorm at the Christian university where I was staying (that’s a whole story in itself!), and chatting with my pal Guan. I noticed that Kam had a guitar on the bench next to her, and I asked if she could play it. She could, and did. And man, could that girl sing! We recorded this song, a popular Thai tune, on my little Canon pocket camera. Although the camera had limited video capabilities, and there were all the background noises one might expect outdoors on a warm Chiang Mai night, it was nonetheless magic! My friend Khae, who is less technologically challenged than I, was able to load the video onto facebook, something that for whatever reason had eluded me, but I have managed to figure out how to get it into Mysterious Orientations all by myself (cue the applause…).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVwIyjsPC58

I ran afoul of this rule by arriving back from Cambodia overland to meet Saki in Bangkok. I wanted to be in Thailand for a further 30 days, but was allotted only 15; thus, after spending a few days in the capital and a week at Colin Cotterill’s place on the Gulf of Siam, I had to make a border run to renew my visa. Up until then, I had not spent a lot of time in Malaysia, and, as we were in the south of Thailand anyway, it seemed quite logical to catch a flight from Surat Thani to Kuala Lumpur, and spend a few days there having a look around. Saki had been to Penang, in the north of Malaysia, but never to KL, so it promised to be a new experience for both of us.

I don’t know exactly what I was expecting of Kuala Lumpur, perhaps a smaller version of Bangkok: 24/7 speeding traffic, blithely ignoring traffic signals and lane indicators; lofty high-rises adjacent to open-sewer slums; throngs of scuttling tourists, locals, hawkers and beggars at every turn. The reality of KL was quite different: polite drivers moved smoothly on well-surfaced roads and highways; high-rises were on display in abundance, to be sure (including the one-time world altitude champ, Petronas Twin Towers), but the Third World slums were nowhere in sight; Gucci, Fendi, Cartier and Rolex offered their wares in a high-rent district that would have slotted in perfectly in Ginza, Manhattan or Knightsbridge; hawkers and beggars were conspicuously absent, and the tourists were a small minority, easily discernible by virtue of their remarkable lack of style compared to the locals.

Because Malaysia is a Muslim country, many of the women dress conservatively, often in baju kurung, a loose fitting full length dress, and hijab. I had thought I might find this a bit oppressive, even as a visitor, but in fact it is quite an attractive (and oh-so-colorful) style which has grown on me a lot. The covering offers protection from the sun, and it is very lightweight, wicking away perspiration and keeping the wearer relatively cool in what can be a very hot and humid country. By comparison, my sweat laden t-shirt and jeans felt like a woolen pea coat and long johns, perhaps not the optimal choice of dress a scant few degrees north of the equator.

I have long thought that architecture is one of the finest of the fine arts, with many of the best examples surviving thousands of years (the stone cliffs of Petra, the ruins of Ephesus, Macchu Picchu, etc). I gravitate more toward the modern expression of design, though: the Sydney Opera House; Gaudi’s La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona; Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater. To that august group, I would like to add a couple of Kuala Lumpur landmarks, both of which bowled me over when I saw them up close: the Petronas Twin Towers, 452 meters (that’s about 1483 feet, or more than a quarter-mile tall, for the metrically challenged) of Space Age design that requires a two-block remove to photograph in its entirety with a normal pocket camera; and the National Mosque, with its origami-inspired blue roof that has become one of the most visited sights in the city, by Muslims and infidels alike.

In a week, I feel as if I only scratched the surface of the surface of this attractive and modern city, and I am strongly looking forward to a return visit. As it happens, KL is one of the hubs for AirAsia, and a cheap layover spot en-route from Tokyo to Bangkok. So, all other things being equal, when I return to Thailand next spring, I will first fly in to Kuala Lumpur, and have a bit of a look-see at some of the parts of the city I missed this time around.

AirAsia, the Greyhound Bus of the eastern skies...

Saki takes a turn as air traffic controller...

Here's a sign you don't see every day (a durian is a really stinky fruit)

Thoroughly modern metro; clean and cheap!

Even the graffiti is/are exceptionally attractive...

The "Restaurant of Home Dining"; you gotta love that!

Petronas Twin Towers can be seen from pretty much anywhere in KL

Petronas Twin Towers, a closer look...

National Mosque

A one-room artist/writer studio, a few steps away, housed volumes of Colin’s books in several languages, award plaques from various writers’ organizations, and an artist’s desk piled high with drawings (both finished and otherwise), rendered in a style that can be much easier illustrated than explained (however, if you are reading the Braille edition of Mysterious Orientations, there is a bit of Gahan Wilson in the characters, more than a bit of Charles Addams in the quirky humor–there is a reason why his UK editions are published by Quercus–and overtones of Maurice Sendak or perhaps Ed “Big Daddy” Roth in the expressions of those individuals caricatured by his sharpened quill).

The day I left, ground was broken on what would someday be his new house. I got to see the architectural drawings of the place, and it all looked very two-dimensional to me: no color, no texture, just a bunch of geometrically-oriented lines that looked for all the world like, well, an architectural drawing.

So, you can begin to imagine my surprise, when I arrived this year, upon seeing a large edifice of yellow and white concrete, red tile roof, and broad expanses of glass. Barely two weeks finished as of my arrival in January, it looked to be an integral part of the grounds, as if it had been secretly in place the whole time.

A few other additions rounded out the roster of changes: Ei and Jo, the Burmese couple serving as housekeeper and jack-of-some-trades respectively, and Kyoko, Colin’s new wife, fresh from Japan!

Add to that mix a pair of Japanese guests: Saki, visiting me from Tokyo for a couple of weeks of her annual holiday; and Keiko, a long-time friend of Kyoko’s who flew in from Singapore on her way home to Kyoto. The boys were seriously outnumbered!

Stay tuned for the photos, or better yet, pick up a copy of GQ, the Chinese edition, which will feature Colin’s new digs as one of its “Foreigners’ Homes in Thailand”, coming soon to bookshelves all over the Middle Kingdom!

I taught this young lady (above) how to eat Oreo cookies American style. She learned only too well, deftly separating the two chocolate cookies, licking out the creme filling, and then handing the two cookies back to me before reaching for another one from the package and repeating the process…

My hotel; across the street from the beach, and $22/night, double

Jumbo prawns, fresh from the grill, 50 cents apiece...

Jeeps through the ages...

This is Frank. Frank is a bit fuzzy around the edges. He says it is due to my ineptness as a photographer. I think it is due to the fact that many 50-cent beers blur his lines. The truth undoubtedly lies somewhere in between…

As it happened, however, I would see Kimleng one last time this trip, as the only bus I was able to find north from Sihanoukville was bound for Siem Reap. She and two of her brothers met me at the bus station, where an undoubtedly bedraggled figure awaited them. She had secured a hotel room for me at the nearby Mandalay Inn, not that I got a lot of use out of it; she and I sat up on the front porch of her shop, chatting until the wee small hours of the morning. Occasionally a customer would drop by for a Coke, a pack of smokes, or a fresh coconut, hand husked by Kimleng with a speed and strength that belied her small stature.

At one point, an English fellow named Morgan brought a guitar over, and the two of us put on an impromptu show for Kimleng and her customers, handing off the guitar to one another after each song. After he left, Kimleng mentioned in passing that it was the first time she had seen or heard anyone play the guitar in person. On TV, of course, but never before in person. Morgan was quite talented, and he wrote some great tunes; he was, however, close to passing out, and although I gave him my business card, and we parted with promises to get in touch, I haven’t heard from him yet. I hope he writes; I would really like to write and/or perform with him again.

I had to be up at 6am for my bus/minivan ride back to Bangkok. Kimleng walked over to the bus station with me, and we said goodbye for the second time of my holiday, after which she hopped onto her mom’s scooter, and went off to school.

The dusty, bumpy, and altogether too-long bus ride to Sihanoukville, on Cambodia’s southern coast, put paid to his high spirits (and Doug’s and mine), the cute and loquacious Cambodian girl seated alongside us notwithstanding. By the time we got there, Frank wanted nothing more than a shower, a beer, and the beach, in no particular order.

Doug surveys truckload of chickens also bound for Sihanoukville...

Sihanoukville is well known among old Asia hands for its party atmosphere, some of the finest Western food in Cambodia, 50-cent beer, and its ladies of, um, less than Presbyterian levels of virtue. It seemed that all of these could be found in abundance at every turn. And, as Frank might say, given that he can rarely resist an awful pun, the girls were in a-bun-dance.

The party atmosphere had bubbled to a high rolling boil by the time we got there, thanks to the synchronicity of spring break and the Chinese lunar new year. Virtually any excuse will suffice to throw a party in Southeast Asia, and this the Cambodians excelled at: fireworks galore; barbecued baby squid en brochette; fruit trays in a riot of colors; and kids running around everywhere.

Golden Lion Circle; note four people on motor scooter!

The food was a cornucopia of excess, with restaurants representing the four corners of the world (that is really a weird expression, when you think about it…): Greece; Italy (several entrants); Poland; Russia; India; France; Thailand; China; I know I am missing some. Those so inclined could secure a real American breakfast (a rarity in SE Asia outside the pricey hotels that cater to Yankees): bacon; pancakes with real maple syrup; eggs over easy; sausages that would hold their own against anything in a Brooklyn deli.

Great eats, and some more of that 50-cent beer!

Roasted peanut vendor (peanuts were roasted, not vendor...)

Burgers, BBQ, Pizza and (of course) 50-cent beer!

Gilligan's Ireland...

The 50-cent beer had every attribute you might expect: it was 50 cents, and it was beer. Cambodia runs on the US dollar (even the ATMs dispense funds in US currency). with 4000 Cambodian riel to one dollar. There are no coins used, either US or Cambodian, so if you buy a 50-cent beer and pay with one US dollar, you will get 2000 Cambodian riel in change. Because riel notes go all the way down to 20-riel denominations, you can easily see that it would be little problem to amass a prodigious quantity of Cambodian notes, with which you could not buy so much as a can of Coke (which typically costs more than a can of beer, by the way).

Remi sports lates fashion accessory, necklace made of beer pull-tabs...

Last but not least, there were the sun-bronzed Cambodian beach bunnies–easy on the eyes, friendly and flirtatious to a fault, and present in numbers to boggle the minds of libidinous Western males. And that’s really all I am going to say about that, because, as I promised to Frank and Doug (particularly when it comes to chronicling events in a blog), what happens in Sihanoukville, stays in Sihanoukville…