Flaming Stars, Banana Boats and Giant Pandas

An
American in Asia:

His Quest for Cosmic Truth

(or at least a Decent Espresso)

A waterfall in Queen Sirikit Botanical Garden, Chiang Mai.

Starting with this week's installation, I'm going to be typing in British. The magazine I write for uses British English and I've got to get used to writing words like "colour" and "metre". Luckily it's mostly a matter of just switching the dictionary on my computer's spell check. And making good use of the adjective, "bleedin'".

At the moment, I'm doing one of the silly things you can do with technology these days: sitting in a restaurant in a mountainous area of northern Thailand, checking my email using my mobile phone. Wirelessly, even.

I'm in Chiang Mai to cover a bunch of stories about the region, specifically the Loy Kratong festival. People float little boats made of banana leaves with a candle down the river, which apparently makes Buddha happy and probably appeases some ghosts (who are always clamouring to be appeased).

The Loy Kratong is a moon ceremony, so it happens at night with lots of lanterns and fireworks and other bright, sparkly things.

Last night I was drinking at a British pub, which is also required if one is writing in British English. I was sitting out front and in the sky, I noticed that the planet Mars was particularly bright. Then I noticed that it was moving slowly across the sky. That was fine, and I put it down to its being not so much a planet as a satellite, which you'll sometimes see when you're away from the big city lights. However, when I left, my sense of reality was seriously challenged by the stars, which had all turned red. And quite a few of them were livelier than stars should be.

What no one had told me was that the Loy Kratong festival also involves home-made hot-air balloons, huge white sacks - that may have been garbage bags - suspended above a burning sponge full of kerosene. I figured this out after a few minutes, but during the interval my assumptions about the universe were on spin-cycle. I really like it when that happens and it's always a little disappointing when the mystery resolves itself and everything has a nice neat explanation again.

Little boats of light float down the river.

Tonight I'm going to float my own little boat and do some wandering around the festival. I really dig wandering around festivals. I even dig the crowds. I enjoy getting hundreds of mental snapshots of all the weirdos and loons that make up humanity. And I'm taller than everyone else so I can keep my sensory stalk a bit above the chaos.

One bit of weirdness is that for these trips I get to have a driver and an assistant. The oddness of it really went home when I arrived at a luxury resort to interview the general manager. The concierge showed us to a table. It was obviously set for two and there was an awkward moment when I realized I was expected to tell my assistant to go wait in the car or something. The Thai concierge didn't even look at him.

I also got in to see the two new pandas that China gave to the city, before the exhibit was open to the public. I just flashed my little card that says reporter and the gates were thrown wide. And shut really fast again to keep out the crowds that had formed outside. People really go nuts about pandas here, which is odd since pandas are mostly famous for their ability to just sit there and munch. I was part of a real live media frenzy and the panda hall was filled with cameras and news hounds. The poor pandas looked really worried. Then the keepers fed them and they just sat and munched.

Media frenzy at the panda house.

I just got back from the fest, and I didn't float a boat, but I lit a cake soaked in kerosene on fire, inflated a white plastic garbage bag with it and released the whole assembly into the sky. It floated away until I couldn't discern it from the rest of the balloons drifting around like lost stars. Since ancient history the Buddhist ceremony has been a kind of Thai Valentines Day, and a lot of the balloons are sent off by lovers wishing for a long and happy life together. Which makes looking at the floating lights in the sky incredibly romantic.

Jeffrey Studebaker has been (in no particular order) a SE Asian correspondent for a Singaporean travel magazine, a teacher, consultant and translator in Japan, a guitarist with the band, Swoon 23 in every city of the US of A, a coffee roaster in Seattle, a bike messenger in Portland, a marine fire system repairman in Seattle, an osteoporosis clinic researcher in Providence, a mental ward counsellor on the night shift in Portland, a brief success in New York, and he has now returned to the US after nearly a decade in Asia to pursue a publishing career.