Cruising on Gilligan's Island

An
American in Asia:

His Quest for Cosmic Truth

(or at least a Decent Espresso)

Well, it finally happened. I should have expected it eventually. Thailand is still the third world after all. I was taking a walk to the store and as I was passing a bunch of food vendors on the street, a big fat rat ran right over my OPEN TOED SANDALS!!! I really can’t put enough exclamation marks after that phrase and my computer lacks the proper font with which to express abject terror and revulsion, but one can imagine.

Without the protection of a shoe, say a good pair of stainless-steel Doc Martins, I was free to feel every nuance of the scuttling rat experience. Highlights included cold wet feet with little claws (I found out that rats like to grab at the ground as they scuttle - or maybe they just like to grab at toes), a quick brush of fur (quite soft actually) and the newfound knowledge that a well-fed rat is actually quite heavy.

Language is a dynamic thing, changing in response to new experiences. Having my naked foot run over by a big fat sewer rat has added a whole new significance and weight to the subtext of the words, “Ew” and “Yuck”.

The Layan Resort Phuket

In other yucky news, I spent the night at a five-star spa resort in Phuket, the country’s number one (and therefore richest) tourist province. While I sat up late watching TV, some monstrous bug was apparently attracted to the light. I say monstrous because, when I first heard him dive-bombing my window, I thought someone had left their chihuahua on my deck. The bug eventually bashed its way through the glass and drank every drop of alcohol from my mini bar, slurred something about Kafka and flew giggling up towards the full moon.

The following day I fulfilled my duties as a reporter by meditating all day. I was there primarily to sample the full moon meditation treatment offered by one of the spas on the island. It was something new for them and it turned out that I was their guinea pig. The poor instructor had never been stuck with a student for more than 90 minutes and she was at a bit of a loss as to what to do with me for the whole day. I like meditation pretty well and I don’t mind sitting cross-legged for a while so I tried to make the most of it. I already knew about the breathing meditation she showed me – it was pretty similar to something I learned from a Vietnamese kung fu master I studied with at university. But I learned some pretty neat stuff about walking meditation, where you just walk and synchronize your breathing with your steps and focus on all the little details of taking tiny steps. There are so many bones in my feet!

In between sessions we talked about Buddhism and the modern world and struck up a rather nice rapport. She ended up giving me a book on Samadhi written by a Thai monk when I left the hotel.

The beachfront at Patong, Phuket.

The next day I embarked on the hectic schedule that had been doing its best to destroy the blankness of mind I was trying to achieve (if achieve could be the word). I zoomed down the coast of really the most gorgeous island I’ve ever seen (which is saying something since I come from Puget Sound, a lovely archipelago itself, and I've seen every episode of Gilligan's Island at least five times - not an exaggeration, I'm afraid).

I checked into another five-star resort on Patong beach. This beach is one of two places in the country besides Bangkok where the sex trade is rampant. I didn’t see any of it (thank God) because after each day of running around investigating things, I had to stay up late in the hotel writing it up (thank the Devil).

I spent an afternoon cruising around in a yellow submarine, looking at fish and coral and spiky little sea urchins. They didn’t play the song, “Yellow Submarine”, by the Beatles, however they did play the entirety of The Best of Queen, starting with the song, Under Pressure. It was a little eerie to float around at 25 or 30 metres underwater, knowing that if anything busted, I’d be in for a really big drink. On the way back the owner of the sub regaled me with his story of debauchery in Japan. The moral of his story was never to trust a Japanese woman. You can imagine the rest.

The TV crew took the words, "Don't move around or we may crash into a reef and die," to mean, "Go ahead and have yourself a dance party."

It was getting late when I got back to land, and I had to make some calls and pound on the keyboard a bit so I caught the first transportation across the island that I could find. This turned out to be an old man on a motorcycle. I try not to get on the back of strange motorbikes but I took his venerable age to be a sign of competence or at least good luck. I put useless imaginings of highway carnage out of my head and quite enjoyed the weaving island roads, the warm breeze, palm trees and the intermittent villages we roared through.

The most common way for tourists to die in Phuket.

The next day I had to visit the island’s aquarium, which turned out to be another huge jaunt. This time I hired a tuk-tuk for the day at a price almost four times what I’d pay in Bangkok. The aquarium was closed for renovations but I showed press-type credentials and got through the gates. I couldn’t get any pictures because the whole place had been emptied, but I met a nice marine biologist and talked with him for a while.

I was late and paid the driver a bit more on the condition that he’d break laws to get me back to the hotel in time to catch my airport shuttle. I had another chance to excersize my powers of serenity and ignore danger. The beauty of Phuket Island helped quite a lot.

At the airport I had one more interview to do with the airport manager, an extrememly sharp man who was almost totally unimpressed with me.

It was an odd way to spend a work week: cruising like mad around one of the major world vacation spots, a harried reporter among crowds who’d spent their savings to come to the other side of the planet and relax.

When I got back to the office it turned out that some pages had been cut from our quota and I needn’t have stressed since we already had enough stories to make deadline. I believe I can just hear some Buddha having a good chuckle at my expense.

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.