Day 9 - Bangkok
10 years ago I sat in this bar with dreams of escape. Did I escape? Yes, I suppose I did. What lay behind me was 6 months of life changing experiences and behind that a life I never went back to. Ahead lay a year and a half of a new life in the new world and after that many years in a world city with my closest friends, a place that became home in a way that nowhere else ever has. That sounds like escape to me. But here I am again still with dreams of escape. I don't think it devalues the life lived since even though I have been recaptured by dissatisfaction and reincarcerated in a comfortable, responsible, mediocre life. The weak force of inertia will always be ready to draw me into its beige orbit if I let it. It lurks at the edges of feelings like 'this'll do', 'i'm ok', 'yeah happy enough'. Not that anyone ever asks each other if they're happy. Is it assumed? The outside appearance sufficient to invalidate the question? Or is the question too large and the answer potentially unpalatable to the asker and asked? But I have not been happy and this unhappiness has seeped from me like a black suffocating cloud that has covered my life, my love. The unhappiness has been general but also specific. I ignored the fundamentals of general happiness 10 years ago because it was easier to find a better way to do the same thing. And you can continue like that for a long time, perhaps indefinitely. That's the camel's back. The specific unhappiness is the straw. The Khao San road hasn't changed in 10 years. The insects are still for sale here, scorpion on a stick? The bars are the same, the tourists are the same, the scorpions are probably the same. I have changed but probably not in the ways I would have predicted. There is a certain amount of wisdom accumulated and a softer, less fundamentalist worldview. And a greater ease with the parts of me that haven't changed. Which all sounds good but still I am sat here. Where I once raged against the status quo I now rage within it and maybe therein lies the problem. That I have accepted the prevailing gameification of life. That it is something you can level up within. Flat, house, bigger house. Camera, nicer camera. Relationship, better relationship. The accumulation of middle class assets. Life as something to be completed. But you can't complete it so I play games for endless hours that I can complete. The enjoyment of the momentary pleasures those real world things can offer is deferred until the next level. And the next. And 10 years passes in the blink of an eye focused on the horizon, which ever leans forward.
I return to the same bar that evening. The Khao San road is in full swing, people and problems spill out onto the street. The assault is multi-sensory. Adjacent bars fight deafening and futile battles with their sound systems. The clashing music thickens the air and kight, colour and sound envelop me. I'm reminded of the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan. This is not my natural environment now, if it ever was. The earlier visit was nostalgia this one is made because I know they'll have the football on. There are signs up warning of a midnight booze curfew due to a religious holiday tomorrow. Midnight only gets me to the start of the second half and pre-emptively ordering beers doesn't seem wise when it's still 28c at night. So I order half a bottle of Thai whiskey for about 8 quid. It seemed a clever idea but caused great consternation to the staff. They conferred and sent over the one with the best English to sternly tell me that I must not take any away with me and that it should be concealed in a plastic bag and also that I must not take it away with me. I started to feel like a pariah and regretted the decision. And how was I going to drink half a bottle of whiskey in 45 minutes (now 35 because of their fussing). However their concern was justified when the police rolled through on the stroke of midnight. Staff ostentatiously packed up the outside chairs and tables, everything was decanted into plastic cups and sound systems fell silent on the Khao San like the guns in November 1918. I was allowed to keep watching the football though and sipping from my bag and enjoying the sort of destruction that was wreaked before those guns fell silent. YNWA.
10 years ago I sat in this bar with dreams of escape. Did I escape? Yes, I suppose I did. What lay behind me was 6 months of life changing experiences and behind that a life I never went back to. Ahead lay a year and a half of a new life in the new world and after that many years in a world city with my closest friends, a place that became home in a way that nowhere else ever has. That sounds like escape to me. But here I am again still with dreams of escape. I don't think it devalues the life lived since even though I have been recaptured by dissatisfaction and reincarcerated in a comfortable, responsible, mediocre life. The weak force of inertia will always be ready to draw me into its beige orbit if I let it. It lurks at the edges of feelings like 'this'll do', 'i'm ok', 'yeah happy enough'. Not that anyone ever asks each other if they're happy. Is it assumed? The outside appearance sufficient to invalidate the question? Or is the question too large and the answer potentially unpalatable to the asker and asked? But I have not been happy and this unhappiness has seeped from me like a black suffocating cloud that has covered my life, my love. The unhappiness has been general but also specific. I ignored the fundamentals of general happiness 10 years ago because it was easier to find a better way to do the same thing. And you can continue like that for a long time, perhaps indefinitely. That's the camel's back. The specific unhappiness is the straw. The Khao San road hasn't changed in 10 years. The insects are still for sale here, scorpion on a stick? The bars are the same, the tourists are the same, the scorpions are probably the same. I have changed but probably not in the ways I would have predicted. There is a certain amount of wisdom accumulated and a softer, less fundamentalist worldview. And a greater ease with the parts of me that haven't changed. Which all sounds good but still I am sat here. Where I once raged against the status quo I now rage within it and maybe therein lies the problem. That I have accepted the prevailing gameification of life. That it is something you can level up within. Flat, house, bigger house. Camera, nicer camera. Relationship, better relationship. The accumulation of middle class assets. Life as something to be completed. But you can't complete it so I play games for endless hours that I can complete. The enjoyment of the momentary pleasures those real world things can offer is deferred until the next level. And the next. And 10 years passes in the blink of an eye focused on the horizon, which ever leans forward.
I return to the same bar that evening. The Khao San road is in full swing, people and problems spill out onto the street. The assault is multi-sensory. Adjacent bars fight deafening and futile battles with their sound systems. The clashing music thickens the air and kight, colour and sound envelop me. I'm reminded of the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan. This is not my natural environment now, if it ever was. The earlier visit was nostalgia this one is made because I know they'll have the football on. There are signs up warning of a midnight booze curfew due to a religious holiday tomorrow. Midnight only gets me to the start of the second half and pre-emptively ordering beers doesn't seem wise when it's still 28c at night. So I order half a bottle of Thai whiskey for about 8 quid. It seemed a clever idea but caused great consternation to the staff. They conferred and sent over the one with the best English to sternly tell me that I must not take any away with me and that it should be concealed in a plastic bag and also that I must not take it away with me. I started to feel like a pariah and regretted the decision. And how was I going to drink half a bottle of whiskey in 45 minutes (now 35 because of their fussing). However their concern was justified when the police rolled through on the stroke of midnight. Staff ostentatiously packed up the outside chairs and tables, everything was decanted into plastic cups and sound systems fell silent on the Khao San like the guns in November 1918. I was allowed to keep watching the football though and sipping from my bag and enjoying the sort of destruction that was wreaked before those guns fell silent. YNWA.
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