Can't believe I've spent over a week already here in Chiang Mai...it's a lush, green, tranquil haven compared to the chaotic hustle and bustle Bangkok, and actually as I'm writing this, I'm realizing I may have fallen for this place!
Before getting into what I've been up to here that has lead to my love affair with the city, I must entertain you with my adventure getting here along with some less light-hearted realities I've discovered while in Bangkok.
So, considering I don't have much of a time constraint in my life right now and despite having travelled for nearly 6 weeks, I still have the same healthy appetite for all things new and different as I did on day one, so, I opted to take the 12-hour (which turned out to be 14 hours, by the way) overnight old train from Bangkok to the North instead of the convenient, efficient 2 hour flight. New and different is exactly what I got...
Imagine struggling to carry three heavy bags (purse, suitcase, "carry-on") through the Bangkok Central station at peak hour in a sauna-like atmosphere, desparately trying to find an English speaking person to no avail, strategically dodging groups of Muslim women dressed in black from head to toe with only their subdued mysterious eyes peering out, bright orange clad, bald Monks scurrying around who I dared not accidentally disrespect by brushing up against given I am a woman, and little groups of random scruffy backpackers, who, like me, were staring helplessly at the schedule written in Thai while playing Dodge the Monks and Muslims.
As I said before, knowing just a few words of the native language goes a long way. I picked up my Thai phrase book, timidly asked for help from the first Thai I saw in a uniform and somehow managed to communicate in a way he understood. He escorted me to my train car, thank goodness, and as I stepped aboard, blurted out , "Really?!?" under my breath as I looked around for the hidden camera and behind-the-scenes prankers who had to have set me up. It was just a really dungy, dark car reminiscent of the NYC metro with series of white bunk beds, maybe 5 feet long and 2 or 3 feet wide with ragged bright orange curtains hanging around as an option for "privacy". I was in a moving jail, sans bars. I sat on my bed still sweating, with my bags still hanging around me, and just stared and took it all in. I braced myself for the cockroaches and spiders that'd likely join me in bed any second. My roomies, luckilly, turned out to be quite a nice, quiet Chinese family. The son, likely around my age, spoke broken English - enough to confirm my concerns that the outlets in the walls did not work and that no they don't serve food. Or wine.
The family closed their curtains by 8:30pm, so there I was....sitting in my moving jail across the darkening Thai countryside, trying to focus on anything other than my bladder, which was getting a bit full, since I had just glimpsed at the "bathroom" walking in: a hole in the floor of the train. Literally! You could see the tracks race by through the wide opening. Quite a challenge for a woman. Now would have been a perfect time for soothing meditation, but I couldn't get my mind to stand still, and my meditation retreat was not for another week. OK, well, fair enough...I wanted new and different!
I tried to sleep and zippered myself in, but tossed and turned for what felt like hours. Partly because I was sharing all 5 feet of my thin mattress with all my luggage (which I insisted to keep near me after someone ripped open my first bag on the overnight ferry to Athens which pissed me right off and caused me to by a new hard case one), but my mind was the thing keeping me up. I felt unsettled for some reason, and not because I was on a rickety, germophobe's and claustrophobic's hell ride (good thing I am neither of those) but rather my mind was wandering back to a recent conversation I'd had that got me thinking some of those seemingly genuine Thai smiles were maybe not so genuine...
My hotel in Bangkok was next to one of hundreds and hundreds of Thai massage places, and of course I indulged a couple of times given 1 hour costs less than $10 USD. As an aside, the Thai massage is so different than the kind you get in the States. They literally use their whole body to get you in different stretching positions and I'll tell ya, these petite seemingly gentle Thai women certainly have strength. Anywho, I ended up making "friends"with one of the Thai girls who worked there (who spoke excellent English) since I passed it multiple times a day and visited more than once. She gave me a lot of great sightseeing tips, taught me about Thai massages and food, gave me tips on stretching, etc. She was a petite woman with jet black hair with funky bright pink highlights interspersed throughout, and had a gorgeous, ridiculously symmetrical face that seemed to always be smiling. Kapui (I do not know how to spell her name to be honest, but it sounded like Kah-poo) was her name and when I told her I would be leaving the next day after a week of being in Bangkok, she invited me for some tea. Thais love their tea.
I asked her the basic get-to-know you questions that we hadn't yet covered: how old are you, how long have you lived and worked here, where is your family, etc. I also asked her how on earth she works so late at night, for I noticed the massage place was open from 10:00am to 3:00am, 7 days a week!
Nineteen years old. Has worked there since she was 16. Family lives outside of Bangkok to the North. She hardly sees them but sends them money once a month. And then she just giggled at the last question, as if I was naive for asking.
I learned that the place, appropriately called "Happy Massage", offers "additional"services after 10pm primarily for horny Farangs, just like many of the others around the city. She has been offering her body for money for over 3 years now, almost every night until the break of dawn, along with most of her friends and other Thai women she knew. She made it sound like it was totally normal and just "what they do there", like how a Weston High graduate goes to Dartmouth and then ends up in Finance in the City or something.
Although she talked about it in a very non-chalant way, I could tell there was something underneath what seemed like blind acceptance of her situation. Some disappointment or maybe some sad helplessness...Or maybe I was imagining it. Was this for real? Was she really that brain washed? Did she really think she had no choice but to sell her body for financial security? Was education really not an option? My dumbfounded brain was full of all of those standard very Westernized, First World questions. In the end, to her, the money she was able to get for what she does was simply a no brainer. And this mentality is apparently prevalent in many areas here for many women.
Of course I have read about it and seen plenty of documentaries and movies about the Southeast Asian sex industry (a booming one, for your information) but never would I thought I'd hear a first hand account of it from someone who I had befriended. I will not share the intimate details she told me, but all I want you to know is that this is real stuff. And that some, like Kapui, thinks it's "normal" and as a result don't even see demanding women's rights or self-respect as a potential option. You can read the newspaper headlines, hear about characters in movies, see occasional Non-Profit agencies reaching out for awareness, etc, but at least for me it's really a disturbing and startling wake up call to have someone you know, someone so sweet and seeming intelligent, living this type of life. I felt so guilty, angry, surprised, and pretty much speechless. So much so that I was quite light on my questioning and sat their with open ears, something that I am regretting a bit now because I still have so many unanswered (I guess my journalistic, nosy side didn't come out as I thought it would..). As we said goodbye, I gave her some extra money in the hopes that she'd take a few nights off for herself, but who knows if she actually did.
As the train jerked and fumbled along the tracks away from Bangkok that night, I then rolled over and thought about her with her pink streaked hair and beautiful smile, hoping she was safe and that she could somehow release herself from the life she thinks she is stuck in. And that I wish there was something I could do. Suddenly, being on the a rickety old train for 14 hours didn't seem so bad.
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