Reflections on the Road: Kravitz and Me, on a Thai Island

THE SETTING  

For two nights I had lived in a plywood closet of a room, which superheated during the day and vibrated to the sounds of rats and the human couple next door by night.  It was no good, and so this morning I walked down the beach with my backpack until, about a half-mile down, I found an A-frame hut right on the water.  It too would superheat in the day – it was discounted because it was the one hut not shaded by a tree – but so long as I could tie a hammock to the porch posts, I didn’t care.  The cost per night: 120 Baht, or three dollars.

I had some structural concerns about my new abode, and I would not have stayed in it had Thailand been any closer to Asia's “ring of fire,” that arch of land and sea prone to festering volcanoes and frequent earthquakes.  I gave the hut a good shake from each of its four corners and was satisfied; it would not likely collapse in the coming week.  Earthquake test complete, I moved on to more crucial matters: setting up the half-decayed hammock the management had loaned me. 

Upon testing it, one rotting porch beam broke under its weight.  Then, in the minutes that followed, the string itself snapped three times.  After an hour, however, and though my tailbone was bruised, my hammock had taken hold.  I stepped back, hands on my hips, and looked at my work:  so this is what a nineteenth century pioneer must have felt, I told myself, after taming wild land in, say, western Nebraska.  (Editorial note: I often say dumb things like this when I’m happy.)

My hammock and home secured, I joined the throng of topless Swedes, muscular Israelis, and the other seventy nations doing their countries proud on a nearby beach.  Diplomats they were not, but from distinct cultures were they all.  I claimed my plot of sand under the shade of a tree.  I listened to the gentle break of each wave and also to Hebrew, Norwegian, Spanish, English, and Thai flying out of bodies sprawled out on the towels around me.  And then I pulled out a book that had drawn me into its world in a way few other books ever had.  It was Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, and two hours later – with sadness, longing, and a haunted feel – I turned its last page. 

My feet on my porch - Ko Phangan, Thailand

THE EVENT

Later in the evening, as I was paying (one dollar) for a dinner of pad thai with pork and a bottle of water, I looked over my left shoulder and saw a television tuned to CNN.  The volume was muted, but the bold words "Breaking News" filled the bottom of the screen.  Without sound, there was no verbal analysis of these awful pictures which showed blackened faces and burning cars.  But words weren’t needed.  In fact, this was a moment in which silence seemed the better conveyer of news, of reality.  I neither wanted nor needed some talking head to parse what my eyes were taking in.  My eyes fixated on the screen.  Tremendous explosions had just hit Karbala and Baghdad.  Well over a hundred were already dead. 

As people lay dying, my stomach continued to digest a scrumptious Thai dinner.  I noticed that other restaurant patrons, dressed in shorts and tank tops and laughing and chatting as they sipped their Chang beers, didn’t seemed phased that blackened people were dying in a box hanging from the wall.

The waiter gave me my change and I slowly walked closer to the silent box of images.  Something was surreal.  I have seen explosions and their results before, even in person, but right now something was very odd and I strained to comprehend it.  On this spinning ball of Earth, with its wonderful noodles with pork and vegetables, with its cold water, sunny beaches, and coconut-scented tanning oil, there are also dismembered corpses, burning cars, bloody faces, and acrid smoke-filled skies.  All on a single spinning ball of earth.  All at the exact same moment.

The television was muted, but a radio was pumping with tremendous energy.  Lenny Kravitz's American Woman shot into my ears with the same force that a rocket lifts into the heavens, and I found myself excited about life even as I stared at the dead of Baghdad and Karbala.  We find hope in different things, and at this moment I was finding hope in the existence of coconut-scented lotion and the hard rhythm of an American musician.  There was hope right now on a star-studded night in the Gulf of Thailand.  Here the world was not at war; it was spread across a beach and savoring good food. 

Perhaps the lyrics of Kravitz’s song resonate with my subconscious.  Perhaps it is that Kravitz voices passion but with control (he sings with force but is not screaming).  Or perhaps I was taking the lyrics and directing them not toward an American Woman but toward these scenes from Iraq: 

American woman, stay away from me
American woman, mama let me be
Don't come hanging around my door
I don't want to see your face no more
I got more important things to do
Than spend my time growin' old with you
Now woman, stay away
American woman, listen what I say 

I want to be involved in the world's problems, even in those places where hatred leads to torn bodies and hot flames.  But in the midst of such involvement, I also want to sing, with Kravitz's passion yet control, a message to the bloody scenes that drain all over this planet, "Don't come hanging around my door/ I don't want to see your face no more, I got more important things to do, than spend my time growin' old with you."    

This week in Thailand, it was important for me to smell coconut oil, to read a good book in a hammock or on the sand, and to pamper myself with fresh pineapple shakes and all the tasty Thai food I cared to eat.  I would take my shirt off, not having to worry about conservative cultural norms in places like the Middle East.  I would have wonderful conversations with men and women who would have their shirts off, too.  I would swim hard – terribly, wonderfully hard – across a wide bay and emerge from the sea with arms and shoulders bulging with blood.  I would do push-ups on my porch as the sun set across the sea that was my front yard.  I would wash in the concrete shower room near the hibiscus bushes near my hut and then, in nothing but the faded yellow towel that I had been using for twelve years, I would walk barefoot through the grass and onto the sand.

As I left the restaurant this night, I saw that the Kravitz song had gone from my ears to my feet.  I moved with tremendous pep, away from the televised fires and into the street of a tropical island.  But I moved this way because I knew that this week I was on vacation, and that one day I'd walk back toward these fires, refreshed by things as simple as the scent of sun lotion and a little good music.  

The view from the hut - Ko Phangan, Thailand

* The events of this story took place three years ago (the first week of March, 2004)

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		Joel Carillet, Gather Travel Correspondent
	Joel's column, "Reflections on the Road," is published every other Thursday to Gather Essentials: Travel. His articles, based on extensive travels in Asia and the Middle East, seek to shed light on humanity, both our own and that of others.   They aim not merely to entertain and inform but also to develop a sense of connection between the reader and the world. Joel's writing and photography have appeared in several magazines and newspapers, including the Kansas City Star and Christian Science Monitor.  Currently he is seeking an agent for a book manuscript entitled Sixty-One Weeks: A Journey across Asia. When not on the road, he happily calls Tennessee home. Keep up with Joel's article series by joining his network, or subscribing to his content.