It’s Thailand, Not Adventure

We woke up to a rare rainy day this morning in Hua Hin, Thailand. This is the third day we have had rain since we left home in January, and it is welcome. It has been regularly in the nineties and low hundreds every day for the last two months, so a cool rainy day was a pleasant little reprieve.

Rainy days are great for reflection.

Tam and I sat on our little patio, with our coffees, and talked about our plans for the next few months (Sri lanka), which got me thinking about our travels to date.

I think, due predominately to my TIA in Vietnam, that we have ended up in far too many cities for my comfort. Because we had decided that I needed to be close to a hospital after my TIA, it has forced us to be in places that are closer to Bangkok. The options were limited. We knew we wanted to kiteboard, live on the beach, and adventure a bit, but within 2 hours of Bumrungrad International Hospital in Bangkok. We ended up settling on the Thai city of Hua Hin, 2 hours south down the Malay Peninsula.

This was after we left nice, quiet, relaxing rural Vietnam, for the reasons Iv’e already mentioned, and holed up in Nha Trang, Vietnam for a week, visited Hua Hin and Cha Am for a week, spent two full weeks in Bangkok, spent another week in the tourist mania hell that is Hoi An, Vietnam, and then moved to Hua Hin. We have been here for the last two and a half months.

Hua Hin is not a huge city, but my god it feels like it. It is most likely because the population of sixty-five thousand people is all concentrated on one main road that runs about five miles, parallel to the beach, all the way through town. The traffic is oppressive. Strangely, it is no better than traffic anywhere in Bangkok, and riding a motorbike here is about the same MOTO GP-meets-Frogger experience as in the bigger city. The difference to Bangkok is that we can get out of the city much more quickly, by motorbike, and go explore the countryside.

The beach here is really nice, super clean, and we are close enough that we get to walk on this beach a couple times a day, but there are a lot of people on the beach (not a Los Angeles lot of people, but still a lot more than I would like all the time).

And, it all seems a little too easy here.

There are a million restaurants (and the food is fantastic), and everything you need is close and convenient. There are even two big malls in walking distance from our condo (yeah, condo). These are proper Americana malls, circa 1980’s, with all the conveniences, food courts, escalators, and piped-in Muzak. Walking through either one, it is a stretch to convince myself I am not that stoned 17 year-old version of myself again, wandering around the Mountain View Mall back home looking for girls. There are two dozen massage places in a half-mile radius, ten 7-11 stores we could walk to in a few minutes time, and Starbucks, McDonalds, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and, well fuck. You get it.

I thought I left the US.

It doesn’t feel like traveling. Other than the fact that the people speak a different language, and the fact that they are friendly and helpful, it feels easy enough to convince yourself you are in the US.

It lacks… Hmm… Hardship?

Maybe that is not exactly right, but it is the most accurate explanation of how I feel. I think Tam and I had expectations of what it was like to travel abroad, in the “old days”, before the pre-internet, pre-Instagram and Facebook simplicity that has shrunken our world into safe, pre-booked, look-up-a-photo-of-anywhere-and-everywhere-before-you-go, convenient (and fucking crowded) travel to “exotic”places. It wasn’t like this when we started traveling internationally.

It used to be an adventure.

Please, don’t get me wrong here. I love the Thai people. They are beautiful, kind, friendly people, with solid family values and healthy spiritualism. Honestly, though, they seem a little beat down now. I can only assume it has to do with the three to four million foreigners living and working here as expats, and the forty million annual tourist visits (pre-COVID, in 2019, though these numbers are almost back up to that again). Since our last visit here in 2005, I see the Thai people as more guarded, a bit standoffish, and their ever radiant smiles seem to have dimmed a bit. I think this expat and tourist pressure could do that to anyone. I don’t hold anything against them. I was raised in a heavily touristed resort town and the wattage of my own smile had dropped over the years. It is unavoidable.

It is, also, just a bit too easy. It lacks the romance and “foreignness” that we came looking for. There is nowhere left in Thailand that isn’t “easy” to get to, “easy” to find, or “easy” to bumble our foreigner’s way around living there.

And there is nowhere left in Thailand that isn’t just completely, mind-fuckingly crowded. Crowded mostly with grouchy, stone-faced Westerners that don’t smile, don’t interact with anyone else, and have terribly inappropriate concepts of what they expect of the service industry workers (yeah, the Thai people). I am treated like some kind of dangerous, psychotic street person because I smile and say hello to everyone. It must happen so little because the Thai people actually seem surprised (happily so) when I do. All the other Westerners just scowl and look away as their chosen form of greeting.

But I do still love Thailand. It has a sense of home, of comfort, that I haven’t found in many places around the world. If I ever tire of too much adventure, or need a place to settle and be comfortable (if I ever get old), Thailand will probably be that place.

Just not yet.

So today we pack for Sri Lanka, and another different adventure.

And, I can hope, some slightly more rural living for a few months.