New Voices in the Matrix

Field Notes from Chiang Mai, Thailand

Randy Sutherland

March 7, 2004

Arrived Bangkok on Wednesday, toured the extensive national museum and visited exquisite temples before flying north to Chiang Mai on Saturday. The museum chronicles the long history of South East Asia wars, invasions, insurrections, assasinations, genocides, murder, mayhem, and misery typical of the human condition everywhere. Prior to the introduction of cannons by the French, Thai wars were a kind of knightly duel fought from on top of elephants. There are many mythical birds in Thai legends. The Portuguese introduced the sweets and candies that Bangkok street vendors sell. Before Siam pursued Western fashions, women wore butch haircuts except for long strands of hair over each ear for attaching flowers.

Although the heat and humidity in Bangkok are as severe as in Mumbai, at least it doesn't smell like a sewer and it is much more pleasant to walk the streets of Bangkok. I saw many old, unattractive and morbidly obese Caucasian men with young, thin, pretty Thai girls on their arms. I also saw a lot of sleeping dogs, every few feet, on every sidewalk. Except for a few Thai men who were passed out drunk on the street, I did not see people sleeping on the sidewalks.

The highlight of my Bangkok visit wa a ride up the river to see a temple. The boat that I hired was very long and narrow with an upturned, flower-festooned prow; a kind of gondola on steroids powered by a gigantic truck engine with the differential adapted to drive a prop at the end of a long shaft. Sometimes we would stop to buy iced tea served in plastic bags from little old women in tiny boats that seemed ready to capsize with every wave. The river teemed with giant cat fish. The shore had temples, houses on stilts above the water, and sections of lush jungle.

After three days in Bangkok I was eager to escape so I am now up north outside of Chiang Mai, in a beautiful house on stilts in a large garden valley surrounded by forested mountains with monkeys. The resort is full of medical professionals who are here for some kind of team-building retreat. On the night I arrived, they had a welcoming party so I decided to hang out and watch how Thais party. Some of them looked a little alarmed to have a white man in their midst and the waitress worked hard to make sure that no Thai would have to sit at the same table with a farang. The situation reminded me of a novel by a friend of mine, Faye Ng, who wrote "Bone," in which she describes how embarrassed and bored she was to have to sit at a table with a white person once at a wedding reception in China Town as a girl in San Francisco.

The party turned into a karoake fest fueled by the jet fuel of Thai whiskey. There was a bizarre moment when eight Thais took the stage and offered a version of a song by an artist whose name escapes me but with lyrics approximating, "Yes, I'm going back to Massachusetts....(something, something).... Massachusetts is where I want to be." I had a similar absurd moment in January while watching the weather report in Zagreb where the TV showed an overview of Croatian weather accompanied by the song with the refrain, "Oh Lord, Stuck in Lodi again." After being politely tolerated by most of the party with slightly forced smiles, I was invited to join a table of four men. As it turned out, they were sexually attracted to me and they described in graphic detail what they wanted to do to me and they asked me where my house was. For the first time since leaving America I felt afraid, but I just laughed at them and told them that I only like girls, which did nothing to reduce their ardor. So I slipped away from them and returned to my haven on stilts by a circuitous route to foil any attempts to follow me. I padlocked the doors and secured the windows and went to sleep to the sound of frogs and crickets.

In the morning I awoke to the sound of birds. When I opened the curtains I saw two women wading in the stream next to my house, wearing hill-tribe clothes and catching tiny river fish with wicker-latticed fish scoopers.

Today I meditated for hours by the river next to a white cow and a young brown bullock. By observing these cows and they way that they lolled in this eden, I learned something new about prayer and meditation.

1 March 2004

Om Namah Mumbai

Field notes from Randy Sutherland

Franck and Sharima, my friends in Morocco, arranged for me to visit a family in Mumbai. (Bombay is a British mispronunciation of the Hindi word, Mumbai.) When I located "the pink bungalow on the beach," I was not expecting a six-story mansion with elevator. Frederick and Corinne gave me the top floor with private staircase. I have 4,000 square feet to myself, including a teak temple bedroom with Buddha. The scalloped wall and every square inch of pillar, floor and wall are decorated with mosaic tile.

Below the balcony, a wide esplanade guards the Indian ocean. Indian families wash their bodies and laundry in the sea. Cricketers use the uncrowded esplanade in the old-fashioned way: The team at bat will actually cheer for their opponents when they are caught out. Likewise the team in the field will clap for a batter when he scores runs. The British schools that I attended in Swaziland taught us to play in the same way. At my first American sports event, I learned that American-style gladiator sport is not a gentleman's game to pass the time after tea at a country club.

Last night, a crow attacked a pigeon on the balcony. I found the pigeon carcass freshly stripped to nothing but skeleton and feet right outside of my bedroom window. When I brave the heat enough to walk outside, I step over dead rats and walk around dead donkeys. On one of my walks, I watched a man and a woman eating chapattis on the sidewalk. Suddenly, the man attacked the woman, bullied her and manhandled her and hit her. Nobody in the crowd said a word to him. Indians warn me that anyone who acts as a Good Samaritan by helping the victim of a crime or traffic accident will be detained, harrassed, and implicated for some trumped up crime by the police. Recently a man was struck by a train at a train station. Nobody in the crowd rendered assistance because they did not want trouble with the police. The police arrived two hours later but it was too late for the man. A policeman's salary is $250 a year here, so they resort to accepting bribes and to creating situations where their victims are manipulated into paying bribes. Most people earn two or three dollars per day.

Now that I am here, I understand why India looked to Russia for so long and even adopted Soviet-style five-year production plans. After Mumbai, any Soviet republic must have looked like the promised land. The Indian air force uses old MIGS that crash frequently and the Indian army uses Russian machine guns. Every Indian that I have talked to wants to go to America, or "any place other than here."

Since visiting the Hindu caves at Elephanta, I have visited another Hindu cave and two Buddhist caves on day trips outside of the city. The caves are carved out of solid rock, with dimensions calculated to amplify chanting vibrations. Each large Buddhist prayer hall contains a large stupa (tall, solid dome), which is not to be confused with a Shiva lingam. I was able to spend a lot of time meditating and chanting in these caves. The echo makes any vocalization sound like Gregorian chant. Outside of the caves, women washed clothes from 2,000 year old cisterns that still collect monsoon water. After four cave tours, I wondered if they were oriented to focus Summer Solstice rays on the stupa. Guides confirmed my hunch that the caves are illuminated by the sun's rays around September 21 every year. The Celts also created Solstice-aligned caves in the West.

I leave tomorrow for Thailand with very little hope for the future of India, where the entire country is ensnared in a corrupt system for which there is no obvious solution.

1 March 2004

Om Namah Mumbai

Field notes from Randy Sutherland

I leave tomorrow for Thailand with very little hope for the future of India, where the entire country is ensnared in a corrupt system for which there is no obvious solution.

07 March 2004

01 March 2004