Letters from Thailand 3

I am not a travel writer, never wanted to be. It seems to me that every genre in literature requires a special training, if not special skills. I like writing fiction and my blog entries are just a way of discharging my mind when I cannot write fiction. They are written in “stream of consciousness” so I just let my mind float adrift and talk about whatever comes to my mind at the moment of writing. Although I am not a travel writer, I enjoy reading the books written by travelling wordsmiths. For me, it is important that the writer uses a beautiful and impressive language when s/he explains his/her feelings towards new cultures, peoples, cities, towns etc. I don’t really enjoy the style which directly tells me what the traveler sees/does. I guess this is a preference and there might be some other readers who enjoy reading things simple and plain.

While J was driving the car, I take one of the few books from the big back pack and read a few pages. It is Bora Ercan’s second travel book, called “Odysseus Islands, A Journey in Mediterranean Sea”. I know Bora from www.izinsizgosteri.net where some of my writings have been published. I met him a few years ago in Istanbul at his yoga school and gave him one my books. This book is signed by him for my name so I guess he gave me his book on the same day. Although he studied Mathematics at METU, he is currently one of the prominent yoga teachers in Turkey. In his book, he wrote this sentence that took my attention: Yol bana soyunur, ben yola soyunurum. Bir kadının bedeninde dilimin dolaşması gibi dikkatli hareket etmeliyimdir. Yolculuk bir aşka başlangıç gibi heyecanlandırır insanı. Yekvücuttur yol ve yolcu, sevişen iki insan gibi. (The road undresses for me and I undress for the road. I should be moving very carefully as if my tongue is dancing on a woman’s body. Travel excites me as if I start a new love. The road and the traveler became one, like two people making love.)  

The last sentence is the one impressed me the most and made me contemplate the opposite. We can think the traveler and the travelled as dialectical poles. Traveler’s main job is to change the travelled and/or to be changed by the travelled. This way we can explain the effect of the road on people better. We set on roads to change our well-rooted thoughts, to challenge our prejudices, to see the other possible worlds and perhaps to replace the ones we thought as the “only one” with the newly discovered one. If we travel with a narrow mind, we only see what we want to see, we only taste what we want to taste, we only hear what we want to hear.

I remember my arrival to Thailand first time, 12 year ago. With all those religious and nationalistic dogmas in my head, for long time, I kept looking down on people simply because of their religion or their culture. However, the more I lived here, the more I realized that life is possible by believing in different things as well. For a person who never imagined a breakfast can be possible without tea, cheese, olive, jam etc, seeing people eating rice in the morning and not using salt for cooking was the first blow. Then I saw the motorbikes, saw the girls not living a conservative life, saw the boys living freely without the pressure from the religious leaders… Then Buddhism made a big difference in my mind. I noticed that people can behave morally without the fear of hell or without the promise of heaven. Seeing millions of people living peacefully –at least not more violently than the people in my country- and happily, without needing the idea of God, made me think that it cannot be true that God will punish these people just because they don’t believe in Him. If He does, then He shouldn’t be called “Merciful” at all. As Russell puts it nicely “My mother is more merciful than God because she will never put me in infinite fire just because I deny her.”

I start questioning many things after leaving my home country because it wasn’t possible to feel the life of others when I only sit in front of TV and watch the anchor telling me their stories. Road changed me and I believe it can change anyone as long as the person is not carrying his/her prejudices with him/her. If you travel the entire world and come back home with the same dogmatic, narrow mind set, then it means you didn’t travel at all. The revolution needs the right mind set to be materialized in reality. This is probably why they say “You need to revolutionize your language (mind set) before you revolutionize your work.”

Road must change us and the way it changes us is the most natural, the most alluring. It does not brainwash us, does not force us, does not rush us into a deep dark well. It does its duty slowly and patiently. Seeing people on TV, eating fried cockroach, can only make us believe that how more advanced our culture is, how better we are at eating and how dirty/filthy the other people are. But when you sit with a friend and seeing him eating fried cockroaches in front of you, laughing loudly and enjoying his life it will make a big change in your thoughts.  At least you will no more look at those people with disgust. It will sound/look more natural and perhaps one day you too will eat fried cockroaches, taste their crispy skin together with the bitter taste of beer.

With these thoughts rolling in my head, we arrive home. It is almost sunset but the dark blue of the night hasn’t arrived yet. Tok Jai sees me even before I get off the car and attacks me with his dirty feet. I hardly open the door and try to control him but it is impossible to control a happy dog –if he was angry, I can be harsh on him but you cannot punish a dog because he is excessively happy to see his first ever master- . I touch his head, let him lick my hand and arm. He then starts running around me like a planet orbiting sun, apparently he wants to play. I start running around the garden, moving back and forward a few times until losing his attention. I sometimes wonder what makes Tok Chai loves and remember me this much. I see him for one or two weeks a year and even in these weeks I don’t stay home much. However, when I am in the garden, he only comes to me, follows me everywhere and when I go out running he runs with me till the end of the village road. I think he is afraid of leaving the village as the road has many speeding cars. When he sees me busy with something else, he comes and troubles me with his dirty fur, almost like a cat. Perhaps, he has some genes from the felix family as he hates water like the cats do. This is also the reason why he is the dirtiest dog in the universe. As far as I know, he did not take a bath for the last 8 years. We used to wash him when he was a little puppy but after he grows up, he is too stubborn and aggressive to anyone who wants to take him to the bath.Plus, we don't know how to train a dog at all. 

After getting rid of Tok Chai, I can have proper time to greet my in-laws with a Thai “wai”. I also hug my mother in law –first time since I married to J- . Normally, I stay within the limits of the cultural boundaries but this was something I always wanted to do so I did it: I gave her a warm hug. This is another interesting thing I learnt from “the road”. J never touches her mother and her mother never touches her in public. This is partly due to the Buddhist teaching and partly due to the reasons beyond my comprehension. Their way of showing their affection to each other is limited to a wai. This is why J was so surprised when she met my mother. In Turkey, mothers love their kids with extreme display of affection like kissing, hugging, squeezing, pinching etc so my mother did to J all she did to me when I was a little boy. It must have been very scary –in a positive way- for J as this kind of display of affection was totally “out of universe” for her. 

After all the greetings are over, we sit for the dinner. It is set on the wooden table behind the house as it is always done. We never eat inside the house; in fact we never sit in the house under normal conditions. The house is a nice place to sleep in but not to live or to have conversations. When neighbors come, they never come to the front door. They directly come to the behind the house because they also know that people will be sitting and chatting –sometimes eating fruits or snacks- there. Kitchen is outside so cooking is done outside. Washing machine is outside so laundry is done outside. My in-laws sit in the house only when they watch TV, usually after taking shower and before sleeping. They both have their spaces in front of TV so they stay there till the moment they fall in sleep.

I also stay with them a bit at my first night in the village but I am too tired for watching TV –only if I like these soap operas which are always superfluously dramatized, stupidly written, terribly acted by beautiful and handsome models, copied and pasted from the previous ones- . I go to bed as early as 9 pm and fall in sleep fast as if I haven’t slept for many days.