"The following day, mother and son walked to the temple, where they met a monk and asked about Schwader's father. 'I don't know that name,' he replied, 'but you're welcome to look through the cemetery.' At first, all they saw were rows of discouragingly pristine tombstones, most of them clearly newer. But just before giving up, they came upon a cluster of older stones, decrepit and obscured by foliage, their Lao inscriptions nearly faded away. Except for one, Schwader noticed, with a barely legible engraving: THONGSAVANH VILAYTHONG. His father's name.
At dawn the next morning, Schwader, with his shaggy mane and cargo shorts, and a monk with close-cropped hair and a long orange robe paired up to lift the top off the stone tower, revealing a hollow where the jar of bones and ashes were kept. Five monks had formed a line beside the grave and began chanting in unison. Per Lao tradition, Schwader cleaned his father's bones and placed them in a bucket, along with flowers, candles, and incense. Soon, he and his mother were in a boat on the Mekong, gathering handfuls of the bowl's contents and scattering them on the river."
From the story, Home Away, in the November 2015 issue of Condé Nast Traveler. Written by JJ Goode.
An absolutely wonderful and amazing story.
Showing posts with label laos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label laos. Show all posts
Saturday, February 21, 2015
Even without the help of technology, the world is still small.
I went to Flushing a few weekends ago and took the 7 train there. The last stop of the E train in the city is near my place so taking that to 74th Street Jackson Heights was easy. Afterwards, when I was waiting on the 7 train platform to transfer, I noticed two guys standing not far from me because one of them was really tall. His brown jacket also helped make him memorable for some reason. I eventually continued on with what I was doing and forgot about them completely inside the rumbling 7 as I stood by the door's window to stare out.
It was about four hours later when I was back on the 7 train at Main Street to head home. I like to ride the second subway-car from the front whenever getting off the 74th street stop to go into the city. It's funny because after I exited the 7 and was heading to the staircase, I watched the same two guys from earlier step out of the first car of the subway in front of me. I immediately recognized the tall guy's brown coat and had myself a chuckle. As they were busy talking and not noticing me walking behind them, all I could think to myself were what are the odds.
But coincidences like that seem to pop-up every now and then, and it always reminds me of how connected we all truly are.
When my good friends Jenn and Daniel came to visit me while I was living in Korea years ago, my only English-speaking and American friend in Seoul was Hyunha.
Hyunha had moved from the Tri-State area and arrived in Seoul after I did. She was living in Korea for the first time with her two daughters, who I was so happy to be able to meet as well. They were in grade school and attending international school to not only be submersed in Korean culture, but also spend quality time with their mom. Hyunha and I had met through a mutual friend from NYC, and we instantly hit it off. We had a lot of fun late nights of just talking and downing bottles of whiskey together as we traded stories and shared parts of our lives.
It was soon after our first initial meeting in Korea that my friends Jenn and Daniel were coming to visit. Since moving to Seoul, I felt like I hadn't seen them in forever. We had also been roommates during my time in NYC before I left, and so my excitement to see them was boiling over. Their flight was scheduled to arrive at 5am, which left me no choice but to sleep at the airport that night. Back then, the only way to get to Incheon Airport from Seoul by public transportation was through an airport bus. These buses had multiple lines and picked-up from most places in Korea's capital city. The ride took about an hour, and the last buses usually scheduled to arrive at the airport were around midnight.
When I picked a long bench inside the airport to sleep on, I only noticed maybe one or two other people also doing so. Surprisingly, none of the airport staff bothered us and we were all left alone as if we weren't there. I'm not sure if that night was an aberration, but there were multiple planes from JFK that all landed that night in Seoul around 5am. I got a spot at one of the many passenger arrival gates and watched as people strolled out one-by-one with luggage in tow. At one point as I stood there waiting, I noticed a certain man come out alone. His face immediately put me at alert, and I studied him carefully to be certain that I was thinking of the right person.
The thing is, Hyunha might have not remembered it, but Korea wasn't the first time we crossed paths. I had seen her before in NYC many years back at a few house parties that our mutual friend threw. I can also recall seeing her with her husband, and he was the same man I had just seen walk out the airport gate alone. Running into him at the airport at that time was a complete shock to me. Because we had just met, I only knew in a general sense that Hyunha's husband at that time was coming into town. I had also just mentioned to her that some close friends from NYC were visiting, so neither of us ever thought there would be any sort of connection.
I watched closely as he walked off to the side to make a phone call. I waited until after he hung up to approach him and say hi. He of course had no idea who I was because he didn't know my face, but eventually figured out what was going on. Soon after, my friends Jenn and Daniel arrived. When we ended up running into Hyunha's then husband later on, it was near a ticket stand for airport buses. The 3 of us had just learned that there were no buses for another hour and the lines of people waiting for them outside were getting long. That's why we were extremely grateful when he invited us to go with him back to Seoul in his taxi. He was in fact going to the neighborhood right next to where I lived and where my friends were also staying. The funniest part was when we were in the cab ride back and he called Hyunha to tell her what had happened.
A few months later when I eventually ended up leaving Korea (not by choice), I was waiting in the immigration line at Suvarnabhumi Airport to enter Thailand. I was there on a one-way ticket with what I planned to be a two-month stay since that's what my visa allotted. I was alone, on an extremely tight budget, didn't know anything about Thailand, and had no idea what I was going to do after exiting the airport. I remember the immigration area being very large and new. It's hard to recall what the reason was, but all of the stations were empty and the many rows of us in line had to wait for some time. I was fortunate to be first in the line all the way to the left and patiently stood with my immigration card in hand. My feelings anticipating that moment where someone would come and stamp my passport to send me into the unknown of Thailand was something I wasn't sure how to feel about.
That's when I heard a voice from behind me. "So, what kind of writer are you?"
On my immigration form, I wasn't sure how favorable "unemployed clueless loser" under occupation would sound. I was going to Thailand without any idea about anything, so I decided to put down "freelance writer" instead.
I turned around and saw a friendly looking guy. A part of it was funny because I could probably count on one hand the number of times in the past 6 months that I had had a conversation with a stranger in English, let alone an American. I told him I had studied writing in college and had worked in magazine publishing in NYC, on top of writing my own fiction on the side. He told me he was from Utah and worked in communications. He had currently moved to Vietnam for work and lived there with his wife. When he found out I had worked at an epicurean magazine, he mentioned that he had a friend who also worked at one. When he told me who it was, my jaw dropped because it was someone from my old job! This was someone who I not only had the pleasure of working with and getting to know, but also someone I respected immensely because they're such a great person.
The nice guy continued to tell me that when my former colleague went to Vietnam for their honeymoon, they had met up with him and his wife for dinner. This all happened during the time we still worked together at the magazine, and both of the couples had met through a mutual friend. Years later, after I had returned to NYC and was working in the office of a restaurant in TriBeCa, my old colleague came for dinner one night. I stopped in that evening to say hi, and it was was the first time we had both seen each other since I had left for Asia. Seeing them was great, and the amusing thing was that their dinner companion was the mutual friend who had introduced them to the man I met at Suvarnabhumi Airport.
Before I left Korea for Thailand, I spent a long period of time being unemployed and looking for work. Since I really needed to earn money, I eventually ended up taking this part-time bartending gig. This was an opportunity that came my way through a friend who had nothing to do with the food industry, it was just a right-place-in-the-right-time situation. The bar I worked at was actually a gay bar in one of Seoul's two major gay districts, Itaewon and Jongno. The area of my workplace, Jongno, was known to be quieter and more subdued than Itaewon, the other major gay neighborhood of the city.
The bar that I worked at happened to be named after this indie American movie with somewhat of a cult following. The film is funny with a sexual storyline and takes place in NYC. Some of the characters are gay, giving the movie a large LGBT fan base. That's the reason why the man who first opened the gay bar named it after the movie, because he was a super fan. When he eventually sold the bar to the owner who would become my boss, the name remained and continued to shine bright in the white sign above its third floor windows.
The gay bar wasn't too big, and my boss was always there. On busy weekend nights, there would be three of us behind the bar, the third being another bartender who worked there full-time. I normally never came out on slower weekdays except for when the full-time worker had a day off. It was an early weekday like that when this fateful encounter happened, and I remember it like yesterday. The bar was completely dead that night until I saw a straight couple open the door to come in and sit at the bar. Now what made them so different and caught my attention was that they weren't Korean, but that they were caucasian.
That might not sound like a big deal, but having two patrons like them casually come for a drink at a random gay bar in Jongno was like seeing two unicorns walk in---it just seemed non-existent. The better news was that not only were they American, but they were also from NYC! Since my boss didn't speak english, whenever anything needed to be communicated to tourists or english speaking non-Koreans, it was my job to attend to them and make conversation if they were sitting at the bar. After the couple sat down and started drinking, I ended up talking with them for hours. She was currently living in China with her boyfriend and working as a university professor at a law school. The two of them had come to Seoul for a short vacation and their hotel for the night was nearby. The fact that they were even staying in a hotel in Jongno was a first for me because even though it's well-known, it's also a very old part of the city with no major hotels, skyscrapers, or hoards of young people partying everywhere. It's known more for having lot of beautiful and traditional houses called hanoks, and being close to the Royal Palace.
When I asked how the two of them ended up choosing this bar to drink at, they said they didn't know where else to go. They had been looking for a place, and decided on us because they saw the name of the bar and not only liked it, but was also intrigued (the bar name also used to be commonly used as a pejorative term in American culture). That night with them ended up being really fun, and conversing with the both of them was a blast. Bartending at the gay bar was a great experience, but I often had shifts were I just felt frustrated and down about life, not understanding why I was having such a hard time finding a job I really wanted. That's why when they even graciously left me a really nice tip, it totally made my day because typically in Korean culture, tipping is not a norm at all. We exchanged emails and I thanked them again so much for coming in as they left later that night. Meeting them at work had been such a refreshing breath of air for me, and I was so humbled by how nice they were.
Less than five months later, I was living in Thailand and went to the capital of Laos for my first-ever visa run. This was after my first 2-month visa had expired, and I went to Vientiane to acquire a new one at the Thai embassy there. This was the closest and most affordable-to-get-to Thai embassy from Bangkok, and getting there required an overnight bus or train to Nong Khai before crossing over into Laos.
On my first and only day of the trip, I wandered around Vientiane as I waited for my passport and visa to get processed. At one point, I am walking on a street along a big road when I see the same American couple from that night at work in Seoul walking towards me. We immediately say hi, and even took a picture together because we couldn't believe our luck. Out of all of the places to be on the planet at that very moment, we somehow ended up at the same exact spot in Laos together.
Who knows, maybe we will all somehow cross paths again. Fate is a crazy thing.
That's when I heard a voice from behind me. "So, what kind of writer are you?"
On my immigration form, I wasn't sure how favorable "unemployed clueless loser" under occupation would sound. I was going to Thailand without any idea about anything, so I decided to put down "freelance writer" instead.
I turned around and saw a friendly looking guy. A part of it was funny because I could probably count on one hand the number of times in the past 6 months that I had had a conversation with a stranger in English, let alone an American. I told him I had studied writing in college and had worked in magazine publishing in NYC, on top of writing my own fiction on the side. He told me he was from Utah and worked in communications. He had currently moved to Vietnam for work and lived there with his wife. When he found out I had worked at an epicurean magazine, he mentioned that he had a friend who also worked at one. When he told me who it was, my jaw dropped because it was someone from my old job! This was someone who I not only had the pleasure of working with and getting to know, but also someone I respected immensely because they're such a great person.
The nice guy continued to tell me that when my former colleague went to Vietnam for their honeymoon, they had met up with him and his wife for dinner. This all happened during the time we still worked together at the magazine, and both of the couples had met through a mutual friend. Years later, after I had returned to NYC and was working in the office of a restaurant in TriBeCa, my old colleague came for dinner one night. I stopped in that evening to say hi, and it was was the first time we had both seen each other since I had left for Asia. Seeing them was great, and the amusing thing was that their dinner companion was the mutual friend who had introduced them to the man I met at Suvarnabhumi Airport.
Before I left Korea for Thailand, I spent a long period of time being unemployed and looking for work. Since I really needed to earn money, I eventually ended up taking this part-time bartending gig. This was an opportunity that came my way through a friend who had nothing to do with the food industry, it was just a right-place-in-the-right-time situation. The bar I worked at was actually a gay bar in one of Seoul's two major gay districts, Itaewon and Jongno. The area of my workplace, Jongno, was known to be quieter and more subdued than Itaewon, the other major gay neighborhood of the city.
The bar that I worked at happened to be named after this indie American movie with somewhat of a cult following. The film is funny with a sexual storyline and takes place in NYC. Some of the characters are gay, giving the movie a large LGBT fan base. That's the reason why the man who first opened the gay bar named it after the movie, because he was a super fan. When he eventually sold the bar to the owner who would become my boss, the name remained and continued to shine bright in the white sign above its third floor windows.
The gay bar wasn't too big, and my boss was always there. On busy weekend nights, there would be three of us behind the bar, the third being another bartender who worked there full-time. I normally never came out on slower weekdays except for when the full-time worker had a day off. It was an early weekday like that when this fateful encounter happened, and I remember it like yesterday. The bar was completely dead that night until I saw a straight couple open the door to come in and sit at the bar. Now what made them so different and caught my attention was that they weren't Korean, but that they were caucasian.
That might not sound like a big deal, but having two patrons like them casually come for a drink at a random gay bar in Jongno was like seeing two unicorns walk in---it just seemed non-existent. The better news was that not only were they American, but they were also from NYC! Since my boss didn't speak english, whenever anything needed to be communicated to tourists or english speaking non-Koreans, it was my job to attend to them and make conversation if they were sitting at the bar. After the couple sat down and started drinking, I ended up talking with them for hours. She was currently living in China with her boyfriend and working as a university professor at a law school. The two of them had come to Seoul for a short vacation and their hotel for the night was nearby. The fact that they were even staying in a hotel in Jongno was a first for me because even though it's well-known, it's also a very old part of the city with no major hotels, skyscrapers, or hoards of young people partying everywhere. It's known more for having lot of beautiful and traditional houses called hanoks, and being close to the Royal Palace.
When I asked how the two of them ended up choosing this bar to drink at, they said they didn't know where else to go. They had been looking for a place, and decided on us because they saw the name of the bar and not only liked it, but was also intrigued (the bar name also used to be commonly used as a pejorative term in American culture). That night with them ended up being really fun, and conversing with the both of them was a blast. Bartending at the gay bar was a great experience, but I often had shifts were I just felt frustrated and down about life, not understanding why I was having such a hard time finding a job I really wanted. That's why when they even graciously left me a really nice tip, it totally made my day because typically in Korean culture, tipping is not a norm at all. We exchanged emails and I thanked them again so much for coming in as they left later that night. Meeting them at work had been such a refreshing breath of air for me, and I was so humbled by how nice they were.
Less than five months later, I was living in Thailand and went to the capital of Laos for my first-ever visa run. This was after my first 2-month visa had expired, and I went to Vientiane to acquire a new one at the Thai embassy there. This was the closest and most affordable-to-get-to Thai embassy from Bangkok, and getting there required an overnight bus or train to Nong Khai before crossing over into Laos.
On my first and only day of the trip, I wandered around Vientiane as I waited for my passport and visa to get processed. At one point, I am walking on a street along a big road when I see the same American couple from that night at work in Seoul walking towards me. We immediately say hi, and even took a picture together because we couldn't believe our luck. Out of all of the places to be on the planet at that very moment, we somehow ended up at the same exact spot in Laos together.
Who knows, maybe we will all somehow cross paths again. Fate is a crazy thing.
Tuesday, November 11, 2014
I've always been the type of person to hold stuff in, letting things internalize in my head and then eventually rot inside me as my overthinking and analysis covered it with an impenetrable shell. The thing is, this process does not feel good at all. In fact, it can feel quite terrible. These cannonballs of emotion take a heavy toll both physically and emotionally, and because I'm not quite good at expressing myself verbally, putting things into words on paper---or the blinking cursor on a computer---has always been extremely cathartic. To me, writing is the opposite of talking because it's not just about expressing yourself in the moment of now, but having the ability to really think about what I want to say and how I want to say it in order to convey a methodical truth instead of a fleeting emotion. With all of that said, I should be writing a lot more honestly on this blog like I used to. Not an hour goes by in my day where some thoughts I need to express and let out here on my blog pops into my head, but I just let it float away. I should be grabbing these transient thoughts to turn them into something I can write about, but I haven't been doing that for a long time now. A part of it was because I had been looking for a new job, and I didn't want my honesty to be interpreted as a high-enough level of crazy to keep me from getting hired somewhere. But I feel like I did myself a disservice by doing that, because in reality this is who I am and no non-existent job (or anything for that matter) should ever hinder me. All of that behavior is related to my anxiety, and the crazy wheels that start spinning in my head when I feel like I need to predict what the most terrible situation of something could be in order to prepare myself to battle its consequences. If I am comfortable with someone, it's such a relief to just be myself and go with the flow. But I usually don't feel totally comfortable around a lot of people, and of course that's more my problem than theirs. It's like at my last job, my boss would joke that I'm too uptight but in reality all that stems from the fact that I want to accomplish whatever I'm doing in the most efficient and correct way possible because I don't want to deal with the aftermath of fucking up. Anyone who's never met me and is reading this must think I'm an anal nutjob, but I really don't think I am. I just tend to observe and soak things in more, that's all. We can't all be loudmouths who love to talk, right? This past Saturday night I went to a bar in the East Village with some friends and there were two people there who I didn't know very well. But we all just drank boilermakers and talked for hours in the comforts of a leather booth, and I couldn't remember the last time I had felt so free and absolutely at ease in front of people who weren't super close friends. It had been so long since I felt that that the next day, all I could think about was why can't I feel like that all the time? Why can't I just let go and chill out and join in on the conversation? There's a reason why I hate hanging out in large groups and big crowds. Spending time with someone one-on-one just always suited me better, and I like being able to immerse myself in the company that I'm in. Sometimes I just get so used to listening and observing that it's mistakenly perceived as so many other things. In all my travels while I was living alone in Thailand and went on many trips to nearby cities and countries, there were rarely any times where I made small talk or had a conversation with a stranger. And I traveled a lot! Actually there was one time in Laos where I kept running into the same old man in the streets of Vientiane and asked to take a picture of him, but there weren't many more. I guess what I'm trying to say with all of this is, since I'm not chatty by nature, I should at least be releasing my thoughts into the written word. Or if I'm not going to write as much as I should, I should be out meeting new people and shooting the shit. Just always being along with my thoughts and a joint isn't always going to cut it. Even at 31, I'm still learning how to break out of my shell. It's late in the night and I can't sleep and don't know where I am going with this entry, and that's okay. As long as I'm being unreservedly honest with myself, I think I'll be alright...
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
i'm just about to head out of my apartment in order to go to the hua lamphong train station.
in a few hours, i'll be boarding a train for a 22 hour journey to malaysia. i believe flying to penang from bangkok should take somewhere around an hour, but since i'm perpetually on a budget, i am opting to take the old-school train instead. while being stuck on a train alone for almost a full day as it travels through southeast asia isn't the most exciting way to get to my destination, i'm pretty sure this is the first and last time i'm doing this, so i'm looking forward to the experience (being broke makes you do crazy things).
i'm going to penang, malaysia, in order to acquire a new visa because i've already been to laos and cambodia countless times. i'm actually super excited to get away from bangkok for a bit, and can't wait to wander and explore as much as possible.
anyway, have a good week and please send me some positive energy to keep me safe throughout my travels.
in a few hours, i'll be boarding a train for a 22 hour journey to malaysia. i believe flying to penang from bangkok should take somewhere around an hour, but since i'm perpetually on a budget, i am opting to take the old-school train instead. while being stuck on a train alone for almost a full day as it travels through southeast asia isn't the most exciting way to get to my destination, i'm pretty sure this is the first and last time i'm doing this, so i'm looking forward to the experience (being broke makes you do crazy things).
i'm going to penang, malaysia, in order to acquire a new visa because i've already been to laos and cambodia countless times. i'm actually super excited to get away from bangkok for a bit, and can't wait to wander and explore as much as possible.
anyway, have a good week and please send me some positive energy to keep me safe throughout my travels.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
laos was tons of fun, but it feels really good to be back in bangkok.
this was my third trip to laos, and i'm so happy and grateful that my friend jaeyang decided to come along with me because if he hadn't, i would've been bored out of my mind. from the time we departed bangkok until the point we returned, our excursion was only about 80 hours or so, but we spent over 30 of those hours in transit. in addition to checking out the laos capital of vientiane, we also went to a popular spot called vangvieng. vangvieng is about a 3-4 hour bus ride from the capital and if i had only one word to sum up our time there, all i can say is WOWWWWW.
this was my third trip to laos, and i'm so happy and grateful that my friend jaeyang decided to come along with me because if he hadn't, i would've been bored out of my mind. from the time we departed bangkok until the point we returned, our excursion was only about 80 hours or so, but we spent over 30 of those hours in transit. in addition to checking out the laos capital of vientiane, we also went to a popular spot called vangvieng. vangvieng is about a 3-4 hour bus ride from the capital and if i had only one word to sum up our time there, all i can say is WOWWWWW.
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