Complete Archives | Previous | Next

Stranger in a Strange Land Newsletter: August 2006

Dear Readers:
I just flew from Bangkok to Boston and boy are my arms tired! Okay,that's not entirely accurate. I've actually been back home for a few months and it really gets you more in the pectorals than the actual arms... After my last newsletter I ended-up spending another week in Vientiane, the capital of Laos, hanging-out with a cool family friend from Boston who had also been travelling around Asia for several months. He introduced me to a lovely Laotian family who ran a restaurant right next to our guest house and we had some good time with. Then I went back to Bangkok to stay once again with my friend Daryl and hang-out with him, Wes, and other Canadian and Thai friends. It was hard to bring myself to leave because I was still enjoying my travels, but I was happy to come home and I've enjoyed my time. People still ask me, "So, you planning on going anywhere anytime soon?" And actually, I'm not. I imagine I'll be around for awhile. And for anyone still interested I'll try to address once again my issues with the truly beautiful and strange country of Japan at the bottom of this newsletter. But first Laos!

They call Laos the "Jewel of the Mekong." The Mekong is the great river in Laos and I would say the best part of Laos is its rivers. I had the chance to swim in the Mekong, the Ou River, and a couple small rivers in the mountains and it was wonderful. It was also a great experience to watch people working and playing on the river as I went down it with other travellers on a little flat-bottom boat. Children and adults would give enthusiastic friendly waves, with big smiles and we did the same back, though we grew less enthusiastic toward the end of our four hour journey on a cramped boat. And in Nong Kiaw, a town where I spent much of my time and met a lot of travellers, I would see people washing their clothes, bathing in the river, and of course kids playing. All along the Ou there are mountains on each side of the river and in Nong Kiaw there was an especially beautiful sight standing on the bridge looking up the river and up the mountains as their green slopes climbed the sky.

My travel in Laos consisted of a few places in the north: Vientiane, the capital, Vang Vieng, the backpackers capital, Luang Probang, the culture capital, and Nong Kiaw and Mung Ngoi small and smaller towns on the Ou River in the mountains. I met some interesting travellers in Laos, many of them had quit serious jobs and decided to start
travelling the world. Fernando from Brazil had even been advising companies on sustainable development before he decided to take a break and start travelling. He was a great guy to travel with along with a bunch of other people in the group. He had some very valuable insights on people as well as sustainable development. I should have listened to Fernando more... His observations about sustainable development were
especially interesting being there in Laos as it was changing and "developing" so rapidly (who knows what it was developing, but it was developing something). The locals in Laos seemed very nice but I wish I had gotten to know them more. Unfortunately, the difference in wealth
created a big barrier between Laotian people and us relatively wealthy travelers.

In Laos, a little in Thailand, and a lot in Cambodia from what I hear, people, especially small children, will come up to you and beg for
money. I felt a mixture of strong feelings every time this happened depending on the situation. Some people say it's a bad idea to give out money because people begin to rely on begging and sometimes people really are swindling you. Ultimately, I said to myself, "These Laotian people are intelligent, creative people and they'll be okay whether I give them money or not. Many of them are good looking too, except this
guy in front of me begging for money. Even if you are making a sad, ugly face to manipulate me with pity, you deserve some money. Oi. Here's 5000 kip (about 0.50 American dollars or 0.05 Euro)." If someone asks me for something and I can spare to give it to them, then part of me says, "Why not give them what they want?" Other times people would seem really friendly and helpful but were really trying to trick other travellers and me into giving them money and then I had no desire to do give them anything. It was often upsetting. It's not fun when someone looks at you, just sees money, and will do the most ridiculous things to get it. But it seems in the tourist centers people are most anxious to get money from you. The little I went to the more remote areas, people seemed more to tolerate and be amused by my and other
foreigners' presence than anxious to get money from us. Those people were nice, but they spoke no English, so it was difficult to communicate. I said, "Hello," "What's your name?" and "How old are you?" in Lao and with the help of gestures we were able to communicate and make a little bit of a connection there in a remote village in the
mountains of Laos. That was very nice.

That was as far as I went in Southeast Asia. After that I backtracked all the way to Bangkok and when I arrived it was the beginning of Songkran the Thai New Year. It started a long time ago as a ritual of pouring water on the Buddha statue and on elders as a sign of respect and gratitude (it's a hot climate, you'd think it was respectful if you grew up there too) but has turned into an all out water fight. Basically everyone goes around throwing water at each other and smearing each others faces with clay for a few days in April. It's a lot of fun but can get chaotic and unpleasant with no real hope of people listening to, "No, please stop!" Generally, I had fun in Bangkok again and enjoyed the last couple weeks of my travels. There was one time Daryl, Wes, and I ate bugs, scorpions, and what looked like maggots with some Thai girls. One of the girls insisted that it's gross to eat scorpions but she really likes the maggots. I thought none of them had much flavor but some had interesting texture. The maggots' texture was strange, soft and then a LITTLE crunchy inside, and they had an odd aftertaste. I think I preferred the crunchy scorpions myself.

I've got one more important thing to warn you about when travelling in Southeast Asia. In some places, not in most places but in some, not only is the toilet a porcelain hole in the ground that you squat over, but the only thing you have to clean yourself with is a bucket of water. I half asked a fellow westerner what I was supposed to do, half checked to see if what I had already done was appropriate, and she said, "Yeah, you have to splash yourself with the water." But I disagree, you can't just splash water at the problem, in fact that's probably going to make it worse. You have to go the problem, be willing to get your hands dirty, and get the job done. And you should note that's why it's taboo in many cultures to offer anything with your left hand. In most places in Laos and Thailand they actually have a spray
nozzle that works quite well and keeps your hands clean. If you've got toilet paper to dry up with afterwards, you're golden, otherwise you are walking around with a wet butt for a little while.

Well, I hope this has all been very helpful, interesting, perhaps amusing or even enlightening. I'm going to get all serious when I talk about Japan below, but thank you for reading thus far. Feel free to write back with any questions or what not. Have a great summer.

Yours truly,
Eli


My issues with Japan center around a certain Japanese word: "gambarimasu." Or more accurately and more widespread in its imperative form: "gambatte." People often translate it as meaning "Good luck" or "Do your best," which fits the contexts in which it is used but doesn't fit the spirit of the word. As I understand it, the literal meaning translates as, "Be strong under the strain" and I believe this captures not only the spirit of that word, but of the Japanese people to a large extent. Japanese people are strong and they value that quality. They value the ability to feel a powerful emotion running through them but to keep strong, serene, or cheerful, on the surface, whatever is appropriate for the situation; or to be extremely tired and yet continue working hard (often with the help of lots of energy drinks). They value the ability to want to say something but to hold ones tongue anyway; or the ability to say something apparently genuinely even if it's not their true feeling. It wasn't until recently that I began to actually admire this. There is value in having these strengths, and I certainly haven't placed enough value on them myself. There are times when it's best to do something one does not want to do, or talk and act differently than one really feels. There are times when one feels so exhausted and yet, one would do best to keep going anyway. As I said, I began recently to admire these strengths more. There are really times when this strength is needed.

At the same time it seems to me that Japanese people are almost always operating under this strain, always "gambarimasu." They so value the ability to endure that they may not wonder enough about whether or not it is best for them to do so. As a long distance runner in high school I learned that there is a limit to how much you can push your body in training. It's good to train hard but after a certain point you aren't making yourself stronger, you're making yourself weaker and in the end you won't be able to perform as well as you ultimately could. Maybe the important questions are: How much can you endure? How much do you want
to endure? and Are you gaining enough or anything from enduring all of this in the first place? In the end I don't know the answer to any of these questions for a particular person in a particular situation. We don't know how strong someone's spirit is or the lessons they may need to learn. But there seems to be a lot of suffering Japanese people put themselves through that is unnecessary. And even if someone's spirit is strong it's all the more reason that it's sad to see it get hurt or weaken under the strain.

I just hope that Japanese people have the strength to sometimes not use their strength. At work, with their family, and in social interaction they work too hard. Really. I hope I don't seem like I'm attacking, I value Japan's beauty, it's history, and some good food. It just made me upset to hear first hand about how much overtime some people were putting in at work for no extra pay. It seems fairly common that some people work from 9am-10pm only to go to the gym late to let off some steam and then get up the next morning to do it all over again. Don't get me started on the young children. And the women are famous for enduring a subservient role, though that has been changing over time. Though I'm not saying Japanese people can't have fun. That's pretty clear they can, I've been happy to observe and benefit from that fact. And in the end I guess that means they'll be alright.