Sun Coast Sun Kissed Some Kind of Happiness

It's Friday where I am, sitting at a high table in a cafe at an airport right now, in transit somewhere in the great wide small large world. I've spent this whole last week in transit, this whole last month, several months--year, really. What a year! But this is not a new years reflection.

This past week I have enjoyed the warm and sunny weather of Florida--a nice change from the snow I left behind, and no doubt a cruel change to the snow falling steadily and piling up on my car for my return home. A welcome nonetheless, though. 

I love airports; I realise I have made this statement before, and it surely will not be the last time. But really I do just love them. And I love the people I got to see on this Florida trip; friends I unexpectedly found out were in the area, childhood friends who live here, school fellows through a soccer match,  new acquaintances through business meetings, and completely delightful strangers.  

I spent hours in a cute little car my favourite shade of bright blue driving around the state, over huge bridges with towers like the sails of a ship, across marshlands, past Disney, by grove after organge grove, around fields and fields of cows--more cows here than in NY!--where old large trees stretched out their limbs languidly in the heat and covered themsevlves in drapes of grey moss falling down to meet the drying grass. So many different sights of beautiful. And even when I found myself despising the endless stretches of flat I rolled into wavy planes and found small small hills to smile in again. 

Sea sponge, fisherman's warves, eating Greek food. Blue water sparkling everywhere. 

I didnt go to Disney when I was near, didn't go because I hadn't the time to spare. Because I can't imagine doing Disney on one's own--you need a group to laugh with for an experience like that. I didn't do Disney because they advertised "come enjoy the most spectacular experience in the world," and maybe I'm a snob or maybe I'm just incredibly ignorant, but I can't imagine that the most spectacular experiences in the world will be found in an amusment park or in simulated adventures. I like to think that my own completely ordinary day to day moment to moment experiences are spectacular, and that I have done and seen and touched and tasted and shared in some of the most wonderful and inimitable experienes in the world and they were part of real life, not a place of pretend that is outside of reality. (And don't get me wrong. I LOVE movies and films and Harry Potter world and I would love to go fly a broom and drink pumpkin juice and have a try at Hogwarts--in UK--and all of that. I just don't think that it should be chalked up as the single most spectacular and life changing dream come true kind of thing... Though maybe it is. I don't know.)

But all that being said, I think I had a pretty fantastic experience even with some deeply frustrating moments strewn in. This morning before heading to the airport, I ran to the beach. (Shock, I know) And it was so beautiful to walk on the fragile broken rainbow of shells in the soft white powder sand along the gulf and look out and think how perfect. How perfect. And how happy I am to have seen the ocean this year from shore to shore to shore to shore to shore. So much. So happy.

Now comes it that November ends and tomorrow begins December, a month where seeing magic is so easy. A month where I'm going to be just as busy!! And I'm terribly excited to see how it goes. 

Making a Splash in the Gulf of Thailand

I hardly know where to begin; so much has happened in the (short?) time since last I wrote. My time in Hua-Hin completed quite nicely the unforgettableness that this trip has consisted of. Perhaps the best way to describe my experience there is to say it was pregnant with the unexpected and very, very full. 

We rose early on Tuesday morning after an absolutely beautiful deep sleep on my part, at last, and readied ourselves for the first portion of the morning: horseback riding on the beach at 8 a.m. In advance of that, we went to this adorable little coffee shop on the corner of our street--both of us being slightly less than awake in mornings before some strong coffee. 

One of the interesting things there is that before entering any of these buildings (our hotel included), you have to take off your shoes. You just leave them out on the sidewalk or on the terrace before entering. May I say, eating barefoot in an open-air restaurant is absolutely refreshing?

After wolfing down our breakfast (I was determined to arrive at the beach in good time for the horses), we walked to the beach and then down along the water in search of the horses. It was overcast--the sky and sea both the same shade of cloudy grey--and the horses were much farther down the beach than we had believed. They also did not com out at 8--we had received misinformation there. So, in the time we had to pass til 9, we wandered through the waking market place just off the beach, explored a bookstore, and picked up some water. (My most perpetual state these last 2.5 weeks has been of endless thirst.)

They were waiting for me with a horse when we returned to the beach, Candace having decided the previous evening to be prudent and not ride. Now, here I might note that I *thought* at the time I had not ridden since I was 12 years old--a time when the girl behind me was nearly thrown from her mount on our trail ride and then carried madly into the woods, all at the provocation of the horse behind her, who then began to annoy my mount before being controlled at last. As I recalled while riding on the beach, though; I have actually ridden a horse once since, just before my 3rd year in uni. That was in West Virginia, where I discovered riding a horse along a ravine while being unable to sit well in the saddle due to a sprained ankle is not the best life choice. So really, all that to say, I am not much of a horsewoman. 

That was fine, my lack of skill, until Candace, being a fine horsewoman, decided to ride after all. Due to her mad skills, the horse people gave us free reign of the horses and the beach--we were quite on our own. No trail ride, no guide, no thing. Just us, horses, and beach. Me alone on a horse... 

I had visions of being able to gallop along the sea--visions that, if you have ever seen the movie "Second Hand Lions," you can draw up in your own mind as well. I am not so foolish as to actually think that I, with no skills, could ride like that. The horse, however, didn't know this about me. So after a very pleasant walk down the beach, it trotted me (oh the jostling!!) and then cantered back up the beach. Exhilarating, but terrifying. But definitely exhilarating and absolutely awesome. 

After dismounting, we went back into the market to find a way back to Bangkok for me. The ladies at the hotel reception the previous evening had told us of a vanservice we could find that would take me. We must have inquired of at least 5 different people before finding it, but we did succeed in arranging for them to pick me up at our hotel at 3 PM. They would get me to some place in the city and from there I would catch a taxi to the airport--all with extra time built in for some crazy delay or breaking down.

Getting to the airport on time was the most stressful part of the entire 2.5 weeks, actually. Not having a phone, not having any sort of device that even could get online, and not speaking the language were all factors enough here... Not being particularly inspired by our train-rides to trust Thai-time as operating anywhere near according to my needs or desires was another. But in fact, it was made even more stressful by my going to the beach at all--a choice which involved missing a flight. You don't deliberately miss your flights. But we made our beach plans after I had bought a ticket, and that ticket left me in Chiang Mai until the 3rd, flying from there straight to Bangkok to London to JFK to home. If you just skip a flight, they often cancel your following flights. I had asked my travel agent beforehand if this would be alright and they wouldn't cancel on me, and he said it "should be fine." Not "will" be fine, but "should" be. So I also had that nagging question in my mind--what if it wasn't fine? Getting to the airport and checking in would be such a relief to that question which could only be answered at that last minute. 

After settling my return trip to the city, which we trusted would actually only take 3 hours instead of the 6 it took via train, we rented a scooter and rode around the city a little before returning to our hotel to change for swimming. There, I tried my first time driving a scooter--very fun! And driving British style, at that. First time legally (I may or may not have driven that way in the States when first learning to drive...Oops.) It was so natural, I later dreamt that I would crash at the airport back in the States for forgetting which side and doing it wrong.

By the time we arrived to the beach, the rain had stopped and the clouds begun to dissipate. It was beautiful. The water was not nearly so clear as the Caribbean, but it certainly was warm. I think I could have stayed in it all day. It was so calm you could float without your face getting splashed by water, too, and for the longest time we had it all to ourselves excepting the fishing boats nearby and some navy boats further out.

Of course, a walk along the beach looking for shells and interesting sea things was necessary, so we did enjoy a nice walk again, only to run back into the water shortly after. Alas... We were lounging luxuriously in the water when all of a sudden Candace yelped--she'd been stung on the arm by a jellyfish and it burned horibbly. Thus abruptly ended my sea-time. But we got her taken care of back at the hotel and then had a delicous lunch (shrimp in tamarin sauce for me, followed by crepes for dessert) and then packing me up to leave.

The 3pm arranged van never showed up, and I realised anew how much I hate trusting my future to others and not having any hand in it at all. We finally just took my things, got a tuk-tuk and took that to a station downtown that was also a van shuttle service--a much more reliable one, it seems. So I took a van an hour later, leaving at 4 instead of 3, back to Bangkok by myself. I fell in with a group of recent graduates from Hong-Kong who had come to celebrate their graduation together, and we enjoyed talking and navigating our way through the Bangkok subway system together before parting ways when I left them to take the sky train to the airport.

My 2nd impressions of Bangkok were much more favourable. This time around I actually got to see the built up, awesome, and almost ridiculously modern section of the city--skyscrapers and beautiful bridges and all! It was gorgeous. I really enjoyed the van ride through over the train ride, as well--entirely different perspective. I chose not to take a taxi because I was so completely done with feeling helpless and having to trust myself to others--taking the subway and then the sky train was tiresome with all the bags, and super crowded, but so rewarding to fight and find my own way through and arrive successfully on my own at the airport at last.

12 hour flight to London left at midnight... I stayed awake for a whole movie (most excellent: "The Exotic Marigold Hotel" or something like that) and then slept for a solid 8 hours at least. There was even an empty seat next to me, so I felt quite spoilt. We got stuck on the plane in London, however--their gang-plank to the airplane wasn't working, and it took a long time for them to relocate steps over to our plane to get us off. I had to run through the airport in order to make my next flight, even with being shortcutted by the airport staff through all the lines.

7 hour flight to JFK was still good, though perhaps a bit less. I wasn't overly fond of my seat-fellow, who felt that he had priority to the entire armrest and over onto my side, kept messing up my tv channels, and kept putting his feet on my side as well. Happily for me, his chair didn't lay back, so he ended up moving to another seat for all but the last remain 30 minutes of the flight, and I again had an empty seat next to me. I also watched another most excellent film--"Salmon Fishing in the Yemen" as well as a rom-com to keep awake.

Which I still am. Despite having to go through immigration and security in JFK, check myself in for the next flight in a different terminal, wait, fly again, and then drive the remaining 1.5 hours home. I calculated that the entire trip--from leaving at 4 pm in Thailand to arriving home, took between 36 and 40 hours. I had it worked out exactly, but I might be a bit exhausted right now. Which means it is time for me to sign out. More tomorrow!

Overdue Post #1: London to Bangkok--Airport Musings

(written down and spit right back to you now at last, despite posts in the meanwhile. please pardon any repetition or confusion of the apparently sick writer of this near-week-old-post!)

After a very long time in motion, I have arrived in Thailand. I'm not sure I can say forward motion, since movement in a direction seems tied to time, and time is out with me right now. Currently waitng for my next flight from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, by the time anyone reads this I will have been travelling in airports and via planes for 24 hours.

I'm excited to be here in Thailand. It was always the most hyped-up last minute weekend away deal you would see plastered on all Bratislava's travel agent store-front windows. It looked so very inviting every time.  Of course, most of those adverts were the beach, not Northern Thailand, with its valleys and mountains and no sea at all. 

But there we come to something I've been thinking again about. I say again because this thought is neither a new thought to myself nor the first time I've shared it, though perhaps the first time in the forum of this particular blog. 

Place isn't really choosy, so to speak. It invites anyone. Some places draw more people than others, especially some unvoiced thing inside them. Other places draw only a few, but those few are come with the call of the place clamoring in the very core of their being. 

It doesn't make pretense, either; place simply is what it is, though it may perhaps not be what we had preconceived (a fault on us, not it). You can be absorbed into a place, grow green or brown or whatever shade predominates. Sometimes we say it claims its tribute of us--perhaps a climbing accident if you are of the mountains, or drowning if you are of the Sea: the completion of your absorption into place. 

When my sister and I returned to Slovakia, we sought to see the place itself. The place that called to us, pulling at our hearts from so very far away. A far away which seemed so often insurmountable. We sought to taste, touch, breathe, feel--to smell it, to assure ourselves it still was itself; to assure ourselves it still welcomed us despite the distance stretched so long between us--unwelcome shadow. You can stay in touch with friends easily now in this day and age; a goodbye to a friend no longer need be the death of that friend to yourself; but a goodbye to a country, to a place is still something like a death because you cannot facebook it, skype it, email it, or meet up randomly with it except to go home again to it. To seek it out as we did on this trip. Sometimes even without all these forms of communication which can almost suffocate us now, you still "now" and you can still "pick right back up" with some friends without the slightest ripple. 

Ripple. And there it is--the catch. Because people and place aren't isolated from each other, or from time. So while we returned to place that welcomed us home and could keep us again if we would; where we had lived before was in a particular space--an intersection of people, place, and time opening into our place of reality (which again was slightly different for us both as a result of our being individual beings already). This could not be revisited; cannot ever be revisited (unless you are dating Dr. Who...)

Returning releases us from the power of that space; we are no longer tied to it in the same way but are free now to make of that space--as well as the place and people of today, the moment we visited--whatever we would. That is the gift of closure.

The dificulty with people in a place is they haven't usually invited you... you simply showed up on their doorstep and said "surprise!" When we move to a place--any place--we should never expect its welcome to include automatic enrollment in the community, in Society. We are the newcomers, foreigners. Those who have yet to build and to establish trust. And as people ourselves, we must also learn to trust those around us. 

People are so much harder than place to establish yourself into. But when you do; people are portable. Build your world into people and people into your world, and you will find home wherever they are, too. 

Departures and Welcomes

Greetings! I have made it safe and sound and happily to Chiang Mai, Thailand! I'm so happy. After a beautiful afternoon visiting my family (I'm not even going to put those familial terms in apostrophes because apparently it was believed for a whole year I was indeed adopted by them!) in Vienna again and a lovely homecoming to there, I had the pleasure of being driven to the airport and seen off. It was a perfect circle; welcomed home by my sister the week before; sent off with love by my brother.

I don't like goodbyes, but I love the hellos that we carry for each other in our hearts.

Now I have been greeted by such love again from dear friends at the airport in Chiang Mai. I've never been here before--never been on this continent at all before--and it still felt like a homecoming.

I love that.

It was, for the record, a good trip. Long, but good. I calculated spending 24 solid hours in the transition.  But I slept on the plane and enjoyed the people around me and the food and the airports and didn't feel too sick. I felt funny slipping my tylenol on the plane and dropping my fizzy vitamin into the water. hahaha.

Ah, and what I found hilarious on the plane--the british pilot told us all "I'm sorry to say it's horribly hot in Thailand right now, about 32 degrees or 91 if you prefer F." It has been about 36-38 degrees in Slovakia almost all week! :)

Ok. Must. Sleep!!