Thailand’s Quiet Island
I have a place where I can go, where the sound of silence is interrupted only by the buzzing of fish jaws munching on their coral lunch. Following the flow of the water, I pass giant white boulders and seaweed gardens, hovering above mauve coloured coral; bulbous mounds that resemble swollen brains. I get lost in this landscape of undulations and crevices, where, floating above fish homes, I feel like a guest – peering in, uninvited – more than I feel fear. Below me, and as far as I can see, are cities of rock and coral guarded by urchins of hypnotising beauty, with shiny black needles – porcupine pom-poms – protecting pearlescent blue beads.
This underwater world – a pocket of water in the vast Gulf of Thailand – was where I happily spent day after day in the ocean. Staggering sideways from the sea in flippers, I emerged onto an island that was, to me, serenity itself: Koh Mak, a retreat from noise and bustle, and from the mass tourism that has overwhelmed so many Thai islands. For me, it was also a retreat into rare moments of beauty, and into myself, where silence was the sound of the water curling its way up the sand. Each morning, I woke from soothing dreams and, with the smell of salt in my nostrils, walked across a patch of lawn and straight into the sea, a new day ahead of me. As the days went by and the sun imprinted itself on my skin, I began to slip further and further into a state of relaxation I’d never known before. I breathed this island with every breath and fell deeply in love with its calm. Continue reading Thailand’s Quiet Island»
Songkran Festival in Bangkok
With only serendipity to thank, Iain and I have chanced upon a handful of Asia’s most remarkable festivals. We arrived in Trivandrum, India’s southernmost city, to find the world’s largest gathering of women boiling rice pudding on fires lit in the streets. We celebrated Holi, India’s Festival of Colours, amongst the ruins of the former Vijayanagara Empire, where we were so thoroughly coated in coloured powder and paint that our eyes blinked white against a mess of purple, pink and blue that covered our faces and hair completely. In China, we were invited to spend Spring Festival in a remote village in Jiangxi, where we drank homemade rice wine against the cold, but declined to eat the family dog. In April this year, we chanced upon Songkran, the Thai New Year festival, while in Bangkok. Also known as the Water Festival, Songkran’s three day water fights rivalled the mayhem of Holi.
Songkran is not unlike Holi: its origins are religious, and its modern day incarnation involves water, paint and intoxicants. Songkran is celebrated across Thailand, and the three day long public holiday often turns into a week-long event, particularly in the northern city of Chiangmai. Many Thais travel back to their hometown for the festival, where they may celebrate in a more traditional manner: by visiting a temple to witness images of Buddha being ritually bathed in fragrant water, and sprinkling – not pouring – water on their elders to bring them good fortune. Continue reading Songkran Festival in Bangkok»
A Letter from Thailand
When I found Letters from Thailand in a jumble of second hand books, amongst translations of best selling thrillers and trashy romances discarded at the end of a beach holiday, I didn’t notice A NOVEL printed in thin, white letters on its cover. It was a dull cover, of Chinese sweets stacked on red silk, and the title of the book, in yellow, with the first word italicised, the second in low-caps and the third in caps – Letters from THAILAND – distracted me. I turned straight to the prologue, which was tragic and – I assumed – true.
The prologue described how a series of letters, written by a businessman in Bangkok to his mother in China, arrived on the desk of General Sala Sinthuthawat of the Thai police. It was written by the general – or so I thought – and his elegant introduction, which warned that Thais might sometimes find the book insulting, but never boring, gave me a respect for Thailand’s police force that probably wasn’t justified.
In 1967, a defector from the Chinese Communist Party, employed as a censor in Shanghai, arrived in Bangkok with a collection of other people’s private letters, which were, he said, his chief form of relaxation. The censor had started life and his habit of letter collecting as a mailman in rural China. The Bangkok businessman’s village, called Po Leng, was on his route and for some reason – perhaps because it contained money – the censor opened the son’s first letter to his mother, written in 1945 aboard a ship to Thailand. The son had left Po Leng at night, in secret; he placed a scribbled farewell note on the kitchen table on his way out – and the first letter, when I read it, was a mixture of remorse and excitement at the prospect of a new and maybe successful life outside of war-torn China. The censor didn’t deliver the letter, and through every promotion and every move, he made sure that he received the 95 that followed – and that the businessman’s mother, who must have thought herself abandoned by an ungrateful son, received none of these letters from Thailand. Continue reading A Letter from Thailand»
Writer in Transit
I don’t have a single journal entry about my three months in India. I didn’t write anything about my time there, except for a post about the dancer that didn’t dance, in a Bombay beer bar. The scene – a slice out of a furtive, alternative reality, swallowed up in Mumbai’s underworld – spoke to me, forming sentences in my head. But those brief moments of inspiration stood alone.
It wasn’t India that sucked all inspiration out of me; India has a habit of giving and taking in equal proportions. During my first few days in Mumbai, I was alive; I looked on the world with the open-eyed gaze of a traveller. I was experiencing a temporary – but intense – release of stress, having packed up my life in Shanghai. The last year had been the busiest period of my life to date: writing a book, teaching English to business people and studying Mandarin at a local college. Then came the great packing sessions – two of them. The first, just a few months before I left the country, was a move from the apartment where we had spent almost three years, into a much smaller space. When I left the smaller apartment – and Shanghai, for good – Iain was visiting family in South Africa. I packed up on my own, feeling completely overwhelmed, while working and tying up loose ends that appeared out of nowhere, as well as making last minute preparations for our trip. The visas and international bank accounts and immunisations were all forced to wait until the very last minute, when I ran around the city in the snow like a rare and ridiculous juggling act.
From the moment I walked out of the arrivals hall, India began to seep into my very being. I was immediately hit by that hot, tropical smell, infused with spices. The unruly trees and fleshy-leaved plants, the fragrant smoke from incense floating through the city, the frying cumin and the boiling cardamom: they all made my senses soar as I breathed in the warmth of a place that affects me like no other. Continue reading Writer in Transit»
The Curse of Gokarna
Proceeding next to Gokarna celebrated over the three worlds, and which is situated, O best of kings, in the midst of the deep, and is reverenced by all the worlds, and where the gods headed by Brahma, and Rishis endued with wealth of asceticism, and spirits and Yakshas and Pisachas…worship the lord of Uma, one should worship Isana, fasting there for three nights. By this, one acquireth the merit of the horse-sacrifice, and the status of Ganapatya. By staying there for twelve nights, one’s soul is cleansed of all sins.
From The Mahabharata, written between 400 and 100 BCE
Part I: Arrival
Gokarna is a village growing awkwardly and uncomfortably into a town. It is in this sense an adolescent, unsure of itself in the modern world, but in every other sense Gokarna is old, with a history that stretches into the remotest parts of human memory. For most of this time, it has been a village of fishermen and farmers with a single distinction: a temple that is believed to contain the soul of Shiva. But India has entered a period of rapid change, and Gokarna is being pulled along with it.
Two thousand years ago, monsoon winds blew Roman trading ships across the Arabian Sea to the nearby port of Muziris, lost to history until 2006, and Indians have encountered foreign ideas and people along the Malabar Coast – the strip of tropical coastline that stretches south from Goa to Kanyakumari, at India’s tip – ever since. Christianity found its first Indian converts here in 52 CE. Jews fleeing the destruction of Jerusalem arrived in 70 CE. Islamic merchants brought news of their prophet in the seventh century, and Portugal established its trading posts at points along the Malabar Coast after Europeans first rounded the Cape. Continue reading The Curse of Gokarna»
Dawn on the Ganges
Sunrise and sunset are when the Ganges is most magical and most alive, with activity and with ceremony. Varanasi’s intense heat hasn’t yet descended on the city; neither have the people who rely on the river’s draw to make a living. Sunrise and sunset are characterised by Hindus flocking to the river’s edge to undergo ritual washing, to make offerings, and to worship in an endless variety of ways. I doubt I will tire of sunrise on the Ganges any time soon; this was my third visit to Varanasi and, as I soaked up the sights and sounds, scribbling into my notebook, I knew that it would only be so long before I returned. These are the notes I took from the time the first light of day arrived, until around 10 o’clock later that morning. Some of the photos that Iain took during our visits are slotted in between my notes, with an only vague sense of order. I hope the notes and photos capture enough of the atmosphere to entice you into making the pilgrimage yourself. Continue reading Dawn on the Ganges»
Bubbling Over
Trivandrum was winding down as I stumbled along a stony road, dazed, back to an empty room. Burnt objects were discarded on the ground, bricks were scattered randomly about. It looked as if the city had been subject to some form of warfare. The smell of smoke was strong and little flakes of ash floated down through the air. Drum beats, trumpets and shouting voices rang in my ears as I gradually moved back towards the city centre in a current of hundreds of other people. The sun and the sounds and the smoke of the day had left everyone exhausted; we all shuffled along amidst the day’s debris. I’d endured the sting of heavy smoke; my eyes had burned to see this world. And what felt like a mirage still drifted past me, but the colours and images were slower moving than at the climax of the afternoon. It had been an assault on the senses that can only happen in India, and I was still coming to the realisation that I had been witness to a rare and extraordinary spectacle.
Every year in India’s southernmost city, millions of women build millions of fires in the open street and cook a pot of rice on the flames. They travel to the city on slow trains or local buses crammed full, spend days guarding the bricks on which their fire will burn and, during a long day of sweltering heat and crowds and noise, remind the city of their strength and devotion, to both their families and Attukal Devi, the goddess to whom the Attukal Pongala Festival is dedicated. It is their belief in her powers – to bless, to help and to heal – that once a year transforms Trivandrum. Continue reading Bubbling Over»
Varanasi’s Doorways
Mark Twain visited Varanasi in 1895, while following the equator around the world. “Benares” he wrote, referring to the city by its Raj era name, “is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together.” Twain was almost right. Varanasi is old – older perhaps than any other city still inhabited by man – but the close, cluttered alleyways near the river, which Twain thought looked older than history, tradition and legend combined, have only taken shape over the last few hundred years. India’s Islamic rulers razed the city’s temples and persecuted its residents, culminating in the demolition of its holiest temple, Kashi Vishwanath, on the orders of Aurangzeb – last of the great Mughals – at the end of the seventeenth century. And yet, in the old city’s rhythms and its connection to the Ganges River, in its cobbled streets with roaming cows and its excess of mouldering shrines, there remain traces of the city established here three or four thousand years ago by the Aryans, when they first arrived in India.
Varanasi’s doorways echo this distant past. They are inconsistent: short, sunken and splattered with mud and dye, or raised, separated from the street by stairs and an elegant arch. They are made of metal sheets rusting gradually, or of wood, delicately carved but rotten, hanging loosely from a hinge. Continue reading Varanasi’s Doorways»
