REDHAUS v7 - Travel - Southeast Asia 2000-01

SE ASIA 2000/01

Jets to Bangkok

A Low Xmas

Smoking Monks &
Slow Boats in Cambodia

The Seventy-Five Cent
Saigon Crewcut

Sortie Inevitable

Hanoi - Paris
16 - 17 Jan 2001

It's almost a thirteen hour flight to Paris. I've spent a day in Bangkok, mostly just picking up a pack full of souvenirs I've left from being here three weeks prior. I also pick up some more gifts, have a return visit to my favorite Pad Thai place, and do a bit more walking around.

I've already seen Vietnam leaving behind me out the airplane windows earlier that day, and that was the real feeling of leaving this world. Now watching Bangkok disappear off the horizon, it's starting to sink in that I am returning to the west. I've never been away on my own, or this long in Asia for so long. I know that the return culture shock will be strong when it hits.

Paris in its fine tradition of would-be security makes it impossible to leave any articles at airports or train or bus stations. (At least they have public trash bins again.) And since my Paris - Boston flight is more than 24 hours away, they won't allow me to check my one large backpack that I really don't feel like carrying around Paris with me for the next day and a half. I take the RER train to downtown Paris, Gar d'Nord, and same problem: no left luggage counter. Fortunately I don't have to hike far with my two packs; It's always rewarding to travel as light as I do. I'm actually carrying more than I usually ever do, but I am on the way back and I've got a lot of gifts.

I find a great room on the 5th floor where Montmarte meets Pigalle. When I draw the curtains there is a fantastic, clear view of Sacre C'ouer, the white basilica on the hillside. When I hike out there I almost expect there will be a child being beaten, but instead it is just a crowd of tourists enjoying a view of the Paris skyline. A harp player bangs out the same three songs to a high-turnover crowd.

Most of the time in Paris now I spend walking around the cold winter streets or sitting in a cafe' with my expected indulgences. I venture out to the Paris modern art museum, catch view of the Eifel tower, walk past Arc d'Triumph and the Louvre.

I'm not ready to go back to Boston, the United States. I don't know what I am returning to. Paris is a shock, a different world, and it seems cleaner and more sophisticated than I what I am used to. But at least they still speak another language I can't readily understand. And the culture, the people here, are already different enough than what I grew up with, that I find amusement and diversity among them. And I feel like I am somewhere; somewhere away.

I'm putting together all the thoughts in my head. All the memories of long overnight trains, the cyclo rides by the rivers, the slow boat, the days of walking and exploring, all the incredible culinary experiences. I'm looking forward to a warm Boston apartment in the North End and an anxious little black kitten, but not much else.

I resolve to find out about the feasibility of getting back on the road soon and going to India for two months and Nepal for three weeks of trekking. I want to find out about the language course in Berlin, and pursue the idea of relocating to Germany as a professor's assistant or going to grad school for painting and art history. I'm trying to decide what to do with the flying lessons that I have begun. I'm thinking I will put into storage most of my belongings and art work, and deciding what I will keep and what I can part with.

It's a relatively short feeling flight to Boston. And then the culture shock is harder than I've ever felt. The cold, the snow, are like the first time. I climb into my apartment, turn up the furnace, and disappear into a trance of backward guitars, sitars and late sixties british vocals. I fall into sleep and dream of a train clicking through the Vietnamese jungle.

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