I had heard about Thailand for years from so many people, but there was one thing my mind didn't process. If that many tourists love it so much, it becomes, well...touristy. While we are tourists for a year and appreaciate some basic tourist infrastructure most times, our brief time in Thailand was one where white people seemed to outnumber Thai people. I don't know what the ideal ratio of tourists to locals is, but I know this was too high.
We stayed below climbers on the cliffs of Krabi. But, for the first time in memory, I wtched rock climbers and my palms didn't get sweaty. Instead, my mind excused my body. I wondered what my brother, the climbing guide, thinks of this climbing scene, this strange mix between the obscene and the serene. Beautiful beaches packed with climbers, ropes dangling, necks craning, crowds gathering. And with only one day to climb and no chin ups completed in the last ten months, my mind preferred for me to sit on the sidelines. After some back and forth about whether to spend our limited time there kayaking or climbing, we opted for a day of deep water soloing--climbing without ropes only to jump (or fall) into the ocean. It is something I have wanted to do for more than a decade, since seeing photos climbers in Arcadia National Park in Maine, the waves of the Atlantic nipping at their heels. I used to read in my brother's climbing magazines about bouldering over Lake Travis in Austin, Texas, dreaming to have such things in my backyard as I sweated in the summer swelter that is New Orleans in August.
There were fifteen of us in all. I was thankful for a European rating system on the climbs, with which I was unfamiliar. This kept me from knowing the objective difficulty of any of the routes. Naturally, as two mostly non-clumbers among climbers, Annette and I were in the weaker third of the group. I wondered if I had chosen a different path in life, would I be spending my two-week vacations on these cliffs and ten months a year in a gym? The water is welcome relief when my forearms burn too much to hang on anymore. And the snorkeling after lunch on an island beach tucked among the cliffs reveals an irrudescent underwater world. Perhaps life could have led me to dream about spending my vacations in the underwater maze of cliffs and coral and sea life along the Andaman Coast. Deep water soloing can be crossed of the bucket list. Perhaps scuba diving should be added.
We are thankful for a tidbit of advice from a young couple from Vancouver. He did a sixty-foot back flip off of the top of a climb and waited outside our guesthouse bathroom while we showered to see if we wanted to split a longtail boat and a taxi back into town. He told us what the Krabi travel agency didn't, a useful bit of travellers' wisdom before we stepped aboard our overnight bus to Bangkok. "Take the train. It's really comfortable. The travel agencies tell you there aren't any seats because they make more money off of putting you on a bus. Go to the train station yourself in Bangkok. There will be tickets."
Thanks to the sore-backed Canuck, we soon found ourselves aboard a sleeper car more comfortable than India, bound for our silent meditation retreat in Chiang Mai. The compartments are spacious. Annette and I get two seats each, eat delicious duck curry and rice, and sleep comfortably, courtesy of Thailand Railways. We are welcomed aboard by the familiar drawl of a long life lived in Tennessee. This good old boy and his Thai wife in their early sixties would be sitting across from us for the next twelve hours. But mostly, Annette and I kept to ourselves and each other. We chuckled as we overheard tid bits of their conversation. We read, played cards, and enjoyed our last day together before ten days of austerity and silence.
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