Leaving Bangkok Behind

October 24

Sitting in the Bangkok Airport on the way to Burma - in a tiny, stifling gate miles away from food or a toilet, I can’t help but feel a bit nostalgic.  Not toward my traveling, my volunteering, the feeling of freedom and liberation that I found in transience, but rather toward the beginning.  Nostalgia; that bittersweet bubble that I let grow unknowingly in my belly during those times when I thought hatred was the only option.  But now when I think back I know that if given the same circumstance, I would do it again.  Bangkok, Thailand, all of it, it meant a lot for me, more than I would have let myself know at the time…I feel like more than ever now that I am leaving it for the last time, that this place is truly my South East Asia home.  Mae Sot, yes, that part of Thailand meant the world to me as well, but mostly this part - the rude and obtrusive, the meddling and the beautiful, the sprawling disgust of Pattaya, the children looking expectantly at me and me giving them the same look back, those days…the summer of my journey, that was the real beginning.  Malaysia, yes you opened my eyes, serving the function of  the Siren’s call to this part of the world, you gave me the gumption I needed to perhaps make the best decision I could have made in leaving Pattaya but now, as I sit here amongst the Sikh men and their turbans, the airlines employees wearing headscarves and the monks boarding planes, I think back to my time, my miserable, laughable, unforgettable time in Pattaya with my South East Asia soul mate, Jenna, and I think that yes, I would do it again.  I would do it again…maybe this is what nostalgia does.  I remember the bad, yes I do, but being here somehow makes me remember the good, remember the growth and ultimately remember the decision I made that impacted me greatly, the decision to leave.  How strange is this? I can’t quite put my finger on it, my missing Pattaya, the place I formerly called Hell on Earth and rightfully so.  The place that makes me shudder when I see Russian script anywhere, the place that made my heart crumble away in tiny pieces. But right now as I leave Bangkok, and this morning when I left my familiar hostel, the one I used to feel so homey in, and traversed my usual route to my favorite breakfast place and got my favorite breakfast (2 of them, I over-indulged…hadn’t had bagel sandwiches in a while), I thought that what I had done rather than traveled aimlessly for seven months was arrive, place a perimeter around South East Asia, then make it my home.  And this, Bangkok, Pattaya, whatever this feeling is, is the living room…the place I will always see when I open the front door.