Stepping Stones Across the River

Taiwan is a goofy place. It’s like it was designed by a nine old.

I am not at all saying that it is childish here, but that there is an unvarnished sense of playfulness. Nine year olds know how to play, they are experts at it. At the same time they know there is a larger wider world, and some of their ideas just might make a difference too; if the adults would listen.

Nine year olds believe in good ghosts, have secret hideouts, ride on two wheels with expertise and abandon. They hold their friends close, argue freely, and are always on the outlook for a tasty snack and fun time. How else could you explain night markets, and streetside silver carts brimming with treats, scooter culture and fist fights in the legislature?

As evidenced by the bing lang sirened lights, overwhelming collage of placards splashed with neon and photoflash, and buildings dressed in a dance of zig-zag, floodlit bath or slow stream of liquid color, the Chinese love affair with illumination touches that place in all of us that wonders at the magic of light.

Sure, there are gangs and mafia, like any playground with its cliques and bullies. Sometimes it is hard to take them seriously with the perm’ed hair and Hello Kitty motorcycle helmets. But, then the gangsters of the west cannot seem to keep their pants on their hips. Perhaps all outlaws need a black hat badge of some sort.

Here too are the closer connections of family. We cultivate independence in the West; Taiwan grows a tangle of interdependent tendrils of connection and support. While there is as much theft and corruption as any other human community; the former president is currently behind bars for having his hands on tainted money. The US could take a page from that playbook, and the one for healthcare as well which provides easy and affordable access to skilled providers; it includes dental and Chinese medicine. Even foreigners who work here and contribute to the common welfare are included.
While some of the largest chip foundries in the world hail from here, the real strength of the country comes from the free wheeling lemonade stand capitalism; Taiwanese do business like morning glory grows vines. People dig in here and DIY.

Taiwan is a unique gem. More traditional than their mainland cousins, modern in a way that would seem like science fiction to the West; tinted with the scent and habit from its crossroad connections with Asia and the West, Taiwan has a fractal like attraction and depth.
Pause for a moment and you can end up mesmerized and entranced for a lifetime.

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The air is a few grades denser in Taiwan; if fog felt like it looks, it would feel just like this.

It is familiar as the smell of warm baked bread, or salt ocean spray, except it contains the oily residue of life and the vibrancy that comes naturally when an abundance of it is compressed into a small space.

Overstuffed upholstered chairs, like Japanese Manga marshmallows, absorb the sway and jostle of the bus as it wheels a grey snake of concrete highway that winds through hillside emerald. Hills invaded by explosive drapings of flora and trees. It is wildly jungleously green. Achingly green, as only humidity and heat produce. Layered highways lead to a desert camouflage of grey, rose, beige and yellow tiled structures, the boxes, alleys, and neighborhoods upon which the life and blood of Taipei thrive.

The twitchy, hyper-vigilance that is the required body armor of the mainland begins to melt away. It is like being able to converse deeply in your mother-tongue.

Trust your feelings. 
It is often good advice that cuts to the quick of a dilemma, or moment of emergency. But, is completely useless when scooting a motorcycle along the left side of the road when your well worn synapses cascade an inky constriction of fear and a magnetic pull to the other side of the road, as the vehicular bio-survival circuitry laid down for a right side of the road world tappity-taps adrenaline into the blood.

A constant mantra cycle of reassurance and the flashbacks of learning Taipei ruled traffic provides enough incentive to stay on the road long enough for the eyes to adapt to scanning direction and velocity as if looking through a mirror. There are times when feelings are nothing more habituated responses; responses in immediate need of an upgrade.

Motorcycles were a big no-no in my family. They were considered a surefire prescription for trouble and medical bills. That has not kept me off them. Nor does the lingering whisper of disaster keep me from pushing off in directions of two wheeled exploration. The illusion of security offered by staying off a twist and go scooter, has none of the vitality of that comes from going places best accessed on two wheels.

I suspect that much of what passes in our lives as feelings of security or safety are in fact simply habits ingrained from our experience, or the concerns of others whispered and believed. What we do in service of a sense of security may in the long run have little to do with it, especially if inaction and an unexamined clinging to the status quo masquerades as safety. The illusion that things are not changing is perhaps the greatest danger of all; it blinds us to what new opportunities are unfolding before our very eyes.

There are times when what feels wrong, is nothing more than a misplaced or antiquated habit leaking neurotransmitters, epinephrine and misplaced belief. They are frequently disguised as sensibility or undeniable truth.
There is a difference between habituated response and genuine feeling.
How to untangle habits from feeling? The methods are endless. With one being, to spend a few hours on a motorcycle in a country where they drive on the other side of the road.

New habits are quickly formed in the presence of oncoming traffic.

…are likely to be Chinese.

Sukhumviet road hosts six lanes of congested traffic, an elevated skytrain, tables of tourist goods, pimps, hookers and a mosaic of peoples and language. The lanes, which branch off, are home to tailors and travel agents, massage salons and hotels, sidewalks congested with tables and stainless steel carted street food, and off of Soi 11, near the Nana skytrain station; the Suk 11 guesthouse.

What could have been another featureless concrete block of rooms has been transformed into an appealing wood and brick maze of guesthouse delight. In 2003 reservations were as required as a wool sweater. They have build steadily on their appeal to the traveler who is not interested in the foreigner ghetto of Koh San road. If affordable accommodations that allow for the opportunity to rub elbows with fellow travelers from all over the globe is your cup of tea, the Suk 11 is for you. It is one of the few hotels that has an expressed policy of no sex tourists. They will toss you out without a refund should you use their cozy operation as a landing pad for amorous amusement by the hour. Smoking in your room, or general unruly behavior is also grounds for dismissal. Increasingly, Chinese is one of the common languages that wafts amongst the jasmine and mosquitoes.

I’m familiar with the voluminous punch of an argument in Chinese. This one steamrollers through the usually lively, but polite buzz of Suk 11’s teak and brick lobby. Shortly afterwards two anger and adrenaline soaked Beijing girls seek out my Chinese-English skills.

They think there is a language miscommunication. They are wrong. It is a cultural divide that they have failed to navigate.

They are not untypical of the modern young Beijing professional. These two are accustomed to a diet of privilege and favoritism that their jobs at one of the government television stations affords them.
 They think their rules apply.

There is indeed a misunderstanding about the amount of time they had agreed to stay, but when one of the girls sharpens her Beijing tongue on the owner, the previously option of more time in this quiet corner of Bangkok vanishes like protesters do from Tiananmen Square.
I really thought it was useless to act as their go-between, but I’ve received lots of help in my time in China; repaying debts of kindness greases the wheels of karma.

“Boss, these girls are afraid that perhaps their English is lacking, and as a result you misunderstood what they where trying to say.” The owner, now well seasoned from years of dealing with unruly guests is quite clear, “I understood them well enough, their English is fine. The problem is not their language. It is their attitude.”
“Sorry girls, you are out of here.”

They start to windup the buzzsaw of entitlement.
“Forget it, forget it!”
It is the Chinese word salve that means game over; walk away.

In the ensuring postmortem they are insistent there simply must be a way to talk the boss into letting them stay. “Girls, you are not in China, you are not in Beijing.”

In China no way can mean “I can not do that”, “I don’t know how to do that“, ”you need to bribe me”, or “you need to ask someone else.” No way usually means there is another way. It is quite different from “that’s inconvenient”. When you hear that, you know you are fucked.

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Eventually the girls figure out that language and culture are not the same thing. Wearing their Beijinger worldview eyes they had translated “no way” into the belief that were was an opportunity, and that their aggressive Beijing stance would abracadabra open a not yet seen door.

After these past four months of dealing with PMPH’s pretend HR department, it is now my turn to observe angry foreigners, as these Beijinger’s bite down on the “I don’t think we are in Kansas anymore” taste of cultural frustration. They have no idea how well I can relate.

There was something in the insistence of the ticket seller that there was no longer a one-way river taxi ticket to the National Palace that conjured up the feeling of memory. Something akin to the flavor of years ago getting detoured by a commission seeking tuk-tuk driver who insisted that I go to visit the temple of the Black Buddha as Wat Po was closed for a Buddhist holiday. He then took the scenic route through several jewelry stores and tailor shops hoping for a spiff, before ditching this Bangkok greenhorn for a fresh mark.
In Chinese, they say 吃一塹， 長一智, sometimes you have to learn things the hard way.
When unsure what to do, it is best to watch and see what the locals do, then fall in line with them.

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The delight of travel is that unless there is a train, bus or plane that defines your day, there is nothing that must be done. There is something deeply healing in being able to follow the rhythm of the moment, move slow enough to notice what catches your interest and let that open the next door.
Wat Po is on the way to Palace; its ceramic dot-matrix of green and blue is like the waft lime and smoke. Today there are no obstructing tuk-tuk drivers, we follow the crowd that trickles through the side gate.
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It is a curious mix. Mirror and ceramic Thai temples, white walled with roofs carpeted in green and orange tile, Buddhas in gold, and statues and gates that speak of a connection to China.

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Wat Po is considered a temple of healing; the art of Thai massage is taught there. Not surprisingly, the medicine of Asia includes channels and points. The images painted are foreign, but not unfamiliar.
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One gates leads to another, leads to a Buddha, leads to an altar, another gate, incense, a cloister of more buddhas, spires and stupa. Like walking a labyrinth, time folds into a non-linear dimension; the inside and outside lose their boundaries as the National Palace falls into the agenda of another day.

Beijing, while full of embassies, and various foreign businesses chiseling inroads into the market of 1.3 billion people, while it has the traffic and subways of a developed city, while it sprawls unrestrained by six ring roads, it has nothing of Bangkok’s international flavor.

Bangkok is textured with a collage of languages, cultures, skin color, and habits. Signage in Thai, Chinese, French, Arabic, and English. Germans in shorts, Muslim women wrapped in black, tourists in tee shirts, Thai’s in pressed white shirts. Traffic counterflows using the British standard. Hello kitty pink taxis, a neon rainbow of scooters, buses that roll slow motion through stops, skytrains and subways, river taxis and tuk-tuks create the circulation through a city dense with humidity and humanity.

Bangkok’s heat and humidity unlocks Beijing cold from the skin. It is nourishing in a way that only nature can arrange. The authentic cuisine from around the world finds its way into every nook and cranny, as if there are wormholes that connect all the cultures of the world. Bangkok is not only one of the major transfer stations for air travel throughout the world. It is a crossroad of culture that reminds us of how different, and how similar we all are.

It is an antidote to the regionalism and single vision mindedness that naturally grows out of being completely surrounded by your own kind.