The Road Less Travelled

In which I ramble aimlessly.

2008-02-13T08:18:00Z

My Other Half will be visiting Bangkok for the first time this April. It will mark a number of firsts for him: the first stamps in his brand-new passport, the first time he leaves the United States, his first trans-Pacific flight, the first time he meets my parents and local friends, the first time our roles are reversed--I am the hometown gal and he is the visitor. After four months apart I am more than ready for him to get here, making an unending list of all the things we have to do in the 12 days that he will be in town (most of them involving food), eager to share my world with him. For it was always his world that I entered when I flew to St. Louis, and my "Valley girl" English helped me transition easily into an American life, leaving so much of my roots behind to slip into a different skin.

The Thai went first, having no one to converse with except the staff at the local Thai restaurants, and so did the Thai and Indian food that I loved. I learned to find favorite dishes at a handful of American restaurants and begged that everything be made just a little spicier for my un-American palate. I put chili flakes in absolutely everything and ordered Chinese food just to add an obscene amount of prik nampla (chopped peppers in fish sauce) to it. I learned to do without sour mangoes and sweet guava and took to dipping pieces of Granny Smith apples in a mixture of salt and chili flakes. I taught the Other Half to love "cheese toast," made with shredded cheese, onions and peppers in a sandwich maker, an Indian snack I had grown up eating at home. I learned to embrace Hot Pockets and cereal for breakfast, though I ached for noodles from street vendors and my favorite tamarind candy.

But I digress. As I often do when food enters the picture.

Temples are on our agenda, as they often are for any first-time visitor to Bangkok. (I hate to tell him how bloody hot it is going to be here in April and how not even the most beautiful temples can distract you from that "I'm going to pass out from the heat and humidity" feeling that Bangkokians know and love so well.) There will be shopping, naturally, and there will be food--in fancy restaurants, in holes in the walls, on plastic chairs on the street. There will be movies in the fancy theaters, where the seats recline and you get a pillow and blanket. There will be other things--sensitive things not to be mentioned in such a public place, matters of culture that could turn out really well or really badly. I choose to block that entire scenario from my expectations entirely or I would be losing hair from the worry. Let it all unfold as it should.

I swear I had a point to this entry when I started.

I guess what I want to say on this Valentine's Day is that I am counting the days and weeks until I see my Other Half again because life is very hard without him close by, and I know that his visit will help us make important decisions about our future. And though I am tired of making these life-changing decisions every few months, I would not be the person that I am without the craziness of the last three years of my life and the tens of thousands of miles I've had to travel to find Home. Through the long airplane rides and bad airplane food, through working 30 hours straight several days a week, through tornado warnings and ice storms and heat waves...it was all worth it. And really, how many people can say that?

Tropical Christmas

2007-11-30T06:01:00Z

December in Bangkok feels almost magical. The temperature drops just enough to pull out the long-sleeved shirts and sweaters for my morning walk to the skytrain station, and the sky is a pale, cloudless blue that signals the end of the year. Christmas trees are set up in front of most malls and hotels, made of different materials, sparkling in different colors, and it takes a few days before the tropical mind adjusts to such blatant displays of a winter tradition. In December Bangkok feels bittersweet to me--the end of one year and the start of a new one, filled with new dreams and new hopes, anticipation for where life will take me and wondering if I am living the best life possible.

I turn 27 this New Year's Eve and I haven't decided yet how I feel about that. These last few years of my life have been so hectic that I have not had the time to sit down and think about things, without the pressure of the next thing I have to attend to. I've flown back and forth between St. Louis and Thailand a total of four times in three years. I spent first two summers in St. Louis in 2004 and 2005, and then ten days there to attend my brother's graduation in 2006 before packing my bags and moving to St. Louis last October. I've been living my life dependent on my airplane tickets, and when you do that, when you can fit everything you own into two suitcases weighing 70 pounds or less each, you forget exactly where you belong.

I wish I was spending my December in St. Louis. As much as I love Bangkok at this time of the year, as much as I appreciate the time I am able to spend with my family, and as much as I enjoy walking around this city during Christmas, my heart still calls for a place far away. Christmas is commercialized no matter where you go nowadays, but there's something to be said about a white Christmas, that picture-perfect kind that renews your faith in all of humanity, and being part of traditions that have been passed on for generations. Because as pretty as Christmas is in Bangkok and as much as we like to pretend to be part of things, Christmas is a very Western, very Christian, celebration.

My last Christmas was spent in a very American house, with a very American family, eating a very American dinner and opening a frighteningly large pile of presents. It was only something I'd ever seen in the movies, and it was overwhelming. And it was nice. The Other Half and I had a little tree of our own, bought for 13 dollars at the Dollar Store because we could not afford more, and we decorated it with baubles in our favorite colors--gold, purple, red and turquoise. It worked. And we bought one of those "Our First Christmas Together" ornaments for Hallmark. It is difficult to spend this Christmas apart, but what's another holiday apart in our journey for a lifetime together?

This Christmas will be a quiet one. After I mail off too many Christmas cards to loved ones around the world, after I pay off all my credit card bills from buying too many presents, after I send off the last of my gifts 12,000 miles across the ocean, it will be just me and my thoughts and my memories. It's a good thing I have so many beautiful memories to choose from. And I will go outside and take some pictures, because there's nothing like sparkly decorations to wake up the wannabe photographer in me. And when New Year's Eve comes, when my birthday comes, I will perhaps learn to let go, to stop worrying, to trust the wind...

...and go wherever it takes me.

The Lost Girls

2007-11-16T05:00:00Z

The Lost Girls are "three twenty-something New Yorkers who ditched their media jobs to embark on a yearlong, round-the-world journey in search of adventure and inspiration." After their visit to Bangkok they wrote a great list of 21 Reasons We Fell in Love With Bangkok. I read this list when I was living away from Bangkok and it made me fiercely homesick. Three amazing American women were able to eloquently describe my crazy city better than I will ever be able to.

Winter Wonderland

2007-11-13T09:46:00Z

The first time I saw snow I was 26 years old and living 12,000 miles from the only tropical home I had ever known. It had been a strange winter in St. Louis, with two terrible ice storms that took down power lines and left hundreds of homes without electricity. The first ice storm left my car caked in inches of ice and then covered in snow, and I spent a full hour beating at the frozen mass with a scraper and pulling chunks of ice off with my bare hands. It was much too cold for a Bangkokian who hadn't quite mastered the art of dressing for winter. I have to admit, though, that the city looked magical covered in ice. When the sun finally came up it reflected off of the crystals that clung to roads and trees and buildings, as if Tinkerbell had just flown by. (Not long after I learned the hazards of driving and walking on the ice, and the pain of cold mornings spent waiting for the car to heat up.)

The first snowfall of the winter happened in the middle of the night, while I was baby-sitting my favorite pair of twins in their West County home. I remember looking out the window that night and seeing the deck covered in a layer of white, as more snow continued to fall gently. I ran outside onto the lawn barefoot for my first taste of snow. The flakes clung to my hair and lashes, and I could not remember ever being part of anything more beautiful. My Other Half, a Missouri native, laughed as I looked up into the sky in awe.

Driving home was a completely different sort of magic, with snowflakes rushing at the windshield and all the headlights of the cars on the roads glowed eerily. Everything was softer somehow, and I remember calling my mother on the other side of the planet to scream to her, "It's snowing!" At around midnight we pulled over into the parking lot of Schnuck's, which was covered in a perfect blanket of white, so I could get out of the car and stand in the snow as it continued to fall. Up until that point my time in St. Louis had been difficult. I was homesick and wanted nothing more than to return to Bangkok, where I didn't have to learn to drive on the other side of the street and where I could get spicy somtam on the side of the road. The snow took a little of that hurt away.

That winter I threw snowballs and made snow angels, almost crashed the car getting off the highway in a snow storm, bought myself the perfect pair of boots for adventuring in the snow and fell madly in love with the cold, white stuff that fell from the sky. I learned to look at the flakes that fell onto the car windows, finally understanding that snowflakes aren't the size of golf balls but teeny-tiny crystals that were utterly unique and incredibly beautiful. I also learned that after a few days, the pretty white stuff turns into yucky gray slush, at least until the next time it snows.

I'm back in Bangkok now and as we get closer to the holidays, what I miss about St. Louis is the anticipation of snow. I miss the sound snow makes when it falls, so different from the downpours of Bangkok, but comforting in its own way. I think what I miss most of all is waking up early one morning, when the sun is bright and warm, and every inch of the ground and every car parked is covered in inches of untouched snow, before real life takes over and the snow goes away.

My Piece of Heaven

2007-11-01T05:19:00Z

It was my last week in St. Louis, Missouri after having lived in the Midwestern city for a full year, and it was my last visit to my favorite place in the city—the Missouri Botanical Garden. The autumnal equinox had come and gone, but the weather stayed warm and the sky was cloudy with the usually unfulfilled promised of rain. (The weather in St. Louis is infamously unpredictable and it is rumored that weatherman in the city receive a lot of hate mail on a regular basis.) I had been told at the entrance that in a grove of holly trees just outside Tower Grove House in the Victorian Garden, hundreds of butterflies were clinging onto the leaves.

I found the holly grove, and at first I could not even see the monarch butterflies as they had folded up their wings and blended so completely into the browns and yellows of the autumn leaves. Taking just one step towards them sent hundreds of butterflies flying into the air for a few breathtaking seconds, and then they would settle back down onto the leaves. Over and over they performed this dance, flying up into the air in a fantastical display, and all one could do was stare. My camera lay useless in my hand; there was no way to capture the quick movements, and looking into the lens meant looking away from the butterflies. It was the perfect way to say good-bye to the place that had been my home for a year.

Henry Shaw, an English botanist and philanthropist, founded the Missouri Botanical Garden in 1859 and it is one of the oldest botanical institutions in the United States, and Tower Grove House was his country home. His resting place is also in the Garden, sheltered by majestic oak and sassafras trees. The Garden is not just a center for botanical research and science education, it is also a sanctuary within the city of St. Louis, covering 79 acres in horticulture wonder. The Garden is home to many of the city's cultural festivals and most notably known for the Japanese Festival that is held at the end of each summer that features sumo wrestling, taiko drumming, traditional tea ceremonies, and candlelit tours through Seiwa-en, the largest Japanese strolling garden in North America.

In the spring and summer, the Missouri Botanical Garden feels like a slice of my own personal heaven, splashes of brilliant colors in every direction you look. One of my favorite displays is the Gladney Rose Garden, shaped in a giant wheel and housing over one hundred varieties of roses with frighteningly scientific names. (Didn't Shakespeare say a rose is a rose is a rose?) Roses in all imaginable shades of pink, orange and red are scattered throughout this round garden, at full bloom in the summer, radiating that familiar rose scent far beyond the confines of the garden. In mid-spring, close to the Gladney Rose Garden, azaleas and magnolias come out to play. In the summer and fall you're surrounded by autumn crocus, lilies in many, many bright colors, dahlias, and much more.

St. Louis is home to people from various parts of the world and so it's only right that the Missouri Botanical Garden is home to five international gardens: the Japanese Garden, the Cherbonnier English Woodland Garden, the Strassenfest German Garden, the Grigg Nanjing Chinese Friendship Garden, and the Turkish Bakewell Ottoman Garden. My favorite is Seiwa-en, the Japanese garden with its four-acre lake filled with giant koi and many zen gardens. Beautiful hidden spots are tucked away all over the Japanese garden, perfect for reading a book, having a picnic, or watching the world go by. Seiwa-en was created to be appreciated in all seasons, and is reason enough to keep returning to the Garden every few months.

As a nanny to five children under the age of four, I fully appreciated the Children's Garden, equipped with a number of things to climb in and on, a sprinkler area perfect for hot summer days, and various exhibits to explore. For the more grown-up learner, the Garden offers a number of classes on a variety of subjects—yoga, bird-watching, cooking, meditating, wreath-making, digital photography, and of course, gardening.

I love that there's always something new to do and see at the Garden, but it's also the perfect place for doing absolutely nothing. Visitors to the Garden seem to truly love the place and it's obvious in how gently they approach each plant, how every picture is taken with great care, and how enthusiastic St. Louisians are when they talk about the Garden. I will never forget the Garden, where I had my first snowball fight, where a hundred butterflies fluttered around me, where I took my favorite photographs. The Garden tends to drag out the artist in a person, whatever forms that art may take, and inspiration like that is hard to find. In a world where everything is changing so quickly--the weather, the technology, the fashion, the dress-length--the Missouri Botanical Garden remains a beautiful, peaceful escape.