Closing chapters, back where we began 1/2

 Bah bah blacksheep, have you any wool?

    Aye, merry have I, three bags full!

When your load is light enough to fit on your back the winds may move you about more freely. The moving becomes as much a ritual and reality as anything, so one morning after 4 days in Vang Vieng I awoke late in the afternoon with a desparate need move on. Like I had gone too long without performing some vital task. Vang Vieng is like the island of misbegotten children in Pinnochio where evrybody smokes cigars and shoots snooker until they turn into asses. VV stake in the world relies on loose morals, radical rope swings, eldless fields of tv bars showing Friends, and the promise of drunken innertubing. I found more to do in Vang Vieng, my body was a cataclysim of digestive vengence, and for days I had minced wearily to the toilet like clockwork every ten mintutes. Coulda been anything I ate. I also managed to make a few new friends, do some caving, get lost on a mountain bike, be attacked by a bat, have at least two machine guns pointed at me ( not as bad as it sounds, I assure) and embark on at least one major pyschadelic experience culminating at four in the morning having telepathic connections with a giant praying mantis. All in all it was a fantastic time. But This morning I awoke and it seemed like the whole guest house had turned over to a new wave of backpackers. I made plans to go to Vientiane, the Capitol City of Laos, was 5 hours away and nothing to write home about, even though I guess I just did.

Back in the land of Saigon, that with all the ground covered seems so long ago like everything else, I was paid in tax free stacks of Vietnamese currency and aquired a proper heap of money that coverted to US dollars still was a sizable bundle, even split up four ways.

$400 taped to the back flap of my beloved Portable Steinbeck

$450 in a tupperwear container amidst the junk of the center of my bag

$300 in my money belt

$250 or so alternately in my shaving bag, my tripod case and my pocket, and on one occasion, in my butt crack.

In Vientiane I counted my money and had a little panic attack that was quelled with 4 spring rolls.  Here is some knowledge for you, you spend double what you think you are going to. Everytime, the prices are higher than in the guidebook, and if I figure I can live for 300 a month it is 500. After I counted money I ate steamed rice as my main chow for three or four meals, just fillin my belly in the 10 cents of rice. 

But it wasn't the money, I mean that's part of it... it cost a certain amount to move  back to Seattle and we were dippin below that mark.  But no, it was more, it was the rightness of it being time for me to make it happen, or that it was happening and I simply needed to let it happen, I honestly find it hard to tell. But I remember this feeling from Italy and in Costa Rica where the same will that brought me here is taking me away. I knew it wouldn't be long now.

Bridget told me over the phone to make it happen and with about $350 worth of grease I did. The lady on the phone asks me when I can be in the Bangkok office to book my ticket for friday, I looked that it was 11:30am and did not hesitate; 12 hours.

Small. tiny, infinitesimal price to pay~ the money I would spend in the next five 1/2 days aside I paid the airline $13 dolars a day for the 27 days I was coming  home early, I think that's a bargain.

Sitting at the desk marked in block letters NARCOTICS CHECKPOINT was a pair of empty boots and two crushed cigarettes.

Thailand. It all coming full circle.  Surprised to be surprised at Thailand again, the comparative wealth after all these months away, my first impression and my last are very different. I was ready at any point to leave and now that the events were set into motion to allow me to do so I could not do it soon enough.

It was early dawn on Khao San road when the bus stopped and we shouldered our backpacks into the artery of tourists and commerce that is Khao San. It comes to a trickle at 5am but that trickle would be substantial for anyother place. Drunk people wore sunglasses stumbling. Diligent men and women fried Phad Thai, busy even now. I woke up either a man or a woman, and was led to the smallest, least hospitable and cheapest room in Bangkok.

Just my style.

After I paid homage to China Air and they furnished my fist with a outbound ticket for friday the only thing that broke the monotany of the days was intermittant Phad Thai binges and Transformers. Bangkok, though cheap to US standards, is routienly three times more than Laos. And in Laos I was budgeting, thus in Bangkok I tried to stay still so I wouldn't spend any money. I didn't too well.

I couldn't wait to see Bridget, I started day  dreaming about it, like what I would say and what the time of day it would be and how long we would hug.

And life just seamin bursting out at the seams, I just had to let it happen, to relax and let go.

To make life easier I bus to the airport at 10pm for a plane that didn't leave till 9am. Airports are natural vortexes, or rather a matrix of opposing constructs; leaving, waiting, departing, joy sadness, anger, impatience, boredom. It echos and chatter mixes with phantom warbles, you get the sence of ceaseless movement, above and the rumbling of the hollow ground below. With a bag for an alibi you could stay on a bench for an indeterminate ammount of time.

Time begins to slip.  I sleep almost five hours that night.

Taiwan and window seat.

Sir the other passengers are trying to sleep could you shut your window.

do I have to?

...

I paid $1000 for this view (sunrise breaching the clouds, 30,000ft) Flying with the rotation of the Earth feels very natural, I can't sleep.

Midway over the Atlantic some kinda sadness for the journey whispers into me.

a song comes to mind that I often sing when i feel this way

..." and I think it's gonna be a long, long time. "