Message board posts these days seem to host fewer and fewer longish stories about excursions to faraway places in this crazy country, as well as lives-lived with Thai men over long periods of time and the cultural divide therein ... the consequences of The Divide being exhilarating as well as disastrous, and all in between.
This post is not meant to be ostentatious (or lazy!) ... simply a favourite story ~ which I kept ~ of one of our journeys some years ago. And, just perhaps, it might encourage others to post something of the like as well.)
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Wong Kar Wai’s movie 'Happy Together' (photo above) is one of my all time favourite gay films. The title is more than mildly ironic, because of course the two Chinese guys who's story the film relates are often anything but happy.
But the movie is mesmerising on many levels: melancholy, dark, tender, edgy, funny, wonderful and quirky cinematography.
It tells the story of two lovers who travel to Argentina together. They love, fight (mostly fight) and break up and get back together continually. But more than anything they try to find their way to the giant Iguazu Waterfall. The journey tinges the entire story, there are false starts after false starts, and, in the end, one makes it there, the other doesn't.
SUKHOTHAI & ENVIRONS: But we had no highfalutin metaphorical waterfalls in mind as we took off down the road about 10 days ago to arrive at Sukhothai in time for the big Loy Kratong celebration held there every year. Our Iguazu ended up being the very Roof of Thailand, on top of it’s highest point, Doi Inthanon, where we ended up searching desperately for A View.
Usually we save a few bucks by staying in bargain Thai hotels along the way ~ for instance, 400 baht a night including pool and breakfast in Lopburi ~ but an unusual splurge of a kind had come to mind a few months before (for I knew full well that Sukhothai would be jam packed with folks looking for a room) and we ended up at the quite lovely and supremely peaceful Ananda Museum Hotel just on the outskirts of Sukhothai. (The hotel gets it's name from the little Museum on the grounds which in fact turned out to be a quiet pleasure after we finished breakfast one morning and walked across the grass to look inside. Well worth a visit if you’re in town).
We entered into a huge room with a splendiferously sexy shower, a king size bed huge and inviting, covered in a silk throw the colour of an emerald green field of ready-to-cut rice, and a very trendy bare concrete floor which Mr Suphot declared "kind of cheap" ... having completely missed the whole Soho loft thing.
But the sweet extras made up for the floor, and the views from one long hall through the forever-open door through the opposite end were quite luxurious, kinda Muslimy, kinda Buddhisty.
Breakfast is the old staple Thai buffet, but this one was elegant, varied, and ~ for once ~ piping hot. Served al fresco in a greeny covered courtyard butted up against a number of rice paddies which were in the process of being harvested.
That evening we took the car and traveled down the road and outside the town about six kilometers to the huge Sukhothai Historical Park. We’d been once before but never during Loy Kratong. Previously we were lucky enough to have the place quite to ourselves, this time no such luck: about 250,000+ Thais & Tourists purposely got in the way of my attempts at photography every fucking time.
Luckily, the temperature was close to perfect ~ one is getting close to the north of Thailand at the point on the map where Sukhothai sits and the coolness at 4PM was a luxurious pleasure in this crowded park ~ and this good fortune served me well as the lack of heat exhaustion transformed many a natural annoyance into ‘mai bpen rai’ moments.
The Great Parade had started as we entered the gates and I managed to shove a meaty arm with a camera attached to the end through the throng to click on a couple of handsome young men (just for you guys!) moments before that fat cop in the background walked up to me and told me to quit being such a goddamn pervert or I’d end up in his calaboose for the rest of the evening.
So I focused on the more innocuous flashes for the rest of the night, which it turned out, was not so bad: Love the look on this chick’s face: Is it a tender but unrequited love (for the guy behind?). Is it an aching disdain for the sweaty farangs pushing to get closer and closer to her, splattering her in dripping perspirations? Is it a final utter letdown at this, the ‘Real Thing’, after the last six weeks of practicing in that dusty parking lot with all those horny young Thai school boys in those ridiculous costumes trying to get in her pants?
And the King? He doesn’t care, up there on his throne, above it all: “ … just another bloody Loy Kratong in the middle of the boonies and really all I want to do is get moving to Bangkok tomorrow and make some real money working at Future Boys on Soi Twilight … “
But as I said, the more innocuous shots were not too bad after all, and this delicious sunset was helped out by all the dust and smoke in the air, which always manages to turn a shot useles due to the blazing sun shining through a clean atmosphere straight into the lens, completely screwing things up.
Here however, the air pollution worked its wonders and I managed to capture a pinky hue in the sky which turns the ruins and statues into a sublimity which could not be attained otherwise.
Fields indiscriminately ablaze in the surrounding countryside are not always a bad thing.
But cynicism aside, Loy Kratong at Sukhothai is in fact mostly a great pleasure and I would heartily recommend it to everyone at least once. The soccer crowds are usually difficult for me … a guy who has a certain, er, ’trouble’ in an elevator with more than three other passengers; who prays to any God who’ll listen for the pleasure of an empty seat beside me on buses and planes; who prefers a dark, mostly empty, bar for a daily contemplative moment, rather than the company of loudmouth drunken expats; who doesn't care to hang it out in front of other guys in trough toilets.
But this place ~ and this time ~ was different. The madding hoards were peacefully and quietly on the move, happy to pitch their mats and picnic with the family on the grassy banks of the park lakes. This time, instead of the bumpy and intrusive claustrophobia of an Isaan music concert, or rush hour on the Skytrain, or a stroll on Silom Rd at midnight, we were met with a smooth flow of a civilized humanity … smoothed even more so from the ban on liquor of any kind within the park being enforced strictly.
Looking out across the lake just before sunset, the little lights and shiny things reflect graciously into the water as Thais wait for the night dark to drift over the lake and the time for unleashing the kratongs was almost upon them.
As the photo below shows, quiet spaces can be found all over the park even during this spectacular and crowded celebration. Sukhothai Historical Park is huge, and in fact only a very small corner of it is taken over by the Mob. Wander off into the trees and old chedis and one easily finds peace around the corner: Mr Suphot prefers to shop around in the eating stalls and tourist traps . . . . I headed off into the bowels of the place to sit under a quiet tree and attain enlightenment.
How could we not take in The Show while we were there?
My nature in Thailand is normally to shy away from these extravaganzas … mostly from long experience that the hype and advertising in Thailand rarely match the end fabulousness. But curmudgeonly plunking down 500 baht apiece for the Sukhothai Light & Music Show seemed like something I could not avoid this time, so serious was His Majesty that we had better bloody well go or my life (or dead body) would be worth perhaps only a few satang at the secret Chinese market in Bangkok which deals in such exotica.
But, it was worth it. Ninety minutes of showmanship later I was somewhat awed by the exuberance and quality of the undertaking. The background was not a set piece but the huge old wats an chedis of the park itself: that big bugger in the middle of the photos below probably never had it so good, even 800 years ago.
Everything was golden at one moment, blue at another, lit by laser light a few minutes later . . . the King stood 8 feet high bathed in a white light . . . the battles were noisy and thunderous with cannon shot and handsome half naked young soldiers clashed in the foreground, saving, losing, then re-saving Sukhothai from those sons-of-bitches the Burmese in numerous battles the names of which elude me but I think I remember the gist of it all from Bang Rashan.
The dancers danced … slowly and beautifully drifting to the center to the gentle strains of Lanna music: it took 15 minutes to get everyone there ~ all slow-dancing toward the middle ~ for the Great Finale. But it was worth it, and the whole kit and kaboodle was really quite, in a good way, hugely overdone and, in a good way, wildly spectacular, and, in the right way, heartfully satisfying.
Did you think kratongs were only launched on the water? Not on your life. These fat paper puppies (with their own fiery power source) also went skyward, the result quite beautiful. In true trainwreck Thai-style all could not be perfect however: one of these babies drifted peacefully across the lake toward us, the watching and generally delighted audience at 500 baht a pop, when it decided to pull a Hindenburg.
For some technical reason, the details of which I do not know, this one (quite large) flying kratong broke apart in mid air directly over he seated crowd below (at 500 baht a German fraulein), and crashed blindly downwards and landed directly on the head of some farang (naturally) seated only four meters away from us. A minor pandemonium broke out around this unfortunate … everyone in the vicinity slapping him on the head and shoulders … Thai seating staff rushing in all directions at once …(lawyers taking feverish notes for future reference) …farangs just outside the Danger Zone screaming.
But all seemed well after a few minutes, no ambulances arrived, and the audience returned to watching the finale and it assumed that The Unfortunate was probably OK but perhaps only minus some unimportant pieces of hair … or hair piece.
THE FOLLOWING DAY: But like the to guys in the movie, conjugal bliss is sometimes difficult to attain 100% of the time. The last half hour at our night at Loy Kratong was not a happy one … a small number of annoying things added up over a small time, and became a Goliath of angst.
Neither of us are perfect human beings by a long shot, and the Goliath conspired to make the end of a quite charming evening not a happy affair. We didn’t talk, went to bed annoyed, continued in this manner through breakfast, then carried it on, childlike, during an already planned side trip to another ancient site (Si Satchanalai), just north of Sukothai about 40 miles or so.
It turned out that, in spite of the bad moods, this magical place was arrived at in the perfect time of the afternoon for picture taking.
I’ve always advised new visitors to Thailand to do their touristy ‘visitings’ (temples, waterfalls, ancient ruins etc etc) as early in the morning or as late in the afternoon as is possible. This plan of attack produces twin benefits: escape from the midday sun and heat, and a very nice low light-and-shadow ambiance in which to take pictures.
So came about that we arrived at this place at four in the afternoon, and probably due to that these photos came out better than they might have if taken earlier.
This was a quite large and wonderfully manicured park which probably deserves more visitors. A mini Sukhothai or Ayuttaya, but without a soul in attendance besides a renovation/cleaning crew of local village ladies.
I like the eerie misty ethereal quality of these photos
These gals were taking up a storm together and Pot could not help but laugh, and tell me one lady was gossiping to the others about her daughter who had taken up with a Thai man who she thought was rich, but whom the mother knew for sure wasn’t and that the daughter was being taken for a fool and yada yada yada ….
I looked up (after climbing an interminable set of stairs up a hill into the dark heart of the jungle) and Buddha once again quietly smiles at me for being childish in our relationship and tells me in no uncertain words to get my shit together and get things patched between Pot and me so that this argument does not colour the whole rest of the trip in darkling blacks and grays and whites. “You dummy!” he whispered in that annoyingly quiet way of his.
THE NEXT DAY: We arrived at the bottom of Doi Inthanon both in much better moods after a bit of lunch where we spent quite a long time explaining each other’s interpretation of The Problem.
This catharsis was ~ as is often the case ~ reasonably successful (with the inevitable dregs and small strings hanging around until Next Time), and during the long drive up to the Roof of The Kingdom we joked about higher and more important things like ‘nuance misunderstandings’ and ‘language difficulties’ and ‘farang/Thai body language’ and ‘hypersensitivity-on-my-part’ and ‘no-sensibility-whatsoever-on-his-part’. We were after all on the grand search ~ our quest ~ for The View and would try our best not be ambushed by foolish arguments and angers and assorted human deficiencies … the end game here was far more important.
After what seemed like a very long and slow ascent … past a growing heavy jungly rain foresty surrounding … through various misty parts which were in fact full-bore low clouds … through climate zones which determined that aircon was no longer needed … through the point where I changed into a wind breaker and from shorts to long pants in the car (the aforementioned argument guaranteed him a free grope during the disrobing).
The summit appeared just before us. The car park loomed like victory. The walk in the cold and biting wind toward The Goal seemed as triumph.
Until we realized there was no summit!
Well, technically there is a summit because great mountains always end ‘somewhere’.
But this one was so anticlimactic, so clothed in nothingness that I was almost oddly exhilarated that I had finally been slapped hard across the face, Zen-like, by the full meaning of the Buddha’s great observation that life is nothing but suffering … that that is all there is.
We walked around the top ~ my mood slowly enveloping a plodding sadness ~ searching for the true summit, the place where we could see all of Thailand in one grand sweeping view. All we found at the top was a TAT welcome to The Highest Point in Thailand, a small coffee shop with freezing Thai and farang tourists warming their hands with atrociously bad coffee (in my hand as well I should add), and a very new and brilliantly clean toilet.
The farangs huddled at the coffee shop were all looking around wondering where in hell the summit (i.e. ‘the view’) was … the Thais huddling in a similar manner, but seemed to be mainly concerned that there was no food stands around. Suphot did himself no favours by observing nonchalantly that “ … Thai people come to Inthanon to see the cold, not so much to see the view … “
Below notice the morose ~ deeply gray ~ shots of the two of us at the Top of Thailand. Big friggin’ deal.
The flowers in Pot’s hand were for a sacred statue in the rainforest just along side this little so-called ‘lookout point’. I just felt like ~ deeply ~ taking a good long piss.
The two shots below are the best view available on the very top of Doi Inthanon, taken by squeezing between the tiny space of two concrete buildings, those being the coffee shop and the 'wrong side' of the (mostly spotless) hong nam.
So we headed down the mountain again, demoralized and under the mundane realization that the best thing accomplished this day was the patching over of an argument.
But nothing is ever what it seems at the most lowly of moments. It just so happened that, earlier while we were driving up the mountain, we had passed by two great chedis about half a kilometer before the summit. At the time they had looked rather compelling, but we were already in a bit of a hurry to reach Chiang Mai before five PM, thus we gave them a pass by in order to get to the summit and the Great View.
So as we descended we came upon these two chedis again, and Suphot asked if I I’d like to go there before leaving.
At that point, already feeling defeated, I said “whatever” and we turned in and drove up a small incline the parking area. It had hardly looked like much from the road below, but once we’d parked and walked up the very long staircase to the chedi (#1) we realized that these two structures were in fact quite huge.
At the top Suphot walked inside, but I stayed outside and walked around the chedi’s marble balcony as down and out as Capt. Ahab pacing back and forth on his dank and damp decks, knowing he's missed his Great Whale one more time.
And what did I see, you ask?
Incredulous, I stood there looking out over all of The Kingdom. I could see all of Thailand.
I ran inside to get Suphot and brought him out into a cold and blustery epiphany. (The reason why he had been so interested in the inside of the Chedi was not to get out of the cold, but to look at the floor! Apparently, some 15 years before, his older brother Tuan Tong had worked on construction at this very chedi and in fact had made the floor).
We stared out over this place ~ this Great View ~ for another half hour or so, then departed … quietly happy, elated even, to have found our Iguazu.
I very much remember one of the sad ending lines from ‘Happy Together’: The Tony Leung character in the movie had finally made it to Iguazu Waterfall just before he left Argentina for his home in Hong Kong. As he stood on the view station almost underneath the crashing waters he became saturated by the mist of the falls, and the voice-over said (something like) this: “ … I had found the waterfall, but I did not feel right. It felt like there should have been the two of us there … “
And so there was, two that is ... but this was no movie.
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But you can still watch this movie ... Wong Kar Wai's that is, not mine ... on YouTube. This is a very Hi Def version (the older ones are not great) in Spanish but with English subtitles:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EGVJ6r ... 3I&index=1
