Nothing To See Here, Keep Moving And Get Out Of My Way

I wasn’t going to share this because it feels petulant and unappreciative but it also feels dishonest not to. So here it is: I’ve been a persistent, low level crank the last few days. There are several sources of my current irritated state. 

  

The Simple Act of Respiration

My breathing isn’t spectacular because--I’m going way out on a limb here--of the air pollution. It’s been so long since I’ve consistently felt this mild, ever present tightness in my chest that it’s dredged up all these recollections from my teenage years. Un-fun ones like walking into our grocery store after dark and suddenly remembering going into a Rainbow at two in the morning in hopes of buying Primatene Mist. I suppose there’s value in these memories. I’ll let you know what it is when it occurs to me. 

Shutdown Bangkok

I have a self-imposed curfew because I’m not interested in being in one of the protest zones during peak hours just in case, you know, today is the day all hell breaks loose. Perhaps I’d risk getting shot or trampled for my beliefs but I have negative interest in doing so for beliefs that I don’t fully understand but are definitely, at least in part, antithetical to mine. Negative interest? That’s right, I’m so not interested that when I walk by protesters I focus on disseminating the thought, “I don’t care what your reasons for doing this are, go home before this gets out of hand, please.” I can’t tell if it’s working. 

The protest zones are where all of the big things (read: tourist attractions) are and even though all sides have gone out of their ways to stress these areas are safe for tourists it feels perverse to traipse through them like Pollyanna whistlin’ Dixie on her way to a gawk at stuff she doesn’t understand but looks neat. Back home I once saw a guy step over a homeless person to get into a club named Nirvana. I vowed to never be that guy and passing through the protest zones to sightsee feels too much like that. 

Just to be clear: I don’t want the protests to end so I can feel good about about sightseeing. I want them to end because I don’t want there to be a massacre. Living on the fringe of and occasionally passing through areas where there are all of the ingredients for a massacre in the near future isn’t just stressing me out, it’s stressing all of the Thai people we know. 

Being Vegetarian

I’m tired of struggling to find something to eat. This is largely self-imposed because it’s easy to find vegetarian food at the grocery store but we want to live Thai style to the degree that we can so we keep trying to find vegetarian street food, which is hard when you don’t speak or read Thai. This means wandering around every night hoping against hope of find stuff we can eat before failing or eating some dubious stuff. 

{Secret Footnote I Hope Spectra Doesn’t Notice: this one is totally Spectra’s fault. I’d happily eat raman, watermelon, and peanut butter & Nutella white bread sandwiches every day for 6 months. As a matter of fact, I’d relish it. When else am I going to get to do that again?} 

Put all that together and last night it took every ounce of self control to not bark at a lady who was at least a foot shorter than I am for walking in a meandering, herky-jerky fashion through the hawker stalls because she was shopping. That is to say she was “walking like a Thai person.” It was terrible because I simultaneously hated myself for feeling so angry because I knew she wasn’t doing anything wrong AND because I really wanted to start bellowing at her all the same. Don’t worry, I didn’t make a peep. 

Spectra's been feeling the same way said we're experiencing experiencing "culture shock" but that’s not what I’d call it because it's lacking the “shock” part. None of this is new and we’ve been totally fine with it over the last three weeks. Only know is it bothering us. I’d call what we're feeling “culture fatigue.” 

It’ll pass. As soon as I’m sure I can get my preventive asthma medication here I’ll double the dose (which is what Dr. Brucker wants me to be taking anyway); the protests will end one way or another; and either our rudimentary Thai will get good enough to order street food or we’ll find a stall with an English speaker. All of this will pass but right now what I ate for lunch perfectly sums up how I feel.

It's not quite as pathetic as it looks; that's a spinach pie.