Thursday, April 12, 2012

Tears in Pai

The next day in Pai was an emotional one for me. It was one of my lower points on the trip. I was homesick for Scott and disappointed to find out that I wouldn’t be working with sea turtles again that summer. Calling my mom on her birthday just made me more homesick. When we took the motorbike outside of Pai that morning on our way to Huay Nam Dong National Park, the scariest part of the whole trip happened (at least it was the scariest part for me). We were driving up winding hills that curved back and forth as we gained elevation. I think both Malone and I knew it would happen, but there was nothing we could do about it. Up ahead, the bend was completely covered with pine needles. We skidded out on the needles and the motorbike fell onto its side, spilling us into the street. I sort of had to jump away from the bike so it wouldn’t crush me or so we wouldn’t crush each other. It hurt. We were so lucky that a truck or car had not been following us. I don’t even want to imagine what would have happened. As it was, Malone had a terribly bruised knee, and my knee and ankle were cut open and half of my big toenail had been scraped off by the pavement. We picked the bike up and kept going to the park, but as soon as we got there, I lost it. I cried because I was scared to get back on the motorbike to drive back, because I was homesick, and because my knee hurt. I guess I was just overwhelmed and needed to let it out. Unfortunately, my tears put a damper on the morning, and it was hard to enjoy the view of the park, though it was absolutely beautiful and the day was sunny and filled with color.



We hung around at the park for only a little while before we returned to Pai. I think we were both a little hesitant to explore the park on the bike, since many of the roads were unpaved and bumpy. And our legs hurt from the fall, so it wasn’t really worth finding any trails to walk on, either. So we went back to Pai, and I tried to relax with a hot shower and some downtime.

Another reason that my emotions were high was that Scott was worried about me. It made me anxious; I knew that if he was worried about me, it was possible that something could actually happen to me. I felt very vulnerable and very subject to injury, especially after the motorbike fall. At the night market in Pai a day or two before, I had seen a woman in a wheelchair being pushed around by a man who was singing into a microphone. They were collecting money. The woman had no legs. She had no arms either. One of her arms was missing after the elbow, but the other was missing even higher up than that. We would see many limbless people in northern Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia: results of the unexploded ordinances left by US soldiers during the Vietnam War. The US soldiers crossed into Laos and Cambodia without permission from those countries, and the landmines are still injuring and killing people today. It is the most heart-wrenching memory of my trip: that these innocent people—farmers, children, just people out walking in the woods—have lost their limbs and sometimes their livelihoods. I read somewhere about a flower that scientists had genetically engineered to detect landmines. The flowers are white, but when they detect the chemicals present in the landmines, they turn red. I imagine parents teaching their children to never go near those red flowers. It makes me want to cry.

I spent Valentine’s Day in Pai, and I don’t remember what we did. My journal just says “Another day in Pai,” and the rest of the text is just reflection. Perhaps it was a day of relaxation: reading, writing, enjoying food, the night market, the sunset, etc. Scott left a video on my Facebook wall of him singing “Half Moon” by Iron and Wine, and that song still brings back memories of being in northern Thailand without him and missing him like crazy. But on the 15th, Malone and I spent our last morning in Pai. It was time to move on. We had our last breakfast in Pai, bummed around near the bus station for a while, then took a mini-bus back to Chiang Mai.

Our stay in Chiang Mai was quick. We went back to the Little Bird Guest House, had some dinner, then went to the night market. I had left my sunglasses in the mini-bus, so I bought a pair at the market, as well as some gifts: silk change purses, a wooden bookmark with a metal engraving, a flower carved out of soap, a ceramic pipe, an alligator carved out of jade, an ink drawing of an elephant. The following morning, we packed our things again, had breakfast, and took a 5-hour bus ride south to Sukhothai, the ancient Thai capital. Our beds at the Garden House were as hard as the floor, and the air was hot and filled with mosquitoes. But we were moving forward with our travels after our long stay in Pai.

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