vMLGoesToThailandI love the beach. When my mind has time to actually wander, two out of three times it somehow makes it to the sandy shores of the Pacific or Caribbean. I think I love the ocean, too. But once, I went deep sea fishing off the Oregon Coast and might have maybe caught a jellyfish for the most part, but I vomited on it right when I’d reeled it up to the surface, then spent the rest of the eight-hour journey silently spilling the contents of my stomach over the side of the boat. I was way annoyed about this; I’d taken dramamine the night before and again that morning before my father and I embarked on this adventure. He watched the whole thing happen from almost the other side of the boat. He’d caught a bass and wanted to show me but stopped short when he saw what was happening. The whole thing was forced on us by my mother who thought we needed a bonding experience. Nothing keeps a sympathetic puker at bay like throwing up. Admittedly, I lied to her and said, “Mission accomplished.” before walking off, pretending not to be super pissed at her after I was back on solid ground.

Anyway, I love the beach. A few years after that fun adventure, I found myself working two jobs- one of which was social work which though rewarding, can be exhausting. So being tired, I hopped on a plane and went to Mexico alone. The Caribbean Sea is much calmer than the wild Pacific of the Northwest United States and it’s also warmer. It was delightful. I wrote a ton, finished reading Atlas Shrugged, ate resort food and drank resort drinks on the beach and in a bar in the middle of a pool. I get excited about things like that.

It was with this in mind that after again, working two jobs for the first part of 2016 and spending a majority of the preceding two years studying for ordination that I decided it was time to go back to the beach. The warm beach.

The Zika virus is making its way around Latin and South America and doctors are split about what that does to men, or men who desire to have children one day, so I ruled Mexico out for this adventure, which was a shame. But Asia had been on my bucket list, so I booked a trip to Thailand. I would rest and regain sanity on the beautiful island they call Phuket.

Fast Forward through planning and packing and daydreaming about things like riding elephants and eating all the Thai food.

I arrived in Thailand somewhere close to midnight. After making it through customs, grabbing my bag, it was another forty-five minutes in a taxi before I arrived at my hotel. The city was mostly quiet, streets nearly empty. I marveled at Asian architecture old and new as we passed temples and offices, furniture stores and 7-Eleven convenience stores. The closer we got to where I was staying, the nearer we got to the beach, the more life was about. Open-air bars bounced with curious dance music or Thai cover bands offered their interpretations of Taylor Swift and Eagles songs. After 22 hours of airports and flying and a 14-hour time change, I was ready for bed- I had plenty of time for adventures. After arriving at my hotel, I bought a beer and hit the Tylenol PM then it was lights out.

I woke with the sun and might have been the only one in Karon who did. I showered, donned some short shorts and a tank top and made my way out into the street. The night’s festivities had left their mark. Beer bottles and cigarette butts lay in the otherwise vacant streets. I had a tour of the island scheduled for the day. It involved stops at temples, island vistas and learning about Thai industry.

That small adventure only lasted eight hours. Once that was over, I wandered until I found a bar that looked like one I could read at. I don’t really even go to bars at home. I’ll sit in the bar section of a restaurant, but that’s about it, so finding a place I’d feel comfortable was key. Once I found the one, I crawled up onto a stool that for some unknown reason, was incredibly tall, ordered a Chang beer and started reading. The place was relatively empty, because it was only just after five. In a few hours, it’d likely have a band beckoning vacationers in for some live music and cheap shots.

My disinterest in the rest of the world obviously wasn’t spoken loudly enough by my unbroken eye-contact with my ipad. I generally love meeting strange new people, but I’d started this trilogy on the flight over that I was thoroughly enjoying and was determined to finish before I got home. Without provocation of any kind, a woman came over and sat next to me. Aside from the bartender, I’d been alone. I glanced up and did that “I’m acknowledging your presence but that’s about it” smile that Americans have perfected on each other, then continued reading.

A few seconds passed then she tried to rotate my stool so that I’d face her. It was at this moment that I knew what it meant to be a single, white male in Thailand, sitting at a bar by himself. I’d been teased about this trip for this reason. I was aware of the fact that prostitution is incredibly common there. I made the mistake of assuming that it was like other places I’d visited, like Amsterdam which once had a famous red light district where all of that stuff was neatly contained. Wouldn’t Thailand be just the same? No. Don’t assume things about cultures you don’t know, Jake.

I set my feet against the wood of the bar to avoid turning toward the woman. I politely told her no thanks and glanced to my beer. The light golden liquid still filled three-fourths of the glass. She didn’t leave for some minutes. She wasn’t the only one to approach me that way, either. I didn’t finish my beer, but paid and left. I hadn’t spent more than three minutes on the beach yet and that was a large part of the reason I was in Phuket instead of Chiang Mai or Bangkok.

My walk toward the sand and the water was also not without event. Women catcalled as I walked past massage parlors. I’m not sure if it was really catcalling, but when I was called “Big boy” more than once, I decided that’s what was happening. I smirked at this, having never experienced anything remotely close at home.

A caucasian girl walking in front of me threw a paper cup into the gutter. She didn’t wait to happen upon a trash can, she just tossed it aside. I was flabbergasted and nearly tapped on her shoulder to politely inform her that she couldn’t do that. But the gutter was filled with empty water bottles, candy wrappers and other human debris. She was simply following the example that had clearly and repeatedly been provided.

There was more of this at the beach. Cigarette butts, beer bottles, and an inordinate number of condom wrappers peppered the ground beneath the palm trees that stood between the ocean and the highway. I didn’t want to be here late at night is what that meant.

Leaving that all behind, I walked toward the ocean. Azure water lapped at the sand. Waves drew swimmers out, then pushed them back toward the shore. Out, then in, over and over again. I wasn’t in swim shorts, but I walked down and stood in the warm Andaman Sea. Rainbow parachutes lifted tourists toward lumpy white clouds and the dazzling sun. Pale people tanned on mats and children swam. I was in paradise. Everyone around me knew the same thing and we drank it in together. Still, the condom wrappers rattling along the sand not ten yards away reminded me that I didn’t want to be on the beach much longer- the sun would soon set.

★                    ★                    ★

After my pineapple and rambutan breakfast the following day, I wandered. I wanted to get lost and explore this place, exotic and other from me and what I’m accustomed to. I snapped photos of dragon statues and sprinted across busy streets. I ambled below palm trees and smiled at strangers. I noted the alarming number of single white guys dragging young Thai women around. Some of these men were old. Like, possibly in their sixties or seventies and had women in their early twenties in-tow. I cringed, feeling horrible for the women.

There’s a ministry in my hometown called Wipe Every Tear. They work to free young women from sex-trafficking which is an excellent cause to put one’s life to. I don’t know their methods, but I kept thinking that there has to be some complimentary organization that works with men, helping them to understand that sex isn’t everything, to let them know that sleeping around and paying for sex is just breaking their souls into tiny pieces almost like horcruxes that won’t help them to live forever.

I’ve never been a fan of men’s ministries- they always vacillate between two extremes: the disgustingly macho, where some speaker rides his Harley motorcycle into the sanctuary of a church and splits wood while he preaches- or a bunch of men crying while holding each other. Neither is masculinity in its fullness, but a middle ground between the two might be a nice start.

It’s dudes from either of these extremes and probably everything in-between that fly to Thailand and the Philippines, to pay for sex with women who have siblings to feed and bills to pay. Maybe not Christian men, but still, regular guys who get it in their heads to do this.

The disparity between the beauty of the place and the character of humanity hit home the hardest the day I went out to the Phi Phi Islands. This little cluster of limestone cliffs jutting out of the water, towering above white sand beaches were where Man with the Golden Gun and The Beach were filmed. This might have been the most beautiful place I’ve ever been.

I ended up spending the day with a couple of blokes from Manchester. I was clearly solo on this giant boat that took us the two hours from Phuket to Phi Phi, so one of them struck up a conversation with me. He seemed like a decent enough guy. His friend came over and as we continued to talk, they somehow got to protesting paying UK prices for Thai girls. I could feel my shoulders slump and my mouth drop at this statement. I spent the day attempting to minister to them as they went on about getting hammered that night and hoping to, well, I won’t use any of their slang for what these guys wanted to accomplish but at this point, it should be obvious.

Like ants on a Thai picnic, human brokenness swarmed over the beauty of this place. One didn’t have to hunt for it because it paraded down the street and the beach in superlative freedom. I’ve always believed that sunlight is the best disinfectant, but there was a different kind of darkness in this place. The most debaucherous were those who’d traveled thousands of miles to be here. Half the world stood between parents and bosses and teachers and clergy. The anonymity of knowing nobody made this place black as night even if the equatorial sun was trying to destroy all of us with skin cancer. The sin that normally would be hidden behind closed doors and confined to lonely nights was free to come out of its closet here. Which explained the general attitude toward me while I was there.

Frankly, I couldn’t get mad at any of these people. This is the condition we’re in. We are broken and needy and think that sex and alcohol and drugs will make us happy. We also seem to believe that riding elephants and eating Thai food and parasailing and traveling the globe will do something for us, but it doesn’t do what we need it to. These are symptoms of the same set of problems, that we’re lonely and bored and tired of life and want to feel alive and what easier way to do that than thrilling our senses? What better way to show others that we’re living the life by sharing photos and telling stories of our adventures?

Can the dead convince themselves that they’re living the life?

If we lie to ourselves long enough, we’ll eventually lose the truth, won’t we?

★                    ★                    ★

I was gone ten days. Two of those were lost to travel, but eight days alone in Thailand was enough. I’d met some excellent humans as well as many who were suffering and didn’t know it. It seemed a joke to an older man I met that he could potentially have children living on that island and he wouldn’t know. I was in paradise, but I was also in some sort of hell. I was in a dystopia, a fallen Shangri La or Eden. Somehow humans managed to kill the guardian cherubim, break back in and foul the place up. This utopia was tarnished.

We didn’t have to build Orwell’s Airstrip One, or Huxley’s future, we were handed a paradise and we’ve had our way with it time and time again. If we rocketed off to another planet and started all over we’d double-down on our failures because it’s what’s in our DNA. Damning as that sounds, and as harsh as I’ve been on people, we’re still beautiful. Imperfect and crying out for help in a thousand different ways, capable of loving and hurting and being filled as well as emptied. We are not purposeless, but often don’t know how to find our purpose, so we flit around like Mayflies, living as though we don’t have enough time to do what it is we’re supposed to do. Some people figure it out, but I promise they had help.

I was both dismayed and slightly hopeful when I got back on a plane to come home. Dismayed because a thousand things waited to be done. But I missed having friends, not just acquaintances that lasted only a few hours or days, likely to never be seen again. And even though much work awaited me, much of it is the stuff that gives me life. Some of it didn’t, but often the two can’t be entirely separated.

I knew I’d miss the beach, the smell of the ocean, and sunblock and curry. I’d miss friendly Thai smiles and polite conversations. But the sun had literally been trying to kill me. And my friends and family better had missed me as much as I longed to see them. Also, I was tired of having sand in all the places. The stuff just gets everywhere and even when you try to wash it all off, some ends up in other places, nobody wants me to elaborate on that. I was ready for home– Boise, knowing that it too, is its own little dystopia.