אתם רואים שם את הקשת מן התקופה הרומית? לא חשוב אבל לידה, קצת שמאלה, ולמטה ממנה, יושב אדם שקנה פירות וירקות לביתו

Greetings from Kanchanaburi, on the banks of the River Kwai. I am having poor luck with internet, so not sure when this is going to get posted.

The quote in the heading is from an Amichai poem, called “Tourists in Jerusalem” which American Jews frequently encounter on their high school summer trips to Israel. In the poem, Amichai describes tourists visiting sites of Israeli loss (Har Hertzel, Yad VaShem) while not interacting with living, breathing Israelis. The redemption will come, writes Amichai, when instead of using a local man as a landmark for spotting an ancient arch, the ancient arch is used as a landmark for spotting a local man.  Unintentionally, I’m sure, Thailand has taken Amichai’s message to heart.

Sukkothai was the seat of the Sukkothai kingdom in the 13^th and 14^th centuries. The old city is covered in ruins that date back six or seven hundred years. You might expect the ruins to be roped off, or covered with plasticene to protect them from the throngs of tourists. You might expect huge information signs, telling you all about the Kingdom of Sukkothai, how many people lived in the city, and the relationship between religion and politics throughout the kingdom. You would be wrong. Aside from a few worn-out signs 100 meters away asking that you not climb on the chedis, you are welcome to walk all over the ruins. And while there is supposedly an audio tour they you can rent which would provide more information on the ruin, I couldn’t figure out where you could rent the audio guide. On Friday I went to the museum about the ancient city of Sukkothai, which spent as much time describing contemporary agriculture as on information about the ancient city.

On the other hand, every time they I have gone hiking, or on my countryside bike ride, tour guides are eager to show off traditional ways of farming, the crops that are grown, and the ways that different hill tribes use bamboo to make their homes. My mom suggested that this is due to a lack of money invested in tourism. While this is certainly a component, I also think that the tourism industry is more interested in showcasing regular contemporary people living their lives, rather than Thai history.

Much of this week has been a comedy of errors. After realizing that Loei didn’t have enough of enough of a tourism industry to help me find a trekking guide, I headed to Chiang Khan, which my guidebook suggested had more of a tourism industry. It did, but it was geared towards the domestic, Thai tourist, and not the English speaking tourist. Still, I borrowed a bike from my guesthouse and went for a ride by the Mekong River, which was pretty. That evening, I was walking around the night market, and I noticed a few young Thai women staring at me. I said hi, and the next thing I know, I have six new Thai BFFs, who are determined to show me around Chiang Khan. They are all college students, studying accounting on a school break. It seems like they pooled their money to rent a hotel room for a few days. Hilarity which only happens with teenage girls ensued: One was enduring a bad break-up, Milk, the ringleader who tried to get me to remember her name by pointing to her breast, wanted to become a supermodel, got me to sing Céline Dion songs with her, I had to pose for pictures with each of them, etc.

I spent Shabbat going back and forth between the pool and my air-conditioned hotel room. Earlier in the week, I had swapped my latest paperback for Phillip Roth’s The Plot Against America at a bookswap adjacent to a restaurant. It did not make for a relaxing Shabbat read. Only in the last hour before Shabbat ended did I discover that my guesthouse had its own hammocks and bookswap shelf.

On Sunday I planned to head to Kanchanaburi. I got a late-morning tuktuk to the bus station, where I was informed that I had to transfer in Tak. Ok, no problem. Upon my arrival in Tak, I learn that there isn’t a bus to Kanchanaburi for another 9 hours. Fortunately, there’s a nice ice cream shop with aircon, WiFi and a power source next to the bus station, so I got a lot of reading done on my tablet. When the ice cream shop closed at 6:30, it was pretty hot, but I made it.

 I arrived in Kanchanaburi at 6 am, and after resting a bit, I visited the Death Railway museum, which is the most Western site that I have seen the whole time that I’ve been here. Tomorrow I have booked a tour to take me to the waterfall and some other local sites, before I head to Bangkok to catch my flight to Delhi where I will be reunited with Leanne and Joanna!