Part 5: "You wanna maaasaaaaage?" -Thailand

I didn't give Thailand a fighting chance.

Oh Thailand. Despite how much I love Thai Air (undoubtedly the best airline in the world and what is probably the singular pride of this country) arrival gave me a feeling that reminds one of a bad taste in the back of your throat, or a rock in your shoe, or the faint touch of a headache, or that horrible phantom smell that haunts my apartment.

It's not that there weren't things to love about this place. In fact I'll list them right now, in no particular order:

• Watermelon shakes (or any kind of shake for that matter)
• My company's annual conference (by far more refreshing than even the watermelon shakes)
  
• Getting to spend time with friends new and old (and all the encouragement that goes with that)
  
• Tons of good western food to eat
• Interesting markets (including women in strange hats with wooden frogs chasing you everywhere)
  
• Beautiful green gardens and bright flowers
• The dentists (I had such a good experience I wanted to go back the next day too!)

And it's not that there weren't some really fun stories to tell. Ask me to give you a Thai massage. Or give me a moment to describe what it's like to buy a cheeseburger for a stranger. Maybe I'll mention the "ice cream sandwiches" and the way that everyone freezes when the national anthem is played.

The truth is that by the time I got to Chaing Mai I had definitely reached travel saturation point. In fact, I did everything I could to avoid the culture of that place. The high nasal sound of the Thai language often made me grit my teeth, the way that temples and idols and spirit houses seemed to sneer out at me from every corner made me shudder, the horror that the prostitutes sold not only their bodies but everything about their culture to the more perverse western clientel produced an uncontolable nausea. Looking back, it is to my regret and dismay at myself and my own feebleness that I countered these things, not with the love and grace that they deserved, but with retreat.

I wish I had never had to see the guys from my company get harrased by eager, or desperate, prostitutes, or idols being paraded through the streets, or children forced out among the vulgar late at night to make a few bhat selling semi wilted flowers, or destitute people merely accepting their fate, or the filth of western tourism and the way that it successfully trashed that culture.

I wish I had never forgotten that we are called to be servants to those prostitutes, light to block out those idols, generous with those children, sympathetic with those destitute, and healing to the broken things of those people.

I was relieved to leave that place and dismayed that I had shown it so little grace. May I be forgiven for the way that I recieved Thailand.