Travelling with the locals

Travelling in Thailand as a Farang I have two options. I could enter one of the many travel agencies that dot the streets of any Farang rich tourist destination in this oriental Kingdom. In which case I`ll travel either in air-conditioned mini-bus or else by a big huge tourbus with comfortable reclining seats, a built-in smelly toilet and a monitor above the driver blaring away most of the trip surrounded by backpack travellers from all over the world swapping travel stories in a multitude of languages while the driver himself is knocking down small bottles of Red Bull energy drinks to stay awake after a night`s partying.

My other option is local buses with wooden seats of the non-reclining type and surrounded by locals on a visit to relatives and exchanging the gossip of the day, politics always a serious topic in Thai conversation. No airco here but open windows for the necessary ventilation, food hawkers at any stop entering the bus offering barbequed chicken legs and carpers, fried shrimp and a varity of fruit, bottles of mineral water or small cans of cold Heineken beer. A rooster tied up in a rattan wooven basket under a seat screaming his protestations while I try to eavesdrop on on-going conversations around me.

Two monks in front of me chanting softly in ancient Pali dressed in orange robes. Two young women, one heavily pregnant discussing the possible name for the soon to be born infant, another serious conversation topic in a medieval society where a name is supposed to be protection, a moordu against bad luck, against attacks from evil spirits and mean unpredictable ghoulds, where a name is supposed to have magical powers!!!

I once again realise my Farang mind is poisoned by Asian magic, preindustrial superstition that has over all these years become an illogical labyrinth inside my Western trained Phii and mind. Listening to these locals talk about the matters of their Asian world my Western Logic is like a distraction to my Farang thinking. My own Dutch world all of a sudden seems like a cultural defilement. I`m experiencing a spiritual and cultural attack on my Farang background, a Thai contamination of my very essence.

Apart from the fact that travelling by local transport instead of farang popular mini-bus or monitor blaring tourbus, is but a fraction of the price, it are those intence feeling that make me opt for these rusty old buses where the wind blows in dust and sand, where smells and sound remind me I`m far away from home, backpacking in a country that is unversally different from my own.

written by  heraclio on May 3, 2009 from Krabi, Thailand
from the travel blog: Farang Chronicles.
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