The plan was to get a bus from Mae Sot to Bangkok at around 8am, arriving there at around 4pm. Fail. I got there at 11pm. Thai time… mine and the bus driver’s.
I did manage to get up early, but then did some work, got distracted online, had a lovely brunch of Burmese tea leaf salad and egg roti at ‘Borderline’, a shop, gallery and tea garden supporting Burmese refugees. I also bought some christmas presents there.
I finally got to the bus station around midday, and discovered that despite the many busses to Bangkok throughout the day, the last one of the morning left at 10.30 and the next one would be at 8pm. Argh! But, no worries, there’s a mini bus going to Tak every half hour, and I could change to a frequent Bangkok bus there.
Well, I don’t know about the every half hour, I sat there reading a book I’d swapped at the burmese tea garden place until around 1.30pm. Then we looked set to go, but only drove to another bus station in town (I’d walked 1km with my heavy bag in the sun to the big one out of town, argh!) and waited there for about half an hour. So we left around 2pm, and after changing at Tak (no waiting, yay!), I arrived at around 10pm in Bangkok, but at the bus station way north of the city centre. Found a bus into the city. I wasn’t actually worried about arriving so late, as I was heading for the Khao San Road area, a backpacker area that stays up late. Getting there at 11pm I had no problem finding a room, some food (street stalls!) and even the beauty salon was open till midnight!
I went to bed and within half an hour I’d finished the 300+ page book I’d started at midday. It was good. I’d spent all the time on all those buses reading it, which is very unusual for me, I usually fall asleep pretty quickly on buses. And seeing as I got up at 6.30am, it was also unusual I didn’t fall asleep at 1am reading the last bit!
The book (Eat, Pray, Love) is the story of a 35 year old woman from New York who recently went through a tough divorce and then lived in Italy for 4 months to learn the language and eat’, India for 4 months in an ashram to pray, and Indonesia (Bali) for 4 months to find ‘balance’, and found love there. In general it was a search of ‘everything’, and love of self.
Lots of similarities with my situation, though a lot of differences too. In part it inspired the post below about gratitude, especially the ‘very amicable divorce’ bit. The fact that my ex-husband eventually forgave me for leaving and thanked me for leaving made things a lot easier for me/us. I haven’t had to live with the guilt of it, thankfully.
This book also made me think more about buddhism, meditation, god(s). Also after recently reading a book called ‘The Big Bang, The Buddha and the Baby Boomers’, by a hippie/journalist/ex-jew from San Francisco.
And about how happy I am right now (after last year being quite up and down, though mostly up). I’m going to look into meditation and buddhism a bit more, but I don’t feel, and have never felt, I need or want a ‘god’.
A summarised (a bit) quote from Eat, Pray, Love:
Destiny is a relationship – a play between divine grace and willful self-effort. Half of it you have no control over, half of it is absolutely in your hands, and your actions will show measurable consequence.
There is a lot you can’t control, but a lot you can. I can decide how I spend my time, whom I interact with. I can select what I eat and read and study. I can choose how I’m going to regard unfortunate circumstances in my life – whether I will see them as curses or opportunities (and on occasions when I can’t rise to the most optimistic viewpoint, because I’m feeling too damn sorry for myself, I can choose to keep trying to change my outlook). I can choose my words and the tone of voice in which I speak to others. And most of all, I can choose my thoughts.
And then another quote, from the book I’m reading at the moment, The Secret Life of Bees:
The problem with people is they know what matters, but they don’t choose it. The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters.
