On the Other Side of the Great Firewall of China: Forget you, Eat Love Pray, I'm taking my vacation back :Thailand Pt. 2

   Since my freshman year of college, I have been surrounded by people who are more liberal than me. I am either viewed as a moderate or a soulless big-business vampire who bleeds third world children dry in the name of greed, depending on how dramatic the person is feeling.
   All the same, I will admit that the free-spirited bohemian gypsy hipster wearing long skirts, hand painted beads and drinking iced thai tea while explaining that we're all connected by an energy is not me. While I understand why people have their views, I do tend to err on the pragmatic side, and I've never felt the need to "find myself."
   I've spent my life reading. Beautifully disturbing Russian novels, stoic yet sweeping British romances, books on 1001 ways to use baking powder, it doesn't matter. Anything and everything I will read. The only exception to that rule is books that try to tell you how to live your life and enlighten you.
   I first heard about Eat Love Pray when a junior in college, and refused to read it for four years, due to the fact that it seemed to me to incorporate everything I was wary of. However, in China, beggars can't be choosers when it comes to English books, and desperation for a decent book wore me down.
   This is important to understand in regards to what comes next. I decided to go to a meditation retreat in Chiang Mai, Thailand. I blame it completely on Eat Love Pray. In case you have no idea what this book is about, it's about a depressed woman who travels and finds herself and is happy again.
   So I trekked back to Bangkok, bought my ticket, then went to the most rickety train station one could imagine. It was literally just a platform of rotting boards on either side of the train tracks. I was quite worried, imagining the type of train that would pull up. I didn't care if it was clean or dirty, stuffed with people or empty, I just prayed that it would have a working air conditioner, because the Thai heat was draining me of both my energy and, I feared, my logical reasoning skills. That morning I had bought an enormous bag of strange, heavy fruit that I had no idea how to eat. I had just bought it because it look interesting and the street woman told me to, and so, for the next few hours, I lugged around my tiny backpack and the huge bag of uneatable fruit.
   Luckily, a train that appeared to be a smooth pewter bullet emerged on the horizon, two hours after it's initial estimated arrival time. I had kept busy by watching some Thai women torture their clothes by plunging the clothes into water, twisting and whipping the clothes against a small shed, then beating the clothes with boards in the most violent washing I've ever witnessed.
   Not only was the train air conditioned, it was frigid. The icy, stainless steel speed train contrasted so much with the heavy humidity, festive colors and comfortable dirtiness of Thailand that it seemed like it belonged to a different time, a different world.
   Shivering, I emerged from my refrigerated cocoon into Chiang Mai the next morning, ready for meditation to be the garbage disposal to all of my convoluted thoughts. I imagined myself, thoughtless, still and serene, while Buddhist monks nodded their head approvingly at my imitation of a statue. I imagined what life would be like when I thought less and slower, when my words would be measured and wise, not the steam of consciousness chipmunk-speak that they usually are. I would return to the US, and everyone would be so impressed by my changes. They would say things like, "Meghan, you speak so slowly now!", "Meghan, you are so chilled out, it's like you're from California!" and "Look at you, reading the news and not getting sad."
   So I went to the monastery, put my things down and still had two hours to meander before the retreat stated. So I went to find Thai iced tea, my obsession in Thailand. As I explored the little Chiang Mai streets, I started to feel uneasy about the meditation retreat, but I tried to push it out of my mind. I went into a tiny tea-house on a side street of Chiang Mai. Moments later, two foreign women walked into the tea house as well. One looked very whimsical, 60s hippie-ish, she had black and white streaked short hair, big star earrings and was wearing a billowy shift dress. She was a real, life-long hippie! She had to be, looking as she did and living in Thailand.
   So I started up a conversation with her, I told her about the retreat, expecting that she would have something to add. And did she ever. She lived on an ashram in India for 10 years, in serious meditation.
   "Oh wow, really? I'm actually just about to go to a meditation retreat. Any suggestions or tips?" I asked.
   "Yes. Don't do it." She answered solemnly. "Meditation lets in everything, and not all spirits are good. Many are evil. I ended up joining a cult and was haunted by evil spirits until I was saved. I'm now a missionary in Thailand for the Catholic Church."
   I blinked. That was not at all what I was expecting.
   What are the odds? That in the 1 hour before my retreat, I would run into an ex-cult member/current Christian missionary who would warn me against meditation?

I had to return to the monastery to pick up my things, but I was having serious second thoughts.

"Oh no!" I scanned the room full of hipster hippie backpackers with their fedoras, lonely planets and supercilious conversations about finding truth. I saw a Che Guevara T-shirt and I started to panic, as I imagined my next few days, a captive audience to listening to Bob Marley and diatribes about the US government. On the far side of the room, the monks were moving a gong into the room.

Then I looked at myself, after all, I was there too. Days of endless heat had broken down my resolve and I was wearing a peasant skirt, and I was backpacking through Thailand, trying to be as frugal as possible. Was I really any different?

And that's when I had it, my moment of epiphany. They aren't me and I'm not them. I don't want to meditate. I don't want to clear my mind and get rid of my thoughts. I realized that

1) Just because I'm backpacking doesn't mean I need to have the backpack lifestyle. I'm not a hippie, and I don't want to be.

2) I don't like gongs, and I don't want to listen to them

3) If I wanted to not be in my head anymore, meditation was perhaps the worst idea I've had so far.

5) I don't need to find myself, because I never lost myself.

which could all be summed up to:

6) forget you, Eat Love Pray, I'm taking my vacation back.

So I picked up my things and walked out, away from the meditation, the gongs and maybe spiritual enlightenment.

I didn't know what I wanted, but i knew that I didn't want to go on elephants, i didn't want to go to temples, I didn't want to take the backpacking vow of poverty, priding myself that I spent $2 a night on a room full of cockroaches instead of $6 on a clean room.

Let me be clear, there is absolutely nothing wrong with cheap hostels, backpacking, or even Che Guevara (as long as people actually know what he did and what he stood for, instead of some abstract idea that they just link to him), it just isn't for me. I can do it, but it isn't my idea of a vacation.

I wanted to do what I wanted to do. So I went to my hostel a day early and signed up for a cooking class.
That was the beginning of the wonderful last two weeks of my vacation. I spent one week in Chiang Mai, that is where I discovered the kindle, which changed my world. An electronic book that could hold hundreds of books! I rediscovered my love of reading, and realized that it was always through reading that I gained perspective. I spent the rest of the vacation wandering around Chiang Mai, talking to people, eating random things and going to nearby lakes and villages.

The last week I spent in Koh Phangan doing nothing, and I loved every minute of it. Koh Phangan is known for the infamous full moon parties, but besides the actual full moon party, I stayed on my sleepy side of the island in a cozy bungalow.
I spent my days making friends with the other guests, reading everything I could, snorkeling, swimming, hiking and drinking copious amounts of coconut shakes. Boring? Maybe to some people, but for me it was perfect.