Back in Thailand

It is a bittersweet feeling that welcomes me back into Thailand after nine weeks in the neighboring and much different countries of Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia.

Bangkok is just as expansive and bustling, but having experienced the much dirtier, sweatier, poorer, and more crowded cities of Vietnam, it is considerably more navigable and less daunting. Thailand's infrastructure - tourist and otherwise - so vastly exceeds that of the communist countries to its east, that it is difficult to recognize a personality beneath the veneer that is presented to travellers. One receives the Thai Tourist Package, a well-tested collection of Things To Do, mass produced for the millions of backpackers passing through the country every year.

Coming back through Thailand will certainly lessen the reverse culture shock that is often so strong upon returning home, packed as one is with new insights and perspectives. I already feel closer to New York than to Phnom Penh, the abject poverty and filth of the latter fading in the bright city lights of capitalism.

I find myself - most definitely unfairly - almost resenting Thailand for its affluence in the midst of such destitution. While certainly much poorer than many nations, it stands as the only country in SE Asia that was spared culturally stagnating colonialism, cruel invasion, and devastating war. Thanks to the events of recent decades there is a commerical and economic gap between Thailand and the rest that seems almost insuperable.

Travelling from Siem Riep to the Thai border we rode an ancient bus (our second of the day: the first had no brakes), crowded and sticky, down a dirt and rock road through the middle of dried up rice paddies, dust covering us from head to toe. At the border we transferred to another bus for the trip into Bangkok; an air-conditioned double decker VIP cruiser that smoothly sped along an autobahn-quality highway.

Of the countless things this trip has taught me, two stand out: Communism, for all its cachet as a hip political idea within intellectual liberal arts circles, in practice devastates people's lives. Second, so does war.

Back home I fear it will be easy to slip back into blithe ignorance and self-righteousness, forgetting that I am one of the luckiest and richest residents of the world, but I hope not.