In the land of fantasies

The one constant, totally reliable thing about traveling...is that one is always *not* having the experience one expected.

Thailand is a great place for this to happen.

Pourquoi?  (We're learning French.)

Parce que some parts of Thailand are really and truly "the stuff dreams are made of."  Take a look at this photo of E on the beach in Phuket...

All of this is real...all 6'1" of him.  (Sorry, couldn't resist ;-))

All of this is real...white sand the texture of brown sugar, crystal clear water, picturesque fishing boat.  This is Nai Thon Beach, one of the quiet northern beaches on the big island of Phuket.  We were totally smitten by it.  Not only are the natural ingredients beautiful, but the combination of white umbrellas set in front of greeny-black pine trees lining the shore was such an aesthetic pleasure too...

We looked down the beach and then up on the hillside.  There, gazing down, were a row of lovely Thai-architecture-inspired condos.  Hmmm.  We got excited -- What if?

We made our way down the beach to a little private cove and up a hidden set of stairs...and there came across a handsome German with 0% body fat (he was wearing an Iron Man t-shirt) and a small fluffy dog.  We lucked out -- he said he owned one of one of the condos.  The development is called Malaiwana, owned by a company called Thanyapura.

We discussed the accessibility of Phuket (flights from everywhere), the gorgeousness of the setting, the convenience of this beach near the airport and Tesco Lotus superstore.  He told us the villas each had large private swimming pools (unnecessary I think) and that there were just a few of them left.  So, E asked, What are the drawbacks.  "Well," said the German, "They're very expensive."  About US $4 million expensive.  Phoooop.  Our little balloon of fantasy deflated.  We thanked the German and went on our way.

Interesting thing, though, look at this -- googling for the name of the development, I found a picture of our German:

Turns out the man we were speaking to was Robert Hauck, the president of Thanyapura.  This little enclave of $4-million condos is just one prong of a 23-hectare luxury-sports-wellness-organic-mindfulness development the company is building.  I couldn't make this up, so I'll just quote from a recent interview with Hauck in The Nation:

Located in the eastern part of Phuket, Thanyapura's 23-hectare campus comprises three centres: Thanyapura Sports and Leisure Club, Phuket International Academy Day School and Thanyapura Mind Centre.

It offers Olympic-class facilities and coaching at its sports training centre. At its Mind Centre, Thanyapura offers best-in-class, evidence-based programmes in meditation, psychology and yoga. The Day School is recognised as a leading school in the region, with a curriculum that bolsters the International Baccalaureate with a rich Social and Emotional Learning programme to produce fully rounded pupils prepared for future success.

The Thanyapura Group also includes an organic farm, which provides fresh produce to the Phuket property and many others besides.

About the opening of Thanyapura, Hauck said:

"We think one way to gauge success is by the calibre of the people we have at Thanyapura. Our triathlon coach is eight-time worldwide ironman winner Jurgen Zack, aka "Zack Attack''. Two elite Kenyan runners, Joshua Kipchumba and Julius Bett, have just taken up residence at our place. Kim Roberts, a leading exponent of Ashtanga yoga, heads up our yoga classes and retreats, including [the upcoming] Nature's Magic from January 21-24. Plus, the Canadian Olympic synchronised swimming team trained at Thanyapura recently. We host an ITF satellite tennis tournament, and the TSLC Brazilian Football Academy."

Clearly, we are not the only ones driven to fantasize by Thailand's beauty.

Let me take you to our next stop: Koh Samui.

E was particularly excited about Samui because we had rented a house with phenomenal Balinese architecture.  This, he thought, was a house, I'd love to own.  We were really looking forward to this.  This was going to be a treat.  We were fantasizing about the house.  Let me show you some of the photos...

Awesome, right?

When we arrived at the Samui airport things started getting subtly more real, let's just say.  Very subtly.  The property manager, a young woman from the island herself, came to pick us up in a pickup truck.  Because she is a young lady and E is a big strong man, he had the pleasure of hoisting our five 50-lb suitcases up onto the bed of the truck.  I had warned her about the five suitcases ahead of time.  This solution seemed fine to her.  E didn't complain, but I thought it was a little strange.  Somehow being a beast of burden jarred with the fantasy of being a king in a Balinese pleasure palace.

We started driving...

Wow, this is not exactly pretty, is it?

This is the turnoff to our house, eh?  Lovely.  The Balinese pleasure palace is conveniently located in a ghetto.

I guess it's not really a ghetto if there's water buffalo behind a sheet metal "fence."  Well, anyway...

Here are some of our other neighbors.  Not sure if you can see the large white shepherd barking at us from the balcony behind the stained wall and the dirty mermaid mural.

You're leaving?  Um, ok.  Goodbye.  (Are you going to remember how to get out of here?)

A few years ago I read Harvard prof. Daniel Gilbert's book Stumbling on Happiness, which is a research-based pop-psychology book on what really makes us happy.  One thought that has stayed with me from that book is that, when we fantasize about a future (that is presumably better than our present), we tend to leave things out.  When we fantasize about getting a kitten, we usually don't imagine having a catbox in our kitchen for 15 years.  We only imagine the part of the picture that we want.  Gilbert has some interesting things to say -- it's worth watching his 10-min TED talk.

So here we are in Samui, discovering that we have failed to fantasize about the setting of the palace.  We are thinking about this when a scooter whizzes up and a pretty Thai girl in a miniskirt hops off the back of the bike, adjusts her boobs, goochie-goos the dog, and walks into the neighbor's house.  Hmmm.  This is the same dog that rushes at me barking when I attempt to leave our house on foot and walk the 3+ miles to Chaweng Beach, where I discover that every square millimeter of space is jealously guarded by a beach resort.  Incomplete fantasy for sure!

(This is someone else's photo, by the way.  It wasn't that sunny when we were Samui.)

Alright, we decide, if we're going to pay for a square inch of sand, for a few moments in time, then we'd like a really nice square inch.  I had read in Fodors that the Four Seasons Samui is "easily one of the most spectacular hotels in the world."  Lunch?

When we walked into reception for the hotel, I wondered if I hadn't died and gone to heaven.  It was just a small open-air platform with a single desk and podium fountain with a smooth lacquer of water flowing over it.  In the background: palm-studded hills dropped off precipitously in front of a massive turquoise ocean.  The setting felt vaguely biblical, like the concierge was St. Peter and she was going to decide if we made it into heaven, not just lunch. 

Because this is Thailand, they were really nice and didn't mind E and me playing proper tourist and taking our photo in front of the view...

I'm guessing that someone at the Four Seasons has read Gilbert's research.  They haven't failed to envision every detail of the tropical island fantasy...from the secluded private beach...

...to the elegant place setting that mirrored the color of the natural environment,

...to the designer bread and olive oil,

...and the highly-manicured food presentations,

...and even a handsome, smiling, polyglot waiter (I heard him speaking in fluent Spanish to the woman at the next table about the fact that she was from Barcelona).

Interestingly, the food was good, but not great.  And that plunging drop from the road down to the private beach where we ate?  Navigated by a system of golf carts.  They must use a lot of batteries, E remarked.

Fantasy about the physical environment was not the only terrain we navigated on our trip through Southern Thailand's kohs.

Let me take you into a different dimension of fantasy...it's now been two years and three months that we've lived outside the USA.  One of the fantasies I've been slowly letting go of during this time is the fantasy of assimilation.  Whenever I tell Americans that I lived in Hong Kong, they breathlessly ask, "Wow, did you learn the language?"  When I say no, they usually respond with disapproval. 

If you never go abroad yourself, it's easy to maintain the fantasy that, if you did, you would quickly learn the local language and become part of the local community.

I think Americans are particularly prone to this fantasy because we come from a country whose modern inhabitants are immigrants and descendants of immigrants.  Our culture is not based in ethnicity.  Elsewhere in the world -- China, Thailand...even France and Italy -- being Chinese, Thai, French, Italian...is not something you do by getting with the program.  In the USA if someone "looks" Mexican or "looks" Chinese, but opens their month and "sounds" American, we take it granted that they are American.  In most other countries it doesn't work that way.  Big white guy speaking fluent Thai isn't assumed to be Thai.  He's still a farang. 

So the thing I have been slowly accepting is the prospect of life as a cultural outsider.  Not an easy thing.  Outsiders get noticed and scrutinized and managed. This is a major loss of privacy, if you think about it.  In Mexico, for example, I had only to set one foot outside the door to be bombarded with offers of taxi.  If I had looked Mexican, I would have simply left the house without any interactions. 

Well, Phuket had a surprise for me.  I found myself one of many, many tall, pale people thronging the beaches...

But they weren't Americans, they were primarily Russians and Swedes.  I was fascinated witnessing conversations between Thais and Russians carried out in a common broken English.  Hearing such different people struggle to understand each other in my mother tongue was fascinating.  So was seeing a totally different set of cross-cultural dynamics.  For example, I saw a young Russian woman impatiently take the nail clippers out of a Thai woman's hand and show her "tchuk tchuk tchuk" how to cut her nails.  I would never, ever touch a Thai person I didn't know unless they invited me to do so. 

I can't say exactly why this felt good.  Somehow I had recovered a sense of anonymity and privacy.  And also, the European-Russian influence had the added benefit of ensuring a great selection of chocolate in convenience stores ;-)

So, time for one more fantasy... 

Have you read Alex Garland's book The Beach?  It's the story of a 20-something backpacker who, late one night in a Koh Samui guesthouse, overhears about a secret utopian community on a tiny hidden island.  Of course the reality of the utopian island turns out to be much, much darker... 

This book took ahold of my imagination when I read it in my 20-somethings and it never let go.  I have to confess this is probably why we found ourselves slamming through the windy waters on the 2+ hour ferry from Samui to Koh Tao (I saw three people barf ).  Check out the luggage "system on the ferry, below ;-)

I secretly hoped Koh Tao was the island in Garland's book.  Well...it kind of was.  It's just 21 km^2, with a permanent population of about 1500.  It's a SCUBA diving hotspot and not much else.  Apparently you used to not be able to get lodging unless you were diving. This was the view from the bedroom of our little hotel.  Phenomenal, eh?

Well, the fantasy that had persisted in my brain all these years failed to update the fact that I have turned into a 36-year-old person in the meantime.  So when I bravely presented for my open water diving certification class, I found that I was senior to everyone in the little dive shop by at least 10 years.  The island was filled half with local Thais (of all ages) and half filled with 20-something expats whizzing around on scooters. 

My dive instructor was a wise old man of 28 with 1000+ dives over his belt and an abandoned career as a lawyer in South Africa.  Well, anyway, I braved the reality of being nearly the age of everyone's mother (!), put my head down and conquered my fear of breathing water and stepping into the ocean with 60 lbs of equipment on my back...and I am now a certified SCUBA diver!

What does that tell you about fantasy?  I haven't figured it out yet...