When Everything Stayed the Same

1. On August 6, 2013, I left the country for the first time. I went to Thailand.
2. Before that sentence was created, I sat down and thought, Do I really want to write this?
3. To be honest, this isn’t that hard of a topic. It’s actually rather easy and not even all that personal, at least not in the standard sense of the word. For most, this is probably a story that one would be eager to share, a small story that is part of the larger book which is their life. And it’s an easy one, too; a typical one. This is a giant spark in the lives of many people, a beginning, a moment they plan months in advance and then look back on to with joyous nostalgia. Yet here I am, dreading this exposé, prolonging the mere explication of what it is I’m talking about without even entirely knowing why. But I guess I’ll get into it, now and for all.
4. I was nineteen, on the cusp of twenty. I was excited because nineteen is Thailand’s legal drinking age, though I soon discovered that being fàràng was enough identification to surpass security and askance glances at bars, hole-in-the-wall convenience marts and the numerous, monopolizing 7-Elevens.
5. Fàràng is a generic Thai term for anyone descending from the West. Colloquially, it can be anyone from a first-world country; no matter your ethnicity — African, South Korean, Brazilian and a half — if you are from North America and/or Europe, you are inherently fàràng. Less colloquially, it means anyone stemming from Europe, or anyone who is white. In actuality, it comes from fàràng sàyt, meaning French. Fàràng can also be heard in ma:n fàràng, meaning potato. Potato is also the name of a popular Thai rock band, but I’m digressing.
6. You probably pronounced those words wrong if you have a Standard American English accent. It’s fah-rahng, like when your doctor sticks that wooden depressor on your tongue and tells you to go “ahhh.” Thai is also a tonal language; the meaning of a word can change entirely depending on the inflection you give it. The translations of “white,” “rice,” “news” and “he” all sound basically the same to most anglophones. But this is the furthest that I’ll get into that, or else we might be here all day.
7. It was the first plane ride I had ever taken by myself. I went from JFK to Seoul, South Korea via Korean Airlines, whose flight attendants were nearly proper enough for me to want to use the outdated phrase “stewardess.” They wore white ribbons pinned in tar black hair and glowing smiles on their smooth, white faces (the ideal look for all of Asia, because the more light-skinned you are, the better off you will be). I sat beside two Vietnamese men with whom I shared Ghirardelli chocolates that I had brought along with me.
8. What was I doing in Thailand, you wonder? Some might have already guessed, and others still curious. For one thing, I wasn’t on vacation, despite the tropical, relaxing notoriety the beautiful country harbors. Instead, like most privileged middle-class students who hide their reality in loans and debt, I had the opportunity to study abroad. So I took it.
9. In late September my program took the lot of us — a small number of only about twenty-five students — to the province of Chiang Rai in northern Thailand. We spent two nights in a small village on Doi Mae Salong, a misty mountain in a region popular for heavy Chinese culture and an abundance of tea grown after the decline of an illicit opium war. In the highlands of Thailand I found it to be, dare I say, actually a bit chilly, warranting the use of the one sweater I brought to the country in seventy degree weather. On the way to dinner one night, three police officers whom my companions and I were passing yelled towards us, “Hello!” They then halted us, and I attempted to smile at them with as much ease as my experience-induced nerves allowed. They had only one simple request, though, which we understood through gesticulation: for us to take a photo with them. We did, and with smiles they allowed us on our way. Shortly after, during dinner, I spied our waitress snap a picture of us while we ate.
10. Alright, but why Thailand, right? Why not England, Spain, bpràthet fàràng sàyt? A lot of people have asked me these questions. What they don’t ask is: Why didn’t you follow the herd? Why didn’t you choose something comfortable, reliable, paved and understood? Why did you fly twelve hours into the future, into a land I know nothing about but must have been indubitably dirty and strange? Why did you choose an equally breathtaking and overlooked area of the world dripping in culture, when you have absolutely none right here?
11. We’ll never know why I chose Thailand.
12. The first thing I saw back when I landed in the States, aside from advertisements all in English, was a TSA officer yelling at a group of Korean nationals for going too slowly through the line.
13. Before this sentence was created, I sat down and thought, Do I really want to write this? Because, see, the thing is this: nothing happened. Nothing. I went to Thailand. I saw starving children and mangled, disease-ridden dogs without homes. I attempted to teach critical thinking to a class of migrants who had lost family to genocide and war. I ate home-cooked food every night for less than two U.S. dollars and watched tens of thousands paper lanterns float in unison towards the night sky. And then I came back. My parents were still alive. My friends were still here — the same friends I had left, except maybe a bit less on account of those whom I realized were never truly my friends to begin with. Earth remained in her methodical orbit. I inhabited a land that was foreign to me over halfway across the globe and nothing happened. Yes, that is my secret: everything stayed the same; I did not change the world. My new secret is this: nothing happened — and that’s okay, because sometimes nothing has to.
This piece of alternative non-fiction was originally written in September of 2014.
