The Tale of a Lost Boy in a Foreign Land.
‘Little did I know, roaming these chaotic streets at youthful dusk of day, that I had shifted the first little piece of the puzzle that destined me for a year of experiences, one after the other, that would — beyond all expectation, shape this young rebel into a man unrecognisable to the naive boy that now walked the alien pavements of this foreign jungle of strange men and curious streets.’
It’s the beginning of summer, 2017.
I’m 18 years of age.
My last A Level examination is over.
I knew I’d got the results I needed, but I didn’t know if I’d ever use them.
What I did know, with certainty, was that I was tired, angry; angry with the education system, with the institutionalised minds and what I saw as a profound ignorance pervading the society I grew up a part of.
I wanted to get away — away from everything familiar, beyond the realm of routine and polite decency — all the things that had worn me down and fed my anarchist spirit.
I was heavily intellectual, heavily philosophical, heavily into fitness, photography, writing, adventure.
I was heavy — in mind, body and spirit.
I wanted freedom, exploration — something new, something real.
I wanted adventure.
So I went after exactly that.
June 26th 2017.
I’m alone, I’m young, and finally, I’m doing what I want — not what I’m told to do.
I land on the streets of Bangkok, backpack fastened tight round my waist, eyes wide, clutching a little Fujifilm camera in my right hand.
Little did I know, roaming these chaotic streets at youthful dusk of day, that I had shifted the first little piece of the puzzle that destined me for a year of experiences, one after the other, that would — beyond all expectation, shape this young rebel into a man unrecognisable to the naive boy that now walked the alien pavements of this foreign jungle of strange men and curious streets. And as such, I regard this day as a great day — as a day that marks the moulding of who I know myself to be now, and who I continue to mould so, and become so, today and for the rest of my mortal existence.
They call this road Khaosan. In the book The Beach, this road is described as ‘the centre of the backpacking universe’.
For many, fresh out of the airport, this is the first destination for the young traveller.
A river of frantic activity, neon billboards, pounding dance music, bambi-eyed young couples, old british men in canvas shorts and leather sandals. Tank top vests, flip flops, unkempt beards and beer bottles.
I remember distinctly a feeling, a knowledge, that this place was more more than a passing landmark — that it would become a memory, or rather a collection of memories stretched out over the thin void of time. I headed to my guesthouse, left all that noise behind — hearing that sentimental familiarity, that echo.
It was a time of great excitement, of great vividness.
That evening I wandered the streets. I got up and I walked, I walked far away into the night, into the deepest and darkest streets I could find. I ignored all sense, all caution, all fear.
And as the eastern sun dozed off over the horizon and yawned its last wink of light, the sky turned pink like off-colour candifloss, and there pervaded a blissful mellowness in the air, and I watched the sky fade gently from that beautiful pinkness into the sombre deep blue of the night.
And so the streetlamps began to flicker on wearily, one by one, like turning on the lights in an amusement park. And I began to walk further again, in whatever direction my feet took me, my little camera in hand, my heart stirring in this unfathomable curiosity of exploring an unknown world.
I passed the snarling snouts of street dogs, old men sitting, sipping tea, skin like dried prunes. I heard the echoes of young kids in the streets, the crying of a baby — that ethereal song of youth that cuts through the black velvet night. I passed an infinitude of suspicious glances, stares of intense curiosity.
I was watched — I could know it surely, from the feeling of the peering gazes that seemed to project themselved from behind thin curtains and barred windows.
But oddly, I knew I was quite safe, I knew that I would come to no harm that night. And surely, I must have been naive to believe so — perhaps. And yet it is true that I came to no harm, and that I walked those street cautiously but without fear.
And it is of my belief that without that courage of which some may call stupidity, that I would not have led myself down that path of which I now find myself most convincingly embarked on — that path that led me into the chasms of adventure and self-discovery. The path that forced me down into that dungeon of fear from which the treasures of inner knowledge, of inner power, can be salvaged from the wreckage of an entity so long conditioned and repressed into self-devaluation, into fear, fear of what is unknown, both outside and in.
For on that path, risk is certain, and for myself atleast, certainly worth the weight of it.
I found myself sitting with some strange old men, men who lived on those streets — men who had left behind the remants of their previous lives, and found an escape in this bizarre jungle of such contrasting existence.
They talked as if they lived in a time far gone, and I sat and listened, mostly — glad to see some familiar faces after that long late evening of walking these dim concrete corridors of strange sights and stranger sounds, that eerie feeling — like walking the surface of another planet.
Nevertheless, I did recognise what I had now begun. A venture into the beginning of a journey that would go on far longer than I ever imagined, and that would surely be marked as the beginning of a new life — as if the boy I was before that day was to be forever lost in the junkyard of sentiment — under the ground, the roots of the seed of what I have now become.
Of which I am forever grateful for that boy I left behind — for I now still sit in his old chair and write these words with the same hands — and without him, I couldn’t have done any of it.
Axle.
