South East Asia Trip Reflections

Letter written to family after returning from Thailand and Malaysia, 2006

Selamat tengah hari,

Well, good to be back in the warm embrace of Japan, but the sights, smells and tastes of Southeast Asia still linger, inextricably suffused into our senses. We spent some of the most unforgettable days there, and turned out to be just the kind of R&R we needed. Our time in Malaysia moved glacially slow, a place that makes even laidback Maui seem like New York City. Our three weeks felt more like three Japan months.

And we saw yet another side of Thailand, the central part, visiting Katchanaburi, host town of the infamous Death Railway, and the ‘Bridge on the River Kwai’. Sight of this landmark bridge will have anyone who has seen the movie involuntarily start whistling the Colonel Bogey march alongside the ghosts of Alec Guinness and company. It’s a fascinating, and remarkably beautiful part of Thailand. A ride on the aptly named ‘Death Railway’ will scare the pants off you more so than the gnarliest of rollercoasters. So happens “Kwai” means scary in Japanese (no relation). Our train was delayed due to a “minor derailment”, an oxymoron if I’ve ever heard one. When a vehicle weighing untold tons comes off its tracks, “minor” is not the adjective that first comes to mind. At any rate, the trip was of the variety only the Thais can provide: lethal. On every corner of the Kingdom you’ll find attractions that can potentially kill you (see elephant photo below). To cite another example, there’s a monastery near Katchanaburi that is run by a monk who happens to keep 18 tigers, creating a sort of orphanage for the endangered animals. To help fill the coffer (to help cover running costs), the monk has opened his ‘Tiger Temple’ to visitors. True to Thai style, visitors are invited to the tranquil temple to risk loss of life and limb. The main draw being visitors are welcome to try their hand at petting the lovely 400-pound felines, sometimes literally losing the limb in reciprocation. I never laugh when I hear these stories of tourist bravery (a.k.a. tourist stupidity). Thailand has this charming power to fill you with more bravado than is good for you. I should know. Momentarily swapping my scruples with Clark Griswold, I found myself signing up my family and myself for a tour of the Tiger Temple. It wasn’t until the owner of the guesthouse we were staying told me that recently a hapless tourist was mauled to shreds by one of the monk’s cats because he had made the fashion faux pas of wearing a red shirt. Guess, like bulls, red enrages tigers. So happens my travel wardrobe consisted of mostly red items (this becomes evident upon seeing our travel pics. see below).

These are the sort of tidbits of trivial knowledge Marlin Perkins should have been imparting on Wild Kingdom, don’t you think? Then again, maybe that’s why Mutual of Omaha pulled the plug on Perkins: too many housewives cashing in on their husbands’ life insurance policies after being inspired to take nutzoid safaris and jungle treks into carnivorous beast infested lands.

Thailand: a Wild Kingdom, indeed.

I’ll spare you the story about our unforgiving, 14-hour journey on Malaysia’s ‘Jungle Railway’, yet another chapter from the Travels & Perils of The Kubos. And no trip of ours is without ‘Gilligan Time’…yes, we did find the "uncharted desert isle” paradise, The Perhentian Islands! A place time itself becomes meaningless, allowing us to surrender our senses to the islands’ refreshingly untamed nature. Kecil (small island) and Besar (big island) are jungle-crowned dots on a map, but teeming with more wildlife than 100 zoos in one! No cars, not motorbikes, no concrete, no phones. Boring? No way! Stretch on a mask, plug in a snorkel, take a dip, and the surrounding seas become a seizure of pure, primal life, the likes of which I’ve only seen illustrated in Jackie Turner’s Watchtower magazines. (I think some of those pages gave the Tiger monk the idea for his temple.) And just when you thought life was getting predictable, a shark the size of Kai meanders under your flippers, Nemo gets innumerably cloned, and you find yourself swimming with giant sea turtles. Here’s a mental image to ponder: Kai throwing a Triscuit overboard, watching in awe as a school of normally docile tropical fish become a seething, thrashing bath of piranhas.

Well, in case you were wondering, yes, the four of us made it out of Bangkok before the country shut down. By mere hours, we managed to miss the hoopla coup de ta, the overthrow of the Thai government.

Again, good to be back. Just waiting (hoping) for our minds to catch up with our bodies.

With love,

Mike

お燈まつりOtou Matsuri (Fire Festival), Wakayama, Japan

Otou Matsuri (Fire Festival) お塘まつりWakayama, Japan Feb. 6, 2009 - Amazing videos are here

"Let's Get Confidence". With fude calligraphy brush, I paint these words, my negai, my hope for both my son and myself on our taimatsu, or torches. These torches and these hopes would burn bright that night, along with thousands of other torches, thousands of other hopes. And the heavens would respond by raining obu, or descending spirits that would swirl about the cold night air, and dance with the mortal embers we men would make.

For the past 1,400 years or so the town of Shingu, Wakayama Prefecture, has been host to one of Japan's oldest festivals, the Otou Matsuri, or Fire Festival, an event that starts innocent enough with participants wearing traditional, all-white "hakuzosoku”, toting yet-to-be-lit "taimatsu" cypress wood torches, and engaging in various innocuous rituals, but ends in a fiery finish at Kamikura Jinja, an ancient sub-shrine of the larger Kumano Hayatama Taishi Shrine, now a UNESCO World Heritage site. Kamikura Jinja is precariously perched on the steep mountainside of Gongenyama in this soulful, seaside town. Every year on February 6 this is the site where boys become men and men become boys, when fire meets soul, as the intense flames of our forefathers rekindle the collective male primordial tinder, humbling both young and old in the presence of the Immortal Face, and its blank stare of infinity.

In real-world terms, in order to participate in the festival one must be male and willing to be subjected to intense heat, violence, and other life-threatening challenges, and most importantly one must be willing to let go of modern securities and conventions and to put tremendous trust in his fellow man, yet at the same time be ready to fight him should he be his foe. I took my son Kai (age 5) but I saw boys as young as two! In this sense it is a rite to passage for young males, and for grown men a rebirth.

The fabric of which Japanese society is woven is of tight strands of mostly the staid, but sometimes the crazed, creating intricate patterns, which on the surface may seem as smooth and sophisticated as kimono silk, but surprisingly primitive on another, deeper, seldom seen level. If one were to look deeper into the fabric, he would see and feel the ever-smoldering embers and blood stains of futile Japan. While these strands are very much hidden from the naked eye, they are in fact there, and they are of a most strange and ethereal cloth.

Festivals like the Otou Matsuri are like kimono on display, in that they in effect show Japan's true cultural tapestry in her fullest splendor, allowing us to touch and feel, to see even the underside: the rough backing of her fabric, the ancient yet essential primary weft that holds her more orderly and ornamental embroidery in place.

As obu fade in the afterglow,
Marking the end of the festival,
Our charred, shortened torches become cold to the touch.

My son and I now feeling within
The burns on our skin,
As our adrenaline thins.

We watch her kimono being put back on,
In gradations of gray, to black,
The countryside of Shingu holding still for another long year
Till the men in white return,
Knowing we will be but two them.

This is the Japan I yearn to see more of. Yes, this is the festival to wake the Primordial Father in all Fathers.

Mike Kubo
Feb. 8, 2009 Kamakura

Special note: Thank you so much Okada-san for inviting us. I will never forget this experience, nor shall my son.

岡田さん、お燈まつりへの招待ほんとうにありがとうございます。海くんと私はこの経験のことをずっと忘れません。