Cha Am - Part Two

Well we've been in Cha Am for exactly two weeks now, with another 3 days to go, and guess what? I'm learning the same lesson again that I've been learning throughout our journey: it really requires a full two weeks in a new location to get a more realistic, or more balanced, or more integrated experience of how to relate with it. First impressions are not necessarily to be considered final.

 

So in my last post I gave Cha Am a big “Nah” regarding the likelihood of returning here to spend any extended time. Too big. An actual city. We're country people after all. I don't remember if I'd even discovered the beach by then. Now, I'm ready to change my rating of Cha Am to a “Yeh. I could spend a month here”. And when I say I “could” spend a month here I don't mean “could” as in “under duress”, or as in “if I had to”. I could spend a month here and enjoy it.  And after our outing today with JC showing us some rental options for a month or more, Nancy feels the same way.  

Why is this? What I'm finding is that it just takes some time to experience enough of a new place in a new country to be able to track that experience sufficiently to see how it's going to move. You could say something like: You just have to give it a chance to reveal itself to you in ways that are more comprehensive. And.......................this simply, and naturally, takes some time. Duh.

Whatever disorientation may be expressed in an initial response may very well be ameliorated after getting one's sea legs. That's been my experience now at both Thung Wua Laen Beach and in Cha Am.  I'm getting the message. And this leads to another, and important understanding: it's not a very good idea, at least for me (and I'm convinced that this is true for “us” as well) to plan many visits to many countries, or to many places within a country, in anything less than months of time. Which is of course how we have structured our journey. Slow travel. We did this intuitively and intentionally, informed by my concerted months of research prior to our departure. Unless one simply wishes to skim the surface of one's experience and see as many sights as one can see and eat from as many different cuisines as one can eat from and chalk up travel merit badges to show off and be able to say “Oh, I've been to.................”, taking one's time is, I declare, now that I'm an expert at this sort of thing, essential.

What has changed about Cha Am then? Well nothing has changed about Cha Am, of course. What has changed is my experience of Cha Am. We've thoroughly enjoyed discovering our favorite section of mostly quiet and expansive beach at the north end of town, where we tend to go in the late afternoons, and rent two beach chairs and multiple umbrellas to shade us from the heat – two dollars for the both of us – and lounge there for a couple of hours or so as dusk approaches and whatever people there may be there tend to leave. This is my favorite time to be at the beach, as the day's light shifts and fades and the air cools down some, and we may be treated to a gorgeous orange sunset through cloud mottled skies.

We've also discovered here my personal favorite restaurant in Cha Am, where Nancy was immediately successful in communicating our vegetarian (“jay”) needs, and where the results have been the best so far in Thailand: a  luscious green curry with heaps of actual vegetables (“pak”), rather than the more typical and paltry results we've had so far of cut scallions and mung bean sprouts; or a “vegetable salad” made from what I believe is pounded papaya strips and some other unidentified ingredients, heaped and dressed with an also unidentified and delicious mixture of liquids; or a plate of stir fried mixed vegetables that is an actual combination of multiple mixed vegetables, and again delicious. And all of this will be delivered to us on the beach at our lounging location by one of the cooks on his motorbike with our tray of delights held aloft in one hand while the other steers and accelerates and brakes as needed. A small miracle.

We've discovered our favorite place to get afternoon coconuts (“makprow”) for the sweet and, according to Nancy's investigations, health giving nectar, as well as the scoop-able meat within the recesses of the hard protective shell. We've discovered Forest Park a short ride from where we stay, where black and blond gibbons swing and play in the trees (Vimeo video link) or lay about grooming one another (Vimeo video link), and where, if one is seeking real quiet in this city, this is where it will be. We found a hillside temple and, I'm told, nunnery, also a short ride from our guesthouse, with meditation caves and a hundred marble steps up the hill to get you to them, and elaborate Thai sculptures and statues of Buddhas and protectors and saints, and cactus! Growing here, in the tropics, in the forest. What!?

 

Or I've discovered my favorite place to hang out in the mornings, near the beach, and sip tea or drink coconut milk which I buy from the mobile coconut lady with whom I now have some recognizable relationship, and read, or just watch the world go by, while Nancy is doing her practice or writing for her flower essence certification.

Or we were invited by Puh, the lovely woman who cleans the rooms at the Blue Lagoon, to attend the birthday party downstairs in the bar for her 70 year old Swedish(?) husband, where we shared in some food and drink there with a couple of expat Brits who gave us their somewhat cynical and bigoted worldview of life back home and a specific bit of education about their relationships with their Thai partners who won't allow them to do anything around the house, even if they want to.

And yesterday we met with American expat Mike Murphy and his fiancee Nuch (pronounced something like “Noosh”), and spent several hours talking and listening and getting to know them, and what a delightful and interesting and generous and gifted and – the clincher – like minded couple of people they are. Well, I can only assume the like mindedness regarding Nuch, since her English is perhaps not so strong as to be able to communicate in this realm. But her kindness and generosity are apparent with her fairly well developed English, and her clearly well developed heart, and she has already offered to put it out on the "coconut grapevine" if we wanted to come back and spend a month or more, and find us a nice place at a much reduced price through her connections and community here.

In other words, we've been here a little while, and have been able to take our time, and begin to settle in to some familiarity, and to find the kinds of things we want and which we enjoy and which serve our needs. These things aren't immediately apparent. And they aren't presented to you immediately. One has to go after them. One needs the time to do that, to be gifted by the discovery or the appearance or the development of the small things that make up a daily life, and to adjust to and adapt to this place, and to meet it on its own terms.  As it is everywhere, this is the way it's done.