Airports are really the weirdest places….they’re so devoid of any indication of the country you’re in (aside from the signs and overpriced souvenirs up for grabs). It’s pretty bizarre, especially the day after you’ve finished 3 months of travel in countries that won’t let you forget where you are for more than a few hours at a time! Sitting in this little internet cafe, it’s hard to imagine the bustle of Chinatown in Bangkok yesterday as the masses poured into the streets to celebrate the Chinese New Year, a sea of red t-shirts and dresses, glittering temples alit with candles and scented with incense, plate-spinners and acrobats and dancers performing awe-inspiring feats on a smoky stage to the rhythm of the high-pitched music drowning out the crowds pressed together to catch a glimpse of the show, the smell of shark fins and pineapples and god knows what other foods that this vegetarian could barely stomach the scent of crashing like waves over you as you weave past the vendors lining the streets…. I can almost forget the images of the government hospitals in India where 3 people can fill a bed while 3 more huddle on the floor below, the roadside shrines to various deities adorned with chains of flowers, the shrieks of horns of every imaginable pitch at rush hour as drivers of the yellow and black rickshaws express their rage at not being able to zip at their usual breakneck pace through traffic…
What’s funnier is that these impressions are the same ones that people in India always voiced to me when they talked about why they love India…. it’s spiritual, it’s emotional, it’s irrational and passionate and full of chaos. You can smell it and taste it and feel it, both before and after you see it. The West seems much to some of them like this airport seems to me: a manufactured place with rules and protocols and everything predetermined, where only a certain range of people exist (for the most part) and “life” is a much more limited commodity– not in years, of course, but in the possiblities that exist for it….
Ok, all for now. I have a million more stories to tell and of course no time to tell them…more when I get to New Zealand, where there may actually be electric sockets in the hostel rooms 
so i can plug in my laptop and type things up….
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