On a Slow Boat

Waiting

Perhatian. Bas akan sampai sebentar lagi.

A man’s disembodied voice announces overhead.
Attention. The bus will arrive shortly.

He never specifies which bus, or how soon. But the bus will arrive shortly, he assures you in a calm, confident tone.

We’ve been waiting at this bus terminal for over an hour. The bus was supposed to come an hour ago. Another one was supposed to be here forty minutes ago, and yet another twenty minutes ago. Whenever the bus failed to appear, the monitor simply updated itself and displayed the next arrival time. No explanation of what happened to the bus, if it was running late or if it was canceled. The only evidence for its supposed existence erased.

Each time we started walking to the other end of the terminal to check with the information counter, the voice would dissuade us. 

Attention. The bus will arrive shortly.

We would then see bus after bus arriving at the terminal, pulling into their respective bay. We would quickly walk back to the waiting area, hoping the bus is finally here. But the bus never came.

Some people in this terminal look like they have been waiting for eternity. An old disheveled-looking man is sleeping on the bench without a care in the world. One of his shirt’s sleeves has been torn off. Another is sitting on the edge while leaning on the railing. He’s been staring at the road for hours. They might be vagrants. Or they might be lost souls like us who are trapped waiting in this Kafkaesque bus terminal.

But let’s wait a little bit more. Didn’t the man say that the bus will arrive shortly? 

In silence – Part 3

(This is Part 3 of the article. Read Part 1 and Part 2 here)

Our numbers are dwindling. Only 30 women and 30 men are left from the original hundred-something. The two sisters who I had heard speaking Spanish are gone. One of them was stung by a wasp, but I thought she looked fine yesterday. The mat on my right – who was previously occupied by a German girl – has been empty for a few days. The guy with the funny hat is missing. The guy with the red hair and hipster haircut left or was asked to leave. I haven’t seen the Eastern European girl who always carries a backpack around the last two days. The Asian guy who normally sits at the front of the hall was not there this morning.

They never tell you why people left; you just notice them gone. There are so much fewer people at meal times that the line for food has gotten noticeably shorter. 

I mouthed to Grace: “Where is everyone?” gesturing at the empty hall.

“Three girls left my dorm last night with their backpacks,” she said.

“Why?” I asked.

She shrugged. “No clue.”

“But there is no way I would leave the retreat after 7 days,” she added. “Not after all these.”

I nodded in agreement. I understand her “not-after-all-these”. No one drops out of marathon after 20 miles unless they absolutely can’t finish. Although I wonder if this dogged refusal to give up is nothing but attachment to our ego as ‘survivors’ or ‘not quitters’. 

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In silence – Part 2

(This is Part 2 of the article. Read Part 1 and Part 3 here)

The cocks crow like clockwork. Every day around 4 am, right around the time the bell is rung, they start crowing non-stop for a good hour. You then hear the pitter patter of footsteps as everyone in the dormitory starts waking up, zippers being opened and closed, bags being rustled and rummaged, doors being opened and slammed closed. Even if you’re a heavy sleeper, there’s no way you can sleep through this morning commotion. So you force yourself to get up, walk bleary eyed to the bathroom, brush your teeth (or shower), get dressed, spray a liberal amount of insect repellent (100% DEET in my case), and walk in the darkness into the meditation hall for the morning meditation session.

The meditation hall is an open air hall with sand floor and lofty ceilings made of wooden planks. Rows of burlap sacks have been arranged neatly facing the front of the hall, where a wooden platform for the monk (or whoever is guiding the meditation session). We sit cross-legged, with sitting mats, and pillows to help make our meditation more comfortable – which is a hard feat to accomplish after 3 hours. When it becomes unbearable, there are short benches for us to sit on. The men sit on the left hand side of the room, women on the right. In the morning and the evening, they lit a few candles – one at each corner of the hall – that makes the whole scene quite surreal. A hundred people sitting unmoving, in silence and darkness for hours on end.

Most people find the first few days to be the hardest. It’s a complete change of routine, starting with the 4am wake up call and 8+ hours of sitting cross-legged meditating. People who are used to 3 meals a day are not accustomed to the fast. People are restless as they don’t have the usual distractions that normally occupy us (jobs, family and friends, the news, social media, hobbies). Most crucially, almost everyone is experiencing caffeine withdrawal.

And I think the rules affect some more than others. Although the staff is pretty laissez-faire in general, they will approach and reprimand you if you’re caught talking, keeping and using your cellphones or laptops, leaving the boundary of the compound, or sleeping during meditation time. If you’re a repeat offender, you’ll be asked to leave the retreat. As adults, unless you’re in the military, we are not used to following rules. So it seems that many participants feel they just lose their freedom – unable to do what they want as they please.

Personally, I find the rules liberating. There’s naturally social pressure to have to interact and socialize with people you live in close proximity with, i.e. other participants. By explicitly removing this social pressure, you now don’t have to acknowledge and interact with other people. You can avoid eye contact without feeling you’re being rude. When someone is walking towards you, you can ignore them. And when you’re sitting in the dining hall, you don’t have to acknowledge or think about what to say to the person sitting next to you.

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In silence – Part 1

(This is Part 1 of the article. Read Part 2 and Part 3 here)

Imagine three large ponds in the middle of a field, with raised walkways all around and between the ponds. You can barely see the pond at night, as they are dimly lit by a few candle posts around the largest of the pond – the one in the middle. You now see eighty, maybe ninety, men and women walking in single file around the pond: the men first, followed by the women. They are all barefoot and walking slowly following the pace of the first person in the line. No one is speaking. After a few times around the pond, they stopped. As if on cue, they all turned sideways to face the pond. Still in silence.

Looking at the reflection on the pond by the faint glow of the candles, I can’t stop thinking about what a great scene this would make for a horror movie, right before we drink cyanide and throw ourselves into the pond en masse. 

Chuckling at the thought, I quickly remind myself that I am NOT supposed to be thinking. I’m supposed to be meditating while walking – paying attention to my breath, inhabiting my body, noticing each step on this sandy footpath. But I can’t stop thinking about how surreal this scene must have seemed to the outside world.

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On the road to Thailand

This vagabond life is a strange existence.

There’s no daily routine, deadline, or ritual to mark the passing of time. We have very few obligations in our horizon: occasionally we’d arrange to meet new and old friends, going to a couchsurfing meetup or some free events when we can. That’s about it.

We wake up when we want to, or need to – if there are buses/flights/trains to catch. We sleep when we feel like sleeping. Fortunately we tend to have the same sleep cycle and we are both realizing we don’t quite like naps. Which is too bad, since daytime in Asia during this time of year is a miserable sweltering hotbox. We could use some siesta while the world around us baked in the heat.

We punctuate our days with meals (2 or 3 times depending on how hungry we feel) and sleep. We set near-term ‘goals’ consisting of places we want to see, food we want to try, activities we want to do. But I notice that these goals are inconsequential. When they fall through for one reason or another,we just say “oh well” and move on. We don’t get upset when the bus takes forever to come. We are getting pretty good at waiting and withstanding long bus rides.

We should have been more upset about our Vietnam plan that got derailed because we forgot to double-check Gabriel’s visa entry date. But we just chalked it down as lesson learned and quickly figured out an alternative plan. I also learned that airline and immigration took no-show at the gate (after you’ve cleared immigration and technically ‘left’ the country) as a serious matter. I was assigned a chaperone who had to be with me at all time until I clear immigration. It sounds like people have used this tactic before to evade immigration.

It’s easy to be sucked in into this passive existence; letting yourself be enveloped by the new sights, sounds and smell – this unknown rhythm of life. I can see myself letting go and just let life drift me along. Am I moving sideways, forward or backward? I don’t know. At least it doesn’t feel uncomfortable.

So far we’ve met two people who are on a similar journey. One guy from Nepal who’s been on the road for four years and another guy from Argentina who started last year. Both carry the “this is so amazing I never want to stop traveling” bug. Made me wonder if we’ll end up being like them.