There’s just one other person in my dorm tonight, a friendly vegan guy from Brazil. He’s just told me about a wild unexpected adventure he had today. 
This morning, he went to a random temple and chatted with a Buddhist monk. At the end of the conversation, he told the monk it was his 33rd birthday and asked if there was some sort of blessing he might give him. The monk said no, that that’s not his thing, but he knows a monk who can give him a blessing and he’s an hour outside the city. He accepts and heads out to see this monk! 
He pays a taxi driver about $18 for the whole day to drive him an hour away to a temple to see this monk and to act as his interpreter. The monk tells him that his blessing is a tattoo, and that if he agrees to the blessing, he has no say in where the tattoo goes or what it looks like. And he agrees! 
So for the next hour the monk taps this beautiful tattoo on the upper center of his back, and chanting the whole while! It represents metta–unconditional love–and other positivities. 
And while he’s telling me the story, he’s just glowing joy! He’s smiles and gushing happiness. The tattoo is stunning. It was free. He had no plans for any of this today. 
And while he’s telling me the story, I’m thinking, “Holy hell, how many times would I have stopped this journey from happening? How many no’s do I have stored in me, always ready to slam down the unexpected?”
I probably wouldn’t have spoken to the monk. 
I probably wouldn’t have mentioned my birthday. 
I probably wouldn’t have asked for a blessing. 
I certainly wouldn’t have hopped in a taxi for an hour drive!
I probably wouldn’t have agreed to a tattoo I couldn’t see beforehand!
And of course, this is this guy’s journey. And mine is mine. And what is is what is. 
Yet, let go. Yet, say yes. Yet, bend. 
This Brazilian is my teacher.

It’s 2am. It’s time for a 30 minute break from the overnight bus. We stop at a nasty place. There’s a restaurant, a series of packaged foods, and a gross bathroom. It’s all very dirty. I’m kind of hungry but the prepared food all has meat in it and it’s been sitting out all day. The packaged foods are all desserts and sweets and very dusty. 

Despite her surroundings, or perhaps because of them, the woman who is working has a lot of pride. She stands with a stiff back and her head tilted up and she holds a strong face. I buy a cold drink for about 50¢ and her face cracks and she smiles. 

The soapless bathroom is a series of very dirty and smelly squat toilets. There’s a big deep hole in the middle of the floor. There are about 10 tiny urinals in a row, each about a foot apart. This spider waits above a middle one and measures 6″ across. I’m trying to pee in the first urinal, with one eye on this spider. I don’t know what it’s capable of. 

The smell of urine is so strong and so distracting. For whatever reason, one of Byron Katie’s sayings visits me. I hear, “Other than what you’re thinking and believing, aren’t you ok?” I just had about a hundred judgments in the last 3 minutes but I’m willing to check this out. As I continue to pee in the urinal, I close my eyes and try to experience this very moment without my thoughts and beliefs. 

My eyes are shut. There are a lot of thoughts to let go of. I wait. As the clouds part, I hear Vermont. I hadn’t even noticed the music before! It comes in from outside. Crickets and frogs and summertime night. And I can smell summer too! The smell is so strong it almost overpowers the smell of urine. It’s a cool, moist, nighttime air that’s very refreshing. It smells like fresh dew! There’s actually a very lovely breeze coming in to this room that I hadn’t felt before now. 

The nighttime air, the sounds of nature, the urine. It’s the Fourth of July, and I’m young, and I’m up so late! I’m at a party and it’s dark and I’m peeing in a portapotty. My parents are busy drinking with friends. I’ve been left to play with other kids the entire evening without having to worry about my parents, about anything. I’ve been eating potato chips and French onion dip and cake and drinking soda. I’ve been running around and catching frogs in the pond and waving sparklers in the air. I’ve been free! Completely free! An incredible feeling begins to well up at the bottom of my belly. It’s a deep deep sense of freedom and joy. Pure joy. Childhood joy. There’s a great sense of spaciousness opening in my body and lightness. If I opened my arms I might simply lift off of this floor and float up. 

The intense smell of urine, like a brick to my face, smacks me back down to earth. And I return to my regularly scheduled programming. I take a photo of my friend.

I was born in 1981 and my first memory of international news was the conclusion of Berlin’s wall in 1989. Soon the USSR dissolved and I remember that too. Over the years, I watched the maps and globes in our classrooms change, new countries appeared, and the bulk of what was called the USSR turned into “Russia.” I was told that it was called Russia before and that’s what it’s called again. I didn’t understand the particulars of what was going on and yet I observed as all the shifts took place. It was an exciting time!

I knew the USSR was “our enemy,” but this didn’t strike any terror in my heart. Certain kids on the playground were also my enemy and they seemed much more frightening than the USSR. Still, some harmful anti-Russian imprinting must have occurred during these years because Russians have always seemed like some enigmatic “other” to me: mysterious and maybe even untrustworthy. Sort of Western like me–certainly more Western than other cultures–and yet inexplicably different. I perceive some unbridgeable cultural divide between us.  

Before I moved to Boston, my only access to an actual (ex-)Soviet individual was through Yakov Smirnoff’s regular appearances on the sitcom Night Court. He seemed like a fun enough “foreign” guy, and yet I simply perceived him to be an American like me (albeit a bit more odd.) His jokes about the crazy “oddity” of the Soviet state only served to further entrench in me this idea of there being some hopelessly wide cultural divide between us. If not for his willingness to translate silly Soviet ways into American humor, maybe, it seemed, I would have been left in the dark altogether. Russians were simply too bizarre to understand without a funny cultural interpreter.

Once in Boston, I began regularly interacting with Russian immigrants at my work. These short, babushka-wearing old ladies would come into Whole Foods together, shopping hand-in-hand. They’d buy huge bags of rolled oats, shrink-wrapped packages of frozen rabbits, and the occasional bag of eggplants or beets taken from the sale rack in the produce department. They didn’t speak a word of English. They’d point at things they wanted and make grunting sounds and walk away without a thank-you. Some of my coworkers complained about them, and I mostly found them amusing. I marveled at how culturally different they were from me and wondered how they got about without knowing English. Despite all this, I always saw them as Americans first and Russians second. In the very least, their loyalty did not lie with Russia and the ex-Soviet states.

And now I’m in Vietnam and the beaches are completely loaded with Russian tourists. There are more Russians visiting here than any other group. Actual Russians! From Russia! Storefronts have signs in Russian and carry goods geared to Russians. Restaurant menus come in Russian first and English second (if at all!) At night I return to my non-Russian backpacker hostel and the Russian families return to their Russian resorts, and during the day we cross paths on the sidewalks and on the beaches and in the business which cater to both. I watch them closely with great curiosity. How different are they exactly? 

I notice that the first Russian woman I pass has a large tattoo of Mickey Mouse on her leg. And how curious is that? If I’m to believe the news reports that say Russians are virulently anti-American, that makes a large Mickey Mouse tattoo curious indeed. At lunch yesterday, I watch the Russian family across from me. They talk to the workers in thick-accented English and wear English-language t-shirts. One shirt says “San Francisco.” The kids hungrily eye my Harry Potter book and watch me with what I interpret as curiosity and jealousy. They begin to fidget in their boredom and turn to their parent’s cellphones for distraction. At dinnertime, I sit in large outdoors restaurant. A Russian couple sits nearby, chain smoking cigarettes and knocking back beers. A very large rat runs across the floor and the lady throws her hands up and screams! Blinded by fear, she fails to see that the rat ran right under their table! The man notices, and remains sitting back in his chair calmly, and puffs on his cigarette and laughs. He watches me watching them and he gives me a wink in recognition of our shared knowledge. I laugh too.

Today at lunch, as I sipped iced coffee and munched on some spring rolls, three middle-aged Russians came in. They wore Crocs and Tevas and sat right next to me. The man was shirtless; one lady was decked out in animal prints. The oldest lady wore a large American flag babushka; a huge bald eagle sprawled across her forehead. They order three bánh mìs and eat their appetizers with chopsticks.

Regarding the Russians, I keep looking for what separates us. So far I’m coming up empty. 

Last night I took an overnight sleeping bus from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap, Cambodia. The booking agency offered three types of sleeping buses and I selected the “luxury sleeping bus.” It cost a pricy $19 (the cheapest was $12.) Splurging!

 

I expected individual reclining seats, much like the seats on airplanes. I’ve seen seats on sleeping buses in Thailand recline 100% and I crossed my fingers hoping for that type.

 

I arrived at the Night Market in downtown Phnom Penh at 11pm. The buses simply park along the street there. Overhead, a bright sign for the bus company promised free water, wifi, blankets and pillows, and an onboard toilet. As the bus pulled up at midnight, I was delighted to see through the windows that it had proper mattresses! Real beds! Each side of the bus had a row of four bunk beds, with one bunk along the back, for a total of 9 bunks and 18 beds! What a luxury! My friend gave me a glowing review about this special kind of bus earlier in the day. She told me that each bed came with privacy curtains and that she slept very well. I was very happy!

 

Upon entering the bus I first noticed the incredibly narrow aisle. With a row of twin sized bunks along each side, it measured no wider than 18″. The bottom bed was simply at floor level with the upper bed around elbow height. As I moved down the aisle my backpack snagged along the sides of the beds. I had to walk carrying my body at an angle because my shoulders were simply too wide. The space was uncomfortably crowded and induced in me a sense of claustrophobia I don’t regularly experience. 

 

Having squeezed down the aisle to my bed, I noticed with alarm that my mattress was set up with two half sized pillows and two sets of sheets. Certainly they don’t put two people on each? My friend wouldn’t have neglected to mention sharing a small bed with a stranger? I halfway-reassured myself that couples could simply split the cost and bunk together.
 

I hopped up and sat on the edge of the upper bed and noted that it was decently comfy, albeit understandably cramped. Becoming more relaxed I leaned back, and, placing my hands behind my back for support, they found themselves on a drenched bed sheet. Upon inspection I noticed the ceiling had been leaking and the far half of the bed was completely soaked. And amidst my frustration with this discovery, someone began scrambling into the bed to join me!

 

He was a Cambodian man, likely in his mid-40s, and when I tried to alert him to our soggy situation I learned he didn’t speak any English. I mimed it to him instead, and he felt the wet blankets with his hand. He inspected the sheets and the ceiling, laughed a little bit, and then plopped his thick unfolded bed sheet overtop the bed puddle. He laid back, right on top, and seemed perfectly contented. Soon, Cambodian music began playing from his phone as he closed his eyes and nodded off. Now, his side of the bed was very, very wet! And yet …no complaints? Miraculous!

 

Or was it even miraculous at all? Pondering his age, I considered that he likely would’ve been a young guy when the Khmer Rouge was busy killing 25% of the Cambodian population. I can’t know what this man may have experienced, if anything bad at all, yet my mind can certainly imagine some worst case scenarios. And it’s an odd thought for me, but maybe sharing a drenched twin bed with a total stranger in a too-cramped claustrophobia-inducing leaking bus isn’t actually something worthy of complaining about?

 

And like this, I got lost in thought. I pondered my self-centeredness and my good fortunes. I pulled our privacy curtains shut, and, shoulder to shoulder, I laid down next to my teacher and tried to fall asleep.

I hunted for cargo shorts in the big mall in Bangkok yesterday. It’s a fascinating place; a true cultural crossroads. Asia meets the West, and both meet the World.

There’s a few American chains like Starbucks, McDonalds, and Burger King. And there are chains that I’ve never heard of from other countries. And there’s an army of hundreds of Thai mom & pop stands selling knock-off purses and clothes and used iPhones and skin-whitening creams. And you can get a Thai massage, a mani-pedi, and permanent makeup–tattooed on your face! Everywhere the merchandise is piled high in stacks or overflowing in heaps. In this land-before-Yelp-reviews, the sellers hang dozens of handwritten testimonials above their shops, written in all the World’s languages. “So-and-so is very trustworthy,” “So-and-so has great prices,” “I will shop with so-and-so again!”

The mall is jammed with thousands of tourists. There are Americans, Europeans, Koreans, business people, backpackers, Muslims, monks, teenagers, and sizable tour groups of elderly white people. The names of the stores are in English only; the mall map is in English, Japanese, and Russian, but not Thai. There are 6 busy floors and crisscrossing escalators and all the noise of crowds, music, and salespersons on megaphones.

I took a pause in this wilderness.

I looked around; drank it in. Humans are so bizarre and curious. How utterly unlikely is all this scene before me? Nature’s splendor.

And as I observed, a Middle-Eastern couple walked past me and they approached an escalator, going up. The woman was probably in her mid-30’s. She wore a full black chador, so only her face was showing. She paused at the base of the moving stairs and looked nervous. The man urged her to step on, but she remained unsure. So she balanced her weight on one foot, and used the other foot to tap the moving escalator a few times. Each time she pulled her foot back as if the escalator were too hot to touch. She looked at her partner as if to say, “I don’t think I can do this,” and he urged her forward with his gestures and his words.

At last, with determination, she turned and met the escalator. She stepped forward–and she ascended! Gazing skyward, eyes fixed upon her destination, she was carried up! A warm and massive smile broke across her face! Her lips pulled back wide, displaying gleaming teeth, and her sparkling eyes and cheeks expressed a joy that I might only find at the top of a rollercoaster! Resplendent and radiating; she beamed, she ascended! Skyward! Glowing! Up! Up!

And I… didn’t find any cargo shorts in the mall. I simply witnessed an Assumption into Heaven! And a joy in my heart. And a fondness for our species.