Dear Mae Sai you’ve been a hard pill to swallow.

Downward gazes and inside jokes,

farng, farang.

Little pointing fingers followed by a wave of giggles

as my floor-length dress with the slit down the side blows wild in the breeze,

trying to contain my runaway drapery,

maintain modesty in a border town where summer dresses don’t fly,

you’re not in the islands anymore dear one..

Om Namah Shivaya

I murmur steadily to myself repelling thoughts of “I just want to go home.”

There is no home, not outside in the physical world at least.

This here is a recurring theme.

Now I’m really travelling.

How dislocated will you become before you eliminate outside chatter

and go to work paving the temple solace inside yourself,

the eternal home within the eternal om,

the exterior is irrelevant,

Oh Mae Sai,

soot and smoke bellow up from your belly

placing masks on the mountains at your back,

your wretched reflection glows unforgiving in the street

glorious, unpainted authenticity.

Fuck the farangs, they’re just passing through.

Smile til my face hurts,

it mostly makes no difference,

and then when I’m feeling so unwanted that I can’t hold back the tears,

you throw me curve balls with every passing street,

a little Burmese babe with the brightest smile

still unsure of how fast her feet will carry her,

she dashes to my right and with the smacking sound of her lips

and the grace of her palm she blows me a kiss.

Thank you sweet one,

that’s just what I needed…

 

(*Farang= Foreigner in Thai… actually it means “foreign” originating from the Thai word for “French”)

A little background on this: For a little over 24 hours I’ve been stuck in Mae Sai, a northern border between Thailand and Myanmar due to a visa oversight/misunderstanding on my part, and I’m now technically an illegal immigrant… haha! narrative version about that coming soon… anyways I sat down this evening and the above is what came out… and to wrap up all that here are some semi-irrelevant photos of the town and this super cute puppy duo I stumbled across.