Raymond Klassen – Ideals and Identities

July 13 – Life in Bangkok, Thailand is layered and vertical. Life in Edmonton, like its landscape, is flat. 

Crackling energy… and visceral! That is my first re-impression of Bangkok. Today is our first day in Thailand. We are jet-lagged, but like all travellers, we are hyper-aware. Our senses are turned on. Maybe it was the pandemic? Maybe it was a kind of endemic fear and fault-finding of Edmonton (or Canada?) that had deadened our senses…. After a long, First-World flight that swelled my aging ankles due to my captivity to airline entertainment systems, they have recovered through the healing of Bangkok sidwalks. On the plane everyone sat together, isolated by screens and single serving food and beverages. In downtown Bangkok, people are unavoidably together.

When we first arrived in Thailand, my family didn’t actually travel all together. We took different flights. Vince and I flew through LA and Taipei to arrive in Bangkok. Rin and Air went through Vancouver and Tokyo. But we were scheduled to arrive 30 minutes apart. Fittingly, we arrived at Thai immigration at the same time. Air took the kids to the “Thai” lanes of immigration, since they are all at least partly Thai nationality, and I (no part Thai nationality) went to the foreigners’ line. Yet, they called us to be together. Our situation, in the eyes of immigration, required us to be together… both kids with expired Thai passports (but valid Canadian ones), coming for different lengths of time, with parents of different nationalities. The immigration officers were kind and practical. They said what the four of us knew in our bones: together, every obstacle could be resolved.

Together, the depth of life is accessible.

Bangkok’s life, in distinction from Edmonton’s prairie landscape, is deep. As I walked the streets today in brief and frequent spurts (to manage the humid heat), I felt life as vertical for the first time in a long time. Vertical skyscrapers, footbridges, road traffic and street stalls…. And underneath?! A living canal with wildlife and plants – it is a spirit that undergirds the city. A life structured by water – flowing and flexible – bending and never breaking – so much a feature of our bodies, our selves, our life together.

I am awakened again, and bodily existing. And since this trip in this place is planned to be short (six weeks), let’s hold it all in awareness, savoring every sensation, from top to bottom.