So, I am back in the USA.

While I was traveling through Europe with my family (in a mini-van, a very American vacation), I received an email from a dear friend that he was getting married in two weeks in NY. Could I make it?

No, of course not, I wrote back. I am in Spain, and on my way to France. My ticket back to Bangkok is already purchased, and then I have a week there to tie up loose ends and say goodbye before making my way slowly back to SF and ... who knows?

But, after I said goodbye to my family at Charles de Gaulle Airport, and then took the RER back into Paris by myself, and spent a few hours wandering the streets, window shopping (in French the expression is "licking the windows") and making my semi-annual pilgrimage to the Picasso Museum, I was flooded with the tediousness of being utterly on my own, and filled with regret about all the weddings I had missed. I went back to the airport and climbed on the plane to Bangkok. And when I got off, I logged on to the Internet, checked the direct flights to New York, and booked a ticket. In less than 24 hours I'd packed what was left in my apartment, handed off my student to a new teacher, texted my entire phone book and told everyone to meet me at the bar for a goodbye drink, and was on a 17 hour flight to JFK. Goodbye Thailand. Goodbye my peaceful, cloistered life.

Interestingly, I can't get anyone to tell me this was a bad idea. You can spend 6 months saying goodbye or you can spend 6 hours, but it all amounts to the same.

I will add that it's also not for lack of affection that makes it possible to go so abruptly. If anything, it's a surfeit of affection; if I'd allowed myself to think about all the people I cared about in Thailand, and the pleasures of my life there and all the happy memories, I may not have had the strength to leave. But, spurred by the momentum of all the traveling I'd already been doing (did I mention the mini-van?), and the adreneline of an imminent departure deadline, I jerked up those roots as if they'd been in wet soil.

The downside, of course, is that it's utterly shocking to find myself back in NYC, seemingly (and literally) plunked from the sky. The weather is beautiful. It's spring, and the parks are all bright yellow green, women are in skirts and men in short sleeves, the East River road lousy with joggers. Lynn Marie's neighborhood is not much changed: same church next door, same German beer garden on the corner, same sqare-faced dogs nosing around the lamp posts and fire hydrants. What's different is more money. A new apartment building has gone up, with beautiful, thick-glass windows. Every other block there is a swanky cafe -- here, in the neighborhood two blocks beyond the avenue I absolutely would not cross when I first moved to Manhattan in 1998. The faces on the jogging path are mostly white, and a pretty young woman I encountered on the footbridge was wearing a t-shirt that said Choate. Just over her shoulder, I could see the projects.

Manhattan increasingly belongs to the trust fund babies, said an acquaintance of mine over coffee. She has been living in Stuyvesant Town, a sprawling residential development on what used to be outskirts of the urban center, the closest Manhattan has to a suburb, for twenty years. Last year Stuyvesant Town was bought by developers for some-odd billions of dollars. The new owners have hired private detectives to trail people who have rent-controled apartments, trying to catch them in some violation of their lease so the owners can boot them out and rent the unit at five times (or more) the current rate. Most people who live in NYC are not poor; they are just average, but there is no place for them. I am reminded of a line in a friend's poem, describing how lightening scoops a hole in a tree, like a butcher ripping the heart from a sheep. That seems to me what is happening to the middle class in New York.

So, I will stay here a few more days, seeing as many friends as I can (one from Bangkok and I are having dinner tonight at a Thai restaurant on 58th and 9th; I've only been in town for 72 hours and I am already nostalgic for Asia) and attending a conference on politics and the Internet on Friday. The definite upside of NYC is that it is jam-packed with smart, ambitious, agitating individuals, and I am lucky to know some of them. If I haven't been able to sleep the last few days, it's probably only partially due to jet leg (my poor body doesn't know what clock it's on) and mostly due to stimulating conversation. If truth be told, it's this energy and sense of being plugged in that I came back for. In Europe, I remembered how nice it was to argue politics, to be among beautiful buildings (Bangkok is a lot of things, but pretty is not one of them), to exchange wry remarks with shopowners and fellow commuters. (This last one is surely my fault for not learning Thai; they are witty there, too, I just don't know it.) My boat was beginning to drift in Bangkok, and I needed a quick trip to shore to remember what solid ground felt like, if only so I could push off from it again later.

Tomorrow Boston. Sunday San Francisco, in two weeks DC, then New Haven, then Idaho to see my family, then Kentucky for another wedding (the first one was beautiful, I have no regrets and am grateful I was able to be there), then we will see how things look. It is all a bit crazy, but it is a life.

Last night I went to the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand for a talk on the changing diplomatic power of China. At the Q&A at the end, an older man walked stiffly to the microphone and introduced himself as from Richmond, Virginia. Now, it is rare to hear an American accent in Bangkok, and a rare pleasure to hear a Southern one, and I grinned as he drawled his question ("Ah perceeve theah is a lot of A-rabic unrest in South Asia. What does China think about all this?" Blink, blink. "I don't think they do.") and then was pleased when he sat down next to me, presumably too tired to walk all the way back to his seat.

After the talk, I turned to him and said, "So you're from Richmond?" hoping to hear a little bit more of that accent. Needless to say, he was delighted to talk.

It seems he "made a bit of money on a piece of land" and has been traveling the world. At 71, he's staying in the youth hostel in Bangkok, so I wouldn't say he's exactly going the gourmet route, and I admired him for taking off on his own and exploring. (He's been in Bangkok a month because he loves the street food.)

He also has so many of those lovely qualities of Americans -- earnest curiosity, assumption that everyone will like him, utter candor ("Ah tell you, ah'm not what ah used to be. Not just my knees...[thumps head] mah brain."), and a don’t-know-a-stranger willingness to engage.

About ten minutes into the conversation (my broken arm was a big hit: "Did your boyfriend do that to you?" ha, ha...ha?), he returned to the question he'd posed to the speaker and lamented he perhaps hadn't explained himself very well. It seems that he had lived in Egypt and Morocco twenty-five years ago, and since then he'd been alerted to the "Arab problem."

Islam was a violent religion, he said, and Arabs [nevermind the conflation] didn't have any respect for anyone but their own kind. He couldn't walk down the streets without getting hassled: everyone wanted to have sex with him. Because it costs something like $40,000 to buy a wife, many Arab men couldn't afford to get married until they were in their thirties; until then, they did it with each other. However, my friend assured me, he never let anyone butt-fuck him.

Deep breath. My American instinct (because I'm as American as my friend, with all the same no-problems-here characteristics) is to see his perspective, empathize, try to tease out what's honest conflict and what's bigotry and cant. But my own biases and suspicions have already kicked in: I begin to hear in his voice not the charming soft slur of the South but hundreds of years of racism and abuse. I hear it when he says "the Arabs" (he might as well be saying "the Blacks," or worse), and I hear it when he praises China for lining up anyone accused of stealing and shooting them in the head.

I am also experiencing feminist rage. Yeah, how about that, not being able to walk down a street without getting hassled? And what about $40,000 to buy a wife? Can we just take a minute and think about what it must be like to be a woman, a piece of property?

My friend sees I'm flustered. "Ah didn't mean to upset you," he says. "You're pretty."

My superficial analysis -- a theory I've applied to other American men of the same generation -- is that my friend experiences the world as revolving entirely around him. The "Arab problem" is derived from his personal discomfort; on the other hand, China is not a problem because my friend enjoyed his previous visits there so well. "You go to these 'English corners' and sit in a chair. Pretty soon, all these Chinese students from the university sit on the floor all around you, and you talk for an hour." (Ah, yes, you're the center of attention and everyone wants to speak your language. God's in his heaven and all's right with the world.) "At the end of the hour, I point to the prettiest girl and say, 'let's have lunch.' The next day all the guys say to me, 'how did you do that?'" It is good to be king.

But then I think, shit, isn't this the doctrine of feminism: the personal is political. Women often take their personal experience and then extrapolate it into a social concern; however, I might add that ideally this scenario works when the solution is for the common good, not the convenience of the individual. My friend admitted that he, too, needed a break from America: "Our government doesn't do a very good job anymore. They let dogs bark and people play their stereos all hours of the night. I had to get out because I couldn't sleep." My gut reaction is -- great, you're a fascist. My real reaction is, I don't know how to answer this question: where does my liberty end and yours begin?

Interestingly, for all our differences (there was no doubt by now we were on opposite sides of more than the Mason-Dixon line), he was better adept than I at acknowledging them and moving on. "I had to leave America, too," I said. "I couldn't live in the same country as George Bush." "Now isn't that interesting?" my friend said -- and he seemed really to mean it. It was interesting, but not worth getting all hot under the collar about.

I also was struck by how I didn't have the language to respond meaningfully to him. I am so used to talking to people who share my viewpoint that I'm startled to come across someone who has another, and I haul out my own cant and propaganda to counter. "Ah do believe yours is the majority view," my friend said when I started in on Iraq. He seemed nonplussed to be in the minority; he also seemed to have heard everything I was saying before. We didn't even have a foothold to start a meaningful conversation.

After an hour, I stood up to go. He was disappointed -- he didn't get too many opportunities to speak English, he said, and he liked me -- "a real lady athlete" -- and invited me for a drink. I said I needed to get home. "Husband?" he said. "Girlfriend?" The anger flares: my personal life, to say nothing of my sex life, is as none of his business as his was to the Arab pedestrians in Morocco. But of course he's not trying to be rude; he's trying to show some gentle affection and perhaps be a bit flirtatious, because he'd like the company and he is, after all, a stranger alone in a foreign city. I'm pulled in diametrical directions: sympathetic to my friend's sincere intentions but intolerant to their expression.

Which I guess is the nub of my disquiet this morning, still thinking about our conversation. I am intolerant. Not of the people and culture in other countries -- I do great with Thais and my international friends -- but of my own. I take offense easily, and I experience a kind of waterfall of white noise when I pick up on anything that strikes me as homophobic, racist, sexist. Trapped in my own generation and gender, I can't stand for any of the rules I recognize to be transgressed. (Is this the same as railing against barking dogs and loud steroes?) And I am burdened by the weight of my country's history. There is a line Humbert Humbert says in a poem to Lolita -- "Lolita, qu'est-ce que j’ai fait de ta vie?/Lolita, what have I done to your life?" -- that I think of whenever I encounter other Americans abroad and we are confronted by even the slightest suggestion that race and ethnicity might matter. America’s history of slavery and subjugation continues to reverberate, and it makes me squirm even in 2007, even in Bangkok, even in conversations that are ostensibly about something else.

You know how sometimes when you are in a small, quaint place and leave for a day to camp or hike outdoors, you return and find the village's hustle and bustle overwhelming? This is not true for Luang Prabang.

Yesterday Susanna and I rented mountain bikes -- single-gear mountain bikes, good for flat mountains -- and pedaled furiously but slowly out of town. It seems the main sights around Luang Prabang are a waterfall and caves; we opted for the waterfall. Thirty-five kilometers away, at the end of a dusty road, it turns out to be your basic waterfall with a few small swimming pools at the bottom. There are also bears and tigers behind bars. Susanna and I bailed into the swimming pools, but not the animal cages (deterred by the sign -- translated only in English, natch -- advising onlookers not to put their fingers in the tiger's mouth.) We also hiked up the slope and took a nice walk up the mountainside, which is maintained by a stooped over man with a bristle brush, assiduously sweeping the dirt. It seems the definition of a Sisyphan task. When we returned to Luang Prabang via tuk tuk (it turns out our mountain bikes' chains balk at hills), the city looked no less sleepy or charming.

The best way to describe Luang Prabang's almost-comatose pleasure has to be the disco. The disco, a nightly event that closes at 11:30pm, is about two kilometers outside of the city center, situated behind a restaurant and flanked by bantam-weight bouncers wearing white leather shoes and welcoming smiles. For an entrance fee of US$2, we were ushered through quilted red doors into a hall that is some combination of 1950s prom, community hall wedding reception, and 7th grade Catholic school dance. The live band played Thai and Lao traditional music on instruments plugged into amplifiers, so it seemed like pop but without the kick -- like flat Coca-Cola. Balloons decorated the stage. Every couple minutes, one would pop; Susanna suggested that when all the balloons popped, the dance would abruptly end and everyone would go home. The seating was half-circle beige nagahyde benches, as if we were going to watch a lounge act in a diner, and co-ed groups sat politely sipping Beerlao (alcohol content approximately .02%; apparently there is a Beerlao Lite, which I can only conclude is the native word for "water") and watching the dancers.

The dancers. The dancers! Susanna's and my jaws literally dropped when we saw them. What does it say that the only thing more shocking than prurience is chastity? Young men and women in modest western clothes -- jeans and cotton Gap-ish shirts -- walked in a solemn circle, with whole feet if not yards between them (I am reminded of the nuns saying, "Leave room for the Holy Ghost"; these couples had room for the Trinity, all of the disciples, and several centuries of popes). There was obviously a dance step pattern, but it involved rather more plodding and synchronization than wild abandon -- a Communist horah. The song ended, all dancers immediately cleared the floor, in five seconds a new song started, and the dance floor was flooded again, this time with dancers diligently walking a circumscribed box step, a Macarana for the anesthetized.

This is not to say the disco was not an absolute blast. Susanna and I quickly left our Beerlao and joined the fray (by "fray" please understand "group of gently swaying individuals"), Susanna doing a much better job than I of figuring out the line dance pattern. We were with our friend Jason, an American from Texas (and hence a natural line dancer) who's lived in Luang Prabang for a year or so and goes to the disco every few nights. He's very tall and handsome and white and bald, and he kind of hovered above the rest of the crowd like a benevolent spirit, floating gracefully through the steps. The music changed again, and we all "fast-danced" to "La Bamba," although without any use of hips, hands, facial expressions, bodily contact, or general recognition that we were sexual beings in proximity to other sexual beings. Even our Lao companion wearing black leather pants (it remains a mystery where he managed to buy them) looked more like he was submitting to a dentist than getting it on with a bunch of tipsy girls in a late night out. It was trippy.

Home at 10:30 (the band takes a break at 10:30, only to return again for a twenty-minute finale to wrap up the evening in plenty of time for people to get eight hours sleep and be alert for work in the morning; I drank Beerlao for six hours straight and didn't have a trace of a hang over) and asleep by 11, only to be woken up at 4am by rhythmic gonging outside our window. It seems a fife and drum is the standard wake-up for the monks; only, the monks seem to exercise the "snooze" option, because the gongs went off about every half hour til 6:30, when the monks finally roused themselves for the morning alms-giving.

Minus the early-morning symphony, life remains gorgeous in Luang Prabang -- lulled by two rivers, a tropical sun, a socialist work ethic, a Buddhist belief in infinite second-chances, and a French colonial legacy of chocolate croissants for breakfast, a nap at lunch, and evening gin and tonics on the veranda. In dramatic contrast, the new airport at Bangkok is predicated to burst into flames at any moment; happily for us, Susanna and I may be stranded in Laos indefinitely...

I am writing from Luang Prabang, which, as my friend Greg says, sounds like magic words, as in,

"Copperfield covered his outstretched hat with a handkerchief, said the magic words 'Luang Prabang' and, poof, disappeared, leaving only his hat."

Luang Prabang IS magic. Nestled between the Khan and Mekong Rivers in north-central Laos, it is a gentle, sun-drenched place, with old, squat French buildings and slender teenaged Buddhist monks in orange robes.
My friend Susanna, who's visiting from New York, and I had lunch today at an outdoor cafe overlooking the river. There were some terraced farms on the far side, and two little girls fording the river. One of them had a silver mylar balloon that she lost hold of; fortunately, it didn't have enough air to float away, but unfortunately, it was swept downstream on the current. She bailed in after it, and sure enough, in about three seconds both little girls were swimming like otters, drenched and squealing.

We came up yesterday from a border town in northern Thailand. Since Luang Prabang is truly in the middle of nowhere -- bordered by Myanmar, southern China, and northern Vietnam, all places that aren't exactly world hubs [on a side note, the Bangkok Airport may be closing for repairs, and Susanna, worried about her return trip, and I tried to make contingency plans. It's pretty bad when your plan B is an international flight from Burma.] -- it's expensive to reach by air, far and somewhat treacherous by road, but accessible and pleasant to reach by boat, as long as you don't mind a long day on the Mekong. A long day on the Mekong! Although I can see that might not be appealing if one is engaged in a land war in Asia, to Susanna and me it sounded charming. We left at dawn, picking our way through fog-shrouded roads in a mini van, with a pink almost-Vermont light on the hills, shivered for thirty minutes at the border (the Lao and Hmong wear fur lined hats, hand-woven scarves, and Western t-shirts; they look like every hipster kid at NYU, only with soft, broad faces, the old people's worn smooth like pennies), then climbed onto a covered wooden boat about 100 feet long with seats that looked like they'd been retrieved from a defunct airplane. Apparently concerned we would starve, Susanna and I had brought a grocery bag of cashews, Thai fruits, granola bars, pretzels, and Pringles, and we spent most of the dribbling crumbs down the front of our shirts while we read. At sunset we had a Beerlao and watched the fishermen pull up their nets from the banks. Not much is happening along the Mekong in Laos, save for the fishermen, some bathers, and a few naked kids; is it CCR that points out that life on a river is the same everywhere? The most remarkable thing is really how peaceful it is, with clean air tinted by the smell of harvest fires, and shifting sand banks, and soft pock-marked rocks, and some sort of Lao cow grazing in the woodlands. (Our guide helpfully told Susanna, "Cows eat grass." "I guess it's hard to gauge foreigners' knowledge," Susanna reflected afterward. "I mean, if I don't even know how to say 'hello,' it's possible I don't know cows eat grass.")

Now we are enjoying a few days in town, eating French pastries for breakfast and Lao catfish salads for lunch. Tomorrow we'll rent bikes and try to find a waterfall. What a miracle to be so far from anywhere and yet feel so much at home.

I know I haven't posted very much recently, but I finally have a Jacob-worthy story. (My brother Jacob is sending wonderful blog entries from France, the latest about his stolen bicycle.)

So, I ducked into the mall this afternoon, as I do almost every day. It was a surgical strike -- I just needed to pick up a book on the third floor. But, wouldn't you know it, there was a 70% off sale on Thai designers on the second floor, so I was forced to stop and have a look.

Mid-browse, my cell phone rang. Bangkok Post, calling to confirm my subscription. (Now that they are publishing me, I figure I should read them.) I hung up the phone and continued shopping.

A few minutes later, I went up to the book store, bought my book, descended to the basement, made a pit stop to the bathroom, and settled in at an Internet cafe to get a few hours of work done.

Out of habit, I reached for my phone to see if I'd missed any calls, and ... no phone.

Now, I have been in Bangkok, what, a year, and so far I have gone through four cell phones. One I left on the grass in the park while I ran, and amazingly enough, it wasn't there when I got back, so I can't say I exactly lost that one -- more like donated it.

Then I forgot the second one in a hotel room in Malaysia. Then my friend loaned me one, and I'd had it a day and it broke. Then another friend loaned me hers, but it was already broken when she gave it to me (as my mother would say, "The couch was on fire when I laid down on it.") and spontaneously turned off mid-phone call, which I kind of liked, but proved to be unpopular with others. So I bought this phone, this current phone, now missing.

I should add, it's not like in the US when you lose your phone and you call your service provider and have the number suspended and simply replace the hardware (I assume. I've never lost a phone in the US. I swear.). In Thailand, you have to buy a separate SIM card, with a particular number that you lodge into your phone like its own little brain. No phone, no brain.

Every time I've replaced my phone, I have to go to the mall (of course), wait in line for an hour, convince the agent that I am the owner of the no-longer-in-evidence SIM, pay a fine, and retrieve my number (but not any of the numbers stored on it).

Then of course there is the utter hassle of going to the electronic black market mall, which I swear is my own personal version of hell, and haggle for a new phone, which is crappy but not cheap, then either the shame of asking friends for their numbers AGAIN, or, my usual strategy, wait around til someone text messages me, send a friendly but vague reply, offer to meet them soon, and show up to see who the hell they are so I can surreptitiously code their name back into my phone. This is to say nothing of all the people whom I will never hear from again.

Anyway, all of this is going through my mind as I dig through my purse, my gym bag, my pockets, the plastic bag from the book store, the folds of the newspaper I'm carrying around... No phone, no phone. I retrace my steps, up the escalator, around the sale, down the hall, through the aisles. No phone, no phone.

I approach the Thai cashiers. They get a look of panic in their eyes -- I am fairly charging them at this point, an enormous white woman with a mad look in her eye. We play a speed-round of charades. They direct me to the fourth floor, where the mobile phones are sold.

Finally I trudge to the Help Desk, knowing that is always the admission of a lost cause, and they kindly inform me there have been no phones turned in at the lost and found.

Of course not. It's not really that I think someone has stolen my phone. It is just that I have no idea where it could possibly be. It has to be somewhere -- it couldn't have just disappeared. And yet I can't imagine how it could have vanished from my bag, which prompts a whole meditation about how I can't seem to hold on to things, how I am utterly stumped by anything that has a physical property at all, how surely this must extend to my current isolation in the world, far from family and friends, so butterfingered with things I hold dear I can't even keep hold of the virtual data of loved ones nor communicate with anyone around me just what it is I've lost.

Then I remember. When I was in the toilet, in the middle of the flurry of unburdening myself of bags before I could do the same for my bladder, I heard a funny thwack sound and noticed the empty trash can was kind of spinning. I assumed that I'd whacked the trash with my gym bag as I swung it off my shoulder, and hadn't even looked inside. Could it be...

Back to the bathroom, where I loitered like a stalker until my stall came free. I opened the door, looked at the trash can, and saw... Well, here's the thing. Thailand is mainly Westernized, but not quite, a fact that is never more obvious than in the plumbing. There are lovely flush toilets here, but they don't take very kindly to toilet paper. As a result, all your basic bathroom refuse goes in the little bin.

Mine had been just emptied when I had used it, but in my forty-five minutes of searching and self-recrimination the bin had been pretty well filled. I stared down at it. I thought briefly of dumping the trash out in the toilet, but that would back up the pipes for sure, and I didn't really want to be responsible for flooding the mall. (Can you imagine? I'm sure it would be considered an act of terrorism.) I thought about just turning around and walking away, but then I imagined the look on the telephone agent's face when I came in for another SIM card, and I figured they'd throw me out of the country just for general idiocy. One way or another, I was getting deported.

I picked up the trash can and gave it a shake. Thud thud thud. There was something heavy in the bottom of that can. Inspired, I took the book out of the plastic bag, slid my hand into it like a glove, plunged into the wadded tissues and maxi pads, and retrieved my phone from its filthy and would-be anonymous grave.

Hoorah! A rinse for both of us in some soapy water, and we are back in business. Of course, there is some irony that I was too mortified to tell people I lost my phone again, but I am shamelessly going to post this story... Is it that things like this don't happen to other people, or is my family just willing to talk about it?

Hey! Check out my book review in today's Bangkok Post.

I'm inspired by my brother Jake's blog about his first few days in France to write down the latest news from Bangkok, but the truth is there doesn't seem to be that much going on. Well, if you don't count a few bombs going off in crowded tourist areas, and the fact they're now searching bags on the subway, and the tiny little economic crisis, and the ongoing martial law. In fact, what seems really true is that none of these things even make the radar. I seem to have lived in Bangkok long enough that I've lost sight of what's strange, and life has taken on an everydayness.

The two exceptions to the ordinary are that the weather has turned cool and breezy, carrying the flavors of spring and gasoline, and the Christmas trees are still up in front of all the department stores. Thailand, which is almost entirely Buddhist, seems to have embraced all the secular and commercial implications of the holiday: the trees are purple, entirely synthetic, three stories tall, and decorated with credit cards.

Hi from Phuket. The sky is blue, the breeze is coming off the ocean, Bill Clinton just left after a nice day of golfing (oh yeah, I think he saw some tsunami work, too), and I'm recovering from my triathlon.

Well, the truth of the matter is that there's not much to recover from since I really only did the swim portion -- two friends and I competed as a relay. It's a pretty long race -- 1.8km swim, 55k bike, 12k run -- and a challenging course, and I wasn't sure I was up to the whole thing; or, more exactly, I knew I wasn't up for training for the whole thing. Those are a lot of sports to get ready for. And it is hot in Thailand.

But, I have been absolutely faithful in my swim training, going to a Masters class twice a week and swimming on my own 3-4 times the rest of the week, plus yoga every day. The biggest lesson here is that when you train properly for a race, you do get faster, but what's really remarkable is that I actually enjoyed the race instead of feeling like I was fighting the water and gasping for air.

We started off, all 756 of us, men and women, professionals and utter amateurs, in a mass start in the Andaman sea, kicked and clawed to the first buoy 300m out, turned horizontal to the shore for a good long while, came back to the beach, sprinted across the sand, and bailed into the lagoon. Going from saltwater to freshwater is a shock. The ocean at least is nice and buoyant; I got into the lagoon and sank like a stone.

I knew I could do the race in 45 minutes; I said I would be thrilled if I did it in 40; in the end, I finished in 38. Woo-hoo! A great personal victory! Now I need to learn how to pass people. To my astonishment, I found there were a lot of folks in my way.

It was also a lot of fun to hang around afterward, drink gatorade, and watch the rest of the athletes go by. (The winners came in before my teammate had finished the bike portion. Just to give you an idea.)

One of the things I like most about triathlons, and triathlon culture, is that everyone is a great mix of competitive and supportive. Case in point, the conversation I had with one of the other women who does the Masters swim class.

Her: Who are your teammates?
Me: Jorge's doing the bike, and Pilar's doing the run.
Her: Oh! That's a good team! Jorge's a good biker. And Pilar's a great runner. (pause) And you're...improving.

Ok, so the three things I think are most int'g abt this mid-term election (still unfolding as I write this) are:

1) high percentage of Democratic governors. Am I right in thinking governors actually end up shaping political culture a lot more than reps or sens? I think there is real power in the governorship (plus road to presidency), and I'll be curious to know what happens on state-level in next few years.

2) I also think this is intg:

"CNN also projects that Arizona voters will approve a measure making English the official language of the state, and that South Dakota voters will reject a proposed law that would ban nearly all abortions."

I'm telling you, the US is going to go through a wave of nationalism. They're also going to back way off of this legislating morality trend of the last 10 years. Bodes well for Democrats, but not so much for the U.S. as a country, I think.

Perhaps unpopularly, I happen to think a dose of Puritanism has been good for America. And nationalism terrifies me.

3) Women and men watch elections differently.

Had an election day breakfast with Democrats abroad this morning, and over the course of five hours this morning, there were four women and about twenty-five men.

The men had score cards. They talked numbers and names. They exchanged information. They used words like "slaughter," "stomp," and "take that!"

For commentary, we turned to four broad shouldered men in suits who debated the strategy and tactics of the races, all with a gleam in their eye like they wished they were out there themselves.

I didn't know whether I was watching an election return or the Superbowl.

Politics is absolutely sports for men.

In contrast, the (few) women talked about the candidates as people -- what their personalities were like, their agendas, their demeanors... Whenever there was a split screen, with people talking at the top and numbers crawling over the bottom, I noticed I couldn't tear my eyes away from the people's faces, and the men tuned out the conversation and all began doing the exit poll math.

Sara: Why did Howard Dean just say the Democrats weren't going to take troops out of Iraq? Isn't that what they're running on?

Don: Yeah, but you see, there aren't enough people who think we should just get out of Iraq to give the Democrats the numbers they need, so they have to say they're not going to get out of Iraq so they can pick up people in the middle.

Kelly: Then Democrats and Republicans are saying the same thing.

Don: (looking confused) Well, that's what you have to do to win.

Sara: What is there to win if you don't have an argument?

Byron: There hasn't been a split-party Congress since 1980.

Same planet, different worlds.

Writing from Penang, Malaysia, an island off the coast of the Malaysian peninsula. It is not an early morning place. For the last few days, I've climbed out of bed at seven and found the streets empty, with not even a breeze to ruffle the star-and-crescent flags on the porches.

Georgetown -- the old city I suppose you'd call it, a former outpost of the British Empire -- is a mash of crooked streets crammed with old Chinese houses and broad boulevards lined with sately old colonial buildings, all porticos and pillars and long, austere lawns. The oldest among them, Saint George's Anglican, with white paint peeling and spire stiff in the blue tropical sky, is empty of churchgoers even on Sunday morning.

"We changed the time for services," a woman tells me cheerily when I enter the nave, having found no life at the two Catholic churches in town, nor anyone home at the Chinese bakery that ostensibly serves breakfast. "Just for today, we thought we'd combine the 8:30 and the ten o'clock and do something at 9:30."

And so it goes in Penang. People do as they like, when they like, without much bother about schedules and convention and even visitors who might not be in the know, although Penang enjoys a robust tourist industry.

At the Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion, where two American friends and I are staying, the guest relations manager can hardly tolerate guests.

"Children," he announces, as one squalls from somewhere in the back of the house, "are best served deep fried."

If you don't mind sharing common space with other people -- families, honeymooners, Western and Asian tourists packed into the foyer for the 11am and 3pm tours -- the Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion is a lovely place to stay. Formerly the home of a 19th century immigrant-turned-tycoon, the mansion has been restored to such detail it has received the status of UNESCO heritage site. Sleeping in one of the bedrooms -- twenty foot ceilings, lavender walls, lime-colored ceiling, bright red bureau -- is like pulling back the canvas and climbing into a work of art.

"Two hundred and fifty ringit per room per night," says the guest relations manager to an inquiring tourist.

The tourist whistles. "That's a lot for a hotel," he says.

"Not really," says the guest relations manager. "And it's not a hotel. It's a home stay."

The guest relations manager turns his back on the tourist and rolls his eyes. What do these people want? his look says. You offer them a nice place, and they want to play let's make a deal.

This view seems to hold true for most of the island. Taxi drivers are disinclined to bargain, which is a shame because they are expensive compared to Bangkok, and the cook says as she lays down a plate of fried noodles before you with a clang, "You pay now." Visitors to Penang will do well to do as they're told -- don't order dahl with nan but rice at the Indian restaurant across the street, for instance, or request apple struedel at the Green Roof Cafe when the date cake is delicious ("But I don't like date"; "Nevermind," says the owner, an Australian emigree, and hands me a plate. ) Likely you'll find the suggestions are good ones.

Once the attractions of Georgetown have been exhausted (24-36 hours, I'd say), head to the beach at Batu Ferringhi. Compared to Thailand, it's not much -- coarse sand and a crowded strip of hotels, ranging from backpacker guest houses to a Holiday Inn to the Lone Pine, a 1950s era establishment a hundred steps from the sea. Still, the beach is lively, most notably for the cabals of men selling parasail rides.

"You want to go up?" asks one, jabbing his finger at the sky. "One for eighty ringitt. Two for a hundred."

I've been watching people go up one after the other, lining up at the seaside like they're waiting for a taxi, and then suddenly lifting off the ground like characters in a fairy tale. Harnassed beneath the bright, billowing parachute and attached to the end of a motorboat, they're pulled over the ocean and three stories into the air. Some let go and ride with arms spread wide. A dad goes with his four-year-old son. A pair of Japanese girls ride together, the one almost in the lap of the other, and nearly take out a crowd of Aussies as they come tumbling back to the sand.

When I finally go -- after having been asked no fewer than eighty-seven times if I want to try -- I scream the entire way from the beach to the air, and then, once aloft, consider staying forever. Is it possible, do you think, to skip the Air Asia flight home and simply parasail back to Bangkok, bumping over the air currents and letting the green island of Penang recede and disappear?

Floods yesterday in Bangkok, and the city was knee-deep in floating garbage. It's been raining hard in the north and in the Philipines (much as the first word I learned in French was "abbatoir," even Thais who don't speak English can say "tsunami" and "typhoon"), and the city finally succumbed to the deluge.

I was at an Internet cafe when the rain started and, no fool, rolled up my pant legs and promptly waded next door to the massage parlor. (FYI, the first thing the masseuse does is wash your feet.) The whole time I was on the table I could hear the girls squealing. Half an hour into it, the owner poked her head behind the curtain and apologized for the noise: the store had started to flood, but they had sandbags now, and it should be okay.

Back outside, miserable-looking tourists were forging the main drag with their suitcases held over their heads while cars sloshed water up around our shoulders. Of all the things I worry about when I cross the street in Bangkok, a wake is not usually one of them.

Now, here's the thing. Bangkok is a city very much like New York -- population density, great public transportation, citizens who consider good style part of the social contract -- and, like New Yorkers, residents conduct their lives on the streets. So, when the public space is flooded, it's not water in the road; it's water in your living room. Sidewalks were packed. Women pushed baby carriages. STREET VENDORS KEPT SELLING FOOD. I swear to God, the tables were packed, and diners simply tucked their feet up under them and kept slurping away at their noodles.

Ah, Bangkok. The more it reminds me of New York, the more I love it.

I ended up going to Khao Yai, a national park about two hours from Bangkok, all day
yesterday -- it was really and unexpectedly gorgeous.

The Asoke Valley is much drier than other parts of Thailand, no palm trees
but vineyards. It looks like Napa.  We rode dirt bikes and drank wine, and I tried
to go horseback riding (also unexpectedly, there is a stable of about two dozen
Arabian horses) but it was already too late in the day.  Dinner at a dairy
farm, with fresh milk.

Whole thing wonderful and disorienting.

So far I love living under martial law. With gatherings of more than 5 people banned, there aren't too many crowds, and the media, having been encouraged to be "responsible," are cheerily reporting an interim prime minister will be named in the next 48 hours. Despite an announcement the military may retain a wee bit of power even once the new congress has been appointed, so far so good on the bloodless coup.

In fact, the only violence I've heard was in the voice of a Thai banker, Nopporn, who twice a week feeds me lunch, reads the English-language newspaper out loud, and then hands me a wad of cash. "I hate George Bush," she said. "Why does he think he can tell other countries what to do? My country. My coup. Leave us alone!"

I'm not exactly sure what GWB said about the Thai coup, but I think my friend was irritated in general at the West's perception that a coup is perforce bad for democracy. I mean, I certainly understand why the West thinks this way, and in the long run, it does seem like a bad precedent for countries to solve their problems by routinely overturning the government.

(This from a woman who's adopted a slash-and-burn strategy for her entire life.)

What I think Nopporn was getting at, though, and what seems to be the common sentiment here, is that Thailand under Prime Minister Thaksin was a democracy in name only, and at least now there is a chance for an authentic democratic government.

This is also another opportunity to demonstrate allegience to the king, who people would just assume be in charge anyway. Nopporn laughed when she saw the Anglicized version of the military government's name was CDR, Committee for Democratic Reform. In Thai, the name is something like "We Swear Our Allegience to the King."

The king, the king. We don't see or hear much of him (cf., Flaubert, who says the writer should be in the book as God is in the world: nowhere seen but everywhere felt), although we do see a lot of baby-faced soldiers with machine guns at busy intersections and Sky Train stops. The first few days they looked stern. The second day they looked bored. Yesterday I saw one hand his weapon to a friend and start break dancing.

In other news, the military government has disallowed the Thais to have their pictures taken with the soldiers, and [belatedly] banned the go-go dancers in camoflauge bikinis who have taken it upon themselves to entertain the troops. Citizens are still welcome to bring the soldiers food.

We in the ex-pat world enjoy business as usual -- yoga, writing, swimming, a quiet Guiness with four friends or fewer in the evening.

Long live the junta!

It's true, there's a coup in Thailand.

About ten-thirty last night, just as I was getting in bed, a friend called and told me to turn on CNN. Sure enough, there were pictures of tanks outside the parliamentary buildings, a part of town not close to where I am but not exactly far, either. The distance between City Hall and Columbia University in Manhattan.

Because it was already nighttime in Bangkok, nothing seemed particularly different or strange. It was only when CNN and the BBC suddenly cut out that things began to feel a little weird. At some point in the middle of the night, the electricity went off.

This morning I got up as usual and went to yoga. The streets were quiet, which is not so strange since it was 6:45am, but the studio was locked. A few of the other students and I loitered in the lobby. Schools, banks, and most offices are closed today. One of the other students had seen tanks on her way to class.

Eventually the teacher showed up and, even though none of the other staff was there, smuggled us in the back way, which I guess means we launched our own coup of the yoga studio.

By the time we finished practicing this morning, the streets were still empty -- the intersection at Chitlom, which I usually have to take my life in my hands to cross, was so deserted I stood in the middle of the road for a few seconds just to savor the experience. At 9am the rush hour Sky Train was virtually empty, and people were quiet and looked glum.

Mostly it feels like a snow day: I'm home again in my pajamas, drinking tea and keeping an eye on the news online. Even the weather is unusual -- cool and raining. I live in a very ex-patty neighborhood, flanked by shopping malls, so I can't imagine that I would feel threatened unless the army tried to take over the Emporium Department Store. As far as I know, the shoe sale is still on, and good news -- the dollar is strong against the baht!

As for the political situation, it's still hard to know what's going on. Thaksin has been politically under siege for months, but there hasn't been a sense of violence or abject power grabbing. Well, maybe a little -- there was a staged attempt on Thaksin's life a few weeks ago, but even that seemed more like political theater than an actual threat.

I know that "coup d'etat" sounds dramatic and makes Thailand appear a banana republic (or, as my political scientist friend calls Thailand, a banana monarchy), but in fact Bangkok is a very firt-world city, and this coup seemingly a very white-collar maneuver. Sure, it's no surprise that a lot of the politicians are corrupt, and that there's dissent in the ranks, but the issues have been playing out more on the stock exchange and Op-Ed page than the streets -- that the military has taken control seems a bizarre response to the situation. It would be as if Enron middle-management had staged a coup.

The wild card, of course, is the king. The general who's taken over doesn't really want to retain power for himself and has declared his allegience to the king; even the tanks circling Government House are wearing yellow ribbons, the symbol of the monarchy.

But, the king isn't a substitute for a prime minister, and he isn't a replacement for Thaksin. A few months ago, when the dubiously-called elections were found to be dubiously-monitored and Thaksin the dubious winner, some of the opposition asked the king to intervene and appoint a prime minister. The king went on national television and scolded them: this is a democracy, he said, and a democracy holds elections. (To that point, Thaksin has been legitimately elected twice by an overwhelming majority.)

It seems to me with this coup that the general is now forcing the king's hand, making him intervene and perhaps appoint someone else. Or, declare his support for Thaksin, which may be in the best interest of democracy but does not seem to be in keeping with the king's personal taste.

It's a curious kind of coup that a) declares allegience to someone else; b) puts that someone else in an impossible position; c) justifies itself by saying the country is too divided under the current leader, and a coup is therefore required to restore harmony; d) apologizes to the citizens for the inconvenience.

Even in their coups the Thai are Thai.

Sunday morning in Bangkok, Thailand, and the sky is overcast and the Sky Train isn't running yet. I can see the tracks from the window in front of my desk. They're surprisingly elegant, tall and curvy. When I'm lost -- which is often -- I navigate by the Sky Train tracks, visible above the traffic, and when I sit at my computer -- which is also often -- I watch the trains go by.

Trains are short, with only about half a dozen cars, and covered in advertisements. (Ironic, because one of the reasons I left NYC was because I needed a break from all the commercialism; could there be a more commercial city than Bangkok?) Somehow the marketing on the Sky Trains appeals to me, though, maybe because the graphics make an aesthetically pleasant contrast to the palm trees; also, just seeing the trains go by, in bursts of red-yellow-and-black, satisfies my need for movement, even when I'm sitting still.

I think it must have been the urgency to keep moving that brought me to Bangkok. Well, in addition to the weather and the inexpensive cost and living. When people ask my why I chose Bangkok, my answer is usually "hot and cheap," which ends up being a pretty accurate summary of other appealing elements of Bangkok, too.

Also, I wanted to get back into the whole world, instead of just the piece of it that is the U.S.
Bangkok is fantastically cosmopolitan. There's a lot of Brits (apparently, the British Embassy in Bangkok is one of the busiest in the world) and Australians, as well as Japanese, Malaysian, Indian, Arab... A lot of big companies have at least offices here, and I seem to encounter engineers and people working in the oil industry. As I'm finding is true about Bangkok in other ways, the city doesn't have a particular speciality -- they're not particuarly about technology, for instance, or finance -- but they make it an hospitible environment for businesses in general.

Well, just how hospitible, from a financial and legal perspective is a topic for another time -- but, what I mean here is Bangkok has capitalized on its service-industry culture, and many expats find it easy to get real estate, set up shop, live alongside the easygoing Thais, and go to the beach on the weekends.

There's also fabulous grocery stores in Bangkok -- Villa Market has the single best selection of flour I've ever seen, although it's so hot I can't imagine baking -- and about every commercial good, from computers to chocolate, you could ever want. So far about the only things I haven't been able to buy in Bangkok are socks and underwear. Thai women are tiny people, and I'm always a little embarrassed when I present to them my feet or hips.

The last and probably biggest reason I came to Bangkok was to start a creative life in earnest. I've been reading Twyla Tharpe's The Creative Habit -- which I really recommend by the way. The premise is that creativity is supported partly by inspiration but mainly by building a routine. So far my routine is 7am yoga (if all I accomplish in a year in Bangkok is relaxing my hip flexers, I'll consider it a resounding success), three hours of writing, lunch, three hours of paid work for my nonprofit job in the U.S., and then swimming, running, or biking in the evening. The Phuket triathlon is a dim-and-getting-dimmer goal.

All this makes for a very calm life, if a bit hermetically sealed. It's easy to meet people in Bangkok -- the wonder of expatriate living, plus Bangkok is like a cruise ship and there's salsa lessons, or bike rides, or karaoke almost every evening -- so I don't lack for company or entertainment or even English, since almost everybody speaks some version of it. The only real lacks are books (expensive here) and culture, so the trick is figuring out how to keep one's world and ideas large, even in the middle of a comfortable life.