Land of the Thunder Dragon
Bhutan is a land of magic, the border with science is muddled.

Auspicious or Inauspicious Beginnings.Waiting for the delayed Druk Air flight. It is a long way to Bhutan no matter what route you take. The choices are essentially through Delhi or Bangkok by plane, and Druk, the national airline of Bhutan, is also the only airline. There are two official land crossings but these are not permitted to westerners, so if you don’t fly you will have to change your citizenship to India or you are not coming.

Land it like Sully. Every time I board a 747 I am amazed by the size of the plane. It is not a nimble craft and the takeoff is more of a lumbering battle with gravity won mostly by sheer determination and brute force. It always makes me think of a building on its side with wings attached. Though I have seen it before, I am uncomfortable with how flexible the wings are, and watching the two massive engines move back and forth. The straight line on the globe between Chicago and Narita, my first stop, is northward over Alaska. I can follow the progress of the plane by an amazingly detailed digital map intermittently projected on the screen and the gradual freezing of the landscape below. The same screen informs me that the outside temperature is –64 F, crushing my dream of riding the inflatable safety raft gently to the ground if the wing should finally decide to give up its tenuous hold on the plane. If it had, at one point I would have ironically come to rest at the birthplace of my son, Bethel Alaska.

Long flights are a condensation of the essential activities of life repeated until your time is up. Eat, drink, sleep and stand in line for the bathroom (also doubling as exercise.) By the time I arrive in Japan the ritual has been performed multiple times and it seems as if days have passed. It’s what I imagine dog years to be like. I struggle with the window-isle choice when I book my flights. On long flights it’s convenient to have the corner that you can comfortably wedge your face into and sleep. The pillow always manages to escape to the floor space the row behind, having the perfectly constructed thickness of the seat gap. I pick up the pillow belonging to the passenger in front of me after it wriggles it’s way through, take a close look at his head and wrap it inside my fleece. This one’s not getting away from me. Maybe this is the mysterious reason people get colds on airplanes. The other benefit of the window seat is the ability to see the exotic countryside of the land you are entering in full panorama. Not the back of some dudes head surrounded by a halo of light, who is getting a nice view. I don’t know how the back of my head looks right now. I just buzzed my hair yesterday, thinking it would be easier to care for and make me less different from the people I am going to be surrounded by. To me it feels knobby. I am sure the guy in the isle seat hates it.

The countryside leading up to Narita is pastoral. Rice paddies, a lazy river, I imagine an ox cart being pulled as we hurtle past, then the full weight of the behemoth plane squishing the landing gear below and I think I hear it let out an umph like a fat man landing a jump on a bicycle. I can no longer see so well and question whether large billowing clouds of grey smoke and the smell of burning rubber are normal. No one else seems to be upset and I was obviously overreacting about the whole wing thing earlier. The sudden terminal lunge to the left and facing 90 degrees to the runway increased the numbers in my camp. Do not count on flight attendants, they are mostly irritable drink servers. The one in the jump seat across from me asked me what was happening, and if I could see anything. How did I become the go to guy? When the smoke cleared the resting position of the plane gave me a great view of the parade of emergency vehicles chasing us down the runway, so I told her everything was fine. Apparently planes are like tractor-trailors and if you loose a wheel, as long as you aren’t actively engulfed in flames you’re allowed to proceed to the gate. With an entourage of course.
A lot of concerned official looking people gathered around the nose wheel pointing and taking pictures and looking back up at us gathered at the gangway windows sporting cheshire smiles. Passengers began to generate theories of wind shear and hemispherical counter-rotation. I took a picture and thought about my credit card.

I love Japan. Seriously. For obsessive compulsive people like me this is the holy land. The orderliness gives me comfort. When I see a worker wiping out the bowl of the drinking fountain after it has been used, I know I am with my people. The concourse is filled with energetic agents scurrying to do their jobs. Everyone is moving. I love this. I think about work and inwardly groan.
I have a couple of hours to kill so I make my way to the United Presidents club. Normally I wouldn’t be admitted but I recently purchased a credit card that is supposed to give me access. Honestly, I am not sure this is going to work and I feel like an imposter as I hand over the card. It is immediately clear to me that I have made a good decision. Plush chairs…muted lighting…hushed tones… and electrical outlets everywhere. My heart goes out to the masses huddled around support columns in the main concourse vying for a trickle of energy.
This is Shangri-la. An oasis of calm in an otherwise chaotic environment. I quickly set up, monopolizing three outlets, phone, ipod, laptop. I’m greedy to replenish my energy. My laptop has become old and can never be far from its umbilicus. Addicted and slow, sometimes I think about putting it out of its misery. We’ve been through a lot together and I feel bonded to this lifeless thing, so I tolerate the idiosyncrasies.
To my right is an area where people quietly go for snacks and drinks. The decibel level could best compare to a library or church as people circle around plates of sweet rice rolls and tasty treats. One machine on the wall looked like a soda dispenser with positions for two glasses. The label read “for beer glasses only.” The obvious choice was the refrigerated racks of glasses adjacent and the green LED button above. The glass is gently lifted, tilted to the perfect angle, filled, righted, and topped with a perfect head.
I nearly shouted out loud “where can I buy one of these?” I don’t think it would have been any more of a distraction than the choir of angels I heard singing in the background. Japan has a way of eliciting this type of reaction from me. I had a nearly identical one years earlier when I sat on a heated Toto toilet seat that also washed and blew dry me to my particular specifications. If you sit on it long enough you will find your favorite settings. Overhead are digital clocks telling the time in every major metropolitan area in the world. After a couple of trips to make sure my machine was still working what I really wanted was a large round clock with a big hand and a little hand so I didn’t have to keep subtracting twelve . I am a little paranoid about airport times on the other side of the international date line, having once showed up 24 hours late for my flight out of Tokyo. In their usual efficient manner I was ushered to the front of the line and placed on a plane home as if my error was all completely understandable. Fortunately a gentle voice overhead told me that flight 881 was going to be delayed a few minutes and that there was plenty of time for another beer. I think it was one of the angels. I seriously love Japan.

Some people like Vegas, I like Bangkok. I may not want to live there but for a night on the town it’s hard to beat. My flight landed at about 11:30pm and I felt mildly disoriented. At this point it really is the other side of the world and the opposite time of day. It was a darkened flight with minimal service and most people, including me, slept. I was comfortably tucked into my window seat until the beer caught up with me and I realized that sleeping isle guy was an obstacle. For a while I contemplated trying to climb over him Lucille Ball style without waking him up. I had a visual of him waking up just when my crotch was about face level and decided against it. He looked a little uncomfortable the way his neck was kinked so I adjusted his pillow slightly. I have two round trip tickets. One from Cleveland to Bangkok and one from Bangkok to Paro. The Bhutan flight doesn’t leave until 6:15am so I am forced to go through immigration and customs and spend the night. In addition to my gear for five weeks I am transporting donated medical equipment for the hospital in Thimpu. Despite thinning my bag to a minimum and leaving behind things like hair and shampoo, I am traveling with a lot of stuff. I imagine myself explaining this to a customs official in some small back room but this time of night they are completely uninterested in the guy traveling by himself with four large bags.

My information packet from HVO recommended if staying overnight to use the Amari hotel. I was proud of myself for remembering to book the reservation and print the voucher that I now clutched in my hand. My taxi driver was competitive and as we raced down the freeway at 12:30am I realized I should have mapped the hotel as well. The tollway was clear. We paused for two tolls and arrived downtown in 35 minutes. The exit ramp wrapped around Bumrungrad hospital and dropped into the madness that is Bangkok at night. Scooters weaving through cars piled up like bumper cars, edging to the front of the line. Tuk tuks belching exhaust squeezing into impossible spaces. Every imaginable inch of sidewalk occupied by impromtu vender stalls, café tables, and people. Sidewalk space is largely occupied by overflowing items for sale and it’s necessary to weave between people and product as you walk. It’s steamy out and very little clothing is needed. I wonder from my taxi how many of the women leaning against the shop windows are for rent. The volume of humanity occupying the limited space reminds me of Times Square at Christmas only sweaty and more chaotic. This is 2 soi Sukhumvit, my place for the next three hours.

The Amari hotel lobby is calm, peaceful and cool. The antithesis of everything immediately outside its doors. I’ve prepaid, so I drop my bags in the room, change shirts and join the masses on the street. Within fifty feet it becomes obvious that most of the women are a commodity as well. Initially it’s the eye contact that is most noticeable. I have to be careful not to hold it too long, and am always the first to break. Pairs of white men and young Thai women, arms entwined, are common. I get a conspiratorial glance from a predator and think, no…we are not the same. I settle in to a table and am descended upon by short skirted women and order beer and a bowl of noodles with shrimp. Everyone in Thailand can cook. No matter where you are the food is aromatic, fresh and delicious. The cold beer and spicy noodles have the hoped for effect and I settle in for a content hour of people watching.
For me this is best as a spectator sport and I would be happy to be invisible. If you aren’t buying you will in general be left alone. Nothing but hopeful looks. Like Vegas it’s easy to get pulled into the atmosphere, and after awhile I become less judgemental. If there is one aspect of our lives that unites us with the rest of the animal kingdom it’s sex. The octagenarian with the teenager seems a distortion and I assume it must provide other less obvious benefits. This society is remarkably tolerant of human sexuality in almost all aspects. A woman walks by that I am certain was once a man. The surgeons here are talented and they have made him beautiful and feminine. The thyroid cartilage remains the one telling flaw yet to be corrected. It’s hard to ignore the attraction of the young women serving my beer. I pay and head back to my hotel for a couple hours of sleep feeling less different from the other predators than I did an hour earlier.

Everyone knows the feeling of waking up and sensing that something is wrong. My particular feeling this morning was precipitated by my phone quietly vibrating on the table across the room. I sat bolt upright wondering how long I had been incorporating it into my dreams. Too long. Thank god my bags were still packed because they needed to be on a plane to Bhutan in little more than an hour. I cursed the tiny switch on the side of my phone as I jammed myself through the door with four bags. The Amari is a beautiful hotel and I tried to protect the door frame, but there is only one flight a day to Bhutan and I still had 35 minutes in a taxi. If you need a place to store your bags in Bangkok I highly recommend it.

If you’ve ever been in an incredible hurry behind someone doing less than the speed limit you will understand my frustration with my taxi driver. He seemed to know the location of the Druk air section of the terminal but was mysteriously unable to find one Baht of change for my thousand. I knew time demanded that I would be running into the terminal with my bags and I thought being followed by a yelling Thai taxi driver would generate a considerable amount of attention and potentially the police. I hate being taken but there was no time for this. Happy Loi Krathong. The Druk Air counter had a flight listed for 8:30. My flight was off the board and the best I could hope for was an empty seat on a flight I knew would be sold out. Instead I was given a breakfast voucher because of the flight delay and a waiver for the excess baggage. Thank you sweet Buddha. Now if I could only find that taxi driver.

The Dharma initiation. It’s generally a curse to be assigned the seat adjacent to the toilet on a long flight. I had that seat once going into Bangkok and was annoyed the entire flight. After the passengers are fed your head is ass height in a crowd of people with high potential for farting. It’s only a matter of time. I say generally because on the inverse flight back out of Bangkok I had e-coli and found myself praising god for the same seat. One I quickly abandoned for the lavatory. Still I try to book away from the vicinity if possible, in part because I like to recline. I found my name handwritten on a piece of paper as I handed my boarding pass to the gate agent and was informed that I no longer had a window seat. As mine was the only name on the piece of paper and I was among only a few chilips boarding the plane I couldn’t help but feel I had been personally selected for back of the bus treatment. If you are a single guy you know what it is like to be given the hotel room next to the elevator on a more than random basis. I wanted to tell them I was coming to do great things for their people and that this was no way to treat me. I kept my peace and shouldered my grudge. Last row, middle seat, toilet. What could be worse? It would be the last row, isle seat, toilet which I now found myself occupying after the guy in the isle seat moved over to sit next to his girlfriend. I am in Asia, the plane is filled with unfamiliar smells and we have to stop in Bangladesh. Fantastic.

Window chick was aloof, fussy and demanding of her partner and I understood why he had initially chosen the isle seat. I had seen her type before and apparently Bhutan and Bhuddhism were not immune. They wore modern nontraditional clothes showing disdain for their culture and I recognized this personality as cross-cultural. My theory on how I lost my window seat, which she now occupied, crystalized in my mind. The Druk Air agent finally yielding to her refusal to sit in the worst possible seat on the plane. I consoled my grumbling spirit on the leg to Dhaka that at least I was free of having to live in the interminable hell of an unhappy person. When I got off the plane I would be free of those emotions and at peace.

Dhaka to Paro. Enlightenment through Snickers. The bathroom jam began as expected. I thought the operating room was the only place where people could violate personal space and not feel uncomfortable. The five feet around the airplane bathroom is the other. If you were seated in a chair anywhere else on earth the chance of someone brushing their ass against your head without the slightest concern would be zero. Trying to find my happy place was interrupted by my neighbor needing to get up and join the compressed square dance to my left. He must have felt he owed me when he returned so he offered a mini snickers bar from a bag full. I could have said no.

Oh, the candy is for your niece. I see. That’s your sister you say. Traveling home from Bangkok together. She’s been there for how many months? In and out of the hospital. You went so she wouldn’t be alone. You can stop now. She can’t walk you say. Rheumatoid arthritis. That explains the swollen metacarpalphalangeal joints. How observant of me. Treatments not effective. You are going to stay behind and wait for the wheelchair when we get to Paro. She wants to be with her daughter. Well, it was so nice to meet you. The three seats in front of us were occupied by crimson robed monks laughing at the bumpy descent between the mountains into Paro. Feeling less peaceful than expected on my arrival, I hoped that I had left some of my own stench behind.

The road to Buddha. Mornings are my favorite time of day here. Normally this is not the case. It’s not that I don’t like the early part of the day, I just prefer to spend it in my bed. More than once I have considered the possibility that I live on the wrong side of the globe for my rhythm and changing my location may right my life. Lacing up my hiking shoes at 5:30am I wonder what spirit has taken over my body what it has in store for me. The weather is best and most stable early in the day with the dawn normally breaking crisp and blue. A gentle breeze flows down valley to return with greater emotion in the afternoon reversing the direction of the prayer flags that cover the hillsides.

Doctor Sam showed me a hike that begins outside the back door of my cottage, through a door in a stone wall, and onto a long road that leads up to Buddha. Having retired from orthopaedics, Sam has spent a full year in the past five working at JDWNRH, and seems to know everyone in town. He has a warm affection for these people and it is obvious the emotion is reciprocated. At 73 he is lean and sinewy and I have to rationalize my difficulty keeping up with him on the steeper sections to the fact that I just landed at 7600 feet from sea level two days prior. Sam has since returned to Port Angeles and I have adopted the walk up the mountainside as my morning ritual. The altitude affects more than just my respiration, and my legs and feet have peculiar aches that make it hard to walk without limping. My feet slap as I walk, and I imagine the passing kids are amused by the ungainly white man. Relative to the people around me I am larger than most, the effect of nutrition on genetic potential. On the busy main streets I am greeted with brief curious glances, warm smiles and the occaisional group of boys marching in playful lockstep behind me.

The city sidewalks overflow with children dressed in traditional gho and kira walking to school. The colors indicate the school but other markings of social class are neutralized. Children of farmers mingle with those of the growing business class with no apparent distinction. Older siblings shepherd the younger members with a gentle hand on the back protecting them from the aggressive drivers. The crowds thin out quickly on the steep hillsides and the greetings become more personal and friendly. “Good morning Sir,” more respectful than obsequious is normally accompanied by a slight bow at the waist and tilt of the head to the side. The smiles are genuine. Like those around me I have lost my last name and am known as Doctor Roger. I am a curiosity, a topic of conversation, and people know my comings and goings.

As I gain elevation the constant barking of dogs begins to fade and is overtaken by the sound of birds and the prayers being carried off in the wind. Dogs are everywhere. At night they bark into the darkness and I see silhouettes running past my cottage. My neighbor dog knows the sound of my gate opening and keeps our area protected, even from me. They have the typical curled tail and generic look of selective breeding returning to the wild and can be found alone or roaming in packs. Some are emaciated and losing hair in broad patches and have a desperate look to their faces. An aggressive pair live near the top of the mountain. Sam bent over, gripped a rock in his hand and they fled. My normal habit of petting dogs has been abandoned and I am wary of these animals. Sam told me a story of a man dying from rabies after being scratched by a puppy and I recall childhood fears of having to undergo six weeks of painful injections in the stomach. Current immunoglobulin therapy is far simpler but fear is not rational. The vast majority are docile and it is more of a cohabitation of two species rather ownership and domestication.

Sound is a complex thing. At times I have trouble hearing the conversation across a table in a restaurant. Up on the hill I can hear the individual shouts of soccer players and the barking of military drills a thousand feet below. The valley walls are steep on both sides functioning as a perfect amphitheater. The sun crests the eastern side and I can begin to see reflections off the Buddha statue up ahead. The statue is both a wonder and a controversy. It is currently wrapped in scaffolding and the underlying gold surface glints in the morning sun. When it is complete it will be the largest Buddha statue in the world. This has elicited varying reactions from pride to disgust amongst the people. The massive proportions can only be appreciated from above and the cost to this society with so little to spare is tremendous. This has generated particularly strong responses from several morning walkers who became my companions on the road. Unlike western culture Buddhism generally shuns superlatives. In the end, like buildings, someone will make a bigger one and the debate means little to me. It represents a destination.

After a week my breathing becomes regular and my legs stronger as I aclimatize. The road was once a trail, like all roads in this country, widened marginally and covered with asphalt. The surrounding hillsides are covered with footpaths heading to remote villages and sacred places, only reachable by walking. People carrying impossible loads on their backs are frequently encountered. Larger monasteries are supplied by horses, and the most remote by yak, but the massive beams used for construction are carried by man. The people are physically hard and weathered by their environment with thick calluses and powerful but thin extremities. Rarely I find an overweight person and I believe it is the product of privilege, and the sedentary lifestyle that comes with wealth. Most people are accustomed to a life of pain and the use of pain medication in the hospital even after surgery is minimal. Old men and women hunched forward over harvested sticks are commonly found making their way on remote roads, often alone and late at night. Without doubt this is life struggling to be. When they stop they will die. Our bodies evolved to fight like this and what it is capable of is amazing. Westerners romanticize this bucolic lifestyle but it is a difficult existence. Despite this their spirits remain kind and gentle and you will be asked to share in whatever meager supplies they carry and usually given the lions share.

There is a side route that descends a trail through clusters of prayer flags that I like to take. The sound of hundreds of prayer flags in the wind is magical and when the wind picks up you can sense the spirits that animate them.
The woodblock imprinted prayers on the flags are carried off into the ether, having a physical substance to the people that create and hang them. The sense that the world is filled and controlled by spirits is easily understood in this atmosphere. The people see shapes and forms in nature as physical manifestations and nothing is random or accidental. Fish and elephants can be seen in the earth, footprints in rock from ancient monks, dragons roaring in the stormy sky, spirits subdued and captured in the earth, their body parts protruding as hills and valleys. It’s a mystical place. I once read a study where people saw faces and objects in random television patterns when their life was made unpredictable. Certainly the border with science in these mountains is foggy and the presence of the spiritual realm real and binding.
I descend back into the city usually having made a new friend along the way, ready for a day of work.