Diving off the coast of Pattaya
Living, dating, and diving in the Gulf of Thailand
There isn’t a single reason or person that compelled me to get my diving certificate. It was a culmination of people and places. While in Bali I had gone snorkelling and enjoyed it tremendously. Diving was naturally the next step. Friends and colleagues had declared it an ‘unforgettable experience’, and I figured I’m in a season of life where I can afford to travel and meander.
It’s been fun. I’ll tell you that the past 8 days I’ve been in Thailand I’ve felt many things, let’s say a range of emotions, from loneliness to deep peace. I’m coming out of the week physically exhausted but mentally refreshed.
Like catharsis, you know? I’m finding that travelling alone forces you to be present with your thoughts. When I do that, I find particularly rocky layer of my mind, sediments of conditioning that has been thickly reinforced.
For example, Bangkok. Why did I think it would be dirty? Nothing surprised me more than the cleanliness of the city, a cleanliness I daresay rivals Singapore.
I also met a medley of people along the way. One girl I met through Bumble (a dating app). We met with the intention of being friends. Refreshing. Zero expectations, with the exception of my craving for Tom Yum soup (which as of this writing I have not had yet). She’s a 26 year old Thai, from a Southern city, working and living in Bangkok.
It gets lonely, she told me. Two weeks ago she found out her boyfriend was cheating on her. She ended things, but takes pills to fall asleep at night. When I remarked ‘you’re back to dating fairly quickly’, she told me ‘I want to heal quickly and soon.’
I found that inspiring. For a long time I’ve been saying I want to wait a year to heal before I start dating again. But what are relationships (and indeed, marriage) if not for deep friendships? I’ve been asking how do I make new friends in adulthood for the longest time, instead of actually just going out and making friends. That, I think, is the ephemeral nature of most friendships anyway. The process is a necessary precursor to a lasting marriage.
Another girl I met was a 24 year old Russian, in Thailand to escape the brutal Moscow winter. We did our diver’s course together, and went out for dinner and drinks two nights in a row. It was remarkable. We talked about the war, our ideological differences, and the energy of the people on the boat. She had studied in London for 3 years, so she sounded fairly English. But ever so rarely, the Russian grit I’ve observed in other Russian tourists crept to the surface.
I learnt blyat means whore.
My dive instructor was a Thai girl who had marriage an Englishman. On the streets of Pattaya the ‘White guy, Asian girl’ motif is seen every other minute, but as I dove with her and her husband, they exuded a chemistry that reminded me of Ton, a 56 year old Dutch man I had met in Bali. I recalled his yearning for love and affection, his hope for something deeper than sex. Not that he was a sex tourist. It’s just that it’s available. And in places where sex sells, women see white men as money bags the same way men see women as meat. I suppose we’re all looking for something, aren’t we?
Diving in the Gulf of Thailand was an amazing experience. It was just the way I wanted it to be: not too beautiful, but enough to make me crave more. You know how it is: having the full taste from the get go makes everything else taste wanting. You need to start bland, and then add flavour afterwards. Here is my baseline:
