The Travelling Fairy DancerThought Provoking Travel
July 23rd 2010 09:16
The sound of the clock, 'tick-tock, tick-tock', was unnaturally loud. Thai food scents wafted through the cracks of the old building - garlic and chicken blending with damp grass. An elderly woman behind the desk of a store grinned at me, displaying toothless gums.
Door bells chimed and a shuffling sound announced the arrival of the elderly woman's husband, home from a day at work. He pushed a small cart in front of him and pulled his legless body behind it, using the momentum to make up for his lack of limbs.
Match sticks, dirty old fridge magnets and rusty lighters made up his kitty. He pulled some Thai baht out from under a blackened tin and coins chinked together musically as they scattered across the cement ground.
His tattered shirt was dripping wet from the downpour outside; the monsoonal downpour I'd been caught in when his kindly wife had tugged me inside her tiny hovel - doubling as it was as a makeshift umbrella stall.
Photography By Vince Valitutti
She smiled down at her husband, collected the money from the floor and started to fuss over him, but not before offering me a hot bowl of noodle soup. I refused vehemently, realising that the soup was probably feeding them for a week.
Insisting, with fiery stubbornness, she smiled with heart-breaking, sincere delight when I relented, finally, under her intense assault. She watched with pleasure as I spooned the spicy mixture into my mouth.
Buying three umbrellas, I ventured out again, leaving behind their sparkling eyes and easy smiles with a heart full of useless sympathy and a mind full of awe - an elderly man with no legs, living in extreme poverty with his wife in one leaky room with no hygiene, warmth or possessions, forced to sell items of little worth on the streets.
The story is common in much of the world and generally viewed as a negative situation.
In comparison to many people, with well paying jobs, houses and valuable goods, who live in clean, structured neighbourhoods, the above situation is appalling; at least on the surface.
But how many times do you see an outwardly wealthy person in an expensive suit, swearing abuse into a mobile phone? A group of supposedly happily lunching females deriving immense pleasure from picking out the flaws of someone prettier, or more successful?
Then there're drivers stuck in traffic jams, faces red with anger, screaming at everyone through the window screen, or parents imparting the damaging issues of their own lives onto their children's.
Most also have legs. And clean drinking water. And food. Yet, smiles don't seem to come as easily.
Sweeping generalisations, yes, and many people do have utter appreciation for their lives. But this is because they don't view the world and its many diversities as negative.
There is something to appreciate in all things and all situations. Thoughts and thoughts alone stop positive energy from progressing. Authors, Eckhart Tolle and Louise Hay, among others, explain beautifully the power held within each thought, and our ability to choose these thoughts.
If you could choose to feel happy, wouldn't you? If you could choose to offer help to someone without any form of resentment or reluctance to share what's yours, wouldn't you? To accept, without judgement, what is around you, if you can't change it, is a step towards staying positive in a world that is sometimes negative.
This is how travel, for me, provokes life-changing thoughts.
Door bells chimed and a shuffling sound announced the arrival of the elderly woman's husband, home from a day at work. He pushed a small cart in front of him and pulled his legless body behind it, using the momentum to make up for his lack of limbs.
Match sticks, dirty old fridge magnets and rusty lighters made up his kitty. He pulled some Thai baht out from under a blackened tin and coins chinked together musically as they scattered across the cement ground.
His tattered shirt was dripping wet from the downpour outside; the monsoonal downpour I'd been caught in when his kindly wife had tugged me inside her tiny hovel - doubling as it was as a makeshift umbrella stall.
Photography By Vince Valitutti
She smiled down at her husband, collected the money from the floor and started to fuss over him, but not before offering me a hot bowl of noodle soup. I refused vehemently, realising that the soup was probably feeding them for a week.
Insisting, with fiery stubbornness, she smiled with heart-breaking, sincere delight when I relented, finally, under her intense assault. She watched with pleasure as I spooned the spicy mixture into my mouth.
Buying three umbrellas, I ventured out again, leaving behind their sparkling eyes and easy smiles with a heart full of useless sympathy and a mind full of awe - an elderly man with no legs, living in extreme poverty with his wife in one leaky room with no hygiene, warmth or possessions, forced to sell items of little worth on the streets.
The story is common in much of the world and generally viewed as a negative situation.
In comparison to many people, with well paying jobs, houses and valuable goods, who live in clean, structured neighbourhoods, the above situation is appalling; at least on the surface.
But how many times do you see an outwardly wealthy person in an expensive suit, swearing abuse into a mobile phone? A group of supposedly happily lunching females deriving immense pleasure from picking out the flaws of someone prettier, or more successful?
Then there're drivers stuck in traffic jams, faces red with anger, screaming at everyone through the window screen, or parents imparting the damaging issues of their own lives onto their children's.
Most also have legs. And clean drinking water. And food. Yet, smiles don't seem to come as easily.
Sweeping generalisations, yes, and many people do have utter appreciation for their lives. But this is because they don't view the world and its many diversities as negative.
There is something to appreciate in all things and all situations. Thoughts and thoughts alone stop positive energy from progressing. Authors, Eckhart Tolle and Louise Hay, among others, explain beautifully the power held within each thought, and our ability to choose these thoughts.
If you could choose to feel happy, wouldn't you? If you could choose to offer help to someone without any form of resentment or reluctance to share what's yours, wouldn't you? To accept, without judgement, what is around you, if you can't change it, is a step towards staying positive in a world that is sometimes negative.
This is how travel, for me, provokes life-changing thoughts.
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Comment by Lara M
Love Speaks
Food Slate
Yea...travels provoke thoughts, and at times humbling...