Crises
In the past 12 hours, I've had two crises, probably the most stressful situations I've experienced in the past several months.
Yesterday afternoon I got on a bus in Krabi which took me as far as Surat Thani. Here, I had to change buses.
Sitting down to wait for my connecting bus, I discovered, to my horror, that I had lost the Le Carré novel through which I had made it half way, having managed for the first time in my life to read on a bus and not suffer from motion sickness. The next hour passed agonizingly slowly.
The new bus drove through the night, arriving in Bangkok early this morning. I decided I would fly the second leg of my trip to Phnom Phen.
Killing some time before going to the airport, I browsed a second hand book store. It was here that I suffered my second crisis. As inevitably happens when I enter a book store, I found far more books which I wanted to read than I could practically carry. I spent an agonizing time trying to decide, in the end of course still buying too many books (Barbara Tuchman, Eric Hobsbawm, Kurt Vonnegut, and another copy of the lost Le Carré). These join Isaiah Berlin's biography of Marx and two histories of Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge in my pack. (Chris will be delighted to know that I still haven't read the original Cambodian history I brought, although I have read two other accounts of the Khmer Rouge which I picked up on my travels).
This afternoon I will fly into Phnom Phen. Hopefully I can read and discard a couple of these books before landing.
Yesterday afternoon I got on a bus in Krabi which took me as far as Surat Thani. Here, I had to change buses.
Sitting down to wait for my connecting bus, I discovered, to my horror, that I had lost the Le Carré novel through which I had made it half way, having managed for the first time in my life to read on a bus and not suffer from motion sickness. The next hour passed agonizingly slowly.
The new bus drove through the night, arriving in Bangkok early this morning. I decided I would fly the second leg of my trip to Phnom Phen.
Killing some time before going to the airport, I browsed a second hand book store. It was here that I suffered my second crisis. As inevitably happens when I enter a book store, I found far more books which I wanted to read than I could practically carry. I spent an agonizing time trying to decide, in the end of course still buying too many books (Barbara Tuchman, Eric Hobsbawm, Kurt Vonnegut, and another copy of the lost Le Carré). These join Isaiah Berlin's biography of Marx and two histories of Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge in my pack. (Chris will be delighted to know that I still haven't read the original Cambodian history I brought, although I have read two other accounts of the Khmer Rouge which I picked up on my travels).
This afternoon I will fly into Phnom Phen. Hopefully I can read and discard a couple of these books before landing.
posted by Tor at 12:27 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home