The Road to Steem Fest | Planning, Wanting, Doubting

I tried to watch The Quiet American again last night. The iPad wouldn't let me, stalling and buffering every five minutes. I didn't mind. I find it hard to warm to Michael Caine, reptilian and predatory, always playing the same character. Set in Saigon in the 1950s, I wanted to see the location filming again, the French colonial architecture.

I realised, when I was thinking about this post, that all my ideas about South East Asia are mediated through a Western prism of films and news footage. Old stories of wars and conflicts, more recent ones of troublesome, in one way or another, sex, playing into our fantasies of the dark side, and, conversely, holiday pictures of paradise.

As I moved beyond the practicalities of planning - time, money, arrangements - I wondered what I wanted from travelling so far to spend time in an unknown city, an unknown part of the world. I thought about some of the serious conversations I have had on here and the opportunity to sit down with people over a coffee and continue. The chance for quiet excursions, sitting with my own thoughts, listening to the murmurings of other conversations around me. Walking in the city in the early morning, finding a place to cross the river.

I wondered about how the world is changing inexorably. We're being dragged along with it. Are we preparing, are we spending enough time understanding the changes that are coming and what they will mean? I thought at SteemFest, among the excitement, the coming together of so many cultures and ideas, there may be the place to reflect.

Will we be aware of the history of where we are, and how that history continues and of our place in it.

I looked at some of my ideas about Thailand. I was a sucker for those Hollywood musicals and The King and I stands out. I was entranced by the plucky English woman, the handsome King, the young lovers. It was an entertainment, popular on film and stage, with many revivals.

It's based on the story of Anna Leonowens, a British travel writer and educator born in India, who was asked to come and teach the wives and children of Mongkut, King of Siam. Anna's own story, full of anomalies, is fascinating, as are the stories of Mongkut and his son, Chulalongkorn.

Thailand, alone among the South East Asian countries, retained independence. There were treaties with foreign powers and trading companies, unequal and with loss of lands, but Thailand remained free from colonial rule. Both Kings had a progressive approach to Europe, adopting many aspects of European culture.

Not colonised, but still a powerful interplay between cultures. How will it be now?

Still romantic, I imagine I will be like Thomas Fowler. I imagine that I will meet everybody, where you meet everybody, at the Hotel Continental. I will be there every morning at eleven. I'm English, I have habits. I drink tea. If I am lucky, I will write. For some small time there will be a connection, I will leave my indelible but hidden traces and I will be forever changed, imperceptibly, but inescapably.

I'm late: I had a cold last week. I've got a note from my mum.
See @anomadsoul's original post.