Chapter 1. Farang: The Foreigner
A pivotal moment that changed my life's trajectory forever
I had just crossed the border from Thailand into Cambodia and I had no idea what I was supposed to do next. How did I end up here? Earlier that morning I had gotten up early to make it to a random bus stop somewhere in the middle of Bangkok where buses picked up locals to take them to a border town on the edge of Thailand.
Foreigners or “Farang”, the term used by locals to typically refer to the descendants of colonizers weren’t supposed to really know about this way. I never really considered myself “Farang” though, and I think some Thai people who knew the history of Black people in America may have thought similarly. Even though it means “foreigner” I always got the impression it wouldn’t be thrown at me unless I deserved it.
Either way, the tourism space is such that farang pay the prices commiserate to the luxuries that life affords us. So I was Farang when it came to my cost of living until I learned a few things over my 6 and a half years in Bangkok.
Of course someone had put the information about the bus stop location and cheaper cost on an online message board and thus began the process of gentrifying local travel. That’s where I found the information myself. So I guess that made me a gentrifier too…
As a Black man in America I’ve been the victim of a system designed for the oppression of people who look like me. However, when I’m abroad also afforded a few of the privileges normally only bestowed upon my white counterparts, especially once I flash my American passport.
You won’t believe some of the doors that open with that little blue booklet.
Through my years of travel, it’s been assumed that I was Arab, Bangladeshi, Ethiopian and when dancing Salsa or Bachata I must be Cuban, Puerto Rican or Dominican. In the first three instances of Arab, Bangladeshi and Ethiopian, you can feel the downward trajectory of the person’s gaze towards me. In the case of Cuban, Puerto Rican and Dominican, since I’m usually dancing, I perceive this as a compliment as I’m mad suave on the dance floor.
But my American passport might as well be a Platinum card in some of these places. Of course there are many places where Americans are disliked, and rightfully so. The behavior of Westerners throughout many parts of the world, whether travelers or in colonization, leaves little to be desired.
The loud and obnoxious American is a reality abroad. Since I’ve lived abroad and have been abroad quite a bit to Asia, I see it and often pretend not to be in any way related to these groups. However, in the predetermined racial hierarchy created by America’s cultivation and then exportation of American racism, a Black man still finds himself ranking below his White counterparts.
After my many years abroad I came to the conclusion that for this to change, Black American men and women must travel the world like missionaries, setting the record straight about who we are by our actions and behavior in person. Like Queen mother said to T’Challa, “Show them who you are”. Only in this way can we begin to chip away at the narratives spun about who we are in the collective eyes of the world.
. . .
Earlier that morning around 5am I had arrived hopped on a bus with the locals heading to the Cambodian border. I slept most of the way to the border and didn’t wake fully until we pulled up to the border stop. The online information said that I could get approved for entry into Cambodia at the border and that I didn’t need to get a VISA in advance.
What are you doing Rich?
This is crazy, my inner voice kept shouting at me.
You have no idea where you are. You have no friends here. You are thousands of miles away from home, and all the money you have except for the money in your pocket and backpack was used to pay your next month’s rent.
Your family has no idea that you’re going on this trip to Cambodia and who knows if you’ll have phone reception. This was before the time of the iPhone and back when you had to go to an internet cafe if you wanted to connect to wifi, check or send email, and do all the things we now take for granted. It’s wild how this was not so very long ago.
Prior to taking this trip I had been fired from my teaching job in Bangkok for insubordinate behavior, poorly attempting to establish a union-like resistance and I was running out of money to live abroad, fast.
My head is screaming “Black people don’t do shit like this. This is White people shit you’re doing bruh!” But somewhere deep within myself there was this part of me that said “why do they get to walk the earth like it belongs to them, and why is it that they can do what they want and I can’t?” One thing I knew about myself is that I had enough sense to be respectful of the people of whatever land I was in. I also knew that often times the locals knew the plight of Black Americans and also maybe because they loved Michael Jackson and James Brown.
At a minimum that would count for some grace with the people.
I had pondered various thoughts and ideas over my young life and one of the things that I realized about being a Black man conditioned by America’s lies and omissions is that our growth is stunted by generational traumas and oppressive ideas that make us feel like we can’t do what White people do.
I grew up learning the subtle nuances of fear from the oppression that dug in deep like the Poplar tree into the minds of my parents and grandparents, passed on to them by their parents and grandparents. These trees were the namesake of my grandfather’s hometown of Poplar Bluff, the same trees that Nina Simone sang about bearing those “strange fruit”… the bodies of Black people lynched and left to hang from the trees as a form of White Terrorism inflicted upon Black people.
There are all of these little ideas rooted in these fears and forms of conditioning like “Go to school. Don’t stir up any trouble with or speak out assertively towards White folks. Get a good job working for the city. Get married. Buy a house and have some kids”, but The Alchemist within me would never allow these ideas to fully take root. So at the age of 29, just 3 years beforehand, I had left the “safety” of the alleged “Greatest country on earth”, The United States.
I told my family that I was leaving the country. I found a job teaching English within 6 weeks of telling them, closed my local fitness company, sold much of my things, packed my bags and moved to Incheon, South Korea. And this is where my story’s trajectory changed forever
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