The Deadliest Form of Travel

The latest tragedy involving a Malaysian air carrier dominates the news at year's end and the mystery of why Air Asia's short hop from Indonesia to Singapore ended so terribly is still unsolved. Weather is the most prevalent theory and the most plausible, since it's thunderstorm season in Southeast Asia right now.

This still is a troublesome hypothesis, since flights in that region safely negotiate thunderstorms with regularity; these are not unusual events for airline pilots. What sticks with me are memories of past Air Asia flights and why I no longer use that carrier, even though its fares are often so low that it seems ridiculous not to.

My last journey with Air Asia was from Hong Kong to Penang, a quick flight that takes only several hours. It was so turbulent that the man sitting beside me crossed himself and began to pray, and I have never been so happy to touch Malaysian soil. Other Air Asia flights before that were always significantly more dramatic than I would have liked, although not as consistently bad as my last. "I don't use them anymore," a friend who frequently commuted by air between Bangkok and Ho Chi Min City told me, "I'd rather pay more and have a good flight. Air Asia always ends up frightening me."

"Why didn't the pilot turn back after being denied a change in route?" is a resonant one. Does Air Asia, as a budget carrier, receive routes that are less desirable than other airlines? Are pilots discouraged from aborting a flight? Will anyone ever know?

Still, even Air Asia is a more secure and less dangerous option than the bus journeys that cross Southeast Asia every hour of every day. Fatalities of bus travelers were regularly reported in Penang's daily papers when I lived there, and the Bangkok Post rarely lacks similar stories,

Thailand alone boasts the second-highest rate of traffic deaths in the world, with long-distance buses taking the lead in those fatalities. Recently a tourist van en route to Bangkok's airport crashed into a highway maintenance truck and claimed several lives. Today's news told of severe injuries incurred by tourists in Phuket, when a bus taking them from one beach to another hit a car and "tumbled down a small hill." And truthfully, any of us who have lived in--or visited--Bangkok have faced more danger when taking a motorcycle taxi than on any airplane flight, no matter how turbulent.

But even so, the 7,784 highway deaths in Thailand in 2012 (the most recent statistic that I could find online) dwarfs the 475 deaths in the air worldwide for the same year. What strange mental quirk makes us fear the skill of highly trained pilots and trust in someone who drives blissfully free of any regulation at all?

Hong Kong to Me

I'm not stealing from Emily Hahn in this title; I'm paying homage. She was the one to first introduce me to Hong Kong in her splendid book, China to Me. When I first went to that city, I walked with Emily through Wanchai, looking for buildings that were of her vintage, loving the ridiculously crowded streets that she would have walked through too.

Then I went to Kowloon, which was a whole other world to Emily. It was to me too. While Hong Kong Island seemed familiar to me, a mixture of Manhattan and San Francisco with Chinese characteristics, Kowloon was like Bangkok on steroids. Everything I loved about Thailand's capital was multiplied here, along with the rampant mall culture which I didn't love at all.

However there were parts of Kowloon that were as chaotic and as fascinatingly ugly as anyplace in Bangkok, and its diversity of population delighted me.

And it was connected to the Mainland. Soon I began to ride the MTR into the New Territories, where different facets of Hong Kong awaited. For me, this is the most interesting part of the former Crown Colony, although some of it made me sad.

This is a residential area developed by the MTR, Lohas Park. It was still being built when I went there. Across the highway were hills with farmhouses and groves of trees. Where I stood, the buildings gave me honest-to-god vertigo when I tried to see their tops.

They formed their own forest that threatened to blot out the sky.

When I traveled on to a completed residential area, Po Lam, the sky was hard to find and pedestrians moved under this landscape. It was a cloudy day but the sky was even darker in this place. Within a few minutes I had to escape in search of light.

And I found it, in an older city that is built around a river. Shatin is my favorite part of Hong Kong because it has been planned for people to enjoy.

And then there are the islands--small communities that retain as much tradition and history as this sentimental traveler could ever wish for.

But as much as I love them, insularity isn't an abstract term. These islands let outsiders come, but they love to see them go.

Unlike Shatin, where people dancing in the riverside often invite me to join the party. Someday I hope I can, for more than an afternoon.

Mix those Blessings

Rites of passage are highway markers. "When I'm six I'll go to school...when I'm thirteen I won't be a child anymore...when I'm twenty-one I can order a cocktail and be served...when I'm thirty I'll have my own house..." Then they begin to lose their luster, slowly but inexorably, and we look for our singularity as they strike--"Forty and thinner than I was at twenty! Fifty and I only have two wrinkles! Sixty and I travel more than I ever dreamed of when I was young."

Then comes the one I can't gloss over--"Sixty-six and my doctor says I have a senile cataract." Oh those medical professionals and their charming terminology!

My eye is now able to see more than I have in a very long time--so much so that I'm already looking forward to the cataract removal in my left eye. But this last month has been difficult for a healthy person--visits to a doctor, eyedrops, being careful of my eye as it heals, to the point that I'm just now resuming my omnipresent eye makeup.

"Can I do this?" has never been something I've asked myself before but I've done it a lot recently. If I ask that often enough, something within me begins to erode. I've always had limitations, based on phobias--water, heights, tight spaces all are barriers to what I have done and will do. But I've had those ever since I can remember. Accepting new limitations is not something I'm willing to do--at least not yet.

However there was a limitation I accepted for years without realizing it, fading eyesight. Now colors are brighter and the outside world holds so many entrancing details when I walk in it. I think again of the May Sarton line, "Lose what I lose to keep what I can keep," and privately alter it to suit my own greedy nature. "Keep what I can keep to mitigate what I lose." And echoing my mother, I tell myself, "It will be all right just as long as I can read."

No Longer in a Large-Print World

This morning I reduced the type size on my computer screen from 150 to 75 and can see this without strain. One small step. Walks have become more interesting, even on my home turf, because of all the details I can now see. Yesterday I could see leaves on a tree that was two blocks away, and architectural details on the old buildings that make up my neighborhood jump out at me as I walk past. 

I'd begun to dislike walking in downtown Seattle because there was nothing new for me to see. There is now...

So yes I am grateful for the removal of my cataract. But being who I am, I am not wallowing in complete Pollyanna bliss. What I wish I had, in addition to what seems to be a successful surgery, is more information.

Cataract removal is a routine procedure, but not for the person who is going through it for the first time. Up until last week, I hadn't even ever put drops in my eyes. A short tutorial on how to do this--a youtube clip perhaps--would not have gone amiss in my case. The doctor who provides my follow-up care assured me that he is erring on the side of generosity when it comes to the eyedrops--if I miss a few days, it doesn't mean disaster. I suppose if some of the drops spill out of my eye, that is also not the end of the world. So I religiously observe every session of eyedropping every day and hope that regularity will trump ineptitude.

I wish I had been told that my eye would become redder after the first two days post-surgery, that it would water far more than ever before, and that it would puff up at night. Yesterday I woke up in a state of sheer panic because my eye was puffy and I knew it was infected, A call to the doctor's office (closed on the weekend) got me through to an ophthamologist on call. After three key questions she decided this was a normal occurrence--since the seepage from my eye wasn't yellow, my vision was the same as it had been the day before, and my entire eye wasn't red. I wish I had been given those guidelines for assessment with my eyedrops and plastic eyeguard and the ugly sunglasses that I refused to wear. 

I wish I had been told that it is normal for one of my eyedrops to crystallize and that it is all right to remove that dried residue around my eye gently with a towel and warm water. I'd been told not to get water in my eye so avoided it as though I were the devil approached by holy water. 

I know I'm not the only person who wishes that I had more information. Certainly a brochure with FAQs for cataract surgery wouldn't go amiss in doctors' offices--but in the one I go to, the only printed information on hand is a leaflet on different technological breakthroughs in the field of surgery. The most help I've been able to find is online from Britain's NHS.

When I have my other eye done, I won't be wallowing in the ignorance I am now. But for first-time patients faced with cataract surgery, we don't even know what questions to ask. It would be wonderful if doctors realized that and provided information before we go into post-surgery panic.

And the Scales Fell From My Eyes...

Although my life is often described as minimalist, I relish my creature comforts in a way that only another former Alaskan homestead child could understand. Hot showers may be a standard, unsung feature to some, but to me they are luxuries of the highest order and I never take them for granted, while taking them at least once a day. Without one, I feel like a leper, crying "Unclean! Unclean!" when I venture outside my apartment.

Sponge baths simply aren't an acceptable substitute.

My last shower was on Monday morning; today is Thursday. My hair is unwashed and I feel hideous. To complete this charming picture, I haven't worn my usual eye makeup for four days. Even in the days of my misspent youth, when I dabbled in the counterculture, I still wore eye makeup.

Tomorrow I will be permitted to shower. Today I'm going to have a quick hot bath. I think a turban look is what I'll be going for afterward, swathing my unwashed hair in a colorful scarf. And sunglasses--rose-colored lenses from Bangkok street markets--have proven to be my best friends.

This is the aftermath of cataract removal, along with the inability to read small print at a comfortable distance. For the past decade, I've seen friends resort to reading glasses and felt grateful that I didn't need them. Now--hello, Eyebobs. No, I will not wear them on a little chain around my neck.

This would be much more annoying if I hadn't been given an overriding preoccupation--eyedrops four times a day. For real fun, I can't imagine anything lower on any sort of scale.

And yet colors are brighter, lines are sharper, and street signs are intelligible at a distance. I suppose it's time to stop being a curmudgeonly old harridan and give proper thanks to modern medicine.

Okay. The American Way of Physician's Care has finally justified its existence--but I still think overall it sucks. Maybe I'll feel differently with clean hair but somehow I doubt it.