i learn by going where i have to go

I'm not a huge fan of Theodore Roethke, but I've always liked that poem ("The Waking," quoted in the title of my post).

Now, no one would ever mistake me for a person with a sense of direction. I have to be told how to get to places I've been visiting since I was a child. I quickly lose touch with the cardinal directions if the sun isn't in a particularly helpful position...and if I'm inside? Forget it. If I was a lab rat, I'd starve before I ever found the cheese at the end of the maze.

But I have always tried to improve. I take Brother's advice and try to draw a map in my head. I pay attention to landmarks. I rehearse directions in my head: "Left at the gas station. Right at the market." Routes that I travel often gradually become less mysterious.

In Thailand, I have given up. I don't even try anymore to figure out where I am or where I'm going. This is because the roads are constructed in such a way as to make navigation much more difficult.

Outside of the central part of Bangkok, there are very few intersections. Instead, whenever two roads meet, there is a system of entrances and exits. The idea is ostensibly to keep traffic moving at all times, using merges and uber-cloverleafs instead of traffic lights to keep collisions from occurring. It's complicated by the fact that most roads are divided, so if you're trying to get to a place on the right side of the road, you've got to make a U-turn. This is done via a U-turn bridge: you exit the main road on the left, make a sweeping turn to the right, crossing over above the road, and wind up on the other side of the road. In addition, main roads have several divisions: the three or four left-hands lanes are for local traffic, and are only intermittently accessible from the three or four right-hand lanes, which are the equivalent of "express lanes" in the U.S. Generally there is also an elevated roadway with even more limited access. All of these different roadways are accessed via the same tangle of ramps that allow right and left turns. The interchanges are works of art.

Someday I'll have to figure out how to take a truly expository picture of the interchange that leads into our town.

I do not learn by going where I have to go.