What would you call a state of awe and disbelief from living in a dream that is too vivid? For me, to experience a manifestation of a dream feels like having a long mild delirium.
This series of photos captures my first abroad destination, Phuket. Using an analog camera my late father left, I was able to get some photographs that have dreamy qualities.
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I almost didn’t have the privilege of flying and going out of the country before the age of 25. My first full-time job allowed me to taste that privilege just a few months before I turned 25.
Airport was a foreign concept to me. I was so afraid that I would be late for my airplane that I had to go to the airport 5 hours before my departure flight. I kept making sure with my new coworkers that it would be my first time on a plane and that they have to keep me company at the airport or I would be super anxious. Nonetheless, I was still anxious that I didn’t get to sleep the night before the morning flight.
Staying in a resort in Phuket, in a bedroom with your own balcony, a bathtub, and a seaview, is a thing that I could never imagine that I would get these kinds of facilities from work. I thought working in an international NGO would lead me to humble places. Instead, it humbled me down with what I think as unnecessary luxury. To experience such luxury abroad for the first time as a worker from the third world feels like I’m a character in a White Lotus.
Then, I realized that I’m surrounded by new coworkers that have worked internationally. That have traveled the world. That have traveled to corners of Africa and other continents for the sake of saving the world. I have entered a new bubble, the international non-profit industrial complex. Although not all of my coworkers are white, I could sense the white saviorism from the organization that I work for. Sometimes I and a fellow Indonesian coworker would think that all of these work that we do for the organization would be for the sake of absolution from the West’s colonial pasts.
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Visiting Thailand, Phuket specifically, gave me the impression that this country obviously has less population than Indonesia that they can keep the environment very clean and maintained.
Or maybe that the history of Thailand that has never been colonized by the West before makes them capable to maintain the country.
The first work that I got from this organization exposes me to the issues that never come in my mind before—human rights abuse experienced by migrant fisheries worker. I got to visit a port control in Phuket where it has fishing fleets that have Burmese and Cambodian workers onboard.
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Kiss of life
Other than getting the White Lotus experience at the resort, I also got to indulge myself with food and beers. I could say that Thai seafood is better than Indonesian. They know how to cook it. And to be in a setting where my coworkers are alcohol drinkers, I can recall that during one of the dinner feasts, I was able to get drunk for the first time in my life.
Having all of these experiences for the first time, just like what I told you in the beginning, is like a lucid dream. Is this what it feels like to have a job? An access to the kiss of life?
The substance that makes the world real
“It’s money, though, isn’t it? The substance that makes the world real.”
That quote from Normal People never rings truer when I recount this journey to Phuket. It is money that makes all of these things possible. If Connel’s experience was to eat ice cream with Marianne in a little italian piazza, mine would be to fly abroad for the first time to Phuket.
After this trip, while writing this, I’m still retaining the same privilege. And I’m and will be forever grateful for it.
I could never know if in the future I would wake up from this lucid dream. Or, I would just keep to forever dream. Higher, further than the farthest star up there.
Camera: Fujifilm MDL-55 Smartshot
Films: Kodak Pro Image 100, Kodak Colorplus 200, Ilford Kentmere 400
Rubiru 