We drink kah-faahr packets that contain 52.5% sugar, 37% non-dairy creamer, and 10.5% instant coffee. There are frogs living in my shoes and there is no toilet paper. I shower by candlelight with a barrel and a bowl. The rain is warm and the mo-peds seat up to five. I fantasize about coming back here in a year and staying for a long time.
All the local faces are familiar to me now, although the names are still hard to keep track of and I can’t seem to figure out who is related to whom. Pooh invites me over for dinner and we collect empty bottles along the road as we walk to her house from the beach. Each wall of the kitchen is made out of a different material than the next and we pour the leftover cooking oil and fish bones between the floorboards. It’s so nice to eat together in silence.
It feels like I’ve been here for about a month and it seems strange that I won’t be sleeping here tomorrow night. At midday I swim around the giant limestone wall that juts out into the sea and the little beach on the other side gives me a sinister kind of deja-vu. The shore is coated in those little sand-balls that crabs make. I know that’s what they are because I’ve seen it on Planet Earth.
In the afternoon I hop on the scooter of a tall, tan Astonian fellow to go to the hot springs nearby. The bottom is swampy and feels like sitting on a fluffy comforter. He teaches me how to say a few things in his language but my brain is too full and I forget them immediately. He tells me that I won’t be able to get the visa I need from the embassy in Bangkok so I change my plan and book a flight to Phnom Penh. The sun is setting on the ride home and the twilight catches the downy blonde hairs on the back of his neck just so. The wind coaxes a tear from his eye which slides slowly back across his cheek until finally flying off and landing onto mine. He tells me to write him if I make it to India in the next month.
I’m sitting in the sidecar of Ba’s scooter and I can’t stop grinning as we zoom out of the bushes and onto the beach after fetching a full fishing net. I make an effort to encode this feeling so that I can return to it later in a moment of faintheartedness.
I can’t adequately express my thank-yous when we say goodbye but I repeat that I have a very grateful heart and I give them each a necklace. I wish I could explain to them how their kindness has inspired me and how their rhythm has regulated my system. I wish I could tell them that being in their home was the best beginning to this adventure for which I could have hoped.
I’m back on the train with the green curtains but now I’m going the other way. A young guy from Hat Yao is also taking the train and he changes his seat so that we can sit together. This time when the man comes around to makes our beds, I don’t hurry to close my curtain. I don’t need the privacy as much this time. It doesn’t bother me to be exposed and I don’t feel impinged upon by the presence of others. My bunkmate hops down from the upper berth to sit on my bed for a while and we share an orange juice. There is cilantro in my dinner tonight and I don’t even mind.
