Quarter Year

I didn’t say a word to anyone for the day, a reminder of my aborted 10-day retreat in 2008. At the time I didn’t understand the point of meditation, but they also did a shitty job of explaining it – here, though, the monks did an excellent job explaining, in careful English, the foundations of Buddhism and how it’s separate from the traditions of Thai Buddhism. For example, women never touch monks. But that has little to do with core Buddhist beliefs and more to do with culture. (The fusion of spirituality and culture is at the center of many religious problems, in my opinion).

After a day of silence we split into discussion groups, each group with a monk, and let the questions fly. I unloaded my doubts on the young man from Laos:

“I know we’re not supposed to enjoy the food – that it should only be for nourishment – but I don’t see the harm in enjoying something as it’s presented to you if you can avoid attachment.” I remembered admiring Claude for savoring a poem by the fire, and the monk didn’t answer directly.

“There’s a guy in my hometown who murdered four policemen. What would Buddhism say a society should do with him? He’s a risk to kill again.” I didn’t mention that guy was already shot, but the monk avoided the question again.

“Would a good dog be reborn as a human?”

I think others in the group weren’t really interested in what I was asking because the subject was often changed to the monks’ daily life.

Monks live in temples and follow five main rules, etc. Here’s the interesting part: apparently there are monks who find the temples too rigid (or something) and take to the countryside. They’re called Forest Monks. My eyes lit up.

“There are Forest Monks? Where?” They wander! They’re nomadic! They walk (alone) across borders – Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Burma – as they wish, popping in to villages to receive alms. Giving alms is a daily tradition here, a lovely beat in the rhythm of life. Every morning around sunrise monks wander around (towns, cities, villages, wherever) with their bowls out. Local laypeople come out onto the street with their donations – usually rice, but sometimes milk bottles or other foods – and set them into the bowls. The monks will stop and say a prayer over the donor.

So I asked where do these Forest Monks sleep? Do they take refuge in people’s homes or in local temples?

“They sleep in Monk Tents,” he revealed.

WHAT? “There are Monk Tents?!” I think everyone in the group could tell that I desperately wanted one even though I’m not supposed to WANT anything, definitely not at a meditation retreat. But to me this was bigger than WANT, this was like realizing that we are all, in fact, one pulsating energy field, but especially me and the Monk Tent. I had to have one.

“You can find them at Monk Stores. There’s a company that has a Monk Factory and makes Monk Accessories for the Monk Stores. It’s a really good business.” This was all blowing my mind. Monk Tents! We had to get one.

The next day, after saying goodbye to the monks and goodbye to Mathew (who’s now safely back in Seattle) we went on an excursion to find a Monk Tent. We went to the Wat and convinced them that, no, we don’t want regular tents, we do actually want a Monk Tent even though we’re not monks. They pointed us to one store. No Monk Tents. After a few missteps and misunderstandings, we finally discovered a store where they had Monk Tents! BUT… it wasn’t how I imagined it. The Monk Tent is two items: a traditional orange Monk Umbrella (for rain and sun) and an orange mosquito net. The umbrella is stuck into the ground, then the mosquito net is draped over it and the monk meditates or sleeps underneath. It’s actually a smart solution to the problem of sleeping unprotected: it’s lightweight, compact and the umbrella has several uses. But seeing how simple it was, we couldn’t justify buying one when it would be so easy to make… alas, we have no Monk Tent… yet.

The alms-giving, to me, is one of the most beautiful, thoughtful practices I’ve seen in all my time traveling. There are a lot of people who come out to give at sunrise. The monks don’t eat to enjoy, as I earlier complained, they eat to nourish their bodies so they can continue to pursue peace and the end of suffering. The people who donate food don’t do so out of pity, but reverence for the monk’s pursuit. This is so different than alms-giving in the West. In the West we often help out of pity, which strips people of pride. Either that, or a person asking for food (who may, in fact, be working for peace) is looked upon as parasitical. Certainly no reverence for the needy in Western cultures. In a lot of ways, Buddhist practices sometimes flip our Western culture on its head. Another way is that Buddhism invites its practitioners to think critically about the nature of the universe (vs. the advice we got at the Catholic convent last year to stop questioning things)… and another example is that Buddha is not a god, he was an actual person who gained understanding about 2500 years ago. And so on.

At the beginning of the whole thing, a lecturer said to us, “You know what -isms came before Buddhism in Thailand? Animism and Hinduism.” He gave an example of each, how they endure. “Then came Buddhism. You know what the latest -isms are? Consumerism, materialism. People extract their meaning from money and objects.” I’d never heard it so simply explained. It’s the latest in a string of religions. I thought about how last week we splurged on jeans, underwear, art, lots of food, and how completely disengaged that pace is from the rhythm of life at the temple.

I’m occasionally challenged to name places that would be “better” to live in than America. Politics, wealth, health care, weather, food, culture, lifestyle… there are a lot of variables. The variable I saw at the meditation retreat is something I’ve never even thought about as a part of a country’s make-up: peace – with oneself, with others and with nature. That’s the core of Buddhism and Buddhism has a powerful influence on Thai life.

So – early tomorrow we’re heading to Myanmar for about 10 days. We’ll be mostly out of touch, but you might as well visit the blog a few times just to drive up the stats.

Sam believes that genetics, essentially, make black people less intelligent. He called it “instincts,” but he implied that these “instincts” couldn’t be overcome, so I thought of it as genetics. He said instincts, like how Jews are two-faced and women are untrustworthy, are “hidden” in people and there’s just not much anyone can do about it.

In America it’s an unwritten rule that people have the same capacity for intelligence (happiness, pain, love, compassion, etc) regardless of their race (sex, sexual orientation, religion, etc). Another unwritten American rule is that you don’t openly question the first rule. Don’t worry, this post isn’t going there.

This story is beside the point, but it will illustrate Sam’s dedication to Buddhist practice. Sam lived with a nagging, painful neck injury caused by a car accident. Finally, eleven years to the day after the accident he decided to get rid of it for good, so he sat down and meditated for three consecutive days. He didn’t eat, didn’t drink, didn’t move from the spot upon which he sat. He focused all his attention on his neck, visualizing it healed. When, 72 hours later, he finished the meditation, he could move his neck freely – he twisted in either direction to prove it. Healed. Hearing this story before the questionable comments, I thought, “Wow, to meditate that much means this guy must be a river of compassion!”

Sam’s phobias seem inconsistent: Buddhism teaches you to love others unconditionally, I thought, so how does he reconcile the practice with the lack of respect? (Well, there are plenty of people who manage to hate despite their loving leaders, so perhaps Sam is to Buddha as America’s anti-gay Christians are to Jesus and the Taliban is to Muhammad).

Sam asked Ali what he believes happens after we die. Ali responded that he feels this is it – there’s no afterlife. Sam said, “So you don’t even believe in re-incarnation?” (which, I suppose, is an afterlife scenario halfway between “this is it” and “there is a heaven”). Sam does believe in reincarnation, obviously, in which one’s karma determines their station in the next life.

So I wonder, Does Sam believe a person’s race is determined by karma from their previous life? In his beliefs, would a good dog be reborn as a Jew? Would a bad Eskimo be reborn as a Latino? It all seems ludicrous to me, but who am I to judge? I have no evidence either way.

I never asked about racial hierarchy as dictated by karmic law because I wanted to be polite: I was in his house, after all. The more relevant topic to come out of this exchange is how a guest should relate to their host. I was brought up to be polite (which in our culture means not talking about touchy subjects) in someone else’s home, but that could be just as much a culture-based practice as the one about not questioning racial equality.

About being a challenging guest, one view is that we travelers can claim “ignorant’s license,” which allows us to say or do things that might be rude in the town we’re visiting but can be written off as cultural differences. For example, Ali suggested that Sam’s hellion of a son (my words) needs more attention from his father, especially considering that Sam splits time between his two families in different cities. It would be inappropriate to say such a thing in England or America, but Sam doesn’t know that, so it might as well be said and written off as a cultural difference. And to be fair, we don’t even know if such a statement is inappropriate here in Thailand. So Ali chose to say what he was thinking and put the onus on Sam to blame the cultural difference if the statement does prove to be insensitive.

(I have a British client who says, “I don’t know why American parents are always gushing about how much they love their kids… I mean, my kids are alright. They’re just kids.” Who knew parental gushing/pride was cultural?)

Anyway, back to the story at hand: So, can a guest challenge their host’s opinions? Mathew says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks (Sam’s in his late 50s), so you might as well just listen politely and even goad them, then later blog about how fucking crazy that guy was. To all the old dogs reading this – can you teach an old dog new tricks? Have you been open to major philosophical changes as you’ve aged?

I’m coming to the conclusion that if you can manage to cleanse your argument of judgment, then these topics are fair game. The key – as is the case with any communication – is to avoid taking anything personally and think about whether you’re making unfair assumptions when you’re speaking. For example: ‘having unconditional love for all people’ and ‘thinking that Jews are two-faced’ aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.

Here’s the argument that won me over: I’ve spent 30 years wandering among millions of people on this planet, starting on North America. Sam has spent almost 60 years wandering among millions of people on the opposite side of the world. Finally, after all this time and all these people, he and I have come together for one night to talk face-to-face on his porch, and it will never happen again. The odds are astronomical that we should be here! With that in mind, it seems like a waste of an opportunity that politeness prevent us from discussing important topics. To me, the devil is in the intent.

As for Sam, his views are consistent with Buddhism in this way: he says that they all come from careful observation. I imagine (assume) he’s dealt with a few Black people he found to be dumb and a few Jews he found to be two-faced. We asked him whether he would ever visit America and he said that even if he was given a free ticket he wouldn’t go. “Too dangerous.” He’s afraid of the guns (of course) and thinks Americans hate people from other cultures (he mentioned Iraq and Afghanistan). In response, Azure showed him pictures of our house, our chickens, the Demeules’ lake house, our friends cooking and smiling, and Sam said, “You must live in a really nice part of America.” Well, yeah, I guess we do.

Either way, it’s hard to trust the opinion of someone who learns about the world through observation but would refuse a free ticket to a place they’ve never been. Not that we’re even close to understanding how his version of the world operates, but is his observation of race so different that he had to ask if Obama was as smart as Bush?

I like this about Sam – an in-the-moment simplicity developed through attention.

We scored an awesome situation, yesterday evening, relaxing on a wooden porch that reaches over the water on Ko Lanta’s eastern shore. The wide, parallel floorboards run from the porch railing to the house, then up the wall to the high metal roof. The tide was just creeping over the rocky beach. As Az and I laid there we heard boats motoring in the distance, rolling waves and chirping birds. We heard hammers tapping metal, people talking, people walking, people singing, cooking and crying, a Muslim call to prayer and occasional wind. The loudest sounds bounced off an island across the channel. The sun was just pushing through the clouds, though it was late enough that none reached the east-facing porch.

Sunrise the next morning

Three years ago we drove past the traditional wooden houses on this, the less-touristed coast. They seemed to glow with lives busied by projects unrelated to us Westerners, and I was hungry to see it. I remember hoping that, if only we looked curious enough, if only we drove slow enough, we would be invited in. It’s harder than you think to get inside someone’s house when you’re traveling: most locals assume you want to see the tourist sites, and we don’t commonly invite ourselves to dinner. And I remember, years ago, peaking into one of these houses and wondering about the natural light climbing from the sea-side back porch, up the hallway boards and through the front room, where families live open to the street. How to get invited inside? For years now I’ve tried to imagine rhythm of this traditional Thai life. What would be inside that house?

Yesterday, when we drove slowly along this road, a simple sign read, “B&B.” We had to stop. Kim welcomed us and called her husband, Sam. Sam had the idea for the B&B: he fantasizes about a worldwide network of homestays welcoming travelers, who later repay the good deed to travelers in their own town. It’s the exact same idea as Couchsurfing.com, but in its infancy and without a website.

Finally, we were invited into the house.

It’s open and airy, constructed completely of wide wooden planks, except for the metal roof high above. It’s like sleeping in a Wild West saloon, or so I imagine. The kitchen sits in the dark, unpainted entry, where only a little natural light drips in through the front door. This is the front half of the house. We walked down the hall toward the sea. The back of the house is dominated by one enormous room, separated from the hallway by a slatted wall. In this room the whole family sleeps on wicker mats and keeps all their possessions.

The bedroom.

A wall panel opens to the outside to let a breeze roll through. Off this bedroom is the main bathroom, which consists of a gravity-flush toilet and a wash basin. The Thai shower two or three times a day to keep cool, so the bathroom floors are always wet, which we find kinda repulsive. The hall opens onto the sea-side porch with solid, waist-high railings. The high ceilings theoretically keep the house cool in the summer, though I’m sure there’s only so much you can do.

When at home the family splits time between lounging on the front porch, lounging on the back porch, and, in Kim’s case, working in the kitchen. On another home’s porch I saw people sitting or laying on the floor. We did the same in Sam’s. He said they sleep in different rooms depending on how they feel. Sometimes it’s the bedroom, sometimes the back porch, sometimes a little loft in the “attic” (the space above the hallway). Most families have their kitchen and toilet in the back of the house and they throw all their natural waste onto the beach for the high tide to reclaim. He said the waste would feed “the animals,” meaning crabs and fish.

At one point in the evening Ali, a very nice Brit who arrived at the same time, suggested we turn on some music, but I noticed that nobody else in the town was listening to music. We could hear everything along the shore – all the motors, dishes and discussions. No music. In fact, Sam said that the villagers prefer to listen to the waves rolling under their porches and the wind stroking their metal roofs.

Just then, though, bass started booming from a couple doors down. On my walk to the store I found the culprits: a group of Westerners, who were renting the house, played music without noticing they were the only ones doing it. I later asked Sam about the religious makeup of this little fishing village. The main town is Chinese (slash Buddhist), and this half is Muslim, but in a few years it will be Protestant.
“Why Protestant?” I asked.
“Because Westerners are buying up all the houses: the five at this end of the street have already been sold.”
“What will happen to the Muslims?”
“They’re moving into the hills.”

As soon as we got inside, we were invited to dinner. We were also invited to sleep there, but had already made arrangements on the other side of the island. Because we never say no to a home cooked meal, we happily accepted the offer for dinner. Kim, Sam’s wife disappeared into the kitchen for about an hour while Sam, Ali, Mike and I sat and talked while Don, Sam and Kim’s son, played on his bike and screamed as loud as he could. The dynamic was such that Ali and Sam would talk with intermittent spurts of Mike and Sam talking, at which times I would talk to Ali. I would later find out that Sam has many “quirks” one of which being extreme sexism.

I was very happy to have Ali there that night. Not only do I enjoy the company of a good Brit, it also cut the awkwardness of Sam not being fluent in English and Mike asking many slow questions, only half of which Sam could understand and respond to. Sam’s English was good by Thai standards and I can’t say I speak any second language as well as he speaks English, but it still wasn’t easy like how I could ask Ali something and get a straight, simple and fast answer. Ali had spent more time with Sam and could answer some of the questions without actually having to ask Sam.

Kim came out with a beautiful grilled fish platter. Apparently Sam and Ali had talked about sushi in the minibus where they met, so dinner was served with wasabi and soy sauce. Mmmmmm.

Sam and Ali and I had some beers and we stayed well past dark. The next day, we were invited to return, though I was a little worried about overstaying our welcome or having it become awkward. I liked having Ali there to promote a group feeling. He had a very easy manner with Sam and would joke and include him in a way that is very difficult to pull off. We were to call Ali the next morning to get a report on the situation.

On the phone, Ali told us all was well, so we packed up our things and drove back across the island to Sam’s house. We got there around 1pm and I was exhausted from the night before (bad hut situation). Sam and Ali were just getting back from a walk when we arrived. They had eaten lunch before we got there, so we put our things down, hung out for a second, then went to find food in the town. We got back, took a nap and when we woke up, Ali had returned from his bike ride and internet outing.

Like a good Englishman, he brought booze back and at 4:30 he poured our first drinks and while Sam continued to nap, Ali sat and talked to us.

Not a photo for Ali’s mom.

This was Sam’s second family, which we weren’t surprised by at all. We knew he was 57, that his wife was probably 25 max, his son 2. He only lived there for 3 days a week and lived on the mainland the rest of the week with his other wife. Ali never asked if the two women knew about each other, but it didn’t really matter. Polygamy isn’t something I can get over. I’ve watched Big Love, I try to be cool with it, see the positives for women, but I can’t. I just hate it. The only glimmer of karma that I could see from the whole thing was that Don, Sam’s son was the worst kid I have ever met and Sam, being sort of old, had to deal with him, even if it was only 3 days a week. Sam said that Don was so bad, that perhaps he would have to teach the child himself because in Thailand, no school would accept such a “naughty” boy.

Naughty is a funny word because it literally means bad, but in the English language it has a sexual connotation that is undeniable to a native speaker. When Sam would use the word naughty, we would undoubtedly giggle like 13 year old boys at whatever it was he was saying. It’s words like naughty that determine whether one is fluent in a language or not. Sam was not and so there were many things that would make us giggle over the next eight hours, either out of fun or discomfort or pure horror.

Sam woke up from his nap and joined us on the porch. It was about five thirty and he asked us what we wanted for dinner. We tried to stress that whatever was easiest would be fine for us, so Kim made the most elaborate curry possible, Masaman. It was delicious of course, but I hated that it took so long and she had to spend the time away in the kitchen making preparations. She seemed used to it, but I still felt bad.

I think Sam thought he treated her like a queen. She got a nice house, all of her needs were met. Later that night, she silently joined us and Sam rubbed her back for a little while. At one point Don poured a whole bottle of Fanta on the floor and after about a half hour of ignoring it, his reluctant parents cleaned it up. Sam told us that he was being a good husband, normally he should never have to lift a hand to do any housework. Not a dish, not a broom, nothing. I seared, Ali protested.

Ai and Sam.

Ali is a funny kid. I say kid because he is seven years behind us and very much like we were when we had just graduated college. Since I consider myself to have been a kid at that age, I call him that, though he is actually by most standards an adult. In the first half hour of knowing Ali, he told us that he had gone to a great masseuse when he first got to Thailand. He hadn’t paid enough for a happy ending, but had given himself one when he got home. “Wow, Ali,” I said, “That’s a lot of information.”
“TMI,” he laughed.

I don’t believe in “too much information“. The more information, the better and so I liked Ali a lot. He got his degree in computer sciences and didn’t seem that thrilled with it. His internship at the UN had been a highlight and he wished he had studied something that would bring him closer to politics or international relations. Ali has big goals and something that I admired about him was that he wasn’t afraid to put them all out there. Many people fear failure or at least public failure and keep the big dreams in. Ali told us that he wants to change the world. He wants to make enough money to have real influence, help developing counties, fix corruption. That big.

Ali’s parents are from Iran. He lived there for four years in his tweens. His dad is a journalist and his mom a librarian. Ali speaks Farsi fluently and Mike offered that this alone could land him a job in some foreign affairs department. He could change the world that way. But Ali had accepted a job as an IT person in a large firm in London, where he would have a high starting salary. He really was convinced that money was how he would change the world. The risk he was taking was sacrificing his dreams for money that would change the world.

You are probably wondering why I am spending so much time talking about an English kid when Sam, the old Thai man is who I am here to learn about. The simple reason is that I really lost interest in Sam the minute he started in on his views. He was a weak, scared old man with two families that seemed too much for him. I didn’t like him. I spent time listening to Ali because he’s the one who wants to change the world in a way that I hope he does.

Sam said Kim didn’t drink. In his Thailand, if a woman drank, she wasn’t marriage material. I took another drink. Women are supposed to be obedient and submissive.

Sam mentioned that Jews were really smart. It took a while to understand that he was saying “Jews” because the topic came out of nowhere. Ali said that, yes, many of his Jewish friends were intelligent. Yes, but do they have many friends, Sam asked. Ali said they had more friends than he did. But are they good friends, Sam asked. They must be hiding something.

Ali didn’t let things slide. Mike and I both sat back as Sam insulted my gender and his heritage and Ali fought our battles. It was the first time I realized how non-confrontational I’d become. We were staying in this guy’s house and he was old enough that we probably weren’t going to change his opinions, but Ali tried anyway and Mike and I respected him for that. It inspired us. Maybe it was worth it to put up a fight. With Sam, I didn’t care. He was old. He was afraid of the world. If he got a free ticket to America, he wouldn’t take it. He couldn’t understand how we could walk around with money in our pockets and not get it stolen. There were gunmen running wild in America.

I had some photos of Little Home on our camera, so I showed him pictures of scary America, where my dad and I built a chicken coop and we planted a garden. Autsy made a bunt cake, freaky stuff like that. Sam said that I must live in a very very nice part of America and I told him, yeah, but most parts are nice. I always try to put it in perspective. If America is 20 times the size of Lanta, the bad parts would measure about the same size as the small town we were staying in. He didn’t believe me.

He wouldn’t go to England either for similar reasons. He thought the people were mean and Ali said most English people are really nice. They are nice in a different way. They are more accepting and fun, but they don’t wave and smile like Thai people do, so to Sam, no, they weren’t nice.

I have found myself thanking my lucky stars on several occasions that I was not born a woman here. When Sam started talking about Hilary Clinton, Ali almost lost his cool. She was too smart for a woman. No wonder Bill did what he did. Although it is not an uncommon opinion among some circles in America, the admission that she was too smart for a woman is very rarely admitted. Sam would never want someone like her for a wife and Mike felt quite satisfied saying that Hilary would not want Sam for a husband. I couldn’t help laughing at the idea of Hilary in Thailand being second wife for a sweaty man like Sam.

Can you see Hil Hil with this one?

Sometimes Ali would throw out equally offensive things at Sam, like when he told him that the reason his son was so bad was that he was an absent father. Maybe if you were around more, your son would be better, he said. It was a completely valid point. The kid did whatever he wanted, he hit Sam, he yelled at nothing, he slammed his bike around on the ground, anything to get attention, but none was given. Ever. No discipline, nothing. Sam thought he was being a better dad this time around, his two kids from his older wife now in their twenties. He wasn’t being a father at all that I could see and Don’s eyes were very destructive for it. The kid would look at things and you could tell that even at two, he was calculating how to break them.

Don’t be fooled by this little one

Some of Sam’s opinions came out of the 1960s KKK handbook. Black people had lesser intelligence and that different races were born with different instincts. Often times, Sam would lean in to Ali like he was sharing a secret with him. I think he felt like they were comrades. Sometimes Mike is left out of the “inner circle” because of his obvious closeness with me, which I am always proud of. Ali debated, but made no headway with Sam and when he turned to us and asked if we supported Barack Obama even though he is black and we are white, we were so shocked that “of course” was the only witty comeback we could think of. I know this shouldn’t have come as a surprise to us, but who asks that? Really? He also asked if we thought Obama was smarter than George Bush even though Obama’s black.

In the morning, I took pictures of the boys sleeping on the porch. In the dark, I recorded the 5am calls to prayer being projected over the loud speaker. Sam came out and took pictures of them too. I think he wanted to put them on his B&B website. Normally, I would have offered to help him build one and done it for free, but I didn’t offer this to Sam.

I fear that the issues that I have with Sam are cultural. When we got to Thailand from Indonesia, we breathed a sigh of relief for having gotten back to a culture we could understand and relate to. I am starting to think that there is so much more to Thailand than what meets the eye. The people are friendly, they wave, they do tourism extremely well, but there are dark parts. Mike claims that being a Buddhist country, they are nicer, more accepting and I want to believe that is true, but there is another side to this country that sits beneath the surface that I remember keeping at bay last time we were here.

We packed up our stuff in Krabi and loaded it all on to the scooter that we had rented for the week. The decision to scoot was made based on our past experience of getting dropped off at the pier in the hot sun to be bombarded with screaming tours. Not wanting to relive that experience and having been inspired by the Balinese, scooting with all of our stuff, some loaded in front at Mike’s feet, one pack on his front and a large one on my back, is our choice method of travel.

When you ride, you see this all the time.

The ride to the ferry was easy. It only took about an hour and a half and when we pulled in, no one really spoke English, so we bought a ticket and got in line. We were under the impression that the ferry didn’t leave for two hours, so we settled in a shady spot with our scooter and waited. We hadn’t been sitting for more than a minute when we saw a ferry pull in. Mike got up and with a series of gestures, discovered that the ferry was actually leaving in 5 minutes. I think it actually leaves about every 10 minutes, but we didn’t know that at the time.

The little ferry from the captain’s tower – Mike asked to go up and take some pictures.

We were on a real high when we made it to the main island. The woman in Krabi who had tried to sell us a shuttle service told us it would be a 3 hour ride and cost about 300 baht to cross on the ferry. It only took 2 hours (though by the time we put our stuff down in the bungalow we would stay in, it was exactly 3) and the ferry cost 43 baht for the two of us and the bike.

All of our worldly possessions loaded on the poor scooter. I seriously hope it makes it.

We immediately went to Sea Pearl (the place we stayed before) and found the overall appearance to be the same. The prices had gone up by about $10, but we were happy to see that the woman was still working there, though 3 years later, she was no longer playing The Eagles on repeat. It was full, or we might have considered splurging on the room, so we headed south to the cute hippie beach that we remembered from our last trip.

This is when we realized how much it had changed. Whereas last time, the small, pot holed road that led south along the coast was lined with sparse wooden bars and some good budget bungalows, it was now packed wall to wall with bars, restaurants and family resorts. The place we ended up finding was across the road from the beach and cost the same as we paid 3 years ago to be right on the beach. Fortunately there was beach and pool access via a larger resort on the other side of the road. We put our things down and went across to check it out.

It was very much like a large children’s play area that you would find at McDonalds. All of the features of the place were painted in bright pastels and everything seemed over-sized. We tried to order food, but ended up back across the street at a noodle stall instead.

We were a little down, so we decided to take a nap. We can’t claim total ignorance on Lanta’s changes. All of the guide books say that it has now been “discovered,” which it has. You really can’t go anywhere on the island without seeing other tourists. It isn’t big enough to sustain a real authentic area and host as many tourists as it does each year. Even still, we wanted to give Lanta a fair shot.

We woke up from our nap covered in sand that had been mysteriously falling on us from the ceiling and went for a sunset drive across the island. From our last experience, the other side of the island still held what we thought to be a real authentic fishing village. We hadn’t seen any restaurants or places to stay 3 years ago, so we still held out hope that things hadn’t changed. They had. When we got there, we were greeted with taxis and restaurants. It was still far less crowded and much more peaceful than the other side of the island. We drove out onto the long pier and watched the sun go down over the island as the squid fishermen prepared their boats for the all night trip. Mike went over and watched them loading up and I took a few pictures of the town. It really didn’t look different than before, the houses all looked the same, build on stilts over the rocky beach, backs opening to the water and fronts to the street.

Old Lanta Town (the fishing village) as the sun sets over the hills.

Mike wants to be a squid fisherman so bad, he is practically drooling.

We drove along the shore to the south into one of the long narrow neighborhoods built in this style and saw a few “rooms for rent” signs and were interested. Near the end of the road, we saw a sign that said “Sam B&B.” There was a woman sitting outside, so we stopped and asked about the place. This is where we met Sam, Kim, Don and Ali.

Krabi also has a fairly large night market in relation to its size, which was right across the street from our hotel, so each night we would go and get some cheap treats, banana pancakes, fresh squeezed juices, fried dough pieces with coconut jam and of course phad thai. On our third night, we heard loud music playing outside our room and went out to find an enormous weekend night market. It had a stage and many clothing stalls in addition to the food vendors, so we walked around to look at everything before we sat down to eat. There were more options at the weekend market, so we got papaya salad and stir fried vegetables. Also, there were cute outdoor bars that served fruity cocktails by the glass or jug. A jug cost 99 baht, or $3. A great deal if you are ever in Krabi on Fri-Sun.

We stayed in a sweet hotel room that we would have never gotten on our own, but since we had it, we lived it up. We spent our time lounging in bed in white robes. We even watched the Rose Bowl.

Nice room.

Mike got sick on the first day in Bandung and couldn’t eat, but I could. The second day it was the reverse.

After two days in Bandung, what I will remember most is the hotel room, the breakfast buffet, and the back seat of the car.

The whole ‘having a driver’ business is new to us: Mul didn’t even mention Alex, sitting behind the wheel, when they picked us up at the airport. After a while we understood that it’s normal to ignore the drivers, maids, nannies and cooks, to talk as if the person that’s there is not there. When we went for a drive, Mul said it would be just the four of us – him and Michelle, me and Azure. Alex drove us.

On that first day in Jakarta, Azure needed a dress for New Year’s but the mall’s parking lot attendant didn’t like that our car was trying to force its way in through the service entrance. Mul can handle any problem, though, and he ignored the workers’ NOs and used the service entrance anyway. Another time he told us it was illegal to drive in the bus lanes, people got in big trouble for it, then he did it anyway. We asked what would happen if he got pulled over and he said nothing would happen: he knows the police chief. He said that success in third-world countries is determined by who you know.

Mul runs a number of businesses, his main income coming from cell phone products. In addition to running phone auctions, he sells ringtones and wallpaper, so he’s constantly using his two phones – one was a really nice Blackberry. They had an extra phone for us, which was really convenient, and Michelle had two phones as well. So many phones!

One time Mul was on the phone as he drove us through the gates of his complex. His maid was waiting farther ahead at the curb and he waved her across to the driver’s side of the road. She hesitated to cross in front of his moving car, but he waved insistently, so she went, assuming he’d stop. He didn’t, and he almost ran her over, still talking on his phone. She handed him whatever we were there to pick up, and as soon as it was in his hand he pulled away and almost ran her over again. She had to jump back. I don’t know if he saw her.

Mul and Michelle were very generous, taking us out to some very nice meals we wouldn’t have experienced otherwise. The first night we had a Korean BBQ dinner that he said cost $400 – the meat was amazing and the service spectacular. The next day we went to a hole-in-the-wall noodle joint that he said cost $40 for the five of us. He said it was too expensive, and I agree considering you can find noodle dishes everywhere for $0.50. These noodles were very good, and Mul again generously paid. Sometimes the kids came with us and had their own simple food – Azure noted that Sebastien, the youngest, craved the same thing kids in the US crave: fish sticks and french fries.

When the kids got loud or fussy Mul & Michelle would pass them off to one of the nannies who would take the kids away to eat. Though it’s certainly foreign to us, my impression was that the kids’ needs were being met all the time. At restaurants the nannies sat at a different table and ate food brought from home. A number of nannies sat in the lobbies, all dressed in similar ill-fitting pastels made for dirty work, taking care of kids for the busy parents inside. When we tried to talk to one of the nannies they were surprised and usually didn’t answer. They were the background.

The kids’ nannies live at Mul’s apartment and spend all their time with the family, on call 24 hours. I asked if the nannies had families themselves and he said, “Of course,” but I’m not sure how that works. The nannies eat what Mul buys for them. In-home helpers are cheap because Mul provides a room for them to stay. He said a nanny costs $80 a month.

Mul said his bar tabs sometimes reach $1400 on a big night, but that’s the price of playing the game among the Jakarta elite. “It’s who you know,” he says, and Mul knows a lot of people. On drives Mul would point out the latest immense real estate developments and he would drop for us the owners’ names. More often than not, Mul knew the owner and had done business with him or was somehow related. Mul instructed his driver to take us past the mall with the most cell phone sales in Southeast Asia.

Mul is really excited about getting into the mining business. Mul knows which companies are successful and why. He’s ambitious, quoting a Chinese proverb that says, “Above every sky there is another sky.” He said everyone cares what brand of clothing you wear, what cell phone you use, what cars you have, what neighborhood you live in. Mul rolls with the high rollers, everyone he hangs out with is someone important. In Jakarta, they practically worship successful companies and brands.

Mul said his family is Christian. They are Chinese-Indonesians and retain strong Chinese traditions, living in the city’s “second Chinatown,” the most exclusive gated community in Jakarta. The stunning houses soar, standing testament to the community’s business success. Apparently, in 1998, Jakarta’s Muslim majority rioted because they believed the Chinese-Indonesians controlled all the wealth and withheld it from the rest of the country. Mul retorted that there are poor Chinese-Indonesians, too. He said, for example, that their driver is half-Chinese, and he only makes $150 a month.

Mul put us up in the brand-spanking-new, $130-per-night Bandung Hilton. The pure white sheets attracted me, they were so clean and luxurious. Azure and I never stay in hotels like the Hilton. Mul obviously appreciates the luxury, service and respected brand name. While rain rolled off the floor-to-ceiling self-cleaning windows, we watched the Rose Bowl on a flat-screen tv and I took a very hot shower. The next morning featured the most extensive breakfast buffet I’ve ever seen, broken up by cuisine. Az and I eagerly sacked the American section’s eggs, waffles, cereal and toast. The Chinese section had noodle soups, hum bao and other stuff I didn’t recognize. There was Indonesian, Japanese and even an ice cream bar for kids of all colors.

We ran into Michelle’s family at breakfast. They’re very genuine people – her dad develops organic fertilizer and is lobbying the government to endorse its use. Her cousin is helping. This was encouraging to hear.

Mul and Michelle skipped breakfast because the maids dropped off their kids and they’d played late into the night, the maids returning to their own hotel across the street. I imagine that hotel is filled with the maids for families staying in the Hilton, all dressed in ill-fitting pastels. The kids seemed tuckered out the next morning, and the maids accompanied them with their grandparents while the five of us toured Bandung with Mul’s friend.

We had a wonderful Sundanese (people of Bandung) lunch in a stunning, unique restaurant called the Leaf Village. We ate in outdoor huts that wandered up the misty hillside among enormous ferns and leafy trees. Azure was sick, so she layed down in the hut while the rest of us enjoyed the food without her. Afterwards, Alex drove us to a lookout where we watched the sun drop behind some nearby mountains. This part of Java is magical. I hope Az and I get a chance to tour the countryside someday.

On the next-to-last day Mul had a special treat for me – he took me to a gorgeous spa with four different pools, temperatures ranging from hot tub to icey. We relaxed in the steam room, jumped in the ice bath, then shivered to the sauna. After I brushed my teeth and shaved we got hour-long massages. Mul treated me to the whole evening and I appreciate his generosity.

The next day Az and I were on our own so we went to Pizza Hut, desperate to rebuild our stomaches with some Western food. Michelle joined us shortly after, having put her daughter down for a nap. Michelle is interested in photography but doesn’t know how to use an SLR, so we treated her to a tutorial, introducing ISO, aperture and shutter speed, and how they affect a photo. She seemed to appreciate the instruction, I hope it could start to pay back their generosity.

Mul showed up and we finally said our goodbyes. They were off to a surprise party, so they had their driver take us to the airport. On the way I tried to ask him some questions, remembering a conversation we’d had with a taxi driver in Bali, but it didn’t go anywhere. I don’t think he felt comfortable talking freely with his passenger.

The scene inside the market

BBQ worker

Azure caught cheating

Shrimp guy

Lobster guy

A local girl

Selling

“You know, just casual, fine dining,” he said.
“Mul, seriously, do I need to wear a dress to this place?” I asked. Mul was being very vague, but his answers were leading me to believe that we were going to a very, very nice place.
“Yes of course,” he said.

I immediately made a mental inventory of what I had in my backpack, three dirty t-shits, two pairs of 80s inspired workout shorts, a pair of stained capris, yoga pants, a black hippie skirt that smelled a little bit like fish and a jacket. No dress. We had spent the last three weeks trying to hang with the local farmers and rice field workers, the dudes at the night markets cooking meat on coconut shell fueled fires and the families riding beside us on the hot, dusty roads, covered in dirt. Fine dining had not been on the radar. Until now. I began to panic. I don’t usually care that much about clothes, but I like to be appropriate. As with everywhere we travel, we just want to go with the flow and in Jakarta, with Mul and his friends, that meant at least pretending like I had showered that week.

It might have been the culture shock that added to the stress of the moment. We had come from Bali, a place that we thought we understood. I have never been able to understand a place where appearance matters so much, where brand names are flashed around and what you do/who you are is the first thing people want to know. We don’t live in that world and don’t know anyone who really does. We know people who are wealthy, but not people who care so much about it or showing it. This was a truly new kind of travel experience for us.

Mul had been showing us around his neighborhood and wasn’t responding to my calm attempts to guide us toward a place that sold clothing. I was starting to really freak out, really freak out, like when you have to go to the bathroom while sitting in rush hour traffic. You try to be patient, look at your options, can you get off the freeway? All lanes blocked. Could you get out of the car and discretely do it on the side of the road? Nope. The last option is always to go in the car, find a cup or something and I really really didn’t want to do that. Wearing my fishy skirt and pit-stained t-shirt was its equivalent.

“Mul, I need to go to the mall,” I declared, louder than was appropriate.
“Okay, we’ll go,” he said. “And over there is the beach, and…”
“No, now!” I said. It was 6:05 and we had to leave for dinner at 7pm. There was no time for another “little detour.”

I immediately worried that the places he would take us would be well out of my price range, but I was willing to pull out the credit card for this one. Luckily, the department store that he took us to was reasonable by US standards, about the same you would spend at a Macy’s. High, but not too high. The boys gave me 15 minutes to find an outfit, so I ran around grabbing dresses and skirts. I settled on a loose black dress with ruffles down the front. When I belted it with a $5 sale belt, it looked kind of good. I decided that I needed stretch pants too because it was too short to wear out in conservative Jakarta. LOL!

When we got back, we had 20 minutes to get ready. Mike was already feeling worn out and didn’t want it to be a late night. Despite his sad state, he dutifully changed into his only clean shirt and his dirty black linen pants. He looked really good, especially from a distance and in a poorly lit room and with a little deodorant, he smelled passable.

Passable!!!

I was now concerned with the fact that the dress I had bought had no sleeves and with the burns in healing mode, I looked not unlike a leper. In romance novels, the poor girl was always outfitted with a huge closet full of brand new designer dresses just her size. I found the real life equivalent in Mul’s old bedroom. His closet was stuffed with outdated 80s pants suits that his mother no longer wore. Jackpot! I found an amazingly shoulder padded blue satin wrap that also sported a tail. I figured it was NYE and since everyone else treated it like the biggest, funnest holiday, so should I. Mul laughed, but assured me it was fine to borrow.

We drove downtown in heavy traffic, everyone was trying to get into the city. We pulled up to the restaurant and they did a bomb search of our car. Since the car was so nice and the people inside obviously not a threat, it only required us to roll down the windows. The restaurant was a very upscale Korean barbeque place. This excited us, since it was one of our favorite meals at home. The food was delicious. And I was so glad we had made the stop at the mall.

As we were planning to head home, Mul informed us that traffic was so bad that we wouldn’t be able to be taken home, we must accompany him to the next stop, which meant drinks with his friends. At his assurance that we would only go for a couple of drinks and leave around one, we were relieved. We had been up since 5am.

In the entryway, we passed a group extremely thin, very heavily made up girls wearing almost nothing. I could assume nothing other than they were escorts. We were led up the stairs, through a labyrinth of white marble halls with doors into private rooms. I couldn’t see into the rooms, they had no windows, so I just assumed they were for, you know, “business.”

Of course I could have asked Mul to clarify where we were going. But we had been playing the “what are we doing” game all day and I found it exhausting with no actual factual exchange. Also, I rather enjoy the solitary and imaginative game of “figure it out yourself.” When we were introduced to Andy, he was the perfect character for the story that was building in my mind. Andy was from San Diego, but now living in Jakarta. He was to only person who looked the way he did that I had seen in Indonesia, and he appeared to have a scar that ran about 8 inches along his hairline. His strong connections with the people that I was now understanding to be “important” and his constant here one minute gone the next act made him a man of mystery . He was a nice guy and very casual too, but behind his disarming nature, he was constantly reading people. I tried to read him back, but failed to find out more than that he had come over to help create clubs in Jakarta. I would have been disappointed to find out that he was only a club promoter or consultant. Luckily for me, that information was never made clear either and the mystery remains.

We followed into a room that looked like a small lounge. It was a private room, but it had a full bar with a full wait staff. The room contained many large chairs, that when put together formed couches. They were arranged around a center table at which a few people were sitting. There was a large tv on the wall, playing music videos and I soon realized it was for karaoke.

In the room we were greeted by a woman, about 28, wearing a camel bowlers cap, a loose leopard print shirt that came tight at the waist and knee high black boots. The thing that was most remarkable about her was that she was not wearing pants. I immediately took her to be a prostitute, as she was wearing ruffled underwear, a similar pair to the ones I had bought at Victoria’s secret for sexy times. Don’t get me wrong, she looked good, but in my mind, there was no other explanation until the guy in the Nikes came over and introduced her as his wife.

Okay, do you see pants here?

I took a seat on the couch and looked around. The girl sitting next to me also looked like a hooker. She was wearing a dress that you could really only refer to as a glorified shirt. I could have seen the lower half of her ass had she had one, but being only 85 pounds, it sort of eliminated that body part entirely. I felt so huge next to her that in my mind the scenario played out of me hopping around the room like Godzilla shouting things like “Mmm, big girl eat little girl for snack!” The meat wouldn’t have tasted very good, however, as she appeared to be completely strung out. Having been wrong about the last woman, I battled my mind not to jump to the same conclusions, but the “dress” was leopard print and my mind leapt. Prostitute!!! Andy came over and introduced her as his girlfriend, Tatiana. Apparently she was just Russian, not strung out. I was confused. I didn’t know what was what.

The place turned out to be a full fledged karaoke hotel sort of thing. The private rooms were not for having sex, but were meant for singing karaoke with friends. Each room was about 10‘ x 25‘, except ours, which was much larger. None of the other rooms had full bars or full wait staffs and they didn’t have a karaoke guy to play the songs for you. In our room, Mul took the mic first. It turns out, he has an amazing voice and when he was singing, you thought it was the original. When he was done, he held out the mic to us and said we should sing. I was very hesitant, as the only two times I have done karaoke in public have not turned out so well. The first time, I was asked to leave the stage by the DJ for throwing out the f-bomb during a rendition of “Dust in the Mother F-ing Wind.” I thought it was a good version, but he did not. The second and last time was a couple years ago on Queen Anne. Nicole and I chose the Shaggy song, “It wasn’t me” to which the DJ asked if we were sure that we didn’t want to sing Paula Abdul. We were offended, but after clearing the dance floor by leaving whole verses without any of the quickly spoken words that we hadn’t realized were even in the song, I understood.

It has been my experience that karaoke is getting more and more serious. The bad singers pick short songs that everyone likes singing, like Madonna, while most of the hardcore karaoke’s use the venues as their own private rehearsals for struggling music careers. Mike wouldn’t have known these things, since he has refused to enter a single karaoke bar in the 8 years we‘ve been dating, finding them to be his version of hell.

When he downed his drink and went over to pick a song, I was SHOCKED. I was nervous too and simply said, make sure you know all the words.

He picked up the mic and began with a simple and semi-popular song “Be with you.” I will say that it was horrible in comparison, just as mine would have been. I laughed nervously, making eye contact with people around the room who were also laughing. Good, I thought, at least they think it’s funny. The girl with no pants snapped a few photos of him singing. Then their faces went straight again and they began talking to each other. I sang sometimes with him, my voice worse than his and we drudged through the song. Mul and Michelle were supportive, but as soon as it was over, I was so relieved.

Mike got up and got another drink and Michelle slid over next to me. The girl with no pants picked up the mic and started singing a popular Chinese song that all of her friends knew the words to. They sang along and Michelle leaned over and said, “She used to be Miss China, you know.”
“The one with no pants?” I asked.

Michelle was an excellent source of information; another bite sized girl whose boobs were falling out of her dress was the most famous model in Indonesia and the quiet guy in the corner was head of an international bank. It also turns out that the guy in the Nikes, Henry was the friend who’s family owned 500 million barrels of oil. No I’m not getting those numbers wrong, you can do the math as I did and realize that the men in the room were the kind of people who owned America.

As the new year approached, hats and horns and glasses of champagne were passed around and we all shouted the countdown at Henry’s lead. He came over and toasted us. And at midnight flashes were going off like crazy. I was trying to capture Miss China on film, which I never had much success at, while she was trying to capture us. “I hear they don’t even work for five months of the year.” “She’s having her birthday at a French chateau.” “What does he mean when he says he ‘washes windows‘?” The less we said, the more mysterious we were.

Seriously, why are YOU photographing ME?

A little after midnight, champagne in hand, I followed the group downstairs to the club. We walked in and up to a great spot a little above the dance floor with a great view of the scene. The music was loud and you could feel it in your body, but you would still talk. It was something I had never experienced before and when I told Mul how awesome it was, he said this was the best sound system in the area. I suppose there are better, but I can’t imagine what they sound like. Henry owned the club of course and only as I sat down to write about the evening did I put together that the luck of getting the best table in the club, having walked in well after it was filled to capacity was no luck at all. I should have figured out that we were in the VIP section when I asked where the bathroom was and was immediately escorted by one of the bouncers standing guard around the couches that we occupied.

Real escorts

Michelle and I hung out on the couch and talked about the real escorts dancing on the bar. Nothing happened to prove them to be anything but hookers and they frequently got off the bar to talk to well dressed men before getting back up. One by one, the crowd thinned as they started accompanying various guys to the dance floor and elsewhere. Mike sat and talked to another one of Mul’s friends and I danced by myself. None of the other girls in our area had much interest in dancing, but I couldn’t help it.

I am really the only one dancing to “The Final Countdown” SAD!!!

Eventually we went back upstairs, but this time to a smaller karaoke room with some of Mul’s other friends. All the guys were taking shots of Jim Bean from the bottle and grinding with each other. The girl who had passed out with the mic in hand got up to puke in the bathroom and I took this as my cue to take over. I can’t recall the first song that I sang. I didn’t pick any of them, but since no one else was paying attention I just went for it. I got a few pulls from the bottle and ended the night as all great nights end — singing a duet to “I finally found the love of a lifetime” with a complete stranger. See title photograph.

I went for it, belting out words far outside my range: I set my voicebox free, unrestrained by keys or tones. And though my timing was good I wouldn’t blame anyone for failing to recognize the song. It was horrible-good, I was smiling, and I proved I could shed self-consciousness to fit in with the new group. Even dancers in the club down the hall probably wondered who was this singer with so much misplaced confidence. That’s what it takes, I thought – show them you can be loose and play.

I put the microphone down. I looked around the table but nobody would make eye contact with me, people were kinda quiet. Instead of applauding, some stood to get a drink while others had already left the room during the song. Azure’s face was in her hands. “What the hell?” I thought.

The following performers ranged from good to spectacular, Mul leading the way with a soft, skilled voice that I didn’t even notice because I thought it came from the karaoke track. Other guys sang well, too, and the women were impressive. The highlight of the night came from a Chinese woman whose performance was so captivating that it snapped me right out of the slog of pretending to enjoy myself. Her style was completely un-Western, a high-pitched, nasally song that might be folk Chinese, performed with the kind of talent that deserved a nationally televised concert on a patriotic holiday. It was like her voice was stretching glass. Friends applauded and cheered. I had totally misjudged the values of this group, a social strategy that’s quickly becoming my signature.

Mul leaned over to me, “She was Miss China a couple years ago.” What?

From the second Mul’s driver opened the door for us, this whole night – our first in Jakarta – would surprise us. Miss China was married to the guy who handed me the microphone, an oil company founder and the Secretary of State’s son. The guy on the other side of Mul was head of Citibank Indonesia. Mul himself is related to, among others, a former head of Lehman Brothers who now leads Barclays Japan. Mul’s uncle owns a distribution company in Indonesia with 60,000 stores, something akin to 7-11, and the uncle’s other company produces 70% of the products available in those stores. Another friend owns Forever 21 and someone else is head of the largest mobile phone service provider in Indonesia, a country with 200,000,000 people, fourth most populous in the world (after China, India and the US). Some guy’s dad is running for Governor of Seoul, South Korea. Another guy has a $50 million credit at a casino in Macau.

The numbers he threw out were staggering. The most staggering, maybe, was the story about his friend’s wedding. It wasn’t the fact that 3,000 people attended, though that dropped my jaw. It was that they hired a world-famous florist to fly from LA to Jakarta to do the flowers. The price: $500,000.

Not surprisingly, I have some opinions about this that I’m going to have to let cool before pouring them on the blog. Can a blog melt? For now, I’ll just say that this was only a preview of the status-pursuit that would be put on display for us over the next five days.

I don’t know what I thought Mul would be like in real life. The only times I had met him were sitting at the table in Mike’s parent’s kitchen, grinning and happily eating Susan’s pea salad or some chicken. He was one of a handful of exchange students the Goldsteins hosted, but Mul stayed the longest (by far) and was Mike’s favorite of “the boys.”

A friendly grind by a close pal. A good night!

When Mul picked us up from the airport in the family version of a limousine, I can’t say I was totally shocked. We had suspected that Mul had this sort of lifestyle when Mike mentioned in an email that he wanted to learn how to make sambal, and Mul replied, “I can have our cook show you.”

We eased through the pre-New Year’s Jakarta traffic with ease, the driver making the ride effortless and extremely comfortable. Mul and Mike caught up and I alternated between paying attention and staring at Taylor Swift’s music video that was playing on the television. My mind would wander into the realm of why did this kid want to live in Mike’s parents basement for two and a half years. This was the first time that I would think about Asia in a completely different way. The ride took about 30 minutes, and Mul explained where we were coming from and where we were headed.

Mul lives in one of three high rise apartment buildings in the very north of Jakarta. They overlook his parents neighborhood, which is the Jakarta equivalent of Beverly Hills. We stopped in at his place to check out the view and meet his family. The maid met us at the elevator and we rode the 16 stories to his apartment. It had stunning views to the north and east that gave glimpses of the city, but mostly the ocean and the fishing port that bordered his parents’ neighborhood.

Papa Mul and Sebastian, the new addition.

We sat down and one of the nanny/maids brought us some water. His kids were just waking up from a nap and came out to say some shy hellos and went back into their room. His wife Michelle wasn’t feeling well that day and in preparation for NYE, she was taking a nap. Mul sat across from us on a chair facing the sofa, “You know Ho Song?” he’d say. Ho Song is another one of the boys who lived in the basement. “He’s getting married in a month. To the president of Korea’s niece.” He would go on to say that Ho Song’s dad was a senator and had run for president in Korea, you know, like if John Kerry‘s son had lived in your basement. “And Charles, you know Charles, right?” Mike would nod. “Charles and I did business for years after living with Susan and Arnie. Charles once went through ten million dollars in two days gambling.” We weren’t sure what that meant, if he has won or lost, but 10 million dollars went through the kid’s hands. These were all people who had found themselves in Somerset, a suburb in Bellevue, Washington, eating Susan‘s cooking and listening to Arnie‘s fishing stories. There were more names and more figures being thrown around. This person’s dad owns this or his uncle is that, he does this now and I became increasingly aware that I had been wearing the same clothes for a week.

Mul went on to say that in Asia, it’s not about how good you are at what you do, but who you know. It seemed quite obvious that Mul knew a good many people, but went on to say that he knew a lot of people, but he wasn’t rich. He was the ideas person, having started over 10 businesses with other people’s money. He seemed to be doing alright to me, but I’m sure that when you are staring down at houses the size of good sized hotels, many of which go unlived in because the owners just bought them to say they had a house there, you feel a little dwarfed.

In the sauna of a five star hotel, Mul would tell Mike a Chinese proverb — Above every sky there is another sky.