Quarter Year

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.