Quarter Year

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.”

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.

I totally lost it. I jumped up and scared the dog away. Mike laughed and I shot him a look of death. “That happy dog licked you!” he said. “Shut up!” I yelled. I instantly rubbed Purell all over my arm. The skin was not broken from this offensive lick, but the rabies’ symptoms started immediately. I stared at the spot and of course it started to redden. It burned, some shooting pains radiated the area of the assault. It was all in my mind, of course. The Purell probably added to the problem, but I was convinced I had rabies.

We were staying on a sailboat in Koh Samui at the time and I was trying to keep my fears in check around our hosts. By the time we got off the sailboat a week later, I was living on borrowed time. I had read that there were only a few reported cases where somebody lived with rabies for more than a few days, a week tops, but I was obviously one of those freak cases and so I prepared for death.

Mike was so good to me and only made fun of me a little. We headed to Bangkok on an overnight train and for whatever reason I decided it was a good idea to read Tuesdays with Morey, a book about a man dealing with his eminent death. I could totally relate. I spent the entire night crying and planning for my death away from my loved ones. I called my mother and told her I had rabies and that I was probably going to die (not the first time I had called her with this claim, sorry Mom).

When we got to Bangkok, Mike took me to the hospital to get treated. I think he was relieved to put an end to my nonsense, but, I walked in to the office and straight-faced, asked about the chances that I had rabies. I explained the situation to the doctor and she just looked at me like I was an idiot.

Was the skin broken? No. Was the dog angry? No. She was confused.

She paused for a minute and leaned back in her chair, trying to figure out the best way to give me the bad news. “People aren’t stupid,” she said, “They aren’t going to let a rabid dog run around biting people. And, the dog clearly didn’t have rabies.”

Oh. Mike was vindicated. He had been trying to tell me this for weeks.

When we decided to come back to Southeast Asia, I was expecting more fear, but surprisingly I have changed. I didn’t get one booster vaccine and forgot to pick up my travelers diarrhea pills from the doctor before I left.

When I got diarrhea almost immediately after arriving and it didn’t stop until, well, it is ongoing actually, I realized this meant I can eat whatever I wanted. I obviously already have something, so even if I got something else, one thing will eat the other thing and I would deal with it when I got home. It actually opened up my options, like the tasty veggies that have been sitting out for days that carry a 100% chance of sickness, or the mystery street meat and chicken balls that taste good, but occasionally have a bit of something else in them.

On the day we left for Munduk, Mike noticed a large burn on his inner arm at the joint. He remembered rubbing it when he had lime juice on it and it stung even more. He was a little nervous and asked a few people what they thought it was. I thought it was probably from where he carried his helmet when he wasn’t wearing it, and he confirmed that it was in the right location for that.

We got to Munduk and I noticed that my arm now had a burn on it too. It didn’t look exactly the same, so I thought maybe mine was from where I had forgotten to put on sunscreen on the ride up to the mountains. I was convinced that that was my issue, completely separate from Mike’s.

Fred and Raini asked if we burned easily. They are both dark and I’m sure think of us as light weights because we are so pale, but no, I don’t burn like this. Not even when I work outside all day. So if it wasn’t a sunburn, what was it? The burns were in a weird shape and they were huge. Mine were streaks, they could have been liquid. Fred mentioned that brake fluid could take the paint off cars. Where had we gotten in contact with break fluid!?!?! What would happen to our arms?

For 2 days the burns got worse. They darkened and started swelling. This time Mike was the one getting nervous. We had no idea what it was, so we had to suspect everything. We were lucky that it was on our arms and not our faces. For this reason, we couldn’t trust any of our creams or ointments or any mixture. We were planning to go back to Ubud eventually, but realized that since we did not know what the culprit was, we couldn’t do anything that we had done before.

Mike started to question why we had come to a third world country. All of the horror stories that we had heard were rushing in to our thoughts. Could someone had thrown acid on us? Is this a disease we didn’t know about and hadn’t prepared for? Was this what leprosy looked like?

With no real answers, we were left to wait and worry. After about three days, it had stopped getting worse and peaked out as a series of dark red streaks for me and a large red patch for Mike.

On day 4 I put my hand on my wound and realized that it matched. It was a hand print, the darkest areas where the thumb and forefinger had sat for a moment, then 4 streaks for the 4 fingers that had touched my arm. Mike’s hand roughly fit as well, so we knew it had to be chemical, but which one. On day 6, mine started to blister and Mike’s had already begun to peel.

Even though it was healing, we still didn’t know what had caused it, which was the worst part. We went through all the events of the day in question. Mike kept going back to the lime. I remembered squeezing some lime into a coconut that morning, had it reacted with one of the lotions that I had put on to burn me? I remembered using lemon juice in my hair as a kid, trying to lighten it. We started thinking that if it could bleach hair, would it have a similar effect on skin? We went to the internet with this and Googled, “lime burn sun” and it popped up with an answer we were satisfied with. Apparently it is common, the easy term is Margarita Burn. Apparently, when lime sits on your skin while you are in the sun it intensifies the burn. I probably had second or third degree burns from this. I was only in the sun for an hour without lotion and it was filtered mostly.

That fucking lime burned my skin!

We breathed a sigh of relief and laughed at all of the things that had gone through our heads, but the thoughts are unavoidable. When you are in a new place with so much time to think, you think the worst.

This morning, Raini woke up with some blisters on her lips. They look like burns, which make sense because she remembers sitting in the sun (after eating lime!) and thinking her lips would burn. Even though she remembers the thoughts, she is still freaking out a little. It doesn’t look that bad to us, you can barely tell, but for her, it it all consuming. She didn’t even come down to breakfast because it was so “bad”. It really is nothing, the rest of us can see that there is nothing that she can do except wait for her lips to heal. It won’t happen again if she wears protection, but she’s already made an appointment with the doctor.