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.”