Music from Mali plays while I see on the other side the Mekong. The ladies in the kitchen have become daily more and more friendly to me. Who was it that once told me that Asians were not affectionate? Well, here, the ladies who work in the kitchen they hug me,  give me food, keep track of my attempts to eat healthy, laugh, and braid my hair.

I sometimes seat to eat with them. Not always as my attention floats between the people who live around Mut Mee, and the guest I become friends with. When I do the conversations are all carried out in Thai. They laugh a lot. Not discrete laughter, it is laughter that shakes the whole body. I always wondered what it is they laugh about. And I guess it is a bit like us in Brasil with our smiles that seem to rarely need a reason to come out. They just do.

There is the staff of the morning and the one of the afternoon. In the morning since I got here were Joy, Tia, Noy, Wii and Pook. And in the evening Man, Yong and and Gaew. From the beginning I got closer to Joy and Wii. Wii played combing my hair all the time. She is 32. Joy is 43. Joy had told me in broken words right when I first arrived that she had two children one boy who was 18 and a girl that was 11.

I eventually became friends with all of the ladies. Through sharing food, laughter, painting nails, having my hair braided.. it is amazing how few words we need to like people. But Joy and Wii were the only two who would appear from nowhere and hugged me till I could not breathe. Wii would sometimes carry me up even thought she is my size.

Today, as I came to work Joy suddenly said she would not come to work tomorrow. I wondered whether it was her day off.

“Are you coming Tuesday?”

“No”

“Wednesday?”

“No”

“Thursday”

“No”

“Friday?”

It starts daunting on me that she might just not be coming back. The ladies laugh at my shocked face. That is what they do… like we smile.

“Are you not coming back at all?”

“I don’t know?”

“Why?”

“Take care of family”

“Are you serious?”

I still am not entirely sure this is serious. Joy has been here for more than a decade.

I go out looking for someone to actually translate to me what is going on. There is no one.

I come back. I am sad. I seat and ask again. It is clear she is going

“Are you happy?”

She becomes silent. The other ladies laugh and say she has enough money now, and does not need to work.

“Husband wants me to take care family”

“Do you want to work?”

“Yes. But husband wants me to take care family.”

I don’t know what to say. I feel sad. What will Joy do without the other ladies? Work in itself might not be the harder thing. But not getting her own money, her laughter in the kitchen.

“How about other ladies?”

“They have grandparents. It is just me and husband?”

“Is your husband nice?”

“Sometimes”

I don’t say anything. I am just sad.

“Sometimes not nice” I do not ask anything when she says that. I don’t know what that means. And in my cowardice I actually thank the fact that I can’t understand the language.

And so it is. It is the last day of Joy. Whose name could not be more appropriate?

I feel sad and angry at how much people intervene in each other’s lives. I wonder what it is that has changed that makes it necessary for her to be home now. I can’t speak the language to know. Without knowing the details all I see is that the ladies laugh. I smile but we all feel sad. Not knowing the details I understand from her movements, from her eyes from the few words that this is not her decision. It is the decision of a man who “sometimes is not nice”.

It is my first christmas outside of a country that celebrates christmas. Apart from the Thai ladies who work in 7/11 (which in Thailand is open 24 hours a day and seven days a week) and yesterday were wearing santa’s hat I did not see much around Nong Khai that reminded me of Christmas. It is true I did not look for it.

Mut Mee, the guesthouse, of course is different. It is international territory so we had a party. Although I advertised the party to everybody who I saw, I myself had no idea what we would do. Julian has been hosting those for years, and as promised in his posters around, that would be a Christmas party without carol singing, since we were in Thailand 🙂

I have never worked in Christmas before. But it felt great to rush the whole morning to help settle all of those who had escaped christmas in their own countries. It was incredible to see the ladies in the kitchen organise overnight a party for more than 80 people. It was special to be again with so many friends who had returned for that.

The garden was full when I came out. The buffet was perfect. Holding food for vegetarians and non vegetarians. No turkey. The main attraction was a Thai band and a Thai group of traditional dance. More specifically they were from Isaan.

I sat around watching the Thai dancers move their hands in total grace. I sat watching the changing of colourful Thai clothes, and listening to the music. Truly astonishing to be in christmas in Thailand I thought. I who never even cared for Christmas was having a great time.

After we were invited to join the Thai dance and a few brave of us attempted to imitate the grace of the Thai dancers. As the dance finished Julian announced that next I would play with Gaspard.

Gaspard and I had practiced a few hours the day before. I did not imagine at the time that so many people would be there. I did not practice that much. Gaspard is good enough to make my own songs seem nicer than they are.

And so it was that we went from Isaan traditional dance to my own songs, to then attempt an homage to the great Cesaria Evora and Buena Vista Social Club. I shook a little bit inside. I explained I was no musician. I would just play a few songs. And so I closed my eyes. I tried to connect inside with my own music. Outside were people from every continent. Every country. Some friends, some people I knew not. Next to me was the talented Gaspard who transforms anything into beautiful music. In front of me the sweet scandinavian and my german friends in full support. They just sat there. I closed my eyes and felt true joy.

As the night came to a close and I sat talking to Jate, ella’ s son, about Buddhism and people in the world I felt so happy. Our deep conversation was taken over by the fact that music restarted. The last survivors remained in the garden around one table singing. Every now and then I heard people saying ” this is the best Christmas i ever have. It was nothing about gifts, and presents, but simply enjoying time with people.” As the sweet Paulina exhaled saying that she would never forget this christmas I felt exactly the same way. Although I missed my family I felt I was pretty much at peace here.

I turn back to Jate, who works in Thai politics, and had been teaching me about asian history and asked him whether he was a nationalist.

” i used to be. But i am no longer.”

” what made you change ?” i ask.

” jules, there is no national. There is just people. We are all just human beings. Not that different you know?”

Yes I do. I could barely put it into words how much I know this in every cell of my body. As I sat around having spent the night with Thais, Indian, Chinese, Scandinavian, Europeans, Africans, Middle Easterners, people of the americas …and who knows from where else I thought… That we are definitely pretty much the same…

From a Buddhist country I wish you all a happy ritual of whatever ritual it is that you celebrate. A happy new year of whatever year that is important to you. But do celebrate it. And whenever you do, celebrate it with others. It does not really matter who they are. In ritual, it becomes pretty obvious, we are all very close.

31- Luis, estrangement love an hate

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“This Eternal contradiction between the love and hatred i feel for this feeling of estrangement that always prevent me from really staying where I am, while at the same time making me tired to be always going”

I read these words in my native portuguese. They come to me via email. From someone who knows me well, even while he thinks he does not. It resonates to me. It is the fate of the inbetweeners. All of us who are searching around the world something we don’t know what it is and it is probably within.

Lina disappears in the little Soy ( street) carrying her heavy bags, wearing her little hat. I am now concerned for this new traveller of the world. In broken english she explains to me i am welcome in china. ” Sure it is around the corner from Thailand”. The strange part is that it is not a joke. I am serious.

When was it that all the people around me became people who find quite normal to cross borders so frequently?

I reread the portuguese words of my Brazilian friend who like me studied all over the world. And who is now back to Brazil. Is he really back? Not sure.

I have spoke lots of portuguese these days. There is an Angolan man here. I who knew next to nothing about the Angolan war now know a lot. Luis is without a question top ten in the most interesting people i have encountered here. His perfect use of portuguese, the beautiful melody that comes from angola, the fact he left in the 80’s angola lived in china for years, practices vipsssana, knows so much about asian politics and so many other topics keeps me like a baby glued in front of teletubies.

The image he painted in my mind. The stories of the war. Images such as the one of his abusive alcoholic father (who beat him a lot as a child) dying in silence in hospital for 3 months. When Luis heard he was in Hospital, he flew to Portugal to meet him. He imagined they would speak for the last months of his father life. That he would tell him his story. But when he got to the hospital his father whose lungs had collapsed could no longer speak.

” In the beginning I spoke and he heard. That was too imbalanced so i became quiet we both just sat there in silence. Communicating in the absence of words. In the thirds month he just cried.”

Luis felt no resentment. He was then a different men. “We all change. I feel bad he cried in the moment of his death. According to Buddhism one should be fully conscious and aware when death comes so that you jump consciously.”

As I walk my Israeli friends to a tuk tuk i see Lina there. She is talking to people on a square. “Perfect! now she will cross to laos with my friends.” But seeing her gentle smile and laughter i know she will have no problem anywhere. San, toothless no longer homeless, organises the tuk tuk for everyone. As she enter the tuk tuk she takes the plaster Doremon she had painted the day before and gives it to him.

Nong Khai is a funny place. If you bike around you see how is it that the Thais keep their smile even when this place is on the verge of a revolution. At around 5:30 older thai ladies dance by the mekong. You see tai chi, and aerobics, salsa. You see gym machines in the street. In nong tin park there is a lot of people running. There are lots of thai food stands. Metal frames to climb. Ponds. And little tables on the ground where children and adults paint. Plaster dolls, and cartoons figures are for sale. One buys them to paint.

Doremon is one of those. The one Lina had picked and painted perfectly. Mine I left behind in the fear someone might not understand my conceptual modernist approach to painting 🙂 Lina hands it to San whose eyes get full of tears. And like this one more friends disappears into a new country.

But it is not all sad. As Lina goes Fred, the scandinavian boy who biked with me is back. Gaspard, the French guy who can play Django is back. Ella, who wrote about her father, is back. Mike, the scaffolder, wrote me to say his is also returning for x-mas and bringing the germans. Yasha (james), the californian who studied for 40 years Buddhism is here. The Brazilians shall be back soon.

It turns out that Inbetweeners are growing and growing. And for these people crossing borders to spend x-mas and new years with friends is not so absurd anymore. Even when x-mas and new years seem just as arbitrary as any other day. I reread the sentence of my friend who says he feels me, more than he knows me.

“This Eternal contradiction between the love and hatred I feel for this feeling of estrangement that always prevent me from really staying where I am, while at the same time making me tired to be always going”

I know it from within. This love and hatred we have for estrangement. There is so much pain that comes from this loss of roots. But there is also so much love. The hate comes from how weak ideas become. The love also does.

Lina goes. She is crossing to a new country showing new people the chinese are not that different. Luis, the Angolan, will stay for a while before he goes to yet another vipassana retreat.

” Buddhism fits a nomadic life. A life of movement and detachment.”

As he says that I think once again about my friend’s sentence. Maybe the love and hatred reside in this one word “detachment”. Something I both aspire to, but am deadly terrified of. But if the Buddha was a good teacher it surely must lie in the middle path… There is some irony to this though… As write this words a smile lifts me. Yes, if the Buddha was right, and we must text it, then that what we inbewteeners search, must lie in between.

30. Pizza and San
.Toothless homeless is beyond joy. As I go down the stairs to reach the river and go to the Gaia I ran into him and Lina, the Chinese girl. He is carrying a pizza. Roxana, the English girl who works here (although she should be on TV doing stand up comedy), had explained to me earlier that now Toothless homeless was no longer homeless. He was living with Handless- The drug dealer.

Now that he had a house he could finally make the pizza he had promised us. He was starting a new business: pizza delivery. With unconstrained joy he carried his pizza on his hands, and like a 7 year old that has lost all of his front teeth he smiles from ear to ear. Lina, the Chinese little doll, is next to him.

She is so delicate. In her little dress, Fine hands that seemed to have been drawn by a painter, and that move almost as if she was a ballet dancer. Her smile always concealed by her hands while her shoulders move up. I can barely understand him.  But through gestures, unarticulated words, Lina’s translations of what she understood I get it. He wants me to go into the Gaia and pretend he had dropped the pizza on the Mekong. He is like a child in ecstasy.

I go into the bar and try to play my part on the game. I am awful at it. No one really understands what I am talking about. So I tell my friends. “Guys toothless homeless is here with the pizza, but he wants me to say that he has dropped the pizza on the Mekong. You have to act surprised when the pizza comes!”

Everybody does so. The pizza is brought. He unwrappes proudly and it does indeed look great. The pizza is devoured in a second and everybody is interested in supporting this new business. Even though we are all skeptical about the time it took him to produce one pizza. San, Toothless no longer homeless, tells me that next year he will put teeth back in. He thanks me for insisting on making Lina stay. “Thank you. Thank you! I will make vegetarian pizza for you next week.”

“Are you in love San?”

He opens his arms, lifts his shoulders and gives me a huge smile.

“I can pay for sex you know. But Lina is like an angel. I have not had a girlfriend since I a teenager”

I am not sure Lina knows she is in his mind his girlfriend. Maybe she does. She seems happy to have friends here. He pays her bill before she can see.  She is shocked and struggles to pay back. He does not let her. He wants to offer me drinks. I thank him but refrain. My Israeli new friend watches with me the scene. We are playing guitar in the Mekong. I play the Israeli song I learned. Preek, the Thai bartender, shows me the bossa nova song I taught him the day before. As the boat rocks as it has never done before, I imagine it as a living organism. I imagine it as big giant roaring with laughter up and down. A giant that is being tickled by all this joy

The sun is blasting in the blue sky. We carry with us no knowledge of the region, a map that features not much more than the departure and arrival point and lots of laughter. We ride bikes we rented from a Thai man we do not understand. The arrival was going to be the wetlands according to our drawn –by- someone- we- do- not- know map. The wetlands  stood 27 km away from where we were. Some of our friends predict it will take us 1,30 hours to bike that, some others predict our death out of exhaustion. We are so unprepared that we do not even really know what it means to bike 54km.  Together with me are a Brazilian couple who is traveling around the world, and a Norwegian boy. We don’t really mind. We go without anything in us that obliges us to finish or arrive anywhere. We go for the ride.

We ride first through the promenade that lies in front of the Mekong, then we exit the town, then we take roads, then we arrive in villages. We take detours and encounter protective dogs, and “waying” ( to way is the gesture of putting both hands in front of you in a prayer gesture.) people. “Ways” are accompanied of swadikas if the person who greets you is a woman, sawdikap if it is a man.

We are in Isaan the poorest and less touristy province of Thailand. It is by far my favorite place here. As we ride along little villages literally no one speaks any English. We “way” back, we respond to every single child who crosses our way. They wave. We knew we would never take one and half  hour to go. We are not people who really mind arriving, we mind encountering. We stop for fruits, for views, for detours. We stop for pictures.

The sun is so strong that even my fellow Brazilian friends who had come from Africa break slightly the vow of never complaining of heat. See they also lived in the UK and when they left to travel Africa they swore never to complain of the sun. That is precisely my own sentiment. So we complain of the heat but with enormous gratitude for it.

We are tired. We see a little village. We see a lady that makes food. I know how to say Kao which is rice. We ask Kao with vegetables. I say “Jeh” to specify I wanted vegetarian. We decide to eat just to have the excuse to seat down. We are not hungry we think. The Thai lady prepares meticulously the fried rice we are going to have. The smells of  chilies and who knows what else starts to float in the air. We love being there. A little village on the backyard of some old Thai lady waiting for this food that we are now desperate for. The little Thai boy plays with his gigantic teddy bear. The king face hangs on the wall.

As we devour the delicious food that is served to us we feel there is no way on earth we could possibly bike more. We are lethargic. We want to sleep. We need coffee. We search for it and we are lucky enough to find a little market where the lady points us to ice coffee. I look around. We get little things. We find the shop the great excuse we need to just stop. As I am going through the items I see a little wallet. It is a perfect one. Perfect for coins! I want to buy it. It is colourful and perfect. I take and as it hangs in my hand I realized they come attached to keys. I am puzzled looking at it, when the sweet Thai lady comes. I suddenly understand that it belongs to her.

She takes it from my hand gently. I apologize. She removes the keys, opens it and removes the money from inside. She then holds it in front of her body, and makes the gesture of giving it to me. “From me to you” kind of thing. You all know how emotional I am. So yes. I get really emotional.. I tell her I can’t take her wallet. She holds her little bag in her chess, then points to the sky and gives it to me. I am speechless.  I had done nothing apart doing lots of “way” when I came in. My friend suggests I should give her money. I cant do it. It is a gift. I want to give her something as well. I have barely nothing with me. I do have my scarf. My favorite scarf I bought in the middle east. The one that traveled with me Palestine, Israel and India. That is it. I will give her my scarf. I walk towards her and repeat the same gesture. From me to you. She is happy. We do not exchange a single word. Just gifts carrying different stories. Just a respect and deference gestures and smiles.

Arriving at the wetlands seems even less important now. We mount our bikes taking every view we see with more joy. We pass rice fields, families, children, and when we arrive finally at the Wetlands I realized that it is really true.. to me what matter is not the end point, it is always the journey.

25. Ms. Lobinson

.I float on the Mekong. Tod, the Thai guitar player, sings Mrs (l)obinson. He asks me whether I want to play and sing. I do. I play Brazilian music, and the very few songs in English I know. But then a Thai boy comes he wants to play with me. I remember Dorjee the Tibetan in Exile traditional singer who so many times I jammed with. I like this practice now: learning to walk inside in another rhythm. I know most Thais who are there. We greet each other. There is so much joy in recognition.

As I am singing in Portuguese and older Danish guy comes to talk to me. He is heartbroken. A Brazilian Mulata has stolen his heart. “She is pregnant of me! 5 months and left me. She already has two children of two other gringos”. He looks at me, his hands moves in the air as if he is taking his heart out , he then throws it on the floor and steps over it. “That is what she did! She told me she was going back to Fortaleza! Do you know what it means???” I don’t, but he explains to me. She is looking for someone else. He is 56 she is 26. I am dazzled how is it that these older men suddenly act like little boys in love. The power of women just flabbergasts me.

I go back to the lady bar with my friends. The ladies now recognise me which means they smile more than often, and greet me back in a joyful way. The ladies who were in the boat with me before hug me. A Thai lady I do not know tells me I sing from inside. She hugs me and thanks me. She cant really put into words, so she breathes deeply and puts her hands in a prayer gesture and she ways at me (the thai greeting). Why is it again that we think we are that different? I can’t really figure it out right now.

I spend more and more time with the ladies who work in the kitchen of my guesthouse. Last night every single one gave me a little hug as they left. I am not sure this is practice. I still remember a shocked little 6 year old when I in my brazilianess just hugged her when I left the school I volunteered in. Not the ladies in the Kitchen. Wi, Joy, Noy, Tia are very affectionate.

Today after they told me swai ( beautiful ) to my red nails I grabbed my nail polish and painted Noy’s nails. I barely understand their jokes, or laughter, but it really does not matter. When I finished Wi made me seat, got her little bag, got a comb out and arranged my hair in two beautiful braids. I loved it. I loved seating in the sunny garden as she combed my hair. I loved not knowing what she was doing. I loved looking at it in the mirror once she was done. I loved our little exchanges that do not need that many words. What is it again that makes us soooo different? I just don’t now.

As I listen to the old European who is heartbroken I recognise that Scandinavians just like South Americans feel sometimes their hearts have been taken out and stepped upon. As I sing with Tod I feel music has also no real boundaries. As I seat laughing with the Thai ladies in the kitchen I know laughter needs no language. As I am welcomed by prostitutes in a lady bar I know that respect needs not much cultural understanding. Even in the complicated conversations about the differences between Mayhayana and Hinnayana Buddhism with an American 70 year old monk and mystic and an older Thai lady who has done her PhD on Thai and Buddhist culture we seem to understand each other pretty well. The more I travel and meet people either exchanging thoughts, words, or simply acts of kindness I feel that yes that is a lot of things we do really differently, but overwhelmingly I still keep thinking we are so alike.   

24. Lisa
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Lisa is 49. She comes from Sacramento California. She always had a dream of going around the world. She teaches in school and for the past 30 year she has been dreaming of going around the world. Not in 80 days, but in 7 months. When you are traveling, hearing of someone who is going around the world starts to become common. I still remember the first time I heard of someone who had crossed Mongolia by horse. I was amazed. Now I have encountered so many people who have done it that it seems banal. But of course it is not banal! It is crazy and amazing.

I met an Israeli in India who told me he used to feel it was heroic when people told him once they returned to Israel that they had traveled in Asia for 7 months. Being in Asia himself he concluded “There is nothing heroic about it, it is actually pretty easy and pleasant.” He is right and wrong at the same time. It is easy and pleasant and at the same time heroic. It challenges it all, but the challenges of our notions eventually become normality to the point that cows and monkeys in the street don’t make you take out your cameras, and at some point not even notice them. And then it is mainly just pleasant.

For instance Roxanne who works here with me was reading the BBC news and she spotted an article where the man had been arrested. She asked me to go through the article with her to see if I could spot anything wrong. “Man riding a bike on the sidewalks” (standard practice in Thailand), “No helmet” ( standard), “ Carrying one baby in front of him” ( one baby??? We see whole families). It was a joke, we laughed about it, but yes it is actually true.

But back to Lisa, she had a dream. So after 30 years she organized herself to go. And on the first day of her vacation she found a lump in her breast. It turned out to be cancer. I look at her as we float on the Mekong. “How are you Lisa?”. Lisa is joyful, on my birthday she made me a balloon and a card with a poem. She gave me chocolate.  Lisa goes to the orphanage to play with children here in NK and is about to take a job teaching for 2 months in a little rural village. “I guess growing old is overrated. I was not going to let cancer get on the way of my dream.” And so she went through surgery, and radio and rented her house and left. In Bali she fell and hurt a leg but she would not let that stop her either. I watched her recover here. Listening to her made me remind me of my own determination to live well when I was in hospital. It is just amazing how much more resilient than we imagine we can be. “I could not do anything better right now. I am seeing the world.” As we both float on the Mekong I agree with her. Yes going around the world is both heroic and pleasant.