by Steve Tait
North of Mae Hon Song, Northern Thailand, January, 2003
A few thin jackets. Some long sleeve shirts. A couple of cotton scarves wrapped around necks. At least they all had shoes and socks. Only one had a thick coat and gloves.
Foreigners rarely think of Thailand as cold. They don’t tend to pack warm clothes. Hard to blame them really. But the mountains of the north can get cold, particularly at this time of year.
Four men, two women. Seated around one big wooden table. An outdoor restaurant connected to the guest house. Corrugated iron roof, dirt floor, no walls. The generator had been turned off hours ago. A single kerosene lamp lit the group.
“Awesome spot. Not a sound. And the only lights are up there.” Ben, British, 23. He leant back on the wooden bench, tilting his head to the sky. “I tell you what, if we were here ten, twenty years ago, we’d be smoking opium now.”
“Wouldn’t that be cool? Doing a bunch of pipes here in the hills.” Jake, British, 25. “Funny how it’s the good things that disappear.”
Nods of heads as the group found unity in Jake’s lament.
“So Jake, you just come from Laos, right?” Laura, 23, a New Zealander.
“Yep. Did the south and then worked my way up to Luang Prabang. Two months.”
“Two months! Cool. So how’d you find the people?”
He took a long drag of his cigarette and slowly shook his head. “Lao people, man, really cool. Takes a while to figure them out, but once you do…” A nod this time, a small satisfied smile. “They’re super chilled. Nothing bothers them. Laugh at anything. Never in a hurry. ’Course the flip side is that they haven’t got a lot of drive. That’s why they’re so poor. They’re just happy to put up with little.” The audience murmured their agreement. They knew the score. “Really need some movers and shakers to go in there and get things happening. Yeah, see, Lao people are basically followers. They’re not leaders. They just haven’t got the ambition. That’s the thing.”
The group listened, happy to digest the insights.
“You were saying similar stuff about Cambodia, weren’t you Beth?” David, Canadian, 26. Recently hooked up with Beth, Australian, 23.
“Well, kinda. But I reckon they’re a bit more serious than the Lao.”
“Yeah? How do you mean. I’m heading that way next week.” Ben folded his arms tightly, trying to ward off the evening chill.
“It’s their history, see. I travelled around a fair bit. Didn’t just stay around Angkor. Met lots of locals. They’re kinda serious. I’d say that when you first meet them, they can come across as a bit grim, or distant. You gotta get to know then a bit before they’ll loosen up. Yeah, they tend to keep their distance. But the thing is, once you get to know them, there’s a real depth there. They’re good people, really solid.”
“I heard that they’re still pretty traumatised. You know, I mean the genocide and all that has sort of made them less light-hearted than other people in South East Asia.” Ben looked to Beth for confirmation.
Beth was leaning against David now, knees up under her chin. “Yeah, wouldn’t argue. Sounds right to me.”
Jake, the Lao expert, had been rolling a napkin into a ball. He threw it at Ben, narrowly missing his head. “Come on, Ben, my man. You’re the one who got stuck in Bali forever. Spill the beans, dude. What are the Balinese like?”
Jake and Ben had spent the previous evening working their way through a couple of bottles of local Thai rice wine. They had bonded.
“Bali, yeah. Jeez, man, tough place to leave.”
“Got stuck there, eh?” asked Laura.
“Could say that, yeah. Spent about four months there in all. Long story.”
“What held you there?” It was the soft voice of Roger, American, age unknown. Much older than the other occupants. Roger wasn’t cold. He had come prepared. A calm man, he had little to say.
“Met a girl.”
A chorus of jeers and cheers, paper missiles hurled his way, friendly punches and pushes launched and landed.
“Yeah, but it wasn’t just that. It was the people, the culture.” He grabbed a cigarette from the table, a clove cigarette (old habits…), and lit it. Exhaling slowly, he went on. “These people have what others have lost – or maybe never had. They’re in touch with their culture. They respect their lands, their spirits. Totally devoted to their traditional way of life. But the thing is they’re Westernised too. They totally relate to Westerners, you can joke around with them and stuff, but they never lose sight of their real values.”
A stillness descended. Each adventurer momentarily lost in his or her own cross-cultural world. Diverse Western seekers piecing together the East.
“Roger?” Beth’s call was hesitant.
“Hmm?”
“You’re quite down there. Come on then.”
“Yeah!” David picked up the baton. “Come on. How long since you lived in the States?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Twenty years? I go back occasionally to see family.”
“And most of that time you’ve spent here in Thailand?”
“Most of it, yeah.”
Whoa. The exclamations came thick and fast. Roger, instantly, had earned almost mythic status.
“Bet you know the Thais pretty well by now.” Another murmur, mocking the apparent understatement.
“So yeah, what are they really like?” probed Laura.
At the end of the table, slightly removed from his companions, Roger sat still. The only indication he had heard, a slight lowering of his head as he tucked his clean-shaven chin further into his chest. They waited. Roger took a breath, sighed, looked up, taking in the young faces in front of him. His heavily lidded eyes showed nothing.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” Incredulity.
Laura: “But you’ve spent like almost half your life here. You must know them inside and out.”
A soft almost imperceptible chuckle escaped his lips. “I used to.”
He let that sink in.
“Come again?”
“I used to know them. Inside and out.” The head raised, the eyes cleared. A sharpness attached itself to his features. “First couple of months? Felt like I had it nailed. Easy-going. Love to have a laugh. Never worried about anything. But it all comes down to not losing face.”
David: “Yeah, yeah. That’s what I heard! All that – what is it? – that mai pen rai stuff. Means ‘never mind’, right?”
“A year or so goes by and I’m not so sure. Started to see the frustration, sometimes even anger. Then the coups and all the chaos they caused. Still, you think you understand. It’s all about maintaining harmony. But if pushed too far, watch out.”
He had their attention now.
“But then more years go by. And that’s when you start to realise.”
“What?”
“It’s not what you’d expect.”
They waited. Roger turned inward, looking for the words, taking his time. “The longer you stay, the more difficult it is to define them. I used to know these people. Don’t think I do anymore.”
Ben was the first to scoff. “Yeah, but come on. I’m sure you can pick out the fundamental, like, traits and stuff.”
“What? The stereotype? The generalization? Could have. Years ago. But it doesn’t work anymore. You keep looking and sure enough, those barriers – the stereotypes, the generalizations – they start to crumble.” He rested his gloved hands on the table. “Look, I meet a local and I see the individual. Her fears, her warmth, her passions, her hopes and dreams. I see her pushy nature, or her uncertainty, or her confidence. And I see her change in different situations. I see her.”
A slim smile turned the edges of his mouth upward, ever so slightly.
“It’s a gift, you know.”
“What is?”
“Those barriers, the stereotypes – letting them fall away. Then you start to learn, you start to see, to see beyond them.” He paused, hesitant. “These people, they’ve taught me to be willing to know less. Only then can you learn more.”
Roger let his head drift downward, chin again nestling into his scarf. His eyes were hooded, his features calm.
His companions held themselves tightly in their thin jackets and shirts.
Note on the Author of A Few Thin Jackets:
A Few Thin Jackets is not the first piece Steve Tait has had published in Eastlit. He previously had Finding a Vein and Moving published in the February 2013 and December 2012 issues.
