16. #2
I’m happy to have Meena’s company on the drive down, eager to be close to her as long as I can.
And there’s something sweet and endearing about this tiny woman behind the wheel of this big Nissan truck, handling it like she’s driven it her whole life, which she probably has.
But just like on the drive up, it’s so shaky on the unpaved road that your jaw will get slammed shut if you’re not careful—so great is the force that rocks the truck as the wheels pass over ruts and ravines carved out of the soil by rain.
Conversation doesn’t come easily, and by the end of it I’m feeling queasy. Thalia was right to plan ahead.
Once the road levels off, we play I-spy with a Thai language variation.
I’m the go-between. Meena shouts out something she sees in Thai and Thalia tries to guess what it is in English with hints from me.
Then when it’s Thalia’s turn she uses more obscure English words—“acacia” instead of “tree”—and I give Meena hints in Thai.
“Dok mai see daeng,” Meena calls out.
“Birds?” Thalia guesses, since those are all around us.
“How about those things guys give to girls to show they like them?”
“Chocolates?” Thalia asks, suddenly hopeful.
“Do you see chocolates out the window?”
“No, but if you do, we could stop.”
Meena laughs.
“Okay, let’s see,” Thalia says. “It’s flowers, isn’t it?”
“Very good,” I say. “Dok mai is flowers. And see daeng?”
“Maybe the color of the flowers?”
“Ooh, you’re hot,” I say. “So hot you’re—“
“—white hot?”
“Close.”
“Red!”
“Brilliant.”
By the time we reach Pai, it’s like we’re a family on a road trip, like we’ve always known each other.
It just makes it that much harder to say goodbye.
At least I can do it properly since there’s nobody around to gossip about us.
I wrap my arms around Meena, practically lifting her off the ground as I kiss her.
Thalia throws her arms around Meena and the two hug.
Then Meena tells Thalia to lean her head down and gives her hair a quick sniff.
It’s like a kiss, she explains. The crown of the head is the most sacred part of the body in Thai cosmology.
So, even when the hair on that head hasn’t been washed in a few days, it’s still a very cute, sweet gesture.
Thalia’s eyes go wide and she sniffs the crown of Meena’s head back. Meena giggles.
I’m already picturing what it will be like when Meena comes to visit. In my mental picture, all three of us are naked. Not the whole time, of course. Just part of the time. And why not? Everything starts with a dream.
We walk around Pai a little while before ordering a cab.
The walking street is quiet at this hour, most of the shopfronts still shuttered, a few coffee places doing a slow morning trade with backpackers who look like they slept in their clothes.
There’s a restaurant with American diner food that has clearly been there for twenty years catering to exactly this clientele.
I get a patty melt and onion rings which are far from the best I’ve had but are a welcome change of pace after eating nothing but Thai food for days.
Thalia gets pancakes, which she doesn’t finish, which tells me she’s still a little sad.
“Are you sad to be going back?” Thalia asks.
“A little,” I say. “I’m going to miss Meena so much.”
“Aww,” Thalia says, reaching over to dab some ketchup from the corner of my mouth. “I think it’s sweet how much you like her.”
“You are not like any other girl I’ve known,” I say.
“Well, girls of my generation are more open-minded about relationships and sexuality and stuff,” she says, then when she notices me smiling she demands to know why.
“Every generation thinks that about themselves,” I say. “I don’t think it’s a generational thing.”
“What is it then?”
“You’re generous and wise and self assured,” I say. “And—and this is no less of a compliment—kinda horny.”
“True. All true.”
After lunch, we call a rental car. The plan is to stop by the famous Wat Rong Khun, better known in English as the White Temple, which sits about fifteen kilometers outside of Chiang Rai. I’ve seen photographs of it a hundred times but photos don’t really prepare you for the thing itself.
The whole structure is completely white but embedded throughout with tiny chips of mirror glass that catch the sunlight and throw it back at you from a thousand different angles at once.
It’s blinding in the best way. The artist, Chalermchai Kositpipat, started rebuilding it in 1997 out of his own pocket and apparently won’t be done until 2070, which means the man has committed to a project that will outlast him by decades.
You have to respect that kind of vision even if it’s slightly insane.
To get to the main building you cross a bridge over a shallow pool, and this is the part that photographs have tried and failed to prepare me for: hundreds of sculpted hands reaching up from the water below the bridge, arms outstretched, grasping at nothing.
They represent desire and suffering, which are the things that keep you from crossing over into the enlightened realm on the other side.
Standing on the bridge looking down at them, I feel something I wasn’t expecting to feel, which is that I recognize some of those hands.
Not literally. But the grasping quality of them. The wanting.
Thalia grips my arm.
“That’s genuinely disturbing,” she says.
“Yeah,” I say. “That’s the point. That’s hell. So be good.”
Inside, the murals mix traditional Buddhist iconography with pop culture references—Neo from The Matrix, figures from contemporary disasters—all rendered in elaborate, detailed brushwork as if Kositpipat wants you to understand that the same forces he’s depicting in the traditional symbolism are still very much at work in the modern world.
I find myself wishing I had more than twenty minutes.
We make it to the airport just in time, thanks mostly to the fact that it’s such a small and sleepy little terminal.
Air Asia is delayed as usual. No other airline in the region can match them in delays.
It’s their signature along with low prices, which is why it’s hard to stay mad.
We make it back to Phuket with no problems, order another car to take us home.
We’re both exhausted as we walk inside. I go to the kitchen for a beer, and wouldn’t you know it?
Through the window I see there’s another half-naked girl swimming in my pool!
Just kidding. That would be pretty implausible. Have to say though, as far as narrative twists go that would be far from the worst.