12. #2
“Lemon Haze smells lovely,” Thalia says, holding the jar in front of my nose.
“How about this one?” I say. “Sour Diesel.”
“You’d choose diesel over lemons?”
“Good point,” I say. “How about two grams of Lemon Haze and another of Pineapple Express?”
Our friend is good enough to grind up the buds and roll them into joints for us. Efficient service. Now well-provisioned, we call Meena and tell her we’ve arrived in Pai. We get Thai food at a little restaurant in town while we wait for her brother to come pick us up.
When he arrives, Sorn smiles but barely says a word. He’s maybe twenty-five, compact and careful-looking, wearing a plain grey shirt. I try speaking to him in Thai, which surprises and amuses him, but he seems to prefer the little English he knows.
“Hello,” he says. “We go.”
I nod and pick up Thalia’s big bag and my smaller backpack and toss them in the bed of the pickup truck with the farm equipment. A coil of rope, a machete in a canvas sheath, a sack of something that shifts when I set the bags against it.
The road is long and winding but even bumpier and slower than before, turning to dirt almost as soon as we leave town.
The path snakes through lush green forest that looks ancient and dense and steaming, the light coming through the canopy in long slanted columns.
Dry season up here doesn’t mean no rain; it means not raining all day every day for days on end.
Smoke rises through the air, or maybe that’s mist. Hard to tell up here.
Thalia gets tossed into my lap on a sharp corner and I put an arm around her even though we’re both wearing seatbelts.
Sorn seems unconcerned, one hand on the wheel, singing quietly along to whatever Thai pop song is coming from the stereo, perfectly at ease on a road that’s trying to kill us.
We arrive at Ban Pang Paek before I even realize it.
Sorn pulls over and turns off the engine and the sudden quiet after four hours of road is its own kind of sound.
All around us is greenery—dense forest pressing close on both sides, the canopy overhead thick enough to drop the temperature several degrees.
Looking around, I see bamboo and split-plank houses sitting low to the ground, their weathered walls the color of old driftwood, metal roofs gone dark from years of rain.
They look like they grew here rather than being built.
A few chickens pick their way between the houses without any apparent destination.
Sorn lifts our bags from the truck bed, sets them on the ground, nods once and walks off. His task is complete.
“Khun Mike!”
I turn and there’s Meena in a pale blue slip dress with a colorful woven ribbon braided into her hair—the kind of ribbon I’ve seen in photos of traditional Lisu dress, bright red and gold against the black.
She walks toward us with her hands open in a greeting.
In America, I’d hug a close female friend without thinking about it.
Thai culture isn’t quite so touchy-feely, though.
Thalia doesn’t wait to consider the cultural nuance.
She opens her arms and wraps them around Meena, who smiles and reciprocates.
“So nice to meet you!” Thalia says.
“Yes, thank you,” Meena says. “Welcome to our village.”
Having hugged Thalia it would be awkward if we didn’t hug too. It’s brief but warm. Her hair smells smoky under the shampoo—a rich woodsmoke that I realize is probably just part of the air here, absorbed into everything.
“Come inside,” she says. “You hungry?”
“We just had lunch in Pai,” I say.
“We have papaya. You would like to try?”
“Sure!” Thalia says.
Inside the house the main room is one large open space, low-ceilinged, the walls uneven where the planks haven’t quite matched up.
There’s a cooking stove near the center of the room with a blackened pot resting on it, and along the far wall a small altar with a photograph and some incense that’s burned down to a stub, the ash curled into a little question mark.
The light coming through the gaps in the walls makes stripes across the floor.
Geckos start calling the moment we walk in, that familiar barking sound, and don’t stop.
The place smells of smoke and ginger and something sweet I can’t place.
Mama is in her bedroom. She’s propped up in bed, small and fine-boned, her grey hair loose around her face.
She smiles as she greets us and Meena tells her all about us in fast Lisu, nothing I can follow.
We smile and give her a little wai, the traditional greeting, hands pressed together at the chest. She returns it with a slow nod and says something that makes Meena laugh.
“She says you are very tall,” Meena translates, looking at me.
As we sit on the floor to eat the slices of papaya and starfruit Meena has set out on a tray, we hear something from the treeline. Whoop, whoop, whoop!
“Are those monkeys?” Thalia asks, her eyes lighting up.
“Yes,” Meena says, her tone suggesting she finds them significantly less delightful. “There are many in the forest. Everywhere. They come—“
She makes a face and acts out the way the monkeys descend on any food left unattended. It’s a chipmunk-nibbling-an-acorn face. At least that’s what it looks like to me.
“We saw monkeys in Phuket,” I say.
“They stole my water bottle,” Thalia adds.
“Yes, they are naughty,” Meena says. “Kamoey.”
Which means both “thief” and “to steal.”
“Oh, can I practice my Thai with you while I’m here, Meena?” Thalia asks.
“Yes, of course,” she says. “But you know, actually we don’t speak Thai a lot here. When talking with mom I speak Lisu.”
“How many languages can you speak?” Thalia asks.
“Only Lisu language, Thai and English,” she says. “Also Burmese just little bit.”
“Only four? I can only speak one!”
Meena grins.
“I think for me it just normal because when I was in the school had to switch,” she says.
“You must have an ear for languages,” I say. “It’s your skill.”
“Yeah, you too, I think so,” Meena says.
I shrug.
“I never really thought I was good at languages,” I say. “I studied Spanish in school, but that was all.”
“You learn quickly,” she says.
“Sometimes,” I say.
“And you don’t give up easy. That is important.”
“I have a good teacher,” I say. “I always have fun learning with you.”
She gives this shy smile, like the compliment really means something to her, which it should because I mean it. She looks down at the tray and straightens a piece of papaya that didn’t need straightening.
“Meena, what kind of work do the people in the village do?” Thalia asks.
“Working in the garden and rice also,” she says. “Actually, I can show you?”
I shove the last piece of starfruit in my mouth before Meena takes the tray away.
She puts it in the small kitchen and then walks us down a narrow path to the rice terraces close to the house.
They step down the hillside in shallow levels, flooded with maybe three inches of water, green shoots standing in neat rows just breaking the surface.
The whole thing looks more intentional than anything in the village itself, the geometry precise, every row the same distance from the last.
I bend over and run a shoot through my fingers. It’s surprisingly tough.
“Hard working like this, na,” she says, that last word meaning something like ya know.
“I’ll bet,” I say.
There’s a man in a sunhat and long sleeves working one of the far rows. He squats down to inspect one plant, turning it over with his fingers and seeing something in it I can only guess at. He doesn’t look up.
“The baby plants need someone to water them because the rainy season is come not yet,” Meena explains. “You want to try?”
“Sure,” I say.
I’m expecting a pump or a faucet somewhere.
Instead the whole village relies on a stream that runs down through the trees at the edge of the terraces.
The trickle is steady but not strong—a good push of water over flat rocks worn smooth.
When the rains come it’ll be a proper rush, Meena says.
We fill up big tin watering cans by submerging them and letting them fill from the current, then lug them down the rows and pour gently around the base of each seedling.
I step on one and Meena is nice about it. It happens, and we’re still new to it.
We do three trips each before we’re sweating properly. The trick with this task, I figure out quickly, is to take it slow. Nothing good here comes from rushing.
“So you’re from Australia, right?” Meena asks Thalia.
“Yes, I’m here just for a holiday,” she says. “I miss Thailand already! I’ll be so sad when I have to leave.”
“Oh!” Meena says. “You know you can stay in Thailand to study Thai language, right?”
“Really?!”
“Yes, the government gives the student visa for one year.”
“Oh my god!” she says, turning to me. “I can do that!”
“Is it difficult to get a visa that way?” I ask.
“Not difficult but a bit expensive,” Meena says. “I have a friend who works at a school in Patong. I think the cost for the class is fifty thousand baht.”
“How much is that?” Thalia asks.
“About $1,600 US,” I say.
“That’s…” Thalia’s voice trails off as she does the math. “About $2,200 Aussie dollars. Pricey, but if it means I get to stay here for a year? And I can learn Thai? This is bloody great news!”
This is the solution I’ve been waiting for. And it’s so simple I should have thought of it myself. All this time I’ve been dreading the moment when Thalia would have to say goodbye. Now maybe she doesn’t have to after all.
“Yeah, Meena, you can tell us where to find your friend’s school,” I say. “We’ll go and get her signed up.”
“Sabai, sabai!” Meena says with a laugh. “Easy!”
After a few more trips to the stream, all the seedlings are watered.
One of Meena’s neighbors stops by—a woman maybe Mama’s age, in a printed blouse—and she and Meena chatter for a few minutes in Lisu.
Very smiley. I catch the word for foreigner and nothing else.
Then we follow Meena to her garden, a small plot just behind the house with a low bamboo fence around it, where she crouches down and pulls some ginger root from the soil.
She never seems to mind when the dirt gets on her dress.
She just dusts it off with easy confidence, like she knows that clothes get dirty and she’s made her peace with it.
“Let’s have some tea,” she says.
Back at the house, we help Meena build up the fire in the stove.
I hold the kindling while Thalia blows at the base of the flame, and then Meena fills a pot with water from the big ceramic jug in the corner.
Meena has to collect the water from the stream every day since there’s no running water inside.
She slices the ginger on a worn wooden cutting board, thin coins of it, and throws them in the kettle and sets it on the flame.
Within minutes the small room smells of ginger and smoke. The kettle whistles and Meena takes it off the heat.
“So,” Meena says, putting her hands on her knees and giving us a serious expression. “Boring already, right?”
We laugh.
“I think it’s fun,” Thalia says.
“Really?” Meena asks with a grin.
“It’s a totally different side of Thailand we would never get in Phuket.”
“Besides, you’re so nice to let us stay here,” Thalia says. “We want to do something to help out.”
“You’re lucky, Khun Mike,” she says. “You have a good girlfriend. Good person.”
“I think you can just call me Mike now, right?” I say.
Khun is appropriate for the classroom but it’s a little formal for what Meena and I are to each other. Or what I think we are to each other.
“Maybe Pi Mike is better,” she says. “The meaning is older brother.”
I laugh and shrug.
“Well, I guess that’s better,” I say.
“How old are you, Meena?” Thalia asks.
“I’m twenty-five—and not married yet!”
She giggles, but it’s a nervous giggle.
“Would you like to be married now if you could?” Thalia asks.
The question seems to surprise Meena and she takes time to think before answering. She pours the tea into three small cups, the color of caramel, the steam rising straight in the still air.
“I’m not sure,” she says. “People still here still think old way. If a girl is not married already at this age, why, why?”
She imitates what I take to be the squawking of the village ladies, hands raised, head tilted side to side. Living in a place like this, I can imagine it easily. Everyone knows everyone’s business. The gossip probably travels faster than the stream.
“It’s only because you’re so beautiful,” Thalia says. “I wished I looked as pretty as you do without makeup.”
Meen grins uncomfortably, covering her face with her hand starting to turn red.
“Wow!” she says. “Oh my god! Thank you.”
“You must disappoint guys all the time when you turn them down,” Thalia says.
“Sorry?” Meena says, apparently not understanding.
“She means guys talk with you and flirt with you but you tell them no and make them sad.”
Meena raises an eyebrow, not sure how to respond politely.
“Not much really,” she says.
“Well,” Thalia says, taking a sip of ginger tea. “Michael can’t stop talking about you.”