Chapter 30. Lemongrass Stains - Epilogue

---

From the moment I stepped off the plane in Bangkok to the last call for passengers to board back to JFK, I never heard a single Thai, Laotian, or Cambodian complain much about anything. It’s not in their Buddhist nature to raise a ruckus. Of all people, Cambodians have the right to a long list of grievances and I would not deny them the opportunity to express them every hour of the day if they so chose. No country’s people have been screwed over more than the Cambodians and deserved it less.
At no point have I seriously questioned my safety in Southeast Asia. Except for relentless touts, no one has followed me, threatened me, or attempted to hurt me in any way. In my country, I cannot walk around safely in my own state’s capital as assuredly as I could along the unlit back canals of Bangkok at three in the morning. I also admit that unlike a certain genre of traveler hell bent on living it up until all hours on drugs, alcohol, and women, my lifestyle choices are much more tame. I do not go in search of trouble.
Thai food leads the way in the region’s gastronomic delights. I left the United States wanting very much to put Thai cuisine above that of Italian cooking. I cannot make this jump. I may be American through and through, but my stomach is still Italian. Nevertheless, if invited to a meal of red curry in coconut milk with a papaya salad at a local restaurant run by a family from Chiang Mai, I’ll be there when the doors open. Lao food is peasant like. Khmer cuisine is the unification of Vietnamese and Thai, but with half the taste. Cambodia has a few things going for it; its ordinary fare at dinner time is not one of them. That all said, I have realized that since my initial arrival in Thailand that I have not once eaten anything frozen or dumped out of a can. I never knew rice had taste; I thought it was just a filler. I never knew the value rice delivers at such a low cost. There is no question that rice feeds millions and prevents mass starvation.
Young travelers carve very certain paths through Southeast Asia. Being on a bus en route from Bangkok to Vientiane is as sure as the Cubs finding a way not to get to the World Series every year. It is possible to traverse the most steep mountain roads in Laos on a bus without a single local face. The other forty or so passengers are all backpackers, mostly asleep, or tuned into their favorite tunes on their new iPods. Discount flights from Bangkok to the Thai islands are almost the exclusive domain of foreigners. Young Americans have arrived in greater numbers, unable or unwilling to shell out ridiculous money to criss-cross Europe by rail as I started to do twenty years ago. Even Europeans admit their travels are extended by a few weeks if they start their vacation in Bangkok as opposed to Málaga. The Dutch and Australians are here in numbers disproportionate to their populations back home. There have been instances when I thought there was no one left to tend to matters in Utrecht because they all decided to have dinner together in at a riverside restaurant in Nong Khai.
When in the company of a Thai woman (a Laotian or Cambodian would qualify as well), I could never shake the stigma of being a single man in Southeast Asia with a newly-acquired girlfriend. When I was alone, other Westerners found me presentable and approachable. My comments were valued. I was introduced to family and friends and asked to join them at their table. But when with a Thai woman, contact with Westerners immediately ceased. A greeting of “Good Afternoon” at lunch would force others to pretend I was not talking to them. They kept their children away from me. I would get looks and glaring stares as if they were saying, “We know why you’re here” in an inaudible tone. They had already deduced my motivations in Southeast Asia to be purely carnal. That put me off limits by the same people who would otherwise unreservedly welcome me out with them if I were unaccompanied, or with a Western girlfriend. The stigma is relentless. It is impossible to shake and it segregated me from my usual social circle to one of her and me for dinner.
Except for a few concrete retaining walls in Bangkok, this part of the world is refreshingly free of graffiti. Sides of building in Vientiane may be cracked and crumbling, but at least they’re not festooned in colorful loops of spray paint. Sadly, the air pollution and malodorous mountains of trash everywhere suppress the joy of not having to bear witness to artistic vandalism.
Westerners will always be considered outsiders in Southeast Asia. Theirs is not an open society that unconditionally embraces and integrates foreigners into their daily lives. If I learn to speak, read, and write Thai fluently, I will never, ever be considered a Thai. I can adapt to Thai practices and covert to Buddhism. The fact remains that I do not look like one and was not born one. While I may be welcome to stay in Thailand as a full-time resident for the rest of my life, no one will ever look at me as an equal, not even in the eyes of the law. Society will deem me a meal ticket if I marry one of their sisters or daughters. Pressures and expectations will be placed on me far beyond my means, only because of my race. An Austrian became the Governor of California a few years ago. Fat chance that will ever happen in Southeast Asia. If Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson truly wish to shed light on racism, they should try to get some air time on the local channels in Thailand and see how far that gets them.
Thai women and their neighbors are very restrained when it comes to public displays of affection with their boyfriends and husbands. Thais are far more interested in pouncing on their cell phones than each other. I am still confident I witnessed conception by a couple in a crowded tram along the Danube in Budapest two years ago. Any subway station in Milan may as well be the set for a soap opera called the Rich and the Horny. Asian women dress with a touch of class and walk around with some dignity. Save the minor fraction of women involved in the commercial sex industry, it is the Australian and English ladies that dawn skimpy skirts and push up halter tops in order to expose their newly inserted navel piercings. If seeking gratuitous glances at cavernous cleavage the Western twenty-nothing woman is far trampier than any Thai, Lao, or Cambodian. As with the men, they are reserved in nature and will go out of their way not to cause a scene. The same cannot be said for me when my ire is aroused.
The Southeast Asian outlook on life is contrary to that of the West. Live now and spend now. Tomorrow will take care of itself. Few save for a rainy day in a part of the world where an entire season is defined by destructive precipitation. Thailand’s saving grace is its fierce national pride, embodied in Buddhism and an adoration in an unremarkable and reclusive monarch. Laos is on the brink of immersing itself in the modern world at the risk of forfeiting the simplicity of what keep sit so unique and pure. Cambodians still have to come to terms with its turbulent past. An entire nation absent of educated men older then fifty (thanks to Pol Pot), non-urbanites remain entrenched in an existence of vicious inequalities wrapped in substandard opportunities and conditions.
Above all, Southeast Asia, and travel as a whole, has taught me to proudly and unapologetically stand up for my values, knowing full well they clash with those around me. While seated at a café in Siem Reap, a French woman castigated me about my contempt for the parents whose children are forced to hawk junk for tourists at Angkor. I expressed the same rage for the women in the streets of Phnom Penh who swap babies at all hours to induce pity from foreign pedestrians for pocket change. The gaunt middle-aged woman haughtily dismissed me. “You cannot go around judging other people’s cultures”, she said in an instructive tone. It was as if I had been caught being mean to another boy on the playground. “You have to respect other cultures.”
“The hell I do!”, I countered. I screamed back at her in French, but with a muffling effect so not to attract too much unwanted attention from the other tables. “I might have to acknowledge them and work within their parameters, but that’s it.”
She scoffed at me, the audacious American brute. “Ooh la la…américain typique.”
This américain typique wasn’t quite finished. I took her dig at me as a compliment. “Merci pour tes beaux mots.” Thank you for your beautiful words. She squirmed. “When it comes to the life of a child, I do not capitulate, Madame.” I leaned into her to ensure she had no other choice but to absorb every jab and right cross I intended to deliver her through my words. They were laced with emotion and most of all, anger. “Forced child labor is wrong, period. And don’t tell me it has to be done to provide for their families. Most children in Cambodia don’t work. Work is the responsibility of adults, not a five-year-old girl selling postcards in front of a temple. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?” I was hoping she would have some awakening to reason. But no, she stayed just as wishy-washy as so many others.
She took a drag of her cigarette, avoided eye contact with me and replied, “Well, it bothers me a little bit.”
“It bothers you? That’s it? I’ll make sure you never get a job as a social worker.” That last quip teed her off. Any sense of civility we could revert back to was now gone. “Where are your sense of values? Have you any?”
She turned back to me. “You cannot judge people. That’s all I am saying.”
“Yes, I can. You do everyday. Your country passes judgment on mine nightly on TV5 and on the pages of Le Monde. You just don’t have to courage to say it.” No sense in ordering another round. I motioned to the waiter for the bill. I cornered her with one last question. “So, in your world it is OK for Nigerian families to sexually mutilate little girls because that is part of their esteemed culture? Is that what you think?”
She struggled for anything to come back with. “But you are applying a double standard. Americans do that.”
While that was a totally different conversation, one thing was for sure. “At least we have standards, Madame.”
It is perfectly fine to judge, but not to prejudge. If after a long stint in Southeast Asia, a person leaves without any changes in his or her view of how people interact with each other that challenges their concept of right and wrong, then the journey has been a downright waste of time.

I have had to jettison much of what I originally packed to make space for the odds and ends I have accumulated throughout four countries. My flight leaves in a few hours and it is time to organize. I hope the cleaning lady at my hotel in Kuala Lumpur makes use of the T-shirts I left behind. I made sure the underwear was safely discarded; I wish the horror of opening that plastic bag on no one. My windbreaker I bought in Guatemala received its proper last rites. There were too many holes in it for it to stop a breeze from chilling my torso. All my pants are gone but one pair of khakis. Yesterday morning I washed them in the sink of my Bangkok hotel. I am making no more trips to have them laundered. I emphatically scrubbed out the faint green streaks of lemongrass ingrained in the fabric. I have no idea where I scraped up against the common ingredient in soups and salads in Indochina and Thailand. I hope to get the chance to come back and find out.

---