Matt’s stomach rumbles. In a good way. In a way that says ‘feed me some delicious Thai food.’ He’s just changed rooms in his bug-infested hotel and is happy to put some distance between himself and that nightmare engine.

The wanderer explores the eastern part of Chiang Mai, outside of the walls that define The Old City district that makes up the town center. He smiles at the juxtaposition there, given that ‘chiang mai’ in Thai actually means ‘new city’. The name sounds almost like New York City, his hometown. He looks into the distance. It’s late September and autumn should just be starting back home…

The air and presence of a motorbike blowing uncomfortably close jolts him back to the midday swelter of the northern province. Matt ducks into a shaded soi.

He doesn’t walk far before he comes upon a tarp-covered lean-to. Inside, two teenage girls and a twenty-something young man are watching TV and chopping papaya with a machete.

Matt inches closer to watch.

One girl holds the papaya in her left hand and casually brings the machete-knife down on it. She pulls it up and lets the knife fall. She does this over and over again, creating scores of cuts running lengthwise down the oblong fruit. Where two or more cuts meet, thin shoestring pieces of papaya come free and fall into the bucket at her feet. Huh. This is certainly a novel way to make the julienne for green papaya salad.

The girl’s mother rushes over waving her hands. She wails indecipherable Thai at her daughter and wrenches away the contents of her hands. Apparently the girl has been holding the papaya and the knife wrong this entire time! The girl rolls her eyes. Mid-roll she makes eye-contact with Matt and smiles. He smiles back.

He comes under the tarp and flops onto the bench next to the young man whose cuddling the older sister. The mother, who has just taken over preparing the papaya in a near-identical (though far more practiced) fashion, puts down her tools to beam yet another smile at him and rush to her mini-fridge.

“Nam yai. [Big water.]” Matt says to the inquisitive eyes of the woman, measuring a foot of air in front of him, “Mai nam noy. Nam yai. [Not small water. Big water.]”

The Thai woman smiles at the farang’s use of her language. Matt’s grinning like a maniac when a big bottle of water is swung onto the table in front of him. The youths laugh.

“Moo? Gai? [Pork? Chicken?]” He asks after a seconds-long gulp-fest.

“Moo,” the woman confirms.

A few minutes later, the family is watching a Thai game show while the Westerner eating pork pad see ew peeks between them. The show doesn’t seem to be talking about food, so he understands nothing. At his attempts to compliment their cooking (‘Dee ma’ [Very good]), the family teaches him the word ‘aroy’. It means ‘delicious’.

He’s leaving the few-degrees-cooler shade now, wishing he had more of those springy rice noodles. The portions in this area of the world are smaller than what he’s used to, though his stomach is satisfied with the offering for now. As the guest departs for the road again, both parties say goodbye. Matt and the family, with their hands waving and mouths smiling, are almost mirror images of each other.

As he wanders, scouting for legitimate and well-reviewed massage parlors, he happens upon a McDonald’s. The garish Ronald McDonald greets his customers with the traditional Thai wai. The yellow-red-white paint job and the forward-lean makes the clown look like a leech balancing on a leaf, ready to slinky onto an unsuspecting victim. Matt shudders.

Despite the aversion, the free WiFi sign draws him inside. Matt’s smearing his mustache with froyo and making faces at some seated French girls (he had to buy the froyo to get the ‘free’ WiFi). They huff in disgust and put their hands up to block their sight of him.

The cashier is entering the elaborate WiFi passwords (yes, plural) into the all-Thai login screen on Matt’s phone when a teenage girl nearby has difficulty with understanding the price for her burger, even though her cashier is speaking English. The girl calls over her older brother and sister and the American licks off the froyo as he overhears their conversation. Unlike the usual foreign exchanges, he can understand what they’re saying. They’re speaking Hebrew.

“M’dabrim Ivrit? [You all speak Hebrew?]” Matt asks them after their burger is sorted out.

“Ken! Gam atah m’Yisrael? [Yes! You’re also from Israel?]” the older sister responds.

“[No, I’m from New York, but I… learned in Yeshiva for… twelve years.]” Matt has to pause to remember the right vocabulary. “[But my Hebrew is only… small now.]”

It’s a reversal of norms as the tan Israelis speak in accented English while the bearded American stumbles through broken Hebrew. The older sister does most of the talking, finger combing the ponytail that falls over her shoulder as she does so. Her siblings chime in occasionally. Soon their parents join them and the entire family is grilling Matt on his past and future travels.

“[I was in Bangkok… four days. Chiang Mai now. After here Vietnam, Taiwan,]” Matt pronounces the countries through the Hebrew alphabet, hoping they have the same basic names as English. “[Cambodia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and after, I don’t know. I go for… six– no,]” he frowns and mutters to his counting fingers, “[one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine, nine… ummm… four weeks?]” Matt’s eyebrows raise imploringly.

“[Month?]” the mother offers.

“[Yes! Thank you very much! I will go for nine months.]”

The family is impressed (as they should be, that future-tense conjugation was pretty solid), but they quickly press him on why he isn’t visiting Israel on his trip. “You can’t believe the news. Israel is great! You should move there!”

Matt assures them that he’s been to the Jewish state and deflects by telling them about his sister’s one-time plans to become more active in Birthright a while back. They’re placated and soon after leave him to enjoy the WiFi and review some simple Hebrew to himself.

* * *

Night has just fallen and Matt’s sitting in the hotel’s bungalow-themed dinner/bar area. Around him sit the people who will be his 11 closest friends for the next 48 hours.

Takuro and Tatsuya are two Japanese graduate students. They chatter to each other in Iron Chef-sounding Japanese, keeping mostly to themselves. Whenever approached in English, Takuro’s the frontman for the pair. Tatsuya smiles and nods at most questions.

P’ter and Franz are brothers visiting from Germany. P’ter is still in school, Franz has just finished, and both want to work in the Mechanical Engineering field. Cars, the brothers are all about cars. Their short-cropped, dirty-blonde hair glints in the torchlight.

Henry and Meaghan are coming in from Australia, though Meaghan’s originally from Canada. Henry teases her and she pushes him playfully. Though Henry’s curly black mop is hidden under his wide-brimmed dundee hat, his smile is flashed often. From behind her long brown hair Meaghan smile is less forthcoming, but it is no less brilliant when she does show it.

Nico and Alex are friends from Chile, traveling for an extended holiday before diving back into the job pool. They’re animated and possess faces like your best friend, instantly inviting and glad to be with you. A bit earlier, the lightly tanned pair had been flirting with two cute French girls. The ladies were smiling the entire time.

Pia and Jenny are travel buddies, the former is also from Chile and the latter from Scotland. Pia has quickly fallen into the male Chileans’ orbit and the rest of the group can only understand sentence fragments of their staccato Spanish conversation. Jenny’s milk-pale skin contrasts Pia’s burnt copper, and the Scot’s thick accent conjures scenes of herding sheep through lightning storms and over emerald hills.

Amid the five couples, Matt’s the only loner. Except for their trekking guide.

“Hallo! Sawahdee-krahp!” their trekking captain salutes enthusiastically.

“Sawahdeep-krahp/ka!” the responses from the group returns sporadically, some mumbling. Not everyone has been as diligent with their Thai studies as Matt (in Thai, many statements end with a formal ‘krahp’ for men- and ‘ka’ for women speakers).

“Oo-oohooohooo!” the Thai man shivers. “I am Joh.”

At 5’2”, Joh is about average height for a Thai man. He’s tanner than most of his countrymen, though he possesses the same simple haircut that many other Thai men sport. He has the hard-muscled and lean body of one who spends quite a bit of time working in the sun. When he smiles, he reveals a mouth full of surprisingly well-kept teeth. Huge teeth. It’s a smile that usurps more than just the lower half of his leathery face. Such facial coup d’états happen frequently.

“Right now, I am City Joh. Tomorrow, I am Jungle Joh. And late tonight I am Ladyboy Joh! Kop kun kaa-aaa! [Thank youuuuu!]” Joh affects a falsetto and drags the last syllable. It’s identical in tone to the one that many of the women/ladyboys make while simpering on the street corners offering massages.

Though everyone in the group laughs, Franz and P’ter find it hysterical. As Joh goes through the logistics of the trip, what they need to pack, and the 8am departure time tomorrow, the boys parrot the ‘kop kun kaa-aaa!’ line to each other, falsetto and all. They keep up the falsetto even after Joh has finished and the group breaks down into its component parts.

Franz, P’ter, Matt, Pia, and Jenny head off in search of the much vaunted Night Bazaar, leaving the others behind. Nico and Alex, back again with the French girls, don’t seem to mind this development. Neither do the Aussie or Japanese pairs, both having headed back to their rooms. They strike out East with Matt leading the way given his recent familiarity with the area.

Matt interrupts his own conversation. “You know, Jenny, your accent sounds a lot like that girl’s from Doctor Who, Amy Pond?”

Jenny faces him with a puzzled expression, framed by the gentle street lights of the moat-ringed city. “Oi don’ watch Doctor Who,” she says, her accent bending and curving the English the American is used to. She exhales strongly on the ‘who’, making it heavy on the ‘oo’. ‘Hoo-oo.’ Like an owl.

“You’re a Brit who doesn’t watch Doctor Who?!”

“No, Oi never–” she cuts off her rolled R, “Is tha’ the red-headed one? Karen Gillan?”

“Yea! Well, I dunno her real name, but yea!”

“Oh ye’, she an’ Oi, we used ta’ party togethah in high school.” Again with the oo’s. It sounds like magic.

“Cor,” Matt says in awe, caught up in the foreign accent and reflexively employing what little UK-slang he knows. “What’re you doing nowadays?”

Jenny’s on a break of sorts, having been a waitress/serving in hospitality for a while. She doesn’t enjoy it, all that socializing, preferring to do… something else, anything else. It’s understandable (and a rather common answer in the backpacking community).

Pia is in a similar spot, she explains to the brothers behind them. She just wants to party and have some fun before she feels like she’s ready to settle down and have less freedom to travel. The German boys, with their goals of becoming stable, successful engineers someday soon, politely nod, but verve the conversation to something a bit more pertinent to them.

“What should we get for dinner?” Franz asks.

Soon enough they’re in the food court for the bazaar. Stall after near-identical stall purvey many different cuisines: Thai, Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai again, Sushi (really? Oh wow, that’s expensive, never mind), what-is-probably-Thai again, generic Asian, Thai… The variety is the typical mall standard, but it’s all mostly the same to the Western palates.

Matt picks a stall almost at random, liking the pictures on their menu. He points and stumbles through basic Thai for a pork and noodle dish and the woman agrees to make it for him, but he can’t pay her just yet. The vendors aren’t allowed to accept cash. She points over to a mall-run coupon exchange booth.

He scurries over to the booth, receives 40 baht’s-worth of coupons and comes back to the stall. When he arrives, however, the older Thai woman is just sitting there, idle.

“Come on, aren’t you making my food? Number song [two]!”

The woman looks up from her newspaper and smiles. “Song? Number two? Okay!” and bustles into the back kitchen.

She comes out two minutes later with a big bowl of steaming pork phở, a Vietnamese staple. There are noodles and broth and bits of basil floating in in the wide plastic bowl. Matt immediately hands over his coupons and makes for the table where P’ter and Franz have already begun digging into some pad thai.

A woman from two stalls down calls for his attention.

Matt turns around and sloshes a bit of soup over the rim, scalding his hands. “Ah fuck!” he mumbles, and then, “Ah fuck! I ordered from you before! You’re two different ladies!”

The second (or should she be considered the first?) woman has a plate of noodles and sauteed morning glory smothered in sauce with pieces of pork arranged on top. She is also rubbing her fingers together in the universal sign of ‘pay me’. She raises an eyebrow at Matt’s vain search for an escape route, dripping bowl in hand.

A minute later and P’ter and Franz are laughing at the American’s predicament. The girls have gone shopping for some cheap knock-off clothes, leaving them alone. Matt’s sitting at the table with two pork noodle dishes in front of him.

“Same same, but different!” the American declares. He digs into his expansive dinner as the brothers talk to him about ball bearings and steel and ask him what that funny ladyboy phrase in Thai was again.

* * *

The boys are damp, and not just from the ubiquitous moist air. Having left the girls to their own devices hours ago, they’ve been among tonight’s drinking and dancing patrons in The Yellow Bar neighborhood. At the moment, they’re peering at orange-lit street signs through bleary eyes.

“Watch out,” Franz says, in his accent of hard vowels and clear enunciation that is reminiscent of Nightcrawler from the X-Men movies, “There is a snake?” The way he pronounces many English statements sounds a bit like everything ends in a question.

Matt stops short and sure enough there’s a headless snake at his feet. “Wow. Gross. Hey, how would you say ‘snake’ in German?”

“Schlange.” Franz crooks a smile, “And there is the einäugige hosenschlange.” He pauses.

Matt cocks an eyebrow.

“A one-eyed trouser snake?” Franz winks.

P’ter snickers and Matt chuckles.

“Alright,” Matt sets down his now-empty bottle on a grimy street corner, “teach me a few more German words and pronunciation”

The brothers continue to teach basic words to the eager American’s prompting as they wander the jungle city, searching for ‘home’.

Within minutes they’re back at the hotel’s patio bar. At the bar is a blonde and tan couple.

Recognizing another foreign language, Matt pipes up, “¿De dónde son? [Where are you from?]”

“¿Hablas español? [You speak Spanish?]” the man responds with a tell-tale lisping Spanish accent.

The woman turns around to face the newcomers.

“[A little. I study, studying… studied in school, high school.]” Matt’s creased brow beads with sweat again.

“[We’re from Barcelona.]” The man grins. “And I speak English, so we can talk like this!”

The three banter for a bit before the two return to their lovers’ chat.

“How come you speak so many languages, but not German?” Franz asks, a bit frustrated with having to speak English with Matt when so many others can dabble in their native tongue.

P’ter mirrors his brother’s frown, but does not speak.

“I dunno, man. I never learned it. And I only know bits and pieces of the languages; I’m nowhere near fluent in any of them.”

“So? German is such a good language!”

“Well, it’s close enough to English that it’s pretty much the same thing, right? Like, I probably already know most of it.”

Franz’s scowl deepens. The flush on the German’s face may not all be from the heat and alcohol.

“For example, what’s ‘water’ in German?”

“Wasser.”

“The same! And ‘book’?”

“Buch,” the older German pronounces the guttural ‘ch’ flawlessly.

“See? Same again! And Volkswagon?” Matt grins.

Franz glowers. “‘Folks-vagen,’” he pronounces the automobile company’s name in its original German.

“See?!” Matt spreads his arms in gracious victory, “Is same same, but different!”

Franz and P’ter stalk off to their rooms to rest up before tomorrow’s two-day jungle trek. Matt sighs and follows them. It’s going to be a long few days if the American and Germans can’t get along.

Metalworking in the Chiang Mai Saturday Market