Things Burn Up On Entry

As the plane dips a wing over Chicago a little after 3:00, Ellen glances across the aisle at me. 

“Different landscape,” she says.

Definitely.  The view out the window shows block upon block of low, flat buildings laid out in predictable squares.  They stretch to the horizon, as does the dull beige sky.  Gone are the mountains, the blocks of Leggo skyscraper apartments, the wide blue ocean filled with cargo ships and ferries.

 

It’s 11:45 PM on 16 July, the day we arrived back.  Excluding the four or five hours of moderate dozing on the plane, I’ve been awake for something like 30 hours.  Ellen is in bed, the kids are asleep, and I’m on the phone to Hong Kong.  Specifically, I’m trying to explain to the clerk at the hotel we stayed at on Thursday night exactly what I mean when I say “stuffed killer whale.”

“It’s a toy,” I tell her.  “A child’s toy.  A-a-a plush toy.”

“Plastic?” she says.

“No, no.  Soft.  Like a pillow.”

“You left a pillow in you room?”

It doesn’t get any easier when I have to explain the concept of killer whale.  I’ve only been in the US for 8 hours, and already I’ve forgotten the complexities of a bilingual conversation in a region where few people are actually bilingual and almost everyone in the service industry was kicked out of high school at the age of 15. 

Finally, she gets a clear enough sense of what we’re discussing to put me on the most expensive hold of my life.  I’m sweating.  I know this is stupid, know I should go to bed, know I’ll be more clear headed after some sleep.  I’ve already gone through all ten of our suitcases twice, unzipping the compartments, digging through the dirty clothes, the souvenirs, random toys and books, the detritus of 11+ months of living abroad.  I can’t find Will’s killer whale anywhere—Will’s killer whale, his favorite stuffed animal, his constant bedtime companion, the receptor of all of his secrets, for all practical purposes his best friend, even now, on the verge of ten. 

Even worse, it was my job, that morning—if you can call something 30 hours and twelve time zones ago “that” and “morning”—it was my job to gather all of the kids’ toys and blankets and stuff them into the various small spaces remaining in our ten suitcases.  I had thought I’d placed dear old Killie in Will’s backpack so that he could have him on the 15-hour flight home, but when I’d searched there come bedtime in Wisconsin, all I’d found was a stuffed orang utan we’d bought in Borneo. Making all of this worse is the fact that Will has an earache and barely slept on the plane, is exhausted, and has seemed incredibly vulnerable as we’ve made the transition from Hong Kong back to the US. 

Eventually the clerk in Hong Kong comes back on the line and tells me they hadn’t found any killer whales in our room, but if we wanted to reclaim the mud-covered duffle and half-eaten sack of Doritos we’d left there, she’d be happy to send them to me, C.O.D.  I hang up and pace into the living room.  My mom is there, reading a book.  She’s still glowing from all the hugs and smooches and the sheer joy of having our three little rug rats back in her life. 

“You should go to bed,” she says.

“I know.”  My joints ache and I can feel a slick of sweat on my forehead.  My clothes are so saturated with body oil and dirt and airline grease that they actually stick to me when I move. 

“Get some rest.  It’ll clear your head.”

“I know,” I say.  “I just can’t stand the thought of our trip ending like this.” 

 

We make it all the way to 4 A.M. before Lucy comes in to the room and says, “I can’t sleep anymore.”

“I got it,” I say to Ellen, who groans something in a dialect of Portuguese I hadn’t known she knew, rolls over, and begins to snore immediately.

I take Lucy in my arms, carry her downstairs into my parents’ basement.  We click on the TV.  I curl her up on a couch, and wrap her in a blanket.

“Cartoon network,” she says.

“Fox News,” I say back.  “Close enough.”

I hope, of course, that we’ll both fall back to sleep, but neither of us does.  Eventually I go upstairs and collect one of those plastic-wrapped packets of 10 different cereals, all in little boxes, all with bright labels, all packed with sugar. 

“Take your pick,” I say to Lucy.  “Anything but—“

“Fruit Loops,” she says.

“—Fruit Loops,” I finish.  “We need to share those with Will and Jamie.”

She chooses Corn Pops and I swear under my breath—they’ve always been my favorite.  As she eats, I crawl over to the suitcases, pull the first one flat, shocked again by its weight.  Back in Hong Kong some—what?  36 hours ago?—we’d borrowed the hotel scale and weighed each of our bags:  24.6kg.  23.9 kg.  24.9 kg.  On the advice of one of the previous HK Fulbrights, we hadn’t shipped anything coming over from the States in 2009.  Instead, we’d stuffed 10 suitcases full of everything we’d need, from undershirts to kitchen knives, and lived off of that for the next 11 months. 

Unfortunately—in a “No Duh” kind of way—living in Hong Kong for a year we’d accumulated a lot of additional stuff.  Some of it we’d sent back with family who visited as they returned to the States.  Others we’d shipped in postal boxes.  The rest we’d thrown into the trash, given to friends, or stuffed into our ten bags, weighing and reweighing, making sure we were under the 25 kilogram max. 

Except that, um, when we got to the airport and I put the bag on the scale, grinning broadly as it posted 25.0, the ticket agent frowned and said, “But the maximum is 23 kilograms.”

I must have looked about to cry, because in a very un-Hong Kong moment, she waved all of our bags through—all of them, and didn’t charge us a penny. 

Now, down in my parents’ basement at 4:36 am, Ben-10 on the TV, I zip open the first of the bags, running my fingers frantically through the loose clothing, the plastic toys, the zip-loc bags of shampoo, searching for one soft, cuddly, much-loved football-sized killer whale.

It’s a nightmare, I have to admit.  Or more accurately, I’m moving in a nightmare-like daze.  I’ve had maybe 8 hours sleep since what was Friday in Hong Kong but Thursday in Wisconsin.  I’ve also had more sugar, more bad food, more caffeine, fewer showers, and less exercise in that time span than I’m used to, making me feel slimy, exhausted, mildly buzzed, and thoroughly depressed.  Making all of this worse, some stupid show about spinning tops—the kid’s toy, that kind of top—is now flashing across the TV screen.  Tops?  Are you kidding me?

And then, in the fifth bag, half-asleep, I tug on what I think is an old towel and pull out a small, black-and-white killer whale. 

 

Will comes down at 5.  I give him a huge hug and hand him Killie, grinning ear to ear.  He takes it from me, grins, and says to Lucy, “Is this Cartoon Network?”

The tops cartoon is over now and it’s something else, something weird with super-heroes, only they’re all really short with big faces, like they’re little kid super-heroes or something.  It’s a cartoon I recognize as something the kids watched when we were in Cambodia and Bali, and maybe as far back as Vietnam, and the thought of those places and their white beaches and the smell of lemon grass just drives my head into the ground, it’s so depressing. 

Will’s tugging on his ear. 

“Still hurt?” I say. 

He nods.  The ear in question is cherry red.

 

Jamie makes it to 7, wakes up his mother (who will owe me those three additional hours of sleep until the day she dies), and comes downstairs.   By this time, the grandparents are up and Lucy and Will are running around half-buzzed on sugar cereal, half-drunk on lack of sleep.  I hand Jamie his share of the Fruit Loops and leave for the bathroom.  When I return, Ellen is sorting through a pile of souvenirs I’d set aside during my search for the illusive baby whale. 

 “Some of these are gifts, right?”

“Better be,” I say.  “We don’t have room for that stuff back in Virginia.”

I go upstairs, get a glass of water, say a few things to the kids, and return to the basement.  Jamie is crying.

“What’s wrong with him?”

“Probably tired,” Ellen says.

“Jamie,” I say, “are you okay?”

He just sobs.

“What’s a matter, honey?” Ellen asks.

“Does your tummy hurt?” I say.

Jamie sobs some more, stammering out, “Y-y-yes.”  And then he opens his mouth and green vomit flies everywhere.

 

It’s 3:20 in the afternoon, and Ellen has come in to the room where I am stretched out on the bed.  “Paulie,” she says, “you need to get up.”

“%#$&,” I say, albeit in a very loving way. 

At 3:41 she returns.  “Paulie,” she says, “you need to get up.  You won’t be able to sleep if you don’t.”

She’s right, I know, but I don’t care.  Right now, my brain feels like someone has wrapped it in a warm wool blanket and dragged it down a very very deep hole.  I’m not so much on the bed, as of it. 

We laid down at 2, swearing we were each going to take a one hour nap—just enough to clear our heads after our pre-dawn cartoon-watching. 

Bad idea. 

Really really really bad idea. 

Fortunately, I have to go to the bathroom, so I literally must drag myself up—though, I admit, I do spend a good ten minutes of half-sleep trying to convince myself that there’s no shame in wet underwear.

Will and Lucy are still asleep as well.  “Kids,” I say, leaning in the door to their room.  “Time to get up.”

Silence.  It’s like there’s a black hole of sound in that room.

I nudge Will with my toe.  “Will,” I say, “you really have to get up.”

I expect a moan, but get nothing.  I look at the clock:  4:00.  Which means, what, 5 am in Hong Kong?  Or 3 am?  It’s an hour off, one way or the other, but my head is so stuffed with dried seaweed and turkey sausage, I can’t even do a simple calculation, much less come up with a reasonable metaphor.

“Will,” I say, and get down on my knees.  I poke his knee.  His leg shifts some, but falls back into place.  I rub his back, give his buttock a pinch.  Nothing.  I lift one ankle by the pant cuff, let it go.  It drops, limp. 

“Ellen,” I call into the living room, “they’ve gone boneless.”

 

It takes us 20 minutes to get them up and into the living room.  Propping them on the sofa, I run into the kitchen to get a drink of water.  When I return, they’ve slid on the floor, their eyes shut. 

“Crap,” I say.  We poke and prod, nudge and elbow, promising them ice cream if they’ll just wake up.  “Culvers,” I say.  “We can go get frozen custard.”

Finally we have them in the Volkswagon.  My head still feels like someone’s filled it with marshmallow fluff and lit it on fire, but I put the car in the gear and we lurch forward. 

When we get to Culvers, we pile out and walk across the flat, black, hot asphalt under the flat, beige, hot sky, into this non-descript blue restaurant that looks like someone took an A&W, gutted it, then installed the dullest furniture they could find.  We buy 5 ice cream cones.  We go sit in a booth.  We lick, silently.  The kids are still blurry eyed.  I still feel like my bones are made of wax that’s been sitting in the sun too long. 

“I’m not hungry,” Lucy says after about five minutes.

“Really?” I say, even though I’m not either.  “But it’s ice cream.” 

She just shakes her head.  Jamie, ever the lemming, says, “I’m not hungry either.”  Will nods. 

 

Will’s ear is still hurting.  Walking to the car, Ellen points to a Walmart.  It’s on the far side of a long, black parking lot the size of Conneticut.

“We should probably stop there and get some Tylenol.”

The thought of going into the big W a mere 24 hours after our return to the States depresses me almost to the point of—well, it’s hard to think of something to compare it to, because going to Walmart is in and of itself the most depressing thing in the world, but you get what I’m saying. 

But Will’s ear is hurting, so we trudge across the mega-gigantic supersized parking lot.  Inside, we’re greeted by a short woman with triceps the size and consistency of steamed buns that have been left in the rain.  Both of her ears are studded with black posts, lobe to crest.  I wonder, for a moment, why it never occurred to someone who spends that much time and money trying to look fashionable that maybe a few dips to shape the upper arms would be a useful thing.

We’re searching for three things:  Kids’ Tylenol, sandals for Will, and books on tape for our long drive up to Minnesota.  Stumbling through the aisles, we find none of them, though we do come across more of the sorts of people you only meet in America:  a bespectacled woman so large she looks like she’s pushing one tractor in front of her and pulling another behind; a teenage boy with a pencil fuzz moustache holding hands with a little girl in a pink Packers jersey; a skinny African-American girl who appears to be wearing a girdle-corset thingy outside her clothes. 

This last one particularly strikes me, and it takes a minute to figure out why.  Is it because she’s only the 5^th or 6^th black person I’ve seen in the last 12 months?  Is it because Manitowoc is such a whiter than white place, that she stands out?

But then it hits me:  it’s because, for the first time in almost year, we’re not the minority. 

 

We find no Tylenol, no sandals, no books on tape.  Crossing the parking lot again, a rusty Chrysler K cruises by us, moving the wrong way down the parking aisle.  Inside is a man in a grayed t-shirt with the sleeves cut off.  Old papers—phone books, newsprint, envelopes with plastic windows—are shoulder high in the back and passenger seats, as though he’s swimming in a sea of paper. 

 

 We’ve decided to drive back to Virginia together—it seems only fitting after a year away that we all pull up to our home together—so we stop at the U-Haul store to reserve a trailer. 

It’s a low, square building sided with beige tin.  A row of orange and white trucks is lined up near the back door, so that’s where I go in.  Inside, three rows of diagonal tables—the kind you find in church basements—are set up with piles of paper, bottles of glue, and scissors.  Six or seven women rest on their elbows, cutting and pasting.  It’s a scrapbook shop.

In front of me is a barrel-shaped man with close-cut gray hair.  He’s wearing a black Harley Davidson t-shirt adorned with a huge American flag.  This is an alliance, I’ll have to admit, that I’ve never really been able to figure out:  Harleys, in my mind sheltered, academic mind, are driven by gangs like the Hell’s Angels.  And Hell’s Angels, in my mind, like things that are decidedly un-American:  marijuana, gang violence, and crepes suzette, just to name a few. 

“Howdy,” the man says as I stroll in.  “What can I do you for?”

“A million dollars,” I’m tempted to say, “though that still might not be enough,” but I keep my mouth shut, except to tell him that I need a trailer.

He asks me a few questions—where, when, how far, for how long, did I have a hitch—and eventually get to the point where he starts tapping into his computer. 

We go through a few more details—do I want insurance (No), do I object to a trailer with Rush Limbaugh on the side (Yes).  He types away, clearly filling in some on-line form.  Eventually, though, he frowns and punches the return key.   The frown deepens.  He taps the key again. 

I expect him to say, “Dag nammit”—I mean, what more could I ask for on our first day back in the States?—but instead he puts on a pair of half-moon glasses, scans the clipping and pasting women, and says, “Bev?  A little help?”

A woman with short blondish gray hair comes over.  Her T-shirt is white, bearing the words “Scrapping: Girls Gone Wild.”

“What’s up?” she says. 

He points to the screen.  “I just put the number here, and then press enter, right?” 

She tilts her head back, peering through her spectacles.  Her glasses, like everything else about her, are wonderfully practical.  Over the years, I’ve known maybe a thousand women like her, aunts, and neighbors, teachers and friends—they’re a particular brand of Midwestern women, sturdy and smart and quick of wit and judgment.  They won’t hesitate to squeeze you in a bear-hug or slap your hand, depending on just how stupid you’re acting at any given moment.  Watching her, I actually find myself choking up, salt misting my eyes.

“Here,” she says, “what’s the number?”

He tells her.  She hammers a couple keys with one finger, then presses enter.  The machine beeps.

“There you are,” she says. 

“Thanks, hon.”

“No problem.”

 

Back in the car, we drive toward Lake Michigan, heading to Osco in search of the illusive Childrens’ Tylenol.  We drive along curving neighborhood streets, past houses I’ve known my entire life.  Even after a full year in Hong Kong, none of it feels weird—indeed, if anything is weird, it’s how absolutely normal all of this feels.  It’s like we never left. 

Along the way, Lucy notices the moon, pale in the afternoon sky.  We talk about this, how the moon and earth and sun are on a three dimensional plane, how that impacts what you can and can’t see and when.  I mention that among my hometown’s other claims to fame—a real-life WWII submarine in the harbor, a sadistic murderer featured on 20/20—there’s the story of meteorite that fell to earth right in the middle of 8th street, one sunny morning in the 1960s.

“What’s a meteorite?” says Lucy.

“It’s like a meteor,” I tell her, “only lighter.”

She doesn’t get the joke, and neither does her older brother who goes on to explain to her the difference between meteoroids, meteors, and meteorites—the first it turns, out, is just an object traveling through space, while the second is the same object entering the earth’s atmosphere.  The third is what actually hits the ground—if anything at all actually makes it through the friction of re-entry. 

By 5:00 we’re in the parking lot of the pharmacy down by Memorial Drive.  It’s not an Osco anymore, apparently having been bought out by CVS.  This is significant, because one of my most horrible moments before returning to the States involved having a sudden mental flash of myself sitting in the parking lot of the CVS in Lexington Virginia, digging desperately through my glove compartment for a gun, a knife, a tire gauge, anything I could use to end my miserable life in a miserable town in and miserable country dominated by a chain of miserable pharmacies known only for their innocuous ability to be stunningly the same no matter where you are. 

I don’t know where this sudden hatred of CVS came from:  I’d never been particularly bothered by the chain before our trip to Hong Kong.  That day, though, sitting in our flat in Tai Po, the tall green mountains outside our window, the hustle and bustle of one of the most fascinating, stimulating, constantly surprising cities in the world not 30 minutes away by train—sitting in that world and having this sudden vision of the dull, flat, predictable sameness of the CVS in Lexington, I’d felt utter despair. 

And now, barely 25 hours into our return to the States, here I am sitting in the parking lot of a CVS, the air conditioning cranked as we wait for Ellen to search yet another store for some medicine to cure my son’s ear-ache.  Stretching out in the front seat, I slide one of my favorite CDs into the player, turn the volume up just a little as Will and Lucy and Jamie chatter away in the back seat. 

I listen for a while, idly hoping Ellen will remember how much she loves me and grab a two-pound bag of Twizzlers before purchasing the medicine.  Eventually a song comes on that I like, and I sing the first few lines:

I think the kids are in trouble,

Do not know what all the troubles are for

Give them ice for their fevers

You’re the only thing I ever want anymore . . .

“Daddy,” says Lucy from the backseat, “how do you know the words to that song?”

“Because,” I say, turning so I can see her, “Daddy’s magic, remember?”

They laugh, and Will gives me what I’ll claim here is a loving tap on the back of the head with the heel of his shoe.

“Really,” she says when they’ve helped me wipe up the blood, “how do you know?”

“Because I listened to this CD every night for a month.”

“In Hong Kong?”

“Yes.”

“Where did you get it?”

“At the HMS,” I say.  “Remember?  Down in Central?”

And then it happens:  my body is in my car in a small town in eastern Wisconsin, the flat Midwestern sky stretching out above me, but my mind is flashing suddenly on a particular corner of Queens Road Central, just outside the MTR near Peddar Street.  Two doors down from the record shop is the mosaic-tiled restaurant Ellen’s friend Michael brought us to.  West leads to my tailor, the best noodle shop in Hong Kong, Shueng Wan and the Market and Hong Kong University.  To the East lies St. John’s Cathedral, Hong Kong Park, the trams and the tastiest Macau restaurants in the world, where the pork chops are tender and the rolls have a thin crust, like the best French baguette you’ve ever had.

And then there’s another flash, and I’m back outside CVS, the Wisconsin sun beating down on the car, the parking lots stretching out for miles all around, the radio loud and trailer tractor trucks rattling by.  

And all I can think is, “Damn.  It’s gone.” 

And it is.  It’s over. 

How You Know It's Time to Go Home

It’s not Bali’s fault.  To be fair, it didn’t have much of a chance at success.  For one thing, even though our fancy Sanur beach resort was supposed to be our last stop before going back to the place we’ve now come to call “Tea Party Nut-Job Land,” because of a weird series of events involving Filipino pirates, orangutans, and sea shells in the shape of John the Baptist’s left buttock, we ended up spending five days in Malaysia at a fancy beach resort there.  Two weeks of crazy travel ending in a beach resort equals really cool vacation.   One week of crazy travel ending in a beach resort and then going to another beach resort equals—well—anti-climax. 

Then there’s the fact that when we first showed up in the Bali we stayed in Ubud, which is arguably the coolest town in pretty much anywhere.  Years from now when I think back to Ubud, I’ll remember circles of men at the fire dance chanting words from an ancient play, a busy street full of markets and laughing women, restaurants where they greet you with scented towels fresh out of the cooler, and waking up in the morning to find monkeys on our porch, searching for food.

Okay, so the monkeys were a little scary—I mean, they’re cute from a distance, but when they’re chasing your six-year-old daughter with bared teeth, the charm sort of wears off. 

But even so:  Ubud was awesome.  Our hotel was surrounded by rice paddies and had a little open-air swimming pool full of cold cold water.   The people were gracious and kind, there was music everywhere we went.  We loved Ubud.

So Bali—or at least our beach hotel in Sanur—didn’t have much of a chance.

Of course, they didn’t do themselves any favors. 

“We’ve given you an upgrade,” the hotel clerk said as we checked in.

“I love you,” I replied.

He looked at me, a little startled.  I smiled.  He frowned. 

“Um,” I said, “Have you met my kids?”  I gestured toward the far end of the open-air lobby where Lucy was doing cart-wheels, Jamie was head-butting Will, and Will was trying to read something involving dragons and boy geniuses. 

I expected this would ease the tension some, but his frowned deepened. 

“Um,” I said, “and my lovely wife?”

The clerk nodded at Ellen, then said something in rapid Balinese to the concierge.  The other man answered back, then rose from his desk and came over to the counter.  The two of them chatted back and forth for a minute, then the concierge gestured toward the kids. 

“These are your children?”

I nodded.  I wasn’t sure what was going on, but despite the concierge’s attempt at a warming smile, I could tell there was a problem.

“Please,” he said, and nodded toward his desk.  I followed him over.

“You have been given an upgrade,” he said.

“That’s very nice.”

“Unfortunately,” he said, “there are rules in The Club.”

“The huh?”

“The Club,” he said, and started typing at his computer. 

Turns out a lot of fancy hotels have a “club” section, an area reserved for special customers.  Sometimes this section has its own pool, sometimes it has a special bar.  Generally the rooms are substantially nicer.  What exactly makes the customers “special” varies from resort to resort, but at our Sanur hotel, that special features was—

“Excuse me?” I said to the concierge.  “I’m not sure I heard you right.”

“No kids,” he repeated.

I looked at him.  He was busily typing away, eyes intent on his screen.  He didn’t seem to be joking.  Then I turned a looked at my kids.  Lucy was still doing cartwheels, flashing her bright-pink designer bloomers (“Francie-pants”—look them up on-line), Will had given up on his book and was strolling the lobby fingering the objet-d’arts on display, each of which stood over a small cardboard sign that said, “Do Not Touch.”  Jamie was—well, I’m not sure, but it looked like he was digging through the garbage.

I turned back to the concierge.  “No kids?” I said.  “Really?”

I’ll admit he was very nice.  He explained that The Club area was set up for couples on their honeymoon, older folks looking for a quiet get-a-way, and other people who generally hated kids. 

“But didn’t you know we had kids?” I asked.

He shook his head, still typing. “Your reservation said ‘Mr. and Mrs.”

“Well, yes,” I said.  “But we also asked for two rooms.”

“But all it said was ‘Mr. and Mrs.’”

“Two rooms, for five people.  Who did you think the other three people were?”

“’Mr. and Mrs.’”

I gritted my teeth.  He kept tapping.  What was he doing, filing his tax returns?  I wondered for a minute if maybe he, too, had a blog, if maybe his was called “Why Kids Suck.blogspot.Com,” or maybe, “Stupid White Men Who Are Even Dumber Than Most of the Other Stupid White Men.blogspot.com.” 

In the end, he was forced to compromise.  Since no other rooms were available, we were “allowed” to stay in The Club for one night.  After that, our “up-grade” would be down-graded and we’d be thrown into some rat-hole with the rest of the breeder riff-raff.   As if that weren’t bad enough, for our one night n that Shangri-La they, we were warned to keep the kids very very quiet.

“So as not to disturb the other guests,” the concierge informed me.

“Sure,” I said.  “We wouldn’t want to annoy any guests now, would we?”

As we followed the bell-boy along a palm-lined path, I turned to Ellen.  “I knew I should’ve brought some fire-crackers.”

“The annoying thing,” she said, “is that they clearly upgraded us because they were over-booked.  It was their mistake to begin with.”

Which is true enough.  And it’s also true enough that when Ellen makes a comment like that, things are seriously out of whack.  Ellen is, after all, the kind and gracious half of our dysfunctional little marriage, and seldom has a mean word to say about anyone or anything.

The Club rooms were gorgeous, with a capital “GORG”:  tiled floors, high ceilings, plush beds, big balconies overlooking a terraced series of cool blue swimming pools (forbidden to the children of course).  In short, pretty much the nicest room we’d had during our travels in Asia. 

“Hey!” Lucy said, when she noticed the big French doors.  “Look!  A balcony!”

“Balcony!” roared Jamie.

“Noooooooooooo!!!!!!” Ellen and I hollered simultaneously, leaping across the room and slamming the doors shut just as the two of them, followed by Will, were about to head into the open air, hurling kiddy cooties and noise pollution before them like Pig-Pen at an Ozzy Osbourne concert. 

The kids just stared at us, frozen in their tracks.

“No,” I said, just to make sure they’d gotten the point. 

They continued to stare, trying to cipher why their parents were being even more bizarre than usual. 

“You can’t go out there,” Ellen said. 

“Why not?” Will asked.

“Because—“ I said, then couldn’t figure out how to explain it.  “Because you can’t.”

“Why not?”  This time it was Lucy. 

“Because,” Ellen said, “children aren’t allowed out on the balcony.”

The three of them took a moment to digest this, and then Jamie—who learns quickly, particularly when it’s something his parents would rather he didn’t—said, “Why not?”

“Because,” I told him, “this is the place that hates children.”

 

Okay, so that’s overstating it a little.  But just a little.  The resort—or at least The Club portion—definitely had a bit of a Vulgaria feel—the land from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang where kids are illegal—as though kids were not just forbidden, but hunted down, bagged, tagged, and fried with onions.  It wasn’t just that you couldn’t hear the sound of children, laughing, splashing, farting with their armpits.  You couldn’t hear anything.  There was no noise.  Anywhere.

“Weird,” said Ellen, coming out of one of the bathrooms. 

“What?”

She held up a hairdryer.  “The instructions are in German.”

“So?”

She shrugged.  “The signs in the lobby.  They were in German too.”

We looked at each other.  “Now that I think of it,” Ellen went on after a moment, “the guide book did say this side of the peninsula was sort of reserved for German and Austrian retirees.”

I frowned.  “Really?”  I’d always imagined Bali as a kind of laid-back, free swinging place, sort of an Indonesian Jamaica, minus the dreadlocks and that really bad movie about the guys with the bobsled.  After a year in Hong Kong, where every building, every bus, every public toilet almost disappears under a shingling of signs forbidding this or that behavior (Bouncing a ball is illegal?  Really?), Bali seemed like welcome relief.  Now though, I pictured a parade of sun-dried geriatric Germans parading by my chaise lounge in string bikinis and sling-shot Speedos, frowning in that Hessian way because my children were breathing too loud. 

“Maybe we should switch hotels,” I said. “What’s on the other side of the peninsula?”

“Drunken Aussie college students.”

“Then again . . .”

 

Dinner didn’t help.  It was already late, so instead of our usual routine of wandering the streets until we found something that looked good, cheap, or both, we decided to eat at the hotel restaurant and make an early night of it.  We knew this would cost us, but it seemed the best option at the time.  Besides, we reasoned, hotel restaurants are usually very nice.

And this one was too.  Sort of.  Right next to the beach, it featured a long tent-like structure under the swaying palms.  The only problem was that it was breezy, so they’d lowered a series of thick plastic sheets to block the wind.  Which would have been okay, had the plastic not been so sand-blasted and scarred as to be opaque, making you feel as though you were sitting in a styrofoam cup.  We could hear the surf, sure.  But see it?  No way.

The food was okay though, and not overly expensive, particularly as we made the children share a pizza.  Between the protein and the wine, we were feeling a little better, a little less cranky.  Then Ellen stopped mid-conversation and stared.  I looked at her, waiting for her to continue, but she didn’t.  Finally, I followed her gaze.

Across the sidewalk, back toward the main body of the hotel, stood two huge—I dunno—gryphon-dragon-phoenix-type thingies, their green figures shining in the glare of two ground-level spotlights.  I’d noticed them earlier, but hadn’t spent any real time thinking about them.  Now, though, Ellen couldn’t seem to take her eyes off of them.

“What?” I said. 

A rueful smile creased her face.

“What?” I said again. 

“Look,” she said.  “Look carefully.”

I did.  Two winged dragons, dark green with gold and red trim, highlighted by halogens.  I looked back at Ellen. 

“I don’t get it.”

She was still smiling, or maybe it was more of a grimace, it was hard to tell in the refracted light of our particular styrofoam cup. 

“Can’t you tell?” she said.

I looked again, more carefully this time.

“They’re facing the hotel,” she said.  “Away from us.”

And then I got it.  All night I’d been looking at the dragons the wrong way, thinking they were direct toward us.  And I couldn’t understand why their faces were so peculiar, why their eyes seemed so strange, why their mouths were pursed like that.  Now that Ellen pointed it out, though, I understood that what I’d thought were their shoulders were actually their haunches, that what I’d assumed were eyes were just decorative paintings on their hind quarters.  And what I’d thought were their mouths were . . . well . . .

“Wow,” I said.  “That’s the largest sphincter I’ve ever seen.”

And detailed, too.  Elaborately so.  As we could tell, even from ten feet away, because—you know—of the two very bright spotlights shining right at them. 

 

This isn’t to say that Bali was bad.  It wasn’t.  Every where we went their were palm trees and rice paddies and sandy beaches.  Stormy-faced god and goddess statues stood on every corner, and the Balinese had decorated them all in white and black plaid skirts and golden sashes.  Below each---and sometimes in random trees or along fences—folks had left hand-size baskets woven of palm fronds and filled with rice, flowers, and burning incense:  offerings to the gods for good luck. 

So Bali wasn’t bad. 

But we were.  We were tired—tired of traveling, tired of hotels, tired of restaurant food.  The kids were tired of being away from their own beds, tired of not being able to play with their friends, tired of having to get breakfast at a buffet every morning.  Ellen and I were tired of them fighting over which channel to watch as we took our morning showers, and tired of walking past dusty market stalls and having folks try to sell us stuff. 

Indeed, we were sick of stuff, which is saying something.  Whereas we’d spent roughly 80% of our waking hours in China and Vietnam buying artsy little crapola for our friends and family back home, in Bali we could barely focus our eyes on any of the beautiful wood carvings, woven placemats, or shell necklaces. 

The one exception to this rule were the prominently displayed carved wooden penises that seemed to be everywhere—and I do mean everywhere:  we must have seen 10,000 of these things in 4 days.  Ranging in size from infantile to gia-normous, they were nearly as detailed as the dragon butts.  Some of them were attached to bottle openers or carved ashtrays, but most of them were just, well, standing there, if you know what I mean.

“What’s the deal?” I said.

Ellen just rolled her eyes.

“I’m serious,” I said.  “We haven’t seen anything like this anywhere.  Why Bali?”

I’m sure we could have found out easily enough—by asking someone, or even cracking open the index to our guide books and looking under, I don’t know, “weird willie obsession”—but we just couldn’t be bothered. 

None of which is to say that we didn’t have any fun.  We did.  We spent three or four hours a day in the hotel pool, frolicking with the kids and thanking god that most of the Germans were wearing one-pieces.  We wandered up the beach some, taking in the parasailors and brightly-painted fishing boats. 

We had some good food.  There was a nice English-style pub down the road from our hotel, and hotel itself had a breakfast buffet that included—I’m not making this up—chocolate-covered strawberry and banana pancakes.  

And right outside our down-graded up-graded hotel room—which was, I must say, a dump—stood a beautiful straw-roofed pagoda surrounded by a cool dark goldfish pond.  It—the pagoda—was carpeted with woven straw mats and triangular pillows that you could lean against as you read, or chatted, or napped.  I love watching goldfish, and I love the smell of straw, so this place quickly became one of my favorite spots on earth. 

So we did enjoy ourselves.  Really we did.  And eventually we even stopped referring to our hotel as “The place that hates kids.”

 

But . . .

I don’t know what it was.  Maybe it was just that we’d seen one crazy nice hotel, one crazy nice beach, one crazy nice country too many.

Maybe it was just that we were tired—two-and-a-half weeks on the road is a long time, especially with three kids who think that having an raspberry contest in a the middle of a fancy restaurant is an appropriate way to pass the time.

Or maybe we were just ready to get home—home home, in Virginia, not Hong Kong.  Ready to get back to our own beds, our own toys, our own friends.

Or maybe it’s not that we wanted to go, but that it was time to go, whether we wanted to or not.  Because maybe when you’re sick of these things—the hotels, the beaches, the people, the food, the countries—maybe when you have to struggle even to notice these things, to not feel blasé about them—maybe then it’s just time to get out of Dodge, whether you want to or not.

I don’t know. 

What I do know is that we’ll go back to Bali someday.  Simply put, we haven’t done this country justice:  we need a good two, three weeks to roam the entire island, get out of the tourist areas, sample more of the food, really see the people, really try and understand the place (and their weird obsession with willies).  Our last morning there, an elderly Frenchman came over and tried to play with Will and me (don’t ask).  Anyhow, once I’d determined he wasn’t a child molester, he seemed friendly enough and we got to talking about our countries and our travels.  And he told Ellen and I about this amazing place, way up in the hills of Bali, were there were no tourists, no airplanes, no jet skis and souvenir shops—“Just,” he said, and then gestured with his hands and looked up at the sky, “just—stars.”

So yeah, we’re going back there.  I know that for sure.

And then there’s this:  after our last morning at the resort, after we’d stuffed our faces with banana-chocolate-strawberry pancakes and swum in the pool one last time, after we’d packed our bags and knelt to look under the bed, after we’d paid our bill and left a nice tip for the help (including our favorite concierge), I took a minute and wandered out of the room and across the path to the big pagoda surrounded by a fish pond. 

Settling on the straw mat, I inhaled that dry-grass smell one last time, wondering if I’d ever be here again.  Below me, dozens of brightly colored fish curved and slid through the dark water.  I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but one of the big surprises for me in Asia is how I’ve come to love these fish.  I love their colors, their bulk, love the way that muscularity glides through the water—so silent, so graceful.  So peaceful.  You can be anywhere in Hong Kong, in Tsim Sha Tsui on the peninsula or even in Central, at some restaurant full of noise and heat and waiters hustling by with steaming trays of dim sum—you can be at one of those restaurants and have to go to the bathroom, and follow a hall toward the back that takes you to an open-air sink and men’s on the left and women’s on the right, and there, right there in the middle of this massive city in this busy region on this gigantic continent—

--right there you’ll find a small pond with a tiny fountain in it and a dozen orange and black fish sliding back and forth in crystal water.

And you’ll breath deeper.  And longer.  And your pulse will slow—and you’ll just know that you’ve added three years to your life.

So now, sitting in Bali on that open-air pagoda, I watch these fish and breath deep and feel the anticipatory stresses of packing and travel leave my chest.  I watch as the red and blacks slip past the oranges, as the pure whites glide by the red and whites.  A giant black one slips out from the shadows and makes his way back and forth among the rest.  He’s huge, maybe five or six times the size of the rest of them, so big he takes your breath away.

 “Big dumb fish,” I say, “don’t you know you don’t belong here?”

I watch him for a while, observe the way he seems never to touch the other fish though he passes them so closely, indeed, seems to disturb their patterns, their swirls of motion. Where did he come from? I wonder.  Why is he so big?  Is he cruel?  Do the others fear him?  Might he not actually feed on them every once in a while?

These are silly questions, I know.  A friend of mine once told me that fish memories only retain information for three seconds.  “Hey look,” said my friend, imitating the large grouper we were admiring in a restaurant tank.  “A castle.”  Then—seconds later—he did it again: “Hey, look!  A castle.”

Which would be a miserable life, of course:  who wants to live with no past, no moments, only the now? 

But then again, I suppose, there are times when such an approach is good, when it’s best to live in where you are right now, not thinking about your next move or mistakes you’ve made or whether or not this hotel or that beach is as good as the last one you were at.

Maybe.  I don’t know.  But I stay there as long as I can, resting on that woven mat, shaded from the warm Bali sun by that straw roof, watching those gorgeous, muscular fish gliding back and forth, their colors flashing in the afternoon light.  And most of all, I watch that big black fish—that giant black fish, so anomalous, so unnecessary—drifting in and out, searching, restless—until he disappears into the shadows as though never there at all. 

Our Intimate Relationship with Borneo

I want you to know that it wasn’t meant to be like this.  When we decided back in March that we were going to spend a week or so in Malaysian Borneo, we set out to rough it.  We booked “rooms” at some camp out in the wild:  looking at pictures on the internet, what we saw were rustic huts, up on stilts, with what looked like one wall missing. 

“Cool,” I said, “We can get malaria.”

“There’s no malaria in Borneo,” Ellen said.

“Then we can just stay up all night with mosquitoes buzzing our ears.”  Just to make sure she knew what I meant, I leant toward her and went,   “Neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.”

She swatted once, then clicked to the registration page.  “You want to see wildlife, right?”

“Neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.”

This time she connected.  “Ow,” I said.  Then added, “Yes.”  Our friends Joe and Jennifer had told us about the wonders of Sabah, how you could see orang utans (closely related to, but not exactly the same as orangutans), proboscis monkeys, monitor lizards, and snakes big enough to eat a large baby, which was fine with me because Jamie was still refusing to poo in the toilet. 

I’d always wanted to visit Borneo, every since I’d seen the video for Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like a Wolf,” with its scenes of dusty noon-day cafes, steaming hot jungles, and women in bikinis crawling around on all fours.  Subsequent research that told me the video had actually been filmed in Sri Lanka did little to dampen my passion for Sabah—which likely tells you a thing or two about logic, sex, and the nature of my brain. 

Anyhow, we were all set:  for six days we’d rough it in Borneo, lulled to sleep by the croaking, chirping, and howling of Malaysian wildlife, forgoing the usual four- and five-star hotel buffets for a breakfast of mealy toast and roasted pebbles, lathering our legs with Deep Jungle Off in a desperate attempt to tame mosquitoes the size of large bats.  This was just what the doctor ordered—that, and cloroquine—to cap our year in Asia.

 

Then, sometime in mid-April, I was in the kitchen doing the dishes (I try to do this every month or so, just so that when Ellen complains about how hard she works, I can frown sincerely and murmur, “I know just what you mean,” before handing her the scrub brush and nudging her toward the kitchen.)

--Anyhow: I was in the kitchen doing dishes, sometime in mid-April when Ellen called:  “Paul.”

“Yes dear,” I said.  (I try to call her dear every month or so, just so that I can—oh, never mind . . .)  I went into the living room, where she was hunched over her laptop. 

She just pointed at the screen.  Settling next to her, I pulled on my glasses.  She was at a site run by the US State Department, looking at a travel advisory: 

U.S citizens should consider the risks associated with travel to eastern Sabah in Malaysia due to the threat from both terrorist and criminal groups. There are indications that both criminal and terrorist groups are planning or intend acts of violence against foreigners in eastern Sabah, notwithstanding the Government of Malaysia's increased ability to detect, deter and prevent such attacks. The Abu Sayyaf Group, based in the southern Philippines, has kidnapped foreigners in eastern Sabah in the past. Criminal elements are also responsible for kidnapping and piracy committed against foreigners. Of present concern are the resorts (and transportation to and from them) located in isolated areas of eastern Sabah, including Semporna and the islands of Mabul and Sipadan. Please avoid or use extreme caution in connection with any travel in these areas or locations.

I sat back, rubbed my eyes, and looked at the posting again.  Then I looked at Ellen.  She was frowning.  She’d spent the better part of every evening during the month of March planning this particular leg of our trip.  It was hard to tell if the look in her eyes was fear, sadness, or just plain anger. 

“Huh,” I said. 

She nodded.  There wasn’t much else to say, really.

We mulled things over for a few days, trying to figure out if this was a recent warning based on recent activity, just a casual warning—“You better bring your umbrella; it might rain.”—or a dire threat—“Go only if you want to see members of your family drawn and quartered and served on a really big pizza.”  Did, we wondered, the warning apply to the part of Sabah that we were in—yes, we were in the east, but we were in the north east, and most of the activity described seemed to be happening in the south east. 

Eventually we sent an e-mail directly to the consulate in Malaysia, asking for their assessment of the situation.  The reply we received—after six days—wasn’t really very helpful:  “The threat is real, if not imminent.  While we would never prevent American citizens from traveling where ever they wish, if you choose to go to Eastern Sabah, please do use caution.”

Long story short (like I ever do that!), we finally decided that we weren’t comfortable taking our kids into a region where pirates were doing more than saying “Arh,” and handing out balloons.  Were we on our own without the kids, the story might be different, but there are some things so stupid that even we won’t do it. 

 

Which is how we ended up at the Rasa Ria hotel in western Sabah.  Of course, “hotel,” isn’t really the right word.  More like, I dunno, maybe “big fat fancy mansion for a lot of rich people who might as well be in Flagstaff for all the contact they have with Borneo”?

Now I want to be fair:  connected to the Rasa Ria is a reserve for the rehabilitation of juvenile Orang Utans.  I mean, if you’re going to be a big fancy hotel that makes bucket loads of money, the least you can do is dedicate some small portion of that money to weaning gangsta apes of their addiction to fermented bananas and Green Day. 

And trust me when I say that the Rasa Ria is a fancy hotel.  Imagine a place where, when you pull up in your car, they welcome you by striking a gong.  Imagine a hotel with one of those fancy pools that twists and curves through stands of palm trees, where you can get drinks with little umbrellas brought to your chaise lounge, where there’s dawn to midnight childcare, where they not only come into your room in the evening, fold back your covers, and leave little mints on your pillows, but tiptoe back in as you’re drifting off to sleep and massage your temples. 

This was, to put it bluntly, not just the nicest hotel we’ve ever been in, but a hotel so nice that I actually broke into hives just crossing the threshold. 

“We don’t belong here,” I whispered to Ellen as we followed a team of bellboys carrying our luggage to our room on a solid gold chariot.  “I have family who drink wine from a box.”

Ellen gave me a look.  “You’re wearing a shirt that says, ‘I’m with stupid,’ and has an arrow pointing to your crotch,” she said.  “I think wine in a box is the least of our problems.” 

Okay, so I’m exaggerating slightly:  we’ve been to places on par with the Rasa (as I like to call it) before:  the Brown in Louisville, the Palmer in Chicago, some fancy-schmanzy Japanese-style place in San Francisco that I can’t remember the name of.  Even our last hotel in Vietnam was pretty cool—also on the beach, also with a huge buffet, also with a fancy pool and nice waiters who would serve us Vietnamese coffee as we lounged under palm trees. 

The difference is that, by the time we got to our fancy hotel in Vietnam, we’d already been in-country for two weeks, had forged our way through the heat and dust of Hanoi, had trekked cross-country to get to Ha Long Bay, had taken dragon-boat rides in Hue.  And even when we were at our ritzy hotel, we made a point of going into Hoi An almost daily. 

In other words, in Vietnam, we felt like were getting to know the country:  we’d interacted with merchants and tour guides and taxi drivers and waiters and hawkers on the street and the roughly 6,000 people who wanted to touch Lucy’s hair.  I’m not so stupid as to claim that—after a mere 14 days—we knew Vietnam.  But at the very least, we were starting to get a good sense of it—of the people, the food, the values, the priorities, the daily life of folks.

Not so in Borneo. 

The first evening we were there, Will and I were standing by the dinner buffet, checking out the options.  There was roast chicken, prime rib, Swedish meatballs, crab legs, six different kinds of soup, sushi, spaghetti, and on and on and on.  Everything my little heart could desire, complete with a chocolate fountain at the dessert bar. 

“Is this all Malaysian food?” Will asked. 

I glanced at the gigantic platter full of meatballs.  I’m not much of a fan myself, but I have to admit they looked pretty good sitting there, surrounded by grilled vegetables and some sort of prawn-cracker type thing. 

“Yes,” I said. 

He looked at the placard in front of us, then at the meatballs, then up at me.  “Swedish meatballs?”

I frowned at him.  “Are we in Malaysia?”

He nodded.

“And is this food?”

 “Yes,” he said. 

“Need I say more?”

Seriously, the sad thing about all of this is that I really can’t, finally, name a single Malaysian dish for you.  Sure, we had some “real” Malaysian food a few days later when we were in Kuala Lumpur, but by then we were already thinking about Bali, and would have stuffed a pickled goat into our mouths if they’d put it on a plate with garnish.   

This is not to say that we came away with absolutely no sense of Borneo.  We discovered, for instance, that when Borneons greet someone, they place their right hands on their heart.  This, I think, is pretty cool, although I have to admit that more than once when I was greeted in this way I was carrying Jamie on my right arm and thus used my left hand to touch my heart, something that caused more than one person to stare at me, cover their eyes, and flee in horror.

And, of course, we spent one steamy morning in the nature preserve attached to the hotel grounds watching orang utans branchiate above our heads.  Which was pretty cool.  Hotel grounds or not, the rainforest that they took us into was the real deal, filled with thick foliage, moist earth, and surreal sounds, including one high, keening drone that continued the whole time we were there.  We sweated like crazy and took maybe 2000 pictures between us—even the usually unimpressed Will took nearly 100—but dang if we didn’t get to see our ancestors eating bananas and having pee fights. 

And on one fine day, we signed up for a trip south to see Proboscis monkeys.  Now I know what those of you who’ve seen me in person are thinking:  Proboscis monkeys?  Those simians with the huge snoz?  And you paid for this?  Why not just go look in the mirror and save yourself some money? 

Because, smartass, my kids have already seen my huge snoz, and have ceased to be impressed with it long ago (emphasis on “long”).   And besides, Ellen and I were hoping that by getting off of the compound we’d have a chance to see some of the real Malaysia, beyond the bikini-wearing masseuses doling out sunscreen by the poolside. 

And we did.  Driving south, through Kota Kinabalu toward Penampang, we rolled past low hills and thick brush, weather-beaten homes with pick up trucks and Toyotas in the front yard, rusted basketball hoops, billboards advertising hotels and restaurants. 

“Dang,” I said to Ellen as we glided along.  “It looks like Virginia.”

 

The monkey trip was a hit, though.  Pulling up to a long boardwalk leading into the jungle, we marched toward a base camp where they fed us a few small snacks, tried to sell us some really cool masks and carvings that I now wish we’d bought, and led us to a long boat which they steered up the river.

Our guide, a small man with a thick accent, cautioned us about getting our hopes up.  “They are very shy,” he said of the Proboscis.  “We may be lucky.  But maybe not.  Who knows?”

We were lucky.  After trolling up the river for maybe 5 minutes, we saw several groups of makaks and two or three monitor lizards the size of either a really small Oscar Meyer Wienermobile or a really large Oscar Meyer wiener,.  Ten minutes after that, our guide pointed to a distant tree, bare of leaves.  We looked.  Strewn among the far tips of the branches were either squirrels’ nests or really really huge bags of laundry.  We got out our binoculars.

Sure enough, they were proboscis monkeys—orange-furred, with white spots around their eyes and those unmistakable noses.  We watched them for a while, concentrating hard getting some good shots with our cameras.  Soon enough, our guide started the boat again and we moved further downstream.  We were satisfied:  we came, we saw, we took fuzzy gray pictures of monkeys with huge noses.  What could be better?

And then we rounded a bend and everyone in the boat went, “Ahhhhh.”  Not two hundred feet away was a huge tree, right by the river, filled with monkeys.  The boat’s driver steered us as close as he could without running into the trees and shrubs overhanging the river bank.  We just stared. 

“Seven,” said a Filipino doctor at the back of the boat.

There was silence, then his wife said, “No, I see eleven.” 

“That one,” the guide said, “has a baby.”

We stared in silence again.  The monkeys were so close we could see the different shades of fur, the features of their faces all without binoculars or zoom lenses.  True, none of this was completely clear, but even so. 

“Fifteen,” someone finally said. 

But there were more than that.  One branch alone held three, all lined up as though having a meeting.  On the opposite side of the tree were three more:  a male, a female, and a baby.  And every time we thought we’d counted them all, some bit of branch or vegetation—or what we’d thought was vegetation—would move, and we’d have to add another to our total.

We probably stayed there a good half hour, taking pictures at first, then passing around the super powerful binocs Ellen and I had purchased in the Cheng Du airport—you could read a newspaper at gate A5 from A31—then just sitting and watching, simply enjoying the cool evening, the broad, white sky, and the unfazed monkeys staring back at us calmly, then ignoring us completely.

After that, it was back to the base camp, passing several herd of water buffalo cooling off in the water.  We had dinner there, then our guide insisted on taking us back on the river to see the fireflies.  We did, were duly impressed, then motored down toward a village not far from where we’d left our van. 

Climbing out of the boat, we followed our guide through the nearly pitch darkness along a number of bamboo walkways.  We passed a school, then made our way onto a paved road.  I had Jamie on my shoulders and was sweating even though it wasn’t really that hot.  I could feel his fingers on my ears, stroking what little hair remains on my head.  In the distance, a chime sounded and we could hear Muslim chants blasted over a loudspeaker.  The smell of smoke and cooking came from somewhere nearby, and all in all, as we marched down that road in the black night, I found myself wishing we had a few more days in Borneo, that we had more time to get out of our hotel/resort/compound and get to know the people a bit more, the food, the culture.

But alas, we didn’t.  In another day or so, we’d head off to Kuala Lumpur, then it was down to Bali for what was to have been the relaxing final leg of our journey—indeed, of our year in Asia. 

So no, there was no more time to explore Borneo, no more chance to get to know anything other than this dark road, this smell of bamboo and palm fronds, this croaking of frogs and chanting in the darkness.  This was it. 

And we all know who’s to blame.  

Duran Duran.  

And Then There Are These Moments

Traveling through Asia, there are sometimes moments like this:

We’re sitting in a restaurant in Kuala Lumpur.  No, actually, it’s a not a restaurant, it’s a bistro, which means that the booths are high and wooden, the floors are tiled, the bar is elaborate with mirrored shelves lined with shiny bottles of Tanquaray, Citroen Vodka, seven different kinds single-malt scotch.  Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and other well-known Malaysian jazz singers blast from the tower speakers at the far end of the room. 

Two hours later, back at our hotel, we’ll discover a market street one block over, full of busy cafes and vendors hawking smoked squid and soya fish and cold cold beer.   We’re in KL for only half a day, en-route to Bali, and this—the market, the atmosphere, the noise, the wonderful urban chaos—is exactly what we were looking for for dinner.  But no.  We’ve got a bartender anxious to make us cosmopolitans, and Lena Horn singing, “If you aaask me, I could write a book.  About the way you move, the way you talk the waaaay you look.”

Oh well.  I’m tempted to be angry.  Or at least annoyed.  We’d set out to find the “Little China” area of Kual Lumpur, but had only gotten as far as an indoor market with overpriced dragon kites and scorpions set in glow-in-the-dark key-chain plastic.  For dinner, we’d wandered toward “Little India,” but never quite found it.  So, hungry and tired and bordering on the sort of desperation you feel when you’re with three smallish kids who are hungry and tired, we’d settled on the bistro.  Oh well.

“At least it has real Malaysian food,” Ellen says, as we sit there, trying to chat over the strains of All of Me.

Except that—well, I hate to say this, but there’s a reason you don’t find dozens of Malaysian restaurants in cities world wide.  Imagine Thai food, with less spice, less lime, more sugar, more peanuts and more, I don’t know, sort of an overcooked potato taste, only with no actual potatoes in sight—and that’s your basic Malaysian dish. 

Which makes it all the more a pity that we couldn’t find Little India.   And didn’t know about the street market just behind our hotel.  So we sit at our marble-topped table, sipping our Sprites, listening to Ella Fitzgerald crooning about how she don’t get around much anymore.

 

And sometimes there are moments like this:

After dinner, we make a bathroom run.  Our bistro is, of course, attached to a large mall, so we straggle in, searching for the usual blue and red man and woman signs.  We find them, and slide down a narrow hallway between a (undoubtedly very Malaysian) deli and an international grocery store.  After attending to business, we stroll into the latter, searching for bottled water and maybe some fresh fruit for the next day’s flight.

We wander.  We’ve been traveling 10 days at this point, been in three different hotels, had maybe 9 hours in the air.  We’re tired, and bored, and a little depressed.  Slogging past cans of squid and chili-pepper-flavored Pringles and beef-flavored potato chips, we blink dully.  Then we turn a corner, and Will says, “Hey.”

We stop.  He points.  On the second shelf down stands a row of white Quaker Oats boxes, the little dude in the blue hat and coat with the fluffy ascot. 

“Quaker chewy granola bars,” Will says.  The listlessness has left his face.  “I’ve been missing those all year.”

I look at Ellen.  She nods.  Traveling in Asia, we’ve learned to pack your own snacks, filling half a suitcase with granola bars and Go Aheads! an orange-flavored Garibaldi rip-off that the kids used to like—the operative term, of course, being “used to”:  I know it sounds strange, but after probably a cumulative six-weeks on the road over the course of the year, gnawing their way through 27 packages of Go Aheads!, the kids appear to have gotten sick of them.  Go figure. 

I put a hand up, grab two boxes of Quaker chewy granola bars off the shelf.  I start to reach for another, then stop, glancing at Ellen.  She nods again.  I get two more, and she grabs a fifth, and we make our way to the check-out counter, suddenly lighter of heart.

 

Or moments like this:

We’re at the smiley-face temple.  I’m sorry I don’t know the actual name of it, but we’ve been to so many temples in Cambodia, and the language there is so unlike Chinese, filled with silent “h”s and “v”s that sound like “w”s and stuff like that that the minute our guide, Vulthy, (pronounced “Woody”—see what I mean?) tells us the name of the next place we’re about to see, my brain switches to “Good Ship Lollipop” mode and I just fall asleep on the sunny beach of peppermint bay.

Which is not to diminish any of these temples.  On the contrary, they are spectacular—every one of them mysterious and historically interesting and architecturally atmospheric.  Indeed, Cambodia as a whole is a delight.  The people are gracious and kind (Jamie has his own entourage at our hotel), the food is a delightful mix of Thai and Vietnamese, massages are cheap and professional, and the country-side is beautiful:  red-brown dirt soil and palm trees, huts on stilts and dogs barking in the warm evening light.  And if all of that isn’t enough for you, at the end of the day, you can walk down any street in Siem Reap, pay a woman a dollar, climb up on a platform, and stick your feet into a large tank of water where hundreds of small silver fish with “massage” your feet by nibbling off the dry skin and salt.  

You heard me.

 

Anyhow, we’re at the smiley-face temple, and it is glorious:  a massive pile of stone and rumble, 37 out of an original 100 towers still standing, each of them with four smiling Buddhas, one carved into each side.  We climb several sets of stairs, trace our way along a terrace, weave in and out of the various entryways and towers.  It’s a fantasy world only real—like being in an Indiana Jones movie, or something starring Angelina Jolie with a long knife.  I keep looking for the Disney signs. 

It’s the perfect place for a nine-year-old boy with an imagination, which is great, since we have one of those.  The only problem is, Will is not having a good time.  For one thing, it’s hot, and poor Will hates the heat.  For another thing, it’s late in the day, and this is the fifth or sixth temple we’ve visited, and Will’s feeling very sorry for himself.  Then there’s the fact that I, wonderful father that I am, have been grumpy with him all day, telling him to pull it together, to stop worrying about the heat, to just enjoy being here and seeing these ruins. 

But he can’t.  Because he’s 9 and he’s been away from home for a year and now he’s away from his home away from home, and it’s hot, and the food here seems kind of weird, and we stayed up late last night watching some dumb dance show, and got up early this morning so we could ride some elephants that were bigger and scarier and—well—bumpier than any of us had expected. 

So we’re wandering through this maze of buildings, and Will is trudging along, every angle of his body determined to convey to us his utter dissatisfaction with the heat and his parents and this stupid place, and one more stupid twelve-hundred-year-old temple.  At one point, Vulthy suggests we pose for a family picture, and Will sighs so loudly and so deliberately that I want to strangle him:

“Get a grip!” I say.  “We’re here for a whole 45 minutes—just relax and enjoy yourself.”

My voice has more edge than I intend—or maybe not.  Maybe it has just the exact amount of anger I’m feeling right now, anger for the way he’s behaving, anger for the fact that I put him in this situation, anger that I can’t do anything to help him now, anger at my own anger. 

Regardless, it’s a frustrating situation—late in the day, hot, with no food and everyone’s blood sugar plummeting into the depths. 

We wander a bit more.  I’m tinkering with the settings on my camera, playing with the black and white and the color modes, trying to get some really good photos.  Eventually I look up and realize everyone has moved on without me.  I pick up my pace, darting between stone pillars that are older than anything I’ve seen or touched before.  I stumble up a flight of stairs, into a dark cloister.  Boards have been laid out on the uneven floor, and I follow them first to the right, then to the left.  At the end of a long corridor, I hear Lucy say, “Daddy!” and I take another quick right.  Up ahead, I see a golden glow, and figures moving on the edge of the light.  I stumble forward.

Within seconds, I’m in a small enclosure, open on all four sides, yes, but open only onto long, low corridors that stretch for twenty or thirty yards.  The only light comes from a small wax lantern next to a Buddha figure and a sand-filled urn holding smoldering joss sticks.  Two men with bare feet and worn trousers rest on their haunches beside the makeshift alter, offering unlit incense to passersby.

Except for Ellen and Vulthy, everyone has moved on, feeling their way down one of the corridors into daylight or something like it.  I glance at Vulthy.  He nods at me, gives not so much a smile as a warming look. 

“This,” he says, “is the most holy place.”  And he bends his head back, looking straight up.

It is then I realize that we must be in the center of the temple, at the very heart of it, under the tallest tower.  As Vulthy nods to the two men and departs, Ellen and I linger, taking in the small, festive canopy over the Buddha, the silken yellow sash over his shoulder, the stone walls that look coal black in the flickering light from the lamp. 

Standing there, I feel a deepening of the air, as though it’s grown darker, cooler, as though we’re on a silent lift that is sinking further into the temple, deeper into the earth.  The air is musky with the smells of soil and joss and old water, all of it edged by the slightly acrid scent of the two men and my own sweaty shirt. 

I glance at Ellen.  She looks back, raising her eyebrows just a touch, showing the hint of a smile.  My inner poet rises to the surface, and I say, in my usual profound way:  “Wow.” 

She nods.  “I know.”

I look at the two men.  One of them holds out the incense, gestures with it slightly.  He’s imploring me to buy, but not aggressively so. Years ago, when I was finishing grad school and Ellen was beginning to wonder if being married to a high-strung, task-oriented, obsessive-compulsive Victorianist was really her idea of happiness, the two of us took a trip to France and found ourselves, late one night, in Sacre Couer, a wind storm raging outside, the interior of the domed cathedral lit by a thousand prayer candles.  Figuring it couldn’t hurt, I lit one, and said a little prayer for our marriage, for Ellen, and for her thinning patience. 

16 years later, she’s standing next to me her patience, if not stronger, at least boosted by a willingness to recognize that I’m not annoying all of the time.  I reach for my wallet.  The way I see it, if a French, Catholic god is willing to help a Lutheran boy from the upper mid-west, maybe a Buddhist god would as well.  Pulling out a 5,000 riel note, I hand it to the man with the incense, holding out three fingers, one for each of our children—though I’m thinking particularly of Will. 

The man takes it, lights three sticks, and hands them to me.  I hold them upright between flattened palms, close my eyes, and bow silently, three times in the Chinese way.  Then I open my eyes, breath in the incense, and nestle the three sticks in the sand-filled urn.

But it appears I gave the man too much money, because he’s handed Ellen three sticks as well.  She, too, closes her eyes, bows silently three times, and places the sticks in the sand.

And then I feel a gentle tug on my hand.  The second man has my palm between his fingers, and is pulling it toward him.  I watch as he takes a piece of red yarn—I later realize it’s a thin, tightly-woven bracelet—and wraps it around my wrist.  He attempts to knot it.  But my arms are too big.  He says something to the first man, who laughs quietly and selects another piece of yarn from a sheath of them.  Again my man attempts to knot it around my wrist, but again it seems to short. 

“Here,” I say, and show him, rolling it off the bones of my wrist to the narrow part just above, where the bracelet fits nicely. 

The other man is tying one around Ellen’s wrist, now, and as they proceed with their work, they break into a murmuring prayer, warm and low and as gentle as—I don’t know—water over smooth river stones, a breeze beneath a shade tree, two puppies gnawing a bone?  We stand there, Ellen and I, these two men on their haunches in the ancient dark, whispering to us, for us, to some ancient power, and feel immensely blessed. 

And then it’s done.  They release us, and we nod our thanks, and step away from the lantern and the shrine and into the coal black that surrounds everything.

We’re moving toward the doorway when I stop, remembering Vulthy in this same spot.  I look up.

I don’t know how to explain what happens next.  Maybe it’s just fatigue.  It’s been a long day, after all, and a long week, and a long year with lots of stresses and lots of change.  Or maybe it’s the kids—Will and his weariness, the stress of constantly worrying about three children under the age 10 in a country far far from home.

Or maybe it’s religion, a remote Buddhist god reaching down and tapping some part of my rib cage that hasn’t been prodded in a long time.  I’m a Lutheran boy in a strange land, after all, and even when we’re home in Virginia it’s not like I make it to church but once or twice a quarter—and that’s a generous estimate.

Or maybe it’s just the age of it all, this twelve-hundred-year-old tower rising up above me, these stones set in place by men and women so long dead their dust may well be part of my own bones.  Gone, for an instant, is the world of cell phones and digital cameras and intense-blue mode; gone are oil spills and computer viruses and the 200,000+ landmines still buried in Cambodian soils.  What I see, when I look up, is a light, a small square of sky, two or three hundred yards distant, random silhouettes of stones jutting at odd angles, the occasional flash of wings accompanied by a fluttering.  We’re a thousand years ago, in the heart of this temple, in the middle of a jungle filled of vines as thick as trees and trees as tall as sky-scrapers, a jungle stretching for a thousand miles beneath a sky that is wide and blue above a red-dirt earth.  

And looking up, taking in all of this, feeling Ellen beside me, air catches in my lungs, my shoulders rise and fall—and out of my throat comes a single, tangible, sob.