Your first impression of Thailand depends upon whom you ask. There are beaches; there are brothels; there are noodles; there are durian, a round, spiky fruit that smells like a noxious gym sock. There are rain forests full of banana trees and elephants. Bald monks hug smartphones and Starbucks cups, varying shades of orange fabric draped over their skinny bodies. An aging American man who stayed after the Vietnam War runs a bar with billiard tables for the tourists; he holds fast to his tight-skinned wife, a woman years his junior. A family of six rides a motorcycle; five smoosh together, back to chest, and the youngest rides in a plastic bucket, his mother holding the bucket to the side of the motorcycle by the handle. There are dentists and doctors with degrees from Europe and North America who choose to practice their vocation here. There are almost one hundred English-speaking private schools in the country for expatriate children.
And this temporary home comes with some familiarity.
In 2007 we stayed in the northern city of Chiang Mai for two months. We lived in Turkey at the time, and after I was diagnosed with severe depression, it was suggested that we visit this medium-sized city tucked into the mountains and misty forests of Southeast Asia as therapy. The perplexingly sizable expat population includes therapists and psychiatrists who speak English and can prescribe low-cost antidepressants with aplomb. It is cheaper to fly across five time zones and rent a house for two months than to travel back to the States and deal with health insurance, wait times, and medical red tape.
In those days, our oldest was two years old and I was in the second trimester with our second. We rented a house in the suburbs, a psychiatrist prescribed me medication, and I met with a therapist three times a week. We ate food not found in Turkey, we fed cucumbers to elephants, and we browsed English bookstores meant for expatriate student backpackers. I bought fabric from the night market to bring back to our apartment on the Aegean Sea and sew into curtains and pillows. We took advantage of cheap prenatal care and discovered that Reed was a boy. He was twenty-four weeks into gestation when we returned to Turkey; there I survived on antidepressants, memories of Chiang Mai, and occasional Thai-based therapy visits via Skype for the next three years.
In Oregon, I had subscribed to a private e-mail list for expats in Chiang Mai in search of temporary housing for the Thailand leg of our trip. Perhaps we’d find an expat family’s home to house-sit while they visited their home country. We could find a guesthouse if nothing else was available, but there was something endearing about the idea of watching over someone else’s bookshelves, frying pans, and soap dispensers. I placed an ad in the e-mail group.
A woman named Muriel needed what we offered; she was returning to the States for medical reasons and needed a house sitter. She lived in the same quiet suburbs where we had lived seven years earlier. It was ideal, except that she was in her seventies and her house didn’t have toys. I waited for another offer, but when none came, we replied to Muriel and agreed to stay.
Muriel’s house—this will be our home in northern Thailand.
The plane lands in the early afternoon, and we grossly overpay a taxi driver to take us to the house, a savvy entrepreneur who knows the cash value of white-faced travelers fresh off the plane. (“Where you from?” Oregon and Texas. “Okay, I take you because Dallas Cowboys.”) En route, I daydream about dumping the contents of our backpacks into a washing machine. I am eager for coffeemakers and unpacking our toiletries onto a bathroom shelf after our month of nomadically stirring instant coffee into lukewarm water. I want the kids to make progress on their grammar, their math. I want to cook.
Muriel’s Thai friend unlocks the front door, shows us the house, hands us keys, and warns us that her car needs servicing and to use it with caution. Tall ceramic vases ensconce top-heavy silk flowers; a knee-high bejeweled elephant sits next to a lightweight rattan couch; breakable empty tchotchke bowls rest on the fragile glass coffee table. Glass shelves encased with doors hold hefty volumes of Amish fiction, figurines of plump peasant children, and collector’s plates signifying anniversaries of varying importance (the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton; Christmas at Disneyland, 1981). Muriel’s final e-mail to me asked us to please make ourselves at home, but to take note that the dinner dishes are a complete set, and if one should break, we are responsible for replacing the entire imported set.
Everything is also pink. Pink dishes, pink vases, pink silk flowers, pink elephant, pink floor tile, pink bathroom walls, pink bathroom sinks, pink marbled kitchen counters. Everything is some shade of pink.
Thai it isn’t. But it is cheap. Kyle parks the breakables above the kitchen cabinets and refrigerator, and we take Muriel’s car to a nearby big-box store because, oddly enough, the house has no sheets or pillows. Also, we are out of soap. I wander the store that reminds me of a Kmart from my childhood, and I cry because I am so tired and because I cannot find soap I like. Tate begs for expensive turquoise sheets, and we find plastic bowls, plates, and cups to replace Muriel’s dinner dishes we would inevitably break. We gawk at duck beak and pig uterus shrink-wrapped in the meat department, snap photos with our phones, and text them to family back home. The store smells like salty ocean and cheap plastic. For dinner, we eat greasy fried chicken in the dining area.
We drive home, stretch our new sheets across the master bedroom mattress, and crawl onto the plastic, rococoesque bed straight out of a gawdy Caesars Palace bedroom. I glance at my nightstand on the left, jump out of bed, and remove the little porcelain girl staring at me with psychotic eyes. I hide her in the plastic rococo wardrobe across the room.
The next morning, while braiding Tate’s hair on our bed, the slats underneath the mattress suddenly snap and drop us to the floor, into the center of the monstrous yellowed plastic bed frame. Kyle and I drag the mattress to the other side of the bedroom floor, where we will now sleep until we leave this house.
The crimson-colored velour bedspread pills miniscule balls of fuzz in the nooks and crannies of our clothes (which I will still pull from my pajama pants four months later in Morocco). Geckos scamper across the floors, walls, and ceilings—this is the only thing remotely Thai about our bedroom. I can hear their little feet at night, inches from my body where I sleep.