It begins to rain and the sun has set, so we need to settle on a spot. We duck into the closest establishment with its lights on, a beacon in the dark pumping John Cougar Mellencamp from the house speakers.
Kyle asks the owner if we can sit outside on the empty patio, at a table tucked underneath an umbrella big enough for the five of us to escape the rain. She nods and ushers us outside, lights a candle at our table. We take menus and cross our fingers, hoping for a decent-enough Thanksgiving banquet. Instead of more noodles and curry, we read the selections: steak, ribs, mashed potatoes, glazed carrots, and rolls. Chocolate cake. Creme br?lée. The kids squeal with glee.
We chase meat with mojitos, which tastes nothing like home, but it doesn’t taste quite like Thailand, either. It is an ad hoc meal, food with no particular home, a conglomeration of Western barbecue and Eastern spices, seared and charred. It works well enough. It echoes how I feel right now, one foot in Asia and one out the door. We eat in the dark, in the rain, in flip-flops. Our waitress brings us cake with lit sparklers and sings to us in broken English “Happy Birthday” to pay homage to our national holiday. Tonight, we are satisfied to be together in the world, as a family, on a dot of an island in the Indian Ocean in Southeast Asia.
“I wonder what our next house will be like?” Tate questions, sighing with a full stomach.
“I get the top bunk if there’s a bunk bed!” shouts Reed.
Back at the guesthouse, toothbrushes are packed in our bags, shirts are rolled up next to socks, and we are ready to move on. Thailand has brought me some peace.
5
SINGAPORE
Asia wanes. We have been here three months and the air is constant: hot, sticky, garlicky. I rummage through my pack again and again for my tank tops and shorts, wonder why I’ve bothered packing jeans and a pullover. On our last day in Chiang Mai, we visit a local clinic for yellow fever shots so we can enter Africa in six weeks. I am ready for new sounds, new smells, but Thailand gives way to Singapore, a few more days in Asia.
It is 90°F in Singapore, year-round. There are two seasons: dry and rainy.
Part of Singapore’s lure is its airport. Changi Airport is regularly voted the best airport in the world by travelers, a destination on its own. There are free movie theaters, swimming pools, art stations, video game portals, nature paths in outdoor gardens, world-class playgrounds, a butterfly sanctuary, and sleeping rooms. A staff of thirteen gardeners tends to the five hundred species of plants, including seven hundred rare orchids. The airport’s website lists the best places to take a selfie during your layover. Because of the airport—and this is no overstatement—I want to go to Singapore.
Truth be told, though, I am admittedly weary of Asia’s cacophony, of the crowds and lights clamoring for attention. There are a few blessed pockets of quiet I’ve found throughout the continent, but they’re hard to find, and they’re outnumbered by the resonant masses of people and cities. I miss the monastery.
The five of us play in the airport for a few hours after we land. The kids zip down slides and Kyle and I sip coffee, share our eagerness with each other—in three days, we will set foot on a new continent.
Asia lays the groundwork for our year of travel, and it has not been easy. We are Westerners, and certain social mores feel familiar to us: queuing in line, assuming the store hours are the same as those printed on the door’s sign, leaving strangers alone in their parenting choices. It has been good for our sea legs to swim in these waters, but we are ready to float for a little while. I want to catch my breath. I want to be in the West.
We leave the airport for our weekend home—a hostel—and catch another taxi. I haven’t stayed in a hostel in over a decade, the last of which I slept in a large group bedroom in Dublin, Ireland, where I was witness to unsavory acts best left unsaid. It would have never occurred to me to bring children to a hostel until a friend suggested I try one out if I couldn’t find a guesthouse. We would barely be in Singapore, and it felt lavish to spend money on an entire house when we were about to head to the most expensive country of our trip. There are family-friendly hostels, my friend said.
Our bare-bones room is listed as “family-style,” which means there are enough beds for six people, most of whom would be strangers if we were traveling solo or as a couple. As a family of five, odds are slim one extra traveler would knock on our door, and we are willing to pay for the extra bed if that were to happen. We rent our blankets and pillows from the front desk, along with towels for our clan, grabbing only three because they’re five dollars apiece per night, and we take the elevator to our floor. Even the hostels are skinny high-rises in Asia.
Kyle unlocks the door. The room is a brilliant white with naked concrete walls. Air ducts cut through the ceiling, but it is otherwise a cube of minimalism—white beds to match our white linens, white desk and chair, white window frame. There are two sets of bunk beds with curtains around each bed to create individual minirooms. One set is twin and the other is queen, leaving almost no walking space between our sleeping quarters and private bathroom. The room feels more like one giant bed with occasional juts of concrete sliced through to divide sleeping arrangements. The air duct sighs, then exhales cold air with a loud hum that morphs into a noise that matches the white walls. I can no longer hear Asia outside. I look out our window and see the throng of traffic below. These are the most comfortable beds we have had thus far, and I sleep hard and dreamless.
In the morning, we play bus roulette, see where the wind takes us. Our phone apps tell us where to go, and we hop on a city bus and get off at Fort Canning Park. The highest elevation in central Singapore, it rises not quite two hundred feet above sea level. It is a green respite in a neat and tidy concrete city full of old trees and nineteenth-century cannons, fortified walls, and Gothic gates, a reminder that Singapore was once a European occupation. Though we’ve already walked miles and miles throughout Asia, we spend the morning walking even more, pretending this park is a forest. The kids play games through the sally ports, hidden doors in the forts that once allowed spies to come and go undetected. We watch older couples speed walk down the paths in matching jogging suits.