Everything Right Where It Belongs

I got home from Malaysia yesterday around seven, on a perfectly blue and gold Wellington evening, coming down through the clouds over the harbour. I’d spent almost twenty-four hours in transit, on various types of public transport and on planes and in airport lounges and I was so tired and dirty and all I wanted was to be home, home, home home home.

Rachel picked me up at the airport and had dinner waiting for me in my fridge for me to eat after one of the best showers I have ever taken in my life. She’d left little notes for me on post-its around the house. I ate my dinner and read for a couple minutes in a sunny spot on my couch and as soon as the sun went down I was in bed—my own bed, about which I’d been having increasingly longing thoughts over the last couple days of the trip; my own bed, upon which, because I am a genius, I’d made up with my (clean) best and most orange-flowered sheets before I got on the plane on Christmas Day. I actually moaned with pleasure when I finally got in, and I was asleep three minutes after my head hit the pillow. I slept for fourteen hours and woke up this afternoon just in time to go to have pasta at Giulia’s and to Skype my mom and go to the first of the Botanical Gardens concerts, which got rained out, which means, hey, it’s summer in Wellington. I go back to work tomorrow.

The trip was wonderful—of course the trip was wonderful. In Malaysia I visited Ed’s family in their village home, in Melaka, and in Kuala Lumpur. I went with him to a gigantic mall and sat outside by a fountain and talked about boys, and also to the Malaysian version of Target. I visited a mosque, a church, a Buddhist temple, and a Hindu temple within one thirty-minute period, all within two blocks of each other. I saw a green sea turtle and a seahorse and a moray eel on the dive trip. I got a fish pedicure. I visited Ed’s university and saw a building he designed. I met his family: his parents, his auntie, his brothers and sisters, his uncles, his cousins, and his grandmother, who gave me one of her batik sarongs and asked me to remember her. I ate roti canai (with and without bananas), chicken rice, cendol, banana leaf breakfast, satay with condensed rice, clay pot vegetables, sweet sticky rice treats, lots of different types of curry, and lots of te tarik. I learned how to say ‘good morning,’ ‘thank you,’ ‘eat!’ and ‘Happy New Year’ in Bahasa Malaysa.

In Cambodia I had long long long talks with my friend Katherine, whom I hadn’t seen since our going-away parties in 2006. I swam in the perfectly warm and quiet sea on Rabbit Island. I went to a pepper plantation and walked amongst an orchard of banana and mango and jackfruit. I posed with a giant sculpture of a crab. I visited a village in the middle of some rice fields where Katherine was finalizing a rice bank contract and held babies and drank a fresh coconut while the old ladies pointed to my nose and made ‘it’s SO BIG” gestures and laughed at my attempts to pronounce Khmer words. I got many many massages which kind of hurt but in a good way. I watched the sun rise over Angkor Wat in an atmosphere that resembled a summer music festival more than anything else, complete with dreadlock hippies. I got nail art done on my toes at a salon that trains former victims of sex trafficking. I ate noodle soup (for breakfast), steamed bread dumplings, guava and cucumber dipped in salt and garlic and chili, crab and squid with fresh green pepper, amok curry, spicy ginger beef in fresh baguettes, sour soup, fish bread, and at least two iced coffees (with either sweetened condensed milk or ‘fresh milk’ and palm sugar) per day. I learned to say ‘hello,’ ‘thank you,’ ‘no thank you,’ ‘I’m hungry’ “I eat Khmer food,’ ‘good,’ and ‘beautiful,’ and also to count (almost) to ten in Khmer.

Everything was new, everything was interesting: seeing my Wellington friend with his family and speaking his first language; visiting a mosque in a rental robe; not being able to even read the signs (well, except the ones in English, which were everywhere); eating with my hands in Malaysia and also with just a spoon and fork, in both Malaysia and Cambodia; the three major cultures (Malay, Chinese, and Indian) represented in Malaysia; noticing that there were hardly any people sort of my parents’ age in Cambodia; hearing my friend Kat, who is rather shy and hadn’t been much good at languages in university, converse confidently in perfect Khmer; going to the megamall with Ed to talk about boys; using a hose instead of toilet paper in the bathroom; watching the Cambodian karaoke videos on the bus from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap; being woken up by the call to prayer at five in the morning in Kuala Lumpur; seeing the Chinese New Year sales at the Malaysian version of Target; sitting in a platform built amongst the palm trees on the beach at Rabbit Island; walking around the falling-down temples at Bayon in the early early morning, one step ahead of the tour buses.

I was either having very intense conversations with my dear friends or, like, completely alone, with not even other backpackers for company. I spent a lot of time looking out various windows of various types of transport and thinking about various things and stuff. I didn’t know what to expect, so I tried not to expect anything, and…and that worked out pretty well. Because I was with other people who could make decisions for me I felt very gentle and open most of the time. I was very easily amused, and very easily proud of myself for things like navigating the trains in KL or for successfully going out to eat by myself in Siem Reap. I thought about Wellington people a lot but Wellington seemed as far away as the States usually feels to me when I’m here, and as very slightly unreal. I was a little surprised to find everything right where it belongs when I got back yesterday–but not at all surprised to find that I too, when I finally got home, was right where I belong.