I woke up in the middle of the night and went and sat on the deck chairs for a bit and watched the lights of the shrimping/squiding boats and tried to let go of my feeling of frustration at not being heard. Let it go. Yes, I do get (unnecessarily) ‘nervous,’ don't I?; how do I let THAT go?
I went for a swim and then had breakfast with Lello; you could tell we were ‘late’ coz the sun was already high enough to be hot. This morning it was fried rice with a fried egg only, as they were out of bananas.
Sat on the porch together and chatted. Got to talking about ‘home’ – how people expect to make a home in another country and examples of people who don’t or can’t because of a (willful) inability to connect with the local people. Lello has a dream of living on the beach it-matters-not-where and fully expects (based on supporting experience travelling) to connect with the locals. I teared up, feeling the ‘weight’ of my often dis-connected experiences in my own multiple 'homes.' Lello asked, ‘But, why do you cry? Do you miss your mother, your father? Sorry if this is an impolite question.’ He suggested it’d be good if I were to spend some time living with my parents in DC. Bless him. I explained that London is my home, if I were to choose one -- for my friends there, for the city itself, for an ambiguous amorphous sense of belonging. He said we should go for a walk and I said I preferred to stay on the porch and be miserable. He took a walk up to the stupas north of us on the beach, and I packed my bag in a leisurely fashion, not unhappily. Lello teases me for the 40mins or so it takes me to pack my bag; I suspect I find something comforting in rationally and carefully organizing my belongings.
About 2.45pm, just before high tide, we hired a vespa-like Kenbo scooter for a ride down the beach to Sinma Fisherman's Village,purportedly 45mins away. Lello drove barefoot, and said driving a scooter reminded him of being a teenager in the south of Italy. Had a great time. Drove down the beach past Lovers' Island, splashed across a flooded channel (‘Ah, now I understand why they talk about the tides,’ said Lello) and then got to a rivulet where a boat ferried people and motorbikes across for 200K; the pilot squatted on the front prow and pulled us across on a rope stretched from bank to bank. Carried on past a cluster of restaurants, then cut inland when the tracks on the beach ran out, onto a sandy track through a small village and out the other side, where we had to choose right or left and went right. The track took us through some fields, up and over a hill, past a stupa to another village. Stopped on the main street at a small restaurant where the glass and tea mugs were arranged on the shelves ever so neatly, and I had a cola and we munched on some prawn cracker type chips. The café-keeper saw me eying a flan-like pudding and served us what turned out to be a rice-based paste topped with gelatin.
We walked down the main street and came out at the water again, where a few boats were moored in the inlet to the sea. Examined the sea snails on the beach, moving ever so glacially; mesmerizing. Continued around the corner, followed by some small kids, and came upon lots and lots of boats moored in a small harbor. Kids were splashing about in the shallows, and some men were waiting with their parcels to get rowed out by slender canoe to one of the larger boats. A man saw me looking around for Lello and he clapped to get my attention and gestured over to the bamboo houses flanking the beach. I looked but didn’t see Lello, and took some more photos of the boats and the boys. Then heard him calling ‘Eli!’ and turned to see him talking to some young men at a bar – at least, a wall of empty beer boxes fronted the property.
We said our farewells and walked inland through the houses, past pigs and people washing and hens with their chicks, past a houseful of women playing bingo, back to the main road and the restaurant where we’d left the scooter. Everybody in this town seems to grow kiss-me-quick flowers in flower pots in front of their properties. Stopped by a house where an older man was crouched attending to a small child playing with a spanner. ‘What do you want?’ he barked at us, but not unkindly. I said we were admiring his beautiful flowers, and then Lello explained how much he would like to plant some back in Italy. The man kindly offered to provide a cutting. He explained he was a little deaf, which was why he didn’t catch everything we were saying. A younger man came and cut off a short bit of thorned branch, and wrapped it in coconut husk which he’d soaked in water for the journey home. The older man said he was an English teacher, and the youger man was his student. I asked where he had learned his English, and he answered, ‘In kindergarten.’ In a different era; he must have been in his late 60s.
Took the inland road back northward, parallel to the beach. Passed mounds of coconut husks by the roadside, and stopped at a house with a particularly large sheet of drying coconut whites out front. There was a gaggle of kids on the porch, and a couple who was our age. ‘Onzi, onzi?’ queried Lello; the word we’d learned for coconut oil, which sounded to us like Fonzi. They looked nonplussed. I made motions of washing my body and my hair, and pointed to the coconuts, and recognition dawned and they said ‘On-zi’ and laughed. The woman of the house went to the back and returned with a Johnny Walker bottle of pale yellow liquid. Yep, it was coconut oil. Lello indicated he didn’t want the whole bottle, and went back to the scooter to get the empty plastic cola bottle he’d saved for transporting his plants. She funneled about half the oil in, and held up 1 finger indicating that’d be 1000K. One boy had cottoned on the fact that onzi was ‘coconut oil’ and Lello would point at him and say ‘Co? Co-co?’ in the hopes he’d reply with ‘coconut oil’. The other kids sat there and giggled.
Got to the rivulet we’d been pulled across in a canoe, only further inland. There was a bridge across, but it was falling apart, and two young men ‘guarding’ it ran after us as we prepared to drive across it. The bike had to cross by boat. I set out across the bridge, having seen a few people cross it on foot, though the young men waggled their hands at me and looked doubtful. Indeed, the bridge had almost entirely collapsed at the far side, but there was one narrow plank that still afforded access to the far bank.
Snaked back through some houses and palm trees to the beach as the sun was preparing to set, and found ourselves at the level of the restaurants; we decided to stop for dinner, and were served bowls of steamed rice with a side of fresh cucumber and eggplant and three tasty Myanmar curries: pork, chicken, and squid (yay! I’d been craving squid since last night). Especially liked the squid. Got some spirals of cracker-like fried dough for ‘dessert’.
Headed back after dark, but fortunately it was straight-forward driving on the beach coz Lello couldn’t find the switch for the lights, and he was concerned about hitting a rock. We followed the tracks left by the ox carts. Splashed through some surf and the engine cut out, and caused us a minute or so of grave concern before sputtering back to life.
At the bend by Lovers' Island we knew we were almost home; how come I hadn’t noticed these huge boulders before, or the hotel south of ours? Got back safe and sound though the scooter conked out on the soft sand and Lello figured one of the hotel staff could come and help get it. Turned out the bike did have a headlight, the button was on the other side of the steering wheel.
When we got to the reception, Norman was there and told us there’d been a devastating tsunami in Japan. He turned on the news for us – the hotel gets BBC News, fancy that. 8.8 on the Richter Scale, epicenter in the sea to the east of Tokyo, waves 7m high, flooding 10km inland north of Tokyo. Amazing footage of a wall of water flattening a city in seconds, becoming a moving miasma of cars and boats and building debris. Tragic.
Rinsed out my damp and dirty sneakers; there’s no way they’re going to dry before we leave tomorrow.
Shared a final Tiger beer on the porch, tucked in the mosquito net tight around the bed, and agreed it’d be nice to go for a swim before we left at 6am.
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