The Lost Girls (43 page)

“I just can't believe that it's my last day here in Bangkok. I'm actually really bummed,” I said, returning to the table and pulling up a chair next to Frank.

“Aw, man. I didn't know that. When are you leaving?”

“Our flight's actually not until 3 a.m., so my friends and I are just going to hop in a taxi from here around midnight. They're going to be here around 6 p.m., but I'm supposed to meet Mark for dinner later, so I should probably try to pack at some point.”

“Mark? Life-changing guy, right?” Frank said. “Well, hurry up and pack, and let's go out and celebrate. It's not every day that you meet someone life-changing. Believe me, I know. I mean, shit, I moved all the way to China for a chick I'd just met.”

“All right, you convinced me. Meet you back here in forty-five minutes?” I asked. “And hey, maybe we can even play tourist and do something really cultural for a change.”

After a quick shower, I set aside an outfit for later, shoved everything else into my backpack, and headed downstairs to check my e-mail. Waiting in my inbox was a note from Mark confirming our dinner and suggesting a meeting place, which sent me into a giddy tailspin all over again. So this was what it felt like when a guy you really like “calls” you back to ask you on a second date?

“It's a good thing we're going out to sightsee, because I have way too much pent-up energy right now,” I said to Frank while quickly dashing off a response to Mark that I, too, was really looking forward to our night out.

Frank had suggested we go to Wat Pho, the largest and oldest temple in the city and home of the Reclining Buddha, which meant we'd have to travel downtown to the central pier and hop on a water taxi. Amanda, Holly, and I had taken one of those canal (
khlong
) boats to the Flower Market, a delightful fairyland of blooms located near the Memorial Bridge on Thanon Chakphet, and I'd relished the experience. Considering that Bangkok had been nicknamed the “Venice of the East” it's certainly the most authentic way to travel, plus you get a little bonus sun and spray while you ride. After speeding down the banks of the Saen Saeb, we hopped off at the Tha Tien pier and went in pursuit of the big man on the temple campus.

One of the city's most visited landmarks, the Reclining Buddha measures forty-six meters long and fifteen meters high and is designed to represent the passage of the Buddha to Nirvana, which likely explains the serene smile on his face. With a body decorated entirely with gold plating and mother-of-pearl engravings on his eyes and soles of the feet, the Reclining Buddha, who lies on his right side, is an impressive sight to behold. Frank and I spent hours at Wat Pho, trying to digitally capture all the Buddha's wide angles and snapping as many shots as we could of the more than one thousand Buddha images on the grounds.

As the day flew by, I was continuously struck by the bitter-sweetness of my impending departure. I'd grown so fond of the mini-life I'd carved out for myself in Bangkok. For the first time since leaving our students at Pathfinder in Kenya, I was genuinely sad to say good-bye to a place and, more important, to the people I'd met there.

On the upside, I
was
really excited to see Amanda and Holly and get back on the road again, especially since our next stop was Bali. It was strange to think that after one week in Indonesia we would leave “hard-core” foreign travel behind and enter an English-speaking country for the first time in nearly nine
months. From that point we had just four weeks in New Zealand, eight weeks in Australia, and it would all be over. I could hardly believe how fast the trip was flying by. In a way, it seemed as if we'd been gone forever, but at the same time, I could remember sitting on the airport floor in Peru waiting for Holly's lost luggage as if it were yesterday. There had been so many extraordinary moments throughout our journey that I longed to freeze-frame, rewind, and replay them forever. And the second I saw Mark again later that night, I added another one to the list.

I'd arrived at our agreed-upon meeting place a few minutes early, so I sat down on a nearby bench to wait for him. In a sea of petite locals, it's hard to miss a strapping six foot blond guy, so I noticed Mark when he was still about fifty feet away. Like the first time he'd walked into Big John's, my heart leapfrogged toward my throat. When he saw me, he grinned and accelerated his pace. Perpetuating the movie moment, I stood and walked quickly toward him, and when we reached each other, he swept me up into a kiss, my arms around his neck, feet dangling in the air just as they should. With a soccer bag slung over one shoulder, his face freshly shaven, and his hair still wet from his postgame shower, he was disarming in every sense of the word.

Since we'd both been experiencing withdrawal symptoms from going too long without Indian food, Mark had picked a place nearby that he said served a mean chicken masala. It was still fairly early for dinner, so aside from a handful of local patrons, we were the only two people in the room. Splitting a bunch of dishes on the menu, we stretched dinner over several hours. Compared to the nervous anticipation that had bounced between us the night before, it suddenly was the most natural thing in the world to be out at dinner together in Bangkok, holding hands and having “How was your day, dear?” chats.
Too soon the gold Ganesh wall clock indicated it was time for us to leave. But before we did, I had the waitress snap a quick photo of us with my camera. That way, when I woke up the next day in a totally different country thousands of miles away from Mark, I'd have proof that I hadn't just imagined him. That he and everything we'd done together had been real.

As we walked hand in hand to the Skytrain, I couldn't get over what a difference a week had made in my life. I hadn't magically shed all my worries or uncertainty about returning home, starting all over again, and finding the man I was meant to be with, but knowing that there was someone out there like Mark made me trust that it
was
possible. While the hopeless romantic in me had desperately wanted to believe that every Juliet had her Romeo, I'd started to lose faith that it could happen to me.

But suddenly there I was, standing in a train car in Bangkok wrapped tightly in the arms of a man who'd completely swept me away the moment we'd met. It had taken me 28 and
⁵
/
₆
years to experience that elusive notion of love at first sight, but my God, was it ever worth the wait. And I knew now that I could never settle for anything less.

As the car sped along the tracks, Mark leaned back against the door and held me against his chest. Before I knew it, the train began to slow. As we approached Mark's stop, he looked down at me and smiled.

“You know something, Jen. I'm not sure when or where in the world it will happen, but I have a strange feeling that our paths will cross again.”

With that he pulled me in for one last delicious kiss before the doors slid open and he stepped out. As I watched Mark's silhouette fade away in the distance, I knew that he was right.

BALI
MARCH

A
fter our whirlwind tour of Southeast Asia, none of us was motivated to move for days. We'd competed for hostels and dodged street vendors at every “must-see” spot from Angkor Wat to Halong Bay. When you find yourself staring at etchings worthy of the term “world wonder” and thinking “
Another
carving of that elephant-faced god guy?” you
know
you're doing something wrong. We needed to stop before we could keep going, and the beaches of Bali were the perfect place to do that. We'd actually gotten this stopover as a free bonus when we'd booked our round-the-world tickets with a San Francisco–based company called AirTreks, and it couldn't have come at a better time.

After only a few days of relaxation, our hotel room in Kuta Beach looked like a college dorm in the aftermath of finals. Magazines fanned across the wooden floor like haphazardly scattered tiles. DVDs towered on the TV like blocks in a game of Jenga. Discarded bags of popcorn, Snickers wrappers, and cans of Diet Coke littered the bedside table. Twisted sheets and limp pillows topped the two twin beds. The only thing missing was an empty keg.

“Time check!” Amanda yelled from the bathroom, and I heard her shake the bottle of mousse she used to tame her curls.

“We have ten minutes until Jen and Stephany get here. But I can be ready in five,” I said. Our threesome had turned into a twosome: Jen's high school friend was serendipitously in Bali on business, and she'd held Jen “captive” the night before in her fancy hotel in Nusa Dua. Soon enough, however, we would become a foursome.

I pulled from the top of my backpack the orange cotton sundress that I'd bought for $5 in one of the stalls lining the main street. Paired with my rubber shower shoes, I would've definitely made
Glamour
's list of fashion don'ts. “This is my fifth day wearing the same outfit. I may break the trip record for going the longest without changing clothes,” I said to Amanda.

“I broke the record for staying in bed the longest,” Amanda said. Since I'd reunited with the girls after yoga school, a part of Amanda seemed to have died and been reborn—as if she'd managed to outrun the relentless striving that had plagued her. Even her temper, once quick to ignite whenever strangers showed the first hint of taking advantage of us, had been extinguished. She claimed to have given up working after her dream assignment had turned out to be a time-sucking, research-loaded monster. I was amazed, but still I wasn't convinced.

“So you're not going to pitch any more stories for the whole trip
ever
?” I'd asked when she'd first made the announcement, staring her straight in the eye to gauge any hesitation.

“Nope,” she'd promised. That word alone wasn't enough to persuade me, but her actions spoke louder: She stopped crafting blogs every night. She abandoned spending afternoons holed up in an Internet café, her station sprinkled with to-go coffee cups and a handful of tattered notebooks. Instead, she had crashed long and hard, sleeping off any lingering itch to be productive, rising only to take surf lessons.

And Amanda wasn't the only one who'd transformed while we were apart. Jen had not only surprised us by willingly flying solo in Bangkok but had also let go of her fear of never finding love after falling hard for Stephany's friend Mark. We could be talking about anything, and she would find a way to work Mark into the conversation—when I'd mentioned my sister would be coming to visit in Australia, for example, she'd thrown in “
Mark
has a sister!” She couldn't even say his name without smiling. It was as if both of my friends had been plunged into healing waters and emerged as lighter versions of themselves. As for me, I was still waiting to get home to Elan.

“Jen, Amanda won't wake up,” I'd noted on the third day in Bali, surprised, after coming in from an afternoon run, to find Amanda still wearing her eye mask. “What do you think we should do?”

“Let's have a movie marathon!” Jen suggested.

“Okay.”

Jen stopped, now surprised herself. “Really? You don't want to go climb a volcano or something?”

I grinned. “Nah, I need to start on that list of movie classics you wrote out for me so I can get up to speed on pop culture. Besides, why climb a volcano when I can watch Indiana Jones do it better?”

While I'd spent a lot of my time educating myself on health and fitness stuff, pop culture had never been my strong point—and my ignorance always showed in awkward exchanges at dinner parties or office meetings. I'd stare blankly after someone quoted a movie or sitcom that everyone but me seemed to know. I traced it all back to my childhood—my mother used to tell my younger sisters, Sara and Kate, and me that the television was broken from June through August. (It was really only unplugged, but we obviously weren't the quickest kids on the block.) Then she'd
pay
us to read books.

I'd much rather have been using my imagination to transport myself into characters' heads than zoning out in front of the television and would have read for free. By the time I'd hit my teen years, I couldn't have cared less about TV and instead passed hours and hours reading contentedly by the fire, even when the TV wasn't broken (or “broken”). I had no complaints, but still, being the only person who didn't understand a single
Seinfeld
reference was getting a little old.

So—for a day at least—I'd been happy to follow Jen and rent a DVD player.

“Hey, Pressy and Corby!” Jen said now, strolling into the room with a beach bag slung over her shoulder and a woman I presumed to be Stephany in tow.

“Hi, Stephany! I'm Holly. Nice to meet you,” I said, going in for a hug. She was about half a foot taller than me, with dark blond hair, brown eyes, and a thin face flushed red from the sun. Amanda, who'd already met Steph when she'd visited Jen at college, chimed out her greeting as she emerged from the bathroom.

“What was it like living in luxury for a night?” I teased Jen. I'd imagined a cloud bed and windows facing the Indian Ocean. Maybe she'd had banana pancakes in bed courtesy of room service before getting a massage by the pool. Jen responded by handing me one of the chocolates that five-star hotels sometimes leave on your pillow during turndown service.

Steph had invited all of us to hang out beside one of the dozens of pools at her resort later that week, but today we were going sightseeing—finally. We walked past the swimming pool lined with flowers, through the gates, and into the street. Herman, one of the smiling Balinese salesmen stationed across the street from our guesthouse, was sitting in his usual spot on the steps outside of his family's single-room office. He was relaxed and friendly. With him, we didn't feel we had to be on guard to keep from being scammed.

Hanoi's terrifying cabdriver experience had administered a shot of caution to all three of us. While no one had been hurt (except for maybe the driver's eardrums after Jen's deafening screams), we'd each gone through our own sort of grieving process to make sense of a situation that had been part blatant trickery, part cultural miscommunication, and part unwarranted violence.

Though I'd had nightmares about the episode like someone suffering a mild case of post-traumatic stress disorder, I knew that incident was only one small wrinkle in the fabric of events that wove our trip together thus far. Rather than muddying my faith in people, our journey proved that for each person trying to take advantage of you, another stepped in with a random act of kindness.

No country we'd visited had illustrated that as clearly as Vietnam. When one young woman had manhandled me before slashing my purse in the markets lining Hanoi's Old Quarter, another elderly woman had swooped in to my rescue. As the would-be thief dissolved into the crowd (I'd managed to scare her off when I made eye contact just as I caught my wallet before it crashed to the ground), the elderly woman had gasped in outrage before grabbing my elbow. She was about four feet five inches tall with hair that shined silver, and she'd led me past shelves quivering with baskets, lacquerware, and hand-embroidered purses. She'd handed me a cup of tea, stitched up the jagged slit in my purse as effortlessly as she breathed, and apologized over and over again in Vietnamese. I was grateful to her for her kindness and because she was a much-needed reminder that the darkness cast by some gives others the chance to let their light shine.

I didn't experience the same blatant push-pull with the people in Bali. Instead of the slight undercurrent of resentment toward backpackers I'd felt in Hanoi's Old Quarter, hospitality
was all I felt in Bali. From the housewives placing flower offerings on cars to smiling salesmen such as Herman to giggling children skipping through alleys, the Balinese's overall attitude seemed light and airy—like powdered sugar or fresh whipped cream. Of course, this one-dimensional view brushed over the hardships they might face, whether it be struggling to feed a family or care for a sick parent. But I'd been awash with gut-level impressions of people whenever I'd first stepped into a new country. From the outside the people in Bali seemed calm, balanced, and graceful.

Seeing us approach, Herman grinned, his mocha skin crinkling at the corners of his eyes.

“Good morning, Charlie's Angels! You have a new friend with you today!” A picture of the Hindu holy trinity (Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva) peered at us from his boxlike office window.

“
Selamat pagi
[good morning], Herman!” After introducing Steph, I asked how much it'd cost to drive us around the island.

“What would you like to see?” Herman asked.

“Are there any temples we can hike to?” I asked.

Amanda explained to Steph, “Holly likes to do something active whenever we're sightseeing.”

“That's fine with me. I could use some exercise,” Steph said happily.

Without pausing to think, Herman said, “I could take you to Pura Luhur Uluwatu, one of Bali's most holy temples.” He explained that the temple was dedicated to the spirits of the sea and set high on a cliff overlooking the Indian Ocean.

Herman told us to come back in an hour so he could pick up the jeep from his brother. We went to grab breakfast, Steph easily falling into step beside us.

Adding a fourth person to our threesome was like holding up a looking glass: we began to see ourselves more clearly through
the reflection in the outsider's eyes. The three of us had grown so accustomed to our idiosyncrasies that we no longer noticed them. With Steph visiting, the roles we'd each adopted to help us travel more efficiently and the habit we had of dissipating tension with humor came back into focus.

 

K
uta Beach, the eight-mile ribbon of sand, markets, and massage parlors where most tourists settled on the island, disappeared behind the jeep in a wisp of exhaust. Forgoing the air conditioner, we rolled down the windows to let the damp, salty air tickle our faces, the sun's rays burning our cheeks as the yellow orb climbed higher in the sky. “Hips Don't Lie” shook from the radio speakers, and we sang along to the radio until we arrived at Pura Luhur Uluwatu temple.

While climbing the steps to the holy site, I watched a monkey leap from a tree, land on a woman's head, and grab her sunglasses. The woman spun around like a whirling dervish while her boyfriend screamed and ran in the opposite direction. So much for chivalry, I thought.

A few seconds later, a different monkey attacked me from behind, smacking my hand and waiting for fruit to fall. People feed the animals in hopes of divine rewards, which turns them into mischievous divas. Bali is the only Hindu island in the Muslim-dominated archipelago of Indonesia, and monkeys are considered sacred in Hindu culture as representations of the monkey god, Hanuman. I hoped devotees were reaping the benefits in exchange for their generous feedings, because the monkeys looked pretty fat to me.

“Holly, get closer to the big guy so I can get a picture!” Amanda was poised on the steps above, her camera pointed in my direction.

“Are you
crazy
?” I was mistrustful of monkeys—they had
already stolen my mangoes in Kenya, grabbed my hair while I had been walking the 777 steps to the temple on Mount Popa in Myanmar, and nibbled my shoulder in the Amazon like deer on corn.

I sprinted up the stairs toward her just as another monkey grabbed her hand and almost succeeded in stealing her camera. “Karma is a bitch!” I exclaimed with a laugh as Amanda squealed and surged past Steph and Jen.

We didn't stop for a breather until we reached the top, but we all froze once we arrived. The sun was flamingo pink and sinking behind craggy cliffs that pierced the sea, the light bouncing off waves as pointy as a sea urchin's spine.

“I've never seen such an amazing sunset,” Steph said, her eyes glowing. “I wish I could travel with you for the rest of the trip. Every day must be one big adventure!”

“Come with us, Steph!” I goaded.

“Well, first I'd have to quit my job, and then I'd have to convince my husband to quit his, too,” she said, taking one last wistful look at the sunset. I froze for a second. Why had no person or thing tied the three of us to home? Steph turned to face us, her hair whipping wildly in the gusts rising from the ocean. Leaning against the ledge of the stone railing, she asked, “What are you going to do when you get back?”

Glancing at one another, we stiffened and stood a little taller. For the first time that day, we weren't all talking over one another to get the words out. We'd come on this trip looking for insight into what to do next, but even though the trip was more than half over, we still couldn't answer Steph's seemingly simple question.

We'd slept under the stars in the Andes Mountains. We'd chanted as the sun rose over an ashram in India. We'd sailed past limestone pillars in Vietnam. We'd prayed in the killing fields of Cambodia. We'd scuba dived among the islands of Thailand.
Now, as we stood on top of a temple in Bali, the future seemed like the most distant place of all.