Delightful Ning in Farangland (4) - Into the Cold

How could she stand the coldness, and how could I stand female company around the clock in my private territories - two of my main worries when I prepared for her visit.  

Into the Cold

11 p.m., I enter the bedroom. To my surprise the windows are wide open. Waves of chilly cold air float into the room like artificial fog on a rock stage. I wrap my arms around me against the coldness. Then I notice something on the bed. A bronze body, uncovered from toe to fontanel, moving slowly on the matrass like a trout in a crystal clear and ice cold stream, exposing every single pore to the cold flow.

"So cold, so wonderful", I hear a murmur. "And it is free - no need to pay for air condition."

While at her home she only has cold shower, in Europe she uses my hot shower. One time by accident there had been no hot water, and she had been okay with cold water too. She only tells me about the cold water shower days after it happened.

She says: "Cold water, no problem."

I tell her some people first shower hot, then finish cold.

She: "WHAT? First hot, then cold?"

Twenty minutes later I hear the shower. Forty minutes later a very excited SE Asian lady with attractive wet hair darts through my house like a schoolgirl: "You know what I did - shower hot, cold, hot, cold - oh, very good!" Later she says she always ends with a cold shower: "Finish with hot shower, I feel I have no shower at all."

We sit on a pebble beach near a small river. I tell her some people like to bathe in that river, but that the water was actually way too cold for that.

She: "WHAT? Can swim in river?!?"

All of a sudden my shy lady is able to change dress on a public beach - she takes a spare shorts I brought. She walks into the small river - god, I freeze when I see it. She sits down on a boulder with ice cold water flowing all around her and falls in kind of a trance, a bronze skinned black-haired Loreley. I want to walk near her through the water to take her picture, but I can't - I can't walk on the spiky stones in the river, and the water is simply too cold for me. She watches my ridiculous efforts with an enchanted smile.

One chilly cold midnight we walk onto a local hill. It is June 21, the longest day of the year, and we want to see the stars and the bonfires on surrounding hills. It is so cold we can see our breath. I would like to go home quickly and to cuddle up in bed (windows closed). Ning dives deeps into her borrowed down jacket and gives me a smile as solid as a hug: "You know: cold weather, but I have good dress - I like that very much." One more warming smile - she really means it.

A Trip To the Capital

I have to attend a business presentation in the capital. After receiving the invitation, I had asked the organiser if I might bring "one more person". This is most unusual; still I want to introduce Ning to as much Farang life style as possible - especially I want to show her a contrast to the casual countryside living we both enjoy every day. As the organiser is keen on seeing me there, they finally agree I may bring "one more person". So Ning gets her own accreditation.

I buy our train tickets from a touch screen monitor and we sit in a super modern train, but she would never comment on things like that. We walk into the City Hilton and find the convention rooms. We are welcomed by three oily marketing guys and get our name stickers, one for me, one for Ning. She says "Nice to meet you" and receives her sticker with a busy smile. About forty people listen to a boring PowerPoint presentation. A visitor on my right side who knows my travel history whispers to me: "Who is she - you brought her straight from Asia? What? Great! Does she like it?"

And then I show off: Normally I ask my questions after the presentation, to have the information all for myself. This time I hold up my arm and interview the presentator during his speech - and sure do I get admiring looks from the good-looking bronze lady to the left.

In a pause she needs restrooms. I know the toilets are quite a walk down the hall, around five corners, so I go with her. Maybe it looks a bit weird to the others that I walk to the restrooms with my cute eastern import; but I want her to find the establishment smoothly, and I want her to find the establishment for *ladies*. I do NOT want her to enter the men's compartment and to run into any collegues or business partners there! 

After the presentation it's "business lunch buffet", standing around high bistro tables. Hilton dishes up "California Fusion cuisine" or so, anyway, there are lots of vegetables, light meats, no greasy fatty bits, that looks fine for her. So I encourage her to grab whatever she likes. Then we stand around high tables on the carpeted corridor, munching. My curious colleague interviews her about her impressions of Europe. But she is most shy and gives me a lot of desparate looks. I try not to help her when I know she has enough vocabulary to answer his questions on her own; and he is a friendly chap. But comfortable she is not. Then a few sales guys in striped suits make their rounds and drop name cards on everybody: my collegue gets a set, I get a set and Ning - she gets a set of name cards, too. She receives them with a "Thank you" and a nonchalant smile and gives the cards an interested look.

All in all, Ning never lets me down. Whether we lunch in the grass, visit friends, customers or businesses, and also with friends and business visitors at home, she is always a bit shy, but graceful, delightful and super-decent. I guess she makes a better impression than I myself.

After the event we have time to look around the capital's shopping area. She likes to go window-shopping, of course, and if she wants, she can use her pocket money for any purchases. First I steer her to the most expensive street, and we see a window full of handbags around 1000 USD; I think at that moment she has cancelled all ideas of further shopping in my country.

We walk into an underground station, and there is one of her most impressive sights in all of her trip: A dirty, poor bag lady sitting on the stairs, holding out a plastic cup for a tip. Ning stoops, looks twice, cannot walk on.

"WHY", she asks, "I think in your country government helps poor people, no?"

She can't believe to see this: a dirty, poor bag lady begging for change on a subway stairway - in a superrich country.

I then have to go to another, smaller meeting, where I can't bring her. She wants to browse through dress shops meanwhile. We agree to meet in the big book shop where she can sit down on a couch and wait for me. After coming back, I see her in front of the book shop - she was too shy to enter on her own.

We walk back to the train station, and she is very silent. I ask if she did buy something, if she did see something, if she had problems finding her way. Her answers are very short. Then I ask if she did talk to anybody.

"No!" she claims.

I ask again - "no!", she sounds annoyed!

Only after half an hour on the train she opens up a bit: A man had talked to her in one department store. She says she answered "No, I wait for my boyfriend." He had touched her hair and smiled and she had frowned and said "Stop! You cannot do this!" He then just moved one meter, but kept watching her from that distance. That's what she says.

I feel very sorry. She is from a very decent, hard-working provincial family, she has no experience at all with obtrusive western males. And while she has the usual bad opinion about Asian males, she never experienced eastern guys touching her hair unwantedly in a shop. And remember, she already had to get rid of´the talkative westerner at the airport gate. I feel sad for her, and I hope her opinion about Farangland wouldn't sink too low. But her idea that the average western man is more decent than an Asian male is definitely shattered.

A few days later she finishes a handwritten letter to a friend in her country. While I want to convince her that she can use the fax machine on her own, finally I myself have to feed her words into the fax machine. Of course I do not understand anything of her Thai writing; but in between I see the English words "business presentation" - our morning in the Hilton seems to have impressed her.

A Trip To the Doc and Into the Past

When we sat on a Thai beach, she had showed me a small scar on her arm. A motorbike accident of course: "Now I shy to wear short shirt or T-shirt. Not beautiful." This little scar! I tried to convince her she looks most delightful anyway, but she wouldn't believe me. And then, in a rush of jovial patronising, I had said the sentence that brought her to Europe.

Now we are in my district capital in Europe. We walk to the skin doctor who wants to check that little scar on her arm.

Her obligatory health travel insurance won't cover the treatment of a three-year-old scar though. Of course my own health insurance wouldn't cover her treatment either. I want to ask the doc if he can write the bill in a way that one or the other insurance has to pay for it. We go to a doc a friend has recommended; I am told the doc is open for tricky questions like this.

We enter a hyper-modern starship-like clinic full of flatscreen monitors and slick nurses. As usual, Ning wouldn't comment. The doc is flat and slick too. He checks her scar and first diagnoses a "beautiful bronze skin". He says he can try to fix the scar, but he cannot promise great improvements looks-wise. Also, after the procedure she has to shield her arm against any sunshine for at least six months.

He suggests we think it over and come back if she still wants the treatment. About the bill, he says he wouldn't like to cheat. But he would not charge us for his work, only for medicine and bandages, about 25 USD all in all. For his counselling, he never sends a bill. Great.

We walk back to the car. My thoughts meander to that afternoon on the water's edge in Southern Thailand, when she had first revealed the scar and her problems about it. Back then, with a self-contented voice, I had said: "Ning - you come to Old Europe, and we go to a good doctor to remove that scar!" She had given me one of her looks of disbelief. From her Asian ex she had learnt that men can lie. I had seen from her face she didn't believe one of my words. Just sweet talk, her look suggested. I brought her to Europe partly to prove I didn't lie about seeing the doc.

I never believed, though, she would survive the procedures at the embassy. Still I bought the health insurance for her (100 USD) and the government paper that confirms I do have money and space for her (20 USD) and rushed it all over by DHL (55 USD). I just wanted to show her I do try my best, and I never told her how sceptical I was. She herself wasn't: She switched family property to her name, stuffed up her bank account with her uncle's money. With all those handy papers from Europe, from her government and from her bank, she still had to get through the interview at the embassy. They asked her about my name, my town and my parents. Luckily I had shown her pictures of my area and my family, I always carry a family flip album in SE Asia to entertain new friends. So she entertained the embassy staff with my family's saga - part of it sheer fiction, but embassy staff didn't know better and was impressed. "Show us a return airplane ticket, and you get a three-months-visa", they promised. I was deeply shocked. Then I called my travel agency and DHL again.

This is what I think when we walk back from the doctor to the car. I had promised to take her to a Euro skin doctor, and I did. Does she remember that afternoon by the water's edge, too? My Asian lady, silently she walks by my side. Then she says: "No need to go back to doctor. Cannot help much, I think."