On Going There Again

A friend of mine from Bangalore studies full time in a Singapore university, but goes back ever so often (once every five weeks or so) that his barber refuses to believe he lives Abroad. “You’re lying,” his barber says. “Your hair hasn’t even grown properly, and you’re back to see me. How can you live Abroad?”

As some of you may have noticed by now, I keep going to the same places. In these same places I usually stay in the same hotels, and do almost the same things I do each time. Why? I like familiarity; I like building. I frequently feel incapable of writing about a place, or of forming a proper opinion, unless I’ve gone back again.

In Krabi a few days ago, I had a similar experience to my friend’s. The family that runs P Guesthouse, where I always stay, last saw me in December and in April. They’re also the people who pick me up from the airport/pier each time.

“You go long time”, they said. “Where you come from this time?”

“Koh Lanta,” I replied. The neighbouring island was indeed where I had spent several days before heading to Krabi.

“Krabi, Koh Lanta, and Krabi? April you Krabi, August Krabi, in between only Koh Lanta?”

They’d thought I was on the same trip since April. I try to explain in my by-this-time strained Thai: no, April I was here in Krabi, then I went to Sangkhlaburi, Bangkok, Maesai, Mae Salong, Fang, Thaton, Chiang Dao, Chiang Mai, then I went home to Singapore, then I went to India for several weeks, then I went to Bangkok, Trang, Koh Lanta, and now, Krabi again.

I keep going to the same places.

“Crappy Krabi”, a traveller told us at the night market, while we munched on banana pancakes drizzled with condensed milk and sugar. I don’t hold it against him — Krabi town is a place with no discernible attraction. Everyone runs off to the islands immediately, as I did the first time. It is certainly not the sort of place you’d give a chance to if you only had a few precious days’ worth of travelling. Given a chance, though, I found I was happy to be in Krabi town. It had the peace of a quiet Thai town, like so many similar ones in the north, but because of geography seemed more like ‘home’ to me: the southern Thai cuisine that is in many ways like the Malay cuisine I grew up eating, at times they were even the same food but with different names. It had the charm of a southern Thai town without the dirty border bustle of Hat Yai. The night markets spilled out with food I knew and loved from every corner — a dinner of a whole barbecued catfish, fried kwayteow, pancakes, dough fritters, cost just 80 baht (S$3.50).

I merely sat at the night market each night, eating the same things, walking the same path, back to the same guesthouse, with the same person, and flew home to Singapore in the same flight at the same time.

You could scratch out every instance of the word “Krabi” and replace them with Bombay, Calcutta, Bangalore, Seoul, Hong Kong, or Bangkok: my point, if there was any in the first place, would remain the same.

I’m home. (At least until 1st December, when I’m finally done with uni.)