Other People

Other people are a lot cooler than I am.

My self confidence is fine, thanks, that’s just a fact. They’re probably cooler than you are too.

During this trip I’ve been lucky enough to have opportunities to have this statement enforced multiple times. Take this, for example: non-Americans have better health-care coverage, take longer vacations and have startlingly better retirement plans than we do. Whether it’s the Dutch couple that essentially said it is nearly impossible for them to be fired, or the New-Zealander who is retired and sitting pretty in his mid-seventies, their countries just offer them much sweeter deals. We also seldom find another traveler who has plans to go back within the next week or two. They’ve always just run out their visa in one country and are on their next border run shortly to extend their stay. Never mind their jobs; they’ll be there when they get back.

            I have also determined that it is possible to find some common ground, and to start a conversation, with every other person. This is not to say that we are all the same by any stretch of the imagination. I think we are in fact the opposite: products of our environment. So while I may never be able to balance a plate of boiled bananas (that’s right, boiled. Imagine my surprise as a bit into a steaming-hot, starchy banana!) I can use a squat toilet with ease. Why? I’ve been squatting to pee since we threw bonfire parties in the woods during high school. See? A commonality. Or take the Brit, who was curious about what we, Americans, liked to eat. We started talking Thanksgiving and asked if he’d ever heard of Tur-duck-en, explaining that it was a chicken, stuffed in a duck, stuffed in a turkey. “We have something like that in the UK!” He enthusiastically replied. “Although it’s with a quail and a guinea-fowl.” Happy to find a common ground, Shira replies “exactly! Only in America, we only eat animals that exist.”

            So whether it’s laughing with our Thai friend God (yes, that is his real name. How can you not like the guy?) about how his childhood in a hillside village just prepared him to be on the reality show “Survivor” – he’d be grilling fish from the comfort of his two-story bamboo home while the other contestants were still shaking hands – or it’s having a few too many drinks with the couple that left the U.S. after college and never looked back, there’s always something to talk about. Other people: just like me and you, but cooler.