The big red sign at Don Muang Airport read, 'Coca Cola Welcomes You to Thailand' It was eight times bigger than the official sign. It probably had something to do with all them American boys passing through on their ways to getting killed in Nam.
Waldo and Saifon stood in the immigration queue holding their brand new passports. South Bend bus terminal was more sophisticated than Bangkok's airport in them days. There was a lot of chaos. Guys in tight uniforms with big guns, drowsy passengers not knowing what direction they was supposed to go, piles of lost bags with panties and socks spilling out of 'em.
When Waldo and Saifon both stepped up to the immigration officer's desk together, the guy yelled at 'em. Waldo had to step back over the red line he thought was just a floor decoration. When it was his turn, he felt bad he was forcing this poor little guy to do a job he obviously didn’t like.
"You not military?"
"No, sir."
"Why you come here?" Waldo remembered his line.
"Transit to Malaysia." They come up with the Malaysia story because there weren't no fighting there. If he'd said 'Laos' they'd figure he was a spy or something. According to the papers, the US had been using Laos as a transit route to get to Vietnam.
The officer demanded to see his return ticket and his money, and he didn’t make no secret of the fact he didn’t like the big guy. Or maybe he just didn’t like no one.
The drive into Bangkok City took longer than the flight. They spent more time stuck in traffic than they did moving. It was two in the afternoon and the sun baked 'em inside that old taxi like one ofWaldo's TV dinners. There was this box affair in the front pretending to be an air conditioner, but the windows was jammed down. What was coming in was hot and sticky. Waldo still had that dumb grin on his face.
"What is it you find so goddamned pleasant about all this, Waldo?"
"Look, girl. We only just arrived, and I'm already sweating like a hog. A few weeks of this and I'll be Sidney Poitier."
"Who?"
"Darn it, Saifon. Don't you ever go to the movies?"
"No."
Twenty minutes after they left it, the airport was still there grinning at 'em in the rear-view mirror. Saifon was already feisty after the flight. She was surprised when her old language come out of her mouth.
"Driver, ain't there some quicker way than this?"
He smiled the first of his eight thousand smiles of the trip.
"This is the expressway, ma'am."
"Jesus. I'd hate to be on the frigging slowway."
It took 'em an hour and twenty minutes to get off the expressway and on to something that showed Saifon what 'slow' really meant.
All the stuff that got Saifon pissed about being stuck in traffic in one of the dirtiest cities in the world, turned Waldo into some happy black Buddha. He sucked in exhaust smoke from old wooden-bodied trucks like it was fresh air or something. He waved his thumb at every vibrating tuk tuk driver that pulled up alongside. (A tuk tuk's kinda like a golf cart but without the luxury.)
He'd been practicing his wai-ing since the tour company girls at the airport prayed at him. It weren't nothing religious or nothing. That's just how they say hi to each other over there. It's called a wai. Them girls at the airport wai'd hi and tried to convince poor Waldo to sign up for a Bangkok Sex Tour. He threw away the brochure but he hung on to the wai.
There he was wai-ing at all the confused pedestrians, and they didn't have no choice but to wai back. He got plenty of practice. There was crossings painted here and there across the roads but they didn’t mean shit. Cars ignored 'em like they was just art to make the road prettier. So people clubbed together in little bands and launched off into traffic so's they could get across the road in one piece. There weren't no people bridges in them days.
Waldo noticed how everything was just that little bit smaller than back home. Sidewalks was narrower. Bus stops was shorter. Cars was dinkier. And of course the people was all Saifon-sized. Some of 'em was even tinier than she was. He felt like he was in this one episode of Land of the Giants where some giant kid had real people to play with like they was toys.
Nearly all the shops was joined together in rows, and opened out onto the street. It was like looking in on an ant farm, like all the rooms was sliced open and you could watch 'em living their lives without their noticing.
Some old guy sat in his underclothes in his hardware store reading a newspaper. A big lady in a cake shop was fanning herself with a pancake. Three un-moving girls with overdone make-up was sitting in a gold shop like cadavers in lipstick. A young couple sat out front of their sign-writing shop and laughed when their baby crashed his stroller into a dog. The dog didn't get the humor.
Waldo soaked it all up like one of them Kitchen Guzzler magic sponges. Saifon was that other ad; the spray for your sofa that stops spilled stuff from soaking in and leaving a stain. You know the one I mean? She didn't let nothing in at all. She grumbled and cussed all the way.
Dtui the driver looked at her in the mirror one time when they was stuck at a red light that didn't do no other colours.
"What you looking at?"
"Sorry, sister."
"No. You got something to say, you say it."
He looked up again and weighed up whether he was likely to make her any more pissed than she already was. It didn't seem possible so he spoke his mind.
"Well, I come from the north-east. The only reason it's Thailand and not Laos is cause it was easier to use the Mekhong as a border than putting down ropes. But you ask 'em all up there and they'll tell you they're Lao. So I got sisters that's Lao, and I got a wife that's Lao. And all my neighbors and friends and fiancées up there is Lao. And if I saw a photograph of you, I'd say you look just like them."
"So, what's your point?"
"So, it's only the look. You got a Lao nose on a Lao face on top of a Lao body. But there ain't nothing Lao about you."
"Good." She said 'good' but in truth it hurt.
"It's like some foreigner found this empty Lao body and climbed inside."
"And that's positive or negative?"
"I don't know. It must be confusing, sister."
She leaned back onto the hot seat and, for the hundredth time, wondered why it was still covered in the plastic they put on it in the factory. She had a lot of wondering to do. For the first time since she could remember, she was surrounded by people she looked like. She wasn't a chink or a nip or a wog. She could walk down the street and no-one'd take the slightest notice of her. But Dtui was right. She was a frigging imposter. There was an alien inside her that wouldn't never really understand what these people was thinking or feeling.