THE $30 RAMBUTAN

The fruit seller wasn’t at his post. He’d left his cart unattended, which was strange. But presumably he knew that no one would take a mango uninvited. Even a farang would know better.

She was going to walk by, but a fresh pomelo salad with dried shrimp and sticky rice would be very good tonight. Pomelo—oversize, mild grapefruit—were almost always in season in Thailand. And with some dried shrimp from the corner 7-Eleven and some dried chilies, it made a foolproof meal. Even she could manage a pomelo salad. Ladarat took a look around for the owner and then stepped behind the cart, pulling out a plastic bag and selecting two of the ripest pomelo. She put two 20 baht notes under an avocado at the bottom of the pile, sticking out far enough to be seen by the fruit seller but not enough to tempt passersby who had sticky fingers.

She looked up to see a young blond man—a farang—standing in front of her. He was wearing a tank top and cutoff shorts, a White Sox baseball cap, and a three-day growth of beard. American. He was holding a fruit delicately between thumb and forefinger, head cocked to one side.

“What… is this?” Definitely American.

And probably a recent arrival. He hadn’t been in Thailand very long if this was the first time he’d seen a rambutan. The golfball-size fruits with spikes were ubiquitous most of the year. But they took some work to open, and most farang didn’t bother.

“It’s a rambutan,” she said.

If he was surprised by her near-perfect English, he didn’t show it. Or perhaps he thought that all Thais spoke English as well as he did.

“Do you… eat it?”

For a moment she was confused by the strange American use of pronouns. Did she eat it? No. Too much work. Do other people? Most certainly. Otherwise, what on earth would it be doing sitting on a fruit seller’s cart?

“You have to cut it open,” she explained. “Then you eat the wedges inside and spit out the seeds.”

The young man looked dubious. Then he handed over a bill: 1,000 baht.

She shook her head. “No, that’s thirty dollars. Too much.”

The young man smiled sheepishly. He reached into a pocket and pulled out a wad of maybe 5,000 baht in various denominations. She took the smallest note she could find—20 baht—and held it up. He nodded happily.

“Be careful about carrying that much money around,” she warned him. “You have more than many people in this neighborhood earn in a month.”

The young man’s brows furrowed in concern, and she realized that he was really quite young. Maybe not even eighteen.

“But I thought Chiang Mai was safe?”

He also still didn’t think there was anything unusual about having this conversation in fluent English with an apparent fruit seller, which showed just how out of his depth he was.

“It is very safe, compared to Bangkok or… Chicago.” She smiled as the boy looked confused. She pointed at his hat. “The White Sox? Wrigley Field?” The kid nodded happily.

It must be nice to be so unfazed by events. If traveling halfway around the world and meeting someone who spoke perfect English, sold him a rambutan from a fruit stall, and talked about the White Sox had not affected this boy’s outlook one bit, then what would?

There are people like that who are so trusting that the oddest events don’t seem to register. And those people all seemed to come to Thailand as tourists.

The kid nodded uncertainly and ambled off down the street, the corner of a 1,000-baht note peeking from his back pocket. Yes, Chiang Mai was safe, and the chances that he would get mugged were very low. But fingers in these streets were quick and deft. The chances of that 1,000-baht note reaching its destination were slim indeed.

She tucked the boy’s 20-baht note alongside hers and thought about leaving the fruit seller a note. Ah, well. Let him wonder.