Twelve Dead Jurors

We never passed on visiting the many used bookstores dotting the backpacker ghettos. One evening, while browsing through a cramped shop in the Khao San neighborhood of Bangkok, we stumbled upon a novel by John Grisham called Die Jury. The title intrigued us, so we picked it up for a quick glance at the plot printed on the back cover. We placed the book back on the shelf with a chuckle when we discovered it was his novel, The Runaway Jury, translated into German.

The Legend of Mr. Sleep

The ninety-mile journey from Poipet to Siem Reap took roughly ten hours over a cratered road victimized by third-world neglect. While the van violently rocked from side to side as it challenged each pothole, choking dust drifted through its ill-fitted windows and clouded the interior. Five hours into the demanding trip, I welcomed the stop.

We pulled off the road and into the parking lot of a sleepy restaurant. Any possibility of a peaceful reprieve from the drive vanished when several children approached and began aggressively selling fruit and drinks. One twelve-year-old girl offered me a piece of pineapple for 2000 riel. Not that I couldn’t afford the fifty cents, but the health section of our Lonely Planet warned of the dangers from diseases contained in certain types of fruit that included pineapple, so I politely declined. And I declined again, and again, and again. Once she understood my position, we engaged in small talk.

“What’s you name?” I asked.

“Niet,” she replied. “And what is your name?”

“Steve,” I said.

She laughed…and continued to laugh. Then she held her hands up to one side of her face, tilted her head on them and closed her eyes.

“Sleep,” she said through a wide grin, “Your name is Sleep.”

Before I could correct her, she rushed to her friends and my name quickly spread. They all laughed, so I said nothing and enjoyed the misunderstanding along with them.

Eventually, the break ended and we crawled into the van for the remainder of our drive to Siem Reap. I said good-bye to Niet and waved as the van pulled away. What began as typically exhaustive dialogue between a tout and a traveler ended as a pleasurable moment with the local people. Whether Niet felt the same, I will never know. We faced a drive that would continue well into the night with conditions unsuitable for getting any rest, so it fitted perfectly when she waved back and said, “Good-bye, Sleep.”

A Cut Below the Rest

After we arrived on Pinang Island, just off the west coast of the Malay Peninsula, I decided my long hair needed a snip. I hit the streets of George Town and settled on a salon that charged around three dollars. A quick fifteen minutes in the chair produced a style that looked more like she ripped my hair using her fingers. With her English worse than my Chinese, I did not bother explaining the problem. I paid for services poorly rendered and hurried back to the hotel room.

I faced the mirror and concluded that a shaved head would rescue me from this disaster. I picked up my Remington beard trimmer and began above the ears chiselling an inch-wide strip down to five o’clock shadow length. Then the batteries died. If it looked bad then, it looked really bad now. I decided that I caused enough damage for one day, and would live with my new hair “don’t” until dawn.

The following morning I humbly walked into another salon and, in my best combination of body language and facial expressions, indicated I wanted the rest of my hair matching the racing stripe I carved over my ears. She nodded while laughing then sat me down. Moments later I hit the streets of George Town again, but now with the best looking scalp in all of Pinang.