Train. Time. - The Stories of Thailand

It was half an hour before the train would leave to Bangkok when Noah appeared. I was sitting at the table of an outdoor café (certainly, since most café tables are outdoors in Southern Thailand) right in front of the train station with Sai, the attendant of the travel agency that had sold me the ticket. She had a special fascination for Westerns and insisted on waiting for the train with me, while we sipped on iced tea.

Noah looked tired and happy. He had ridden his bicycle almost one hundred miles, the distance from Satun to Trang, to meet me. He started his journey on Friday afternoon and arrived at Hat Yao, the fisherman village where I had been volunteering for a couple of weeks, when it was too dark to find the small school where I was staying. The village consisted on a bunch of scattered modest houses and the school was in the darkness of the jungle. The only lit room was the classroom where all the teachers slept at on mats on the floor, covered by mosquito nets. That night, unable to find the way to me, Noah had slept on the beach to start the second leg of his ride to the train station in Trang on Saturday morning.

That was my last day of my first stay in Thailand. The next day, after twelve hours on a train, I would arrive in Bangkok to take my long flight back home. I had left the school in the morning and the train was leaving at noon. Because I had arrived early, I had had enough time to get a much needed pedicure and check my messages at an internet shop. Noah had written to me:

“Flor, mi fuego, I know I will find you.”

So I waited for the train and for Noah, losing my hopes of ever seeing him again with every passing minute.

We had met at the Diamond Cave, a rock climbing section in Railay Beach, in Krabi. Five months prior my friend Joey had asked me if I would like to climb in Thailand. Without hesitating I had said “yes”. And there I was, in the burning heat of Krabi, harness on and hands covered in chalk. Noah was with a group of friends waiting to climb, too. We engaged in conversation and he told me he was there enjoying a few days of recess from his teaching job. Teaching in Thailand… I thought, “What a wild idea!”

Noah was an obviously joyful soul. He was one of those rear persons that carry their great attractiveness with great humbleness, so that his physical appearance was shaded by the gorgeous interior. He was peaceful. He talked about everything with passion. He carried items that dear friends had given him: a batik scarf, a backpack made out of a rice bag, a Buddhist amulet.

We saw each other a few more times at the beach. We were both staying at the Tonsai side of the peninsula of Krabi, which was a rock-climbers paradise. In the evenings, we all gathered around the Freedom bar on mats and cushions on the floor and enjoyed the warm breeze and the smell of the ocean in that far-away land, while we listened to Bob Marley –of course.

I left Krabi on a stormy morning. It was hard to leave because most long-tail boat conductors did not want to navigate on a rocky ocean. I had to cross the peninsula to the Railay side, where the seamen where braver. I did not see Noah to say good bye.

I found Noah online one of the few times when I had access to the internet at the fisherman village. He promised he would visit me and I did not believe him. And then he rode his bike for one hundred miles to see me.

At the Trang station Noah sat at the table where Sai and I were having our drinks. Sai did not understand Western clues, I think, because she stayed there instead of giving us some alone time. We wanted to say a lot in a small lapse of time. We wanted to stretch the minutes, but they seemed to run so fast.

“When do you think you would like to return to the States?” I asked Noah.

“I am content. I do not know what will bring me back some day.”

I understood him, many years later.

He walked me to the train and stayed on the platform while a conductor showed me to my seat and placed my bags on the suitcase rack. Then I walked to the steps and he came to hug me.

“I knew you would stay”, he joked. And he kissed me the tenderest kiss of my life.

We broke the embrace as the train started moving. I walked to my seat and saw Noah watching me with a smirk. What was he thinking? Maybe I should have stayed and miss my flight. I was not that daring those days.

And that was the last time I saw Noah, standing on the train platform. I will never see him again in this life, among the illusions that make up the material world, because Noah is now pure light.