My dad

July 20th, 7:44pm - Railay Island, Thailand

As anyone reading this probably knows, I like to talk. A lot. I especially like telling stories, and often stories I feel impart some valuable message or lesson to the listener. Unfortunately I feel like I'm sometimes a bad judge of which stories are strictly worth repeating, and usually I just stick to stories I think I sound good telling.

Yesterday on the beach I had an occasion to tell one particular story, about traveling and meeting people, to a couple German guys I was sitting with (So many Germans here!). They were about 38, drinking beers, and nodding while I talked, smiled when I finished, and then pronounced my father a just and wise man. This was enough of a catalyst that I felt like I should tell the story here, because I often give my dad the impression that I think hes a senile doofus who only likes food and cooking, and here is a chance to correct that publicly...
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Last December I went to Israel with a Birthright group, and stayed a while after the tour to be with my brother, who was working there, and my parents, who came to visit us both. Israel was a fairly exciting place, in the Middle East, and often felt like a different world than the US.

My family took a day trip to Jordan, and inward from there to Petra, to see the city cut into the rock face there. It is one of the new wonders of the world, a UNESCO World Heritage site, etc. etc. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petra). We had to go.

To get there we had to take a bus across the Israeli border, through some rather undeveloped parts of Jordan, and into Petra, which was relatively developed and touristy. On our bus ride in Jordan through the more rural areas, we stopped at a very broken down ramshackle building that had a toilet and a shop. When I say ramshackle and broken down I mean ramshackle and broken down. Awful smells, no running water, no toilet paper, on and on. It was worse than some of the places I've found in Cambodia during my travels in SE Asia. Needless to say the surrounding areas were only more dire-looking, if possible, with the lone buildings in the distance very decrepit housing structures. I imagined they had no running water as well, likely no electricity, probably no education, and possibly extremist. I think I was under the impression that if we went more than 10 feet from our bus we'd be mugged, kidnapped, shot, beheaded, put on the news and in the annals of American tourists captured and killed. If the bathroom was this bad, who knew how awful the rest of the area was??

I hope then, that you can imagine my surprise, shock, and dismay when my father stepped out of the bus, looked around, took a deep breath of dry desert air, and started walking briskly toward one of the housing structures. One of the housing structures far away. One of the housing structures with people around it. With more than one person, in fact at least 3 or 4 people, mostly adults and a few young kids. As we approached (I had followed him out of some mad impulse) my nagging pleas and their stares intensified. "Dad, what are you doing? This isn't safe! You're crazy! This is dangerous! Who are these people? They are staring at us dad! They are staring at us right now..."

With what I thought of as testicles (although not brains) of iron, my dad and I ended up walking up to the house, smiling, me in a sickly sort of way, and then stepping up onto the porch were the people stood. Although nobody spoke English, they didn't immediately shoot us, and there were smiles and nods all around. I became distracted by a smaller housing looking thing up on a hill behind the house, and pointed to it to ask my dad what it was. One of the men followed my finger, looked at me, and bustled off into the thing. With some trepidation I saw him emerge holding a bundle that could have been anything from a claymore mine to a series of knives and swords. It turned out, magically, to be a real live, very cute, very cuddly, baby goat. He pressed it onto me and had me hold it, pet it, and hug it. It was possibly the highlight of my trip, Petra and all. The picture on the top of this page is something i'll treasure for a long time.

I held the goat, there were more smiles and nods, and I have to say the house suddenly looked quite cozy, and the welcoming and kindness much better than any kind of expensive decoration I may have been looking for.

As we walked away, I wasn't really sure what to say, and so silence followed us as we walked back to the bus. As we approached, my father looked at me and smiled: "Zach, anywhere you go in the world, pretty much anywhere, 99.9% of the people are going to be friendly, kind people just trying to make it. Remember that wherever you go people are generally good, and that if you're open and friendly great things can happen".

As I travel around Thailand meeting people and having adventures, I have to say: Thank you Dad. I don't know what being a father is, but it has to be something like what you did.