DAY 41 | BANGKOK, THAILAND
One of the happy coincidences was meeting Rini… Rini is one of the awesome people I took a flight with to Chiang Rai; a flight that I booked in a really quick decision compared to the average time I take in even the simplest of things like choosing an ice cream flavor. She’s from Indonesia and she actually studied and lived in Egypt for four years! Her Arabic is very good; but of course she learnt the official arabic not the Egyptian one…Which is also strange to be replying to since you’re like should I be replying in the official arabic as well?!
It’s always strange to speak in Arabic while traveling since it’s either English or just body language with non-English speakers :D
The funny thing is, when she told me where she stayed in Cairo I told her yeah I know that neighborhood I sometimes go to a local Thai restaurant there; El Nil, with my friends and she used to go there as well!! Small world :)
Which reminds me of when I was in Lisbon, Portugal, I’ve been staying at a hostel for 2 days. We were only two in the ladies dorm, low season, we didn’t get to say much other than good morning because she would either be rushing to head outside early in the morning and I would just be waking up or she would already be asleep when I get back to the hostel at the end of the day. On my third day though, I came back early so we began to talk and she was from Tunis! Felt weirdly good to be talking in Arabic and it was so strange for BOTH of us to be saying good night in Arabic, it was so good to hear it, a phrase that you’re so used to saying almost every night back home but that moment, “Good Night تصبحي على خير” had much more weight and made more sense for me in a place where I was a passer by and a temporary explorer.
You never realise how much you miss speaking in your own language when you’ve only been using it in phone calls with no actual person sitting in front of you, just a voice in some other place, in a different continent with a different time zone calculating when is the perfect time for both time zones to intersect.
