I first saw her at the elevator lobby on the 20th floor. She held the door open for me.
“What floor?” she asked.
“The lobby, please,” I answered.
She isn’t a local. She’s a Westerner, but she can’t be backpacking, because this is a five-star hotel. She’s dressed to go out, though, not in the partying sense, but in the it’s-humid-out-so-you-dress-appropriately sense. It was just a little past eleven in the morning.
I next saw her a few minutes later, at the pier. Turns out, we had the same plans. That’s why she was going to the first floor: to cross the Chao Phraya, via boat, to one of Bangkok’s fancier malls on the other side.
“It’s you again,” I said to her.
She smiled.
We didn’t talk after that. The boat arrived soon after, and I may have offered pleasantries. Can you climb on the boat? That sort of thing. We sat on opposite sides and took photographs of the water, the coast, and the boats.
The funny thing was, when we got off the boat we ended up going in the same places. I wasn’t thinking much of it until I realized she was browsing the same refrigerator magnets I just browsed. And then I entertained the thought. Will I see her again? That’s when I finally lost sight of her.
Yes, I saw her again. Two hours later, on the pier, at the mall, taking the same boat, returning to the hotel.
“It’s you again,” I said to her, again. “We keep bumping into each other.”
“Yeah,” she laughed. “You did some shopping?”
She had two shopping bags with her.
“I did,” I said, “but they’re not big things.”
The hopeless romantic in me would have thought that this is perfect. This could be meant to be. You did see her again. Maybe you should talk some more.
“Where are you from?” I asked.
“America,” she answered. “How about you?”
“I’m much closer here,” I said. “The Philippines.”
“Oh, my mother’s Filipina.”
I wouldn’t have thought. To be fair, I remember the nose piercing and the tattoo of a rib cage on her arm, and that’s about it.
“When are you flying back?”
“Tonight. Around nine.”
“Me too, but my flight’s at around seven. Maybe we’ll bump into each other at the airport?”
She laughed, and that was it.
In the course of taking photos a few hours before I took one with her as the subject. Yes, there is every reason to say that it’s creepy, and that my thing for candid photography is no excuse. In my defense, it’s of her in the boat, looking out, and I thought the whole scene looked really good.
My confidence did not go far enough in this instance. I had that inner monologue about how I’m a creep. No ice breaker, no names given, no social media handles exchanged. I’m not even thinking of romance. It’s always nice to say you’ve made friends during your travels, although I still keep in touch with Lizzie from Jeju because I did tell her I thought she was cute, for some reason. And now we talk about our cats.
We walked the same paths again, but she went to the elevator lobby, presumably back up to the 20th floor. I had already checked out, so there was no chance we’d bump into each other again.
And I highly doubt the Internet would work in this instance. "If you're the girl at Shangri-la Bangkok with the nose piercing and the ribcage tattoo and the blue top with 'Peaches' written on it, I'd love to keep in touch." Nah. I guess the idea is to keep this story as it is.
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