SED Artist

Picture this.

It’s 11 am, on one of the hottest days in Cambodia so far. I am sitting in a minivan ready for a 9 hour journey over the border and into Thailand. Liv and I thought we’d struck gold and landed ourselves our very own private ride. Of course not. One by one it starts to fill up. One tiny middle seat left, and it gets attributed to the final guy, a middle aged large American. He’s pushed into the van by a guy from Myanmar who barely speaks English, and from the moment he’s through the door, he isn’t silent once. He’s loud and boisterous and is in a particularly good mood, although, as recounted many times, is seriously hungover and woke up only moments ago. Turns out, he’s a great ice breaker for the group, and really bonded us with this top notch Canadian guy Logan. The American guy talks non stop, speaking only of himself, shoving his ideas, his life story and his souvenirs in our faces as if it’s the most interesting thing in the world. He really did, quite literally, shove them in our faces. I could smell those Angkor Wat shot glasses, they were that close.

Now I understand, it seems mean of me to be so rude about this guy for no reason. People’s life stories and souvenirs are interesting and it’s great to hear about them, but, it all depends on the delivery. This time, the delivery was bad. He took up too much mental space, he was too loud, too rude, and spoke only of himself.

Thirty minutes into the journey and he cracks open a bottle of vodka, asking over and over again for us to join him as he downs the entire bottle. Another guy drinks with him, but by the time they’ve finished the bottle and rudely acquired a new hard liquor, Liv, Logan and I are not having the best time. In poor taste, he unapologetically blasts his own bad pop music. By that point, the AirPods came out and the three of us attempted some peace and quiet behind shut eyes, music, and a bit of blog planning. By this point I was already thinking, this guy is rude and unpleasant, hiding his lack of manners behind a jovial laugh and flashes of his pearly whites.

He must have noticed that I couldn’t really stand him, which is surprising considering his poor social cues, because about two hours into the journey, he turns to me and says ”Sister, you’re quite serious aren’t you!”.

That’s a statement by the way, not a question. God forbid the man asks me a question.

Stupidly, it completely threw me off.

I stuttered a bit, “umm… depends the day”. It’s as if I needed to justify myself to this stranger whom I didn’t like, who had not asked me a single question but who’s life story I seemed to know by heart.

I disliked the view of the back of his head after that. For some reason I felt so angry. It’s such a small thing, but it felt so big, and why couldn’t I just have told him to politely piss off ?

This may seem like an overreaction, but it made me angry, and I think most people would feel the same, especially in this case I think, women. I don’t think he would have said anything had I been a man.

It didn’t make me angry because of his opinion of me, I really couldn’t care less about that. I think it comes from something else, which lies mainly in the roots of men vs women, especially older men vs younger women.

This happens oftentimes, older men who like to tell you something about yourself or something that you’re doing wrong before he’s even inquired a single thing about you.

On the slow boat to Laos, which lasted two days, another middle aged and boisterous man told me to put my feet away because “we’re actually in a Buddhist country now and you’re being disrespectful to their religion”.

We’d been in the boat for hours, and I’d spent most of my time sitting quietly, minding my own business, reading and painting. That’s innocent enough right ? I don’t think I caused anyone an ounce of discomfort let alone disrespect. Actually, I know I didn’t. Interestingly enough, during the entire journey, a large group of young adults at the back of the boat had spent their time getting drunk, in varying states of undress, groping each other and making out. I think they violated a few more Buddhist codes than I did, and yet, he didn’t say a thing.

Instead of minding his own business and accepting the little blips of cultural ignorance that a young traveller might have, he went out of his way to display his great worldly wisdom and unload an ego boosting telling off on me, in front of everyone.

This is something I’ve observed quite a lot during my travels; you notice when people ask questions, especially men. I don’t want to make it a gender thing and maybe I shouldn’t, but I’m going to because from my experience, that is the way it’s been.

When someone is curious and actually engages in a two way conversation with you, you notice. Some people seem to think they’re blessing you with the knowledge of their personal existence and experience. They’re not.

I think this ties in a lot to the idea of ‘social budgeting’ that I mentioned in my previous blog. So much energy goes into listening to another person yap at you. To them it really doesn’t matter who you are; if they’re not asking questions and they’re not curious about who you are, you really could be anyone. It’s humbling actually, and not in a good way, just in a very small person kind of way.

I guess applying your self awareness and ability to say no is vital here. That’s a big travel lesson, I think; you really learn about your own boundaries and how willing you are to push them. It’s okay to bend them every now and again of course, but sometimes you’ve just got to stick to your gut and say no, or just politely take yourself away.

Of course there’s great benefit to the curiosities of other people’s lives and experiences. Conversations are one of those beautiful exchanges were both parties involved get to learn, inwards and outwards simultaneously. If that’s not happening though, even at the most basic of levels, then it really is way more fun to just say no.

Saying no really gets you places when you’re travelling. Truly, it’s one of those things you become so comfortable saying. No thank you, no I don’t want to go there, no I don’t want to spend that money, no I don’t want to hear about your late night experiences with Cambodian women. That makes me sound so serious, just like Mr.Sister said, and you know what, maybe I am. It reaches a point, as a young woman I think especially, when you really have to stand up for yourself and your boundaries. When a loud rude man turns to you and tells you who he thinks you are (when minutes earlier he told you and the only other woman there ‘you’re beautiful women but I have a wife’ as if bestowing upon us the highest of honour) you’ve just got to be okay sticking to your unfriendly face and ignoring the old fart who gets drunk and taken away by the Thai police at the border.

Being a serious person, and being seriously sick of someone’s ‘nonsense’, are two very different things. There’s great strength to sticking to your feelings sometimes and not putting on a face.

That too is a big part of the ‘saying no’ factor. Having boundaries and fluctuating feelings around different people under varying factors, is just normal.

So no Mister, I am not serious thank you very much, I am just seriously done with you and wish I didn’t have to sit in the same square metre as you for the next 9 hours. But thanks for your consideration.