By Lucy

Content warning.

On Sunday morning, David headed out. Which is good, because he was starting to get on my nerves. He had monopolized the one good mug, even hiding it in his room overnight, and he didn’t put anything away in the kitchen properly, which is quite rude when you consider that I didn’t have to let him use my stuff. He even let ants into the sugar!

Since it was the first day of my weekend – I get two days off, not that I’m working that hard – I wanted to go for a long bike ride.

As I had my breakfast, I noticed the pregnant dog was actually just heavily postpartum. She now has 5 puppies following her everywhere.

Of course, I found them less cute when I discovered that at some point on Saturday, they had ripped open my backpack!

Before I could go on my bike ride, I had to fix it.

My initial goal was to bike to the beach, but I only made it about 3/4 of the way there before I decided I was too tired to continue. I stopped and had a handful of the cashews I kept in my bag before heading home. They have these little shelters all along the roads in Malaysia, for some reason.

Now that I have nothing to do but sit on my porch and contemplate the hazy horizon, my thoughts inevitably turn to my own mortality.

I read a Guardian article about the “long middle”, a fairly new state of being. Analogous to modern geriatrics… before modern medicine, illness was an acute affair. After all, it wasn’t until the last hundred years that we could put stents in arteries to clear blockages, antibiotics to clear out potentially fatal infections, and when surgery is mostly guaranteed to succeed. As many doctors will attest, being able to revive someone is not always a gift; they’ll often not ever return to their former health, which was probably not 100% to begin with.

The state of being disabled by chronic illness is new as well. After all, diabetes used to be fatal. People often mention their grandparent who “dropped dead” of a heart attack or stroke, but rarely anymore. You didn’t used to have to care for aging parents and grandparents for years, because there was no medical intervention to prolong their lives. Now we linger, for years or decades, and a new way of thinking is required. What is enough life? What level of disability is acceptable? How do we survive as a society when a good chunk of our citizens require around the clock care?

So we’re learning as we go, really.

My existence is a testament to that. Before modern surgical techniques, I would be long dead of metastatic colon cancer. There’s no guidebook for this, no precedent.

Another thing that provoked this line of thought was that, I Googled my illness to send a webpage to Vlad – then he can just copy anything that confuses him into Google translate – and I noticed they’ve updated the webpages about me. Now the chances of my disease occurring are one in a million, and the average life expectancy is 35-40.

Great.

Well, now I can say I’m a one in a million.

I think the reason for the update is desmoids. Before, they were thought to be rare surgical side effects. Now they seem to be more and more common… and I suspect the answer lies somewhere between “better data” and “microplastics”.

Speaking of, I haven’t had my usual meds for a while. Somewhere in HCMC I ran out of Tylenol and Imodium and I couldn’t be bothered to refill them. I’ve been muddling along fine so far.

There was an interesting dilemma on The Pitt. Mel’s severely autistic sister has a boyfriend and all that that implies. Which is an interesting conversation that we also need to have as people live longer with disability, some of which impair cognition. Like with dementia; at which point can someone no longer consent, even if it’s with a spouse?

My writing comes in stops and starts. I’ve been trying not to fight it, just leaving the page open and typing a sentence or two at a time as it comes to me. My goal is a thousand words a day, and as long as I hit that I count myself as satisfied.

It’s doing weird things to my mood, like it always does. Putting myself in the mental space I need to for this book makes me want to drink. It’s probably a good thing that drinking is impossible here, but it doesn’t bode well for when I am back at work again.

Monday I took even slower. I didn’t want to injure myself by working out too much. Just writing and watching Youtube.

The internet can be hit or miss. Some days it works well all day. Some days it cuts out constantly and I can’t get anything done… usually the days I want to write. I finally give in and buy an E-sim. Still cheaper than staying at a hostel!

In the afternoon, some internet techs showed up. I was excited until I realized they were just staying overnight and not here to fix something.

In the middle of the afternoon, a tropical storm struck. It rained forever, hard enough that you couldn’t see across the yard, although it came in waves. It was not relaxing; on the tin roof of the courtyard, it sounded like cannonfire, and I couldn’t hear my computer even with my headphones on.

In the evening, the tiler’s car died. I’m not sure what was wrong with it, but he was out there looking at it with a flashlight. He ended up working on the damn thing until past midnight. I need more earplugs.

Tuesday… back to sweeping the courtyard. After last night’s rain, I doubt I need to water the plants.

I’m not sure why Ismail does this. He’s busy, but he’s not so busy that he can’t water the plants and sweep the courtyard every other day anyway. Loneliness? Trying to attract international travelers? He has a lot of guests and everyone around town knows him… David called him a village elder.

Vlad wanted me to double check that he was ok to stay before he arrived on Thursday, so I double checked with Ismail, who seemed nonplussed by it.

Already, time to nut up or shut up.

With the number of scary articles about how everything is going to Hell in a handbasket, I booked a flight home at the end of July. I went back and forth on visiting Japan before I did, and ultimately decided I’d rather take my time. If I come back at the end of July, that gives me a few solid months to fatten up my wallet before we slow down for winter. Still, I think this proves I was right to try and knock out a bunch of countries all at once. Some of these places are going to be completely unrecognizable before long. As much as everyone likes to talk about ‘things opening up soon’, it will take 3-4 years to rebuild the destroyed infrastructure in the Middle East. This is our new normal.

The tilers finished up and headed out. They’d been here as long as I had, and although we never really talked, one of them made a point of coming over and saying goodbye to me. Perhaps it was a thanks to me for keeping the shared bathroom clean.

Shortly before dinner, I went out for another long bike ride. A couple of boys on a scooter stopped and asked me for a selfie. I agreed, already thinking to myself they’ll probably send it around the village groupchat claiming to be dating me or something.

I stopped by this cafe off the main road. It’s open 4-10 pm, catching everyone coming home for work. I didn’t have any cash on me – I only have 9 ringgit left – but I stopped to chat with the owners for a bit. He offered me a free bottle of water, but I had no way to carry it and declined.

For dinner, I made myself eggy in a basket; a British dish where you cut a hole in a piece of bread, toast it on the stove, then fry an egg in the middle. It’s a meal for when you’re feeling lazy. Not that I have anything but time, but I also don’t want to invest much money into cooking ingredients. I’ve been getting away with spending around 50 ringgit a week on food.

I was still feeling a little peckish, so I grabbed out the rice crackers the ladies had left me. To my surprise, the crackers had sardines baked into them! I found them instantly addicting and struggled to stop myself from finishing the bag that day. I have no idea how many calories are in them, but I imagine quite a few.

Wednesday… I was practically vibrating with excitement. Vlad was in KK, but taking the bus up the next day, which was valid. I was pretty sure he’d enjoy it here, but I could be wrong, and he’s allowed to be skeptical.

After I was done the day’s chores, I settled in to book the Philippines. I definitely wanted to take a ferry around, even though flying was still cheaper. I’d found this cheap hostel with attached restaurant on an out-of-the-way beach on Palawan, and I’d decided to spend a week there.

There seemed to be only one ferry company to Palawan. Your options are, to go directly to Puerto Princessa, which is a 25 hour ferry ride, or to take a ferry to Coron. The problem with the Coron ferry is that it only runs once a week, and there’s only one night before you have to head out. It also means I have a couple of days to kill in Manilla beforehand.

Well, I have 4 weeks to kill, why not spend a week in Coron? I booked the overnight ferry from Manilla to Coron, then a week in Coron, then the 4 hour ferry to Puerto Princessa. It gets in late, so I booked a night in town and 8 days at the beachfront hostel.

Hm… now what? Do I fly back? Take the overnight ferry back? And when?

Maybe I don’t need to plan that now.

After I had lunch, Ismail came over and offered me a bowl of something he cooked. It was some sort of soup… casserole… thing, with durian as the main ingredient. Since I’m a polite person, I accepted the bowl and gave it a try.

It was weird. Cooking durian does reduce the infamous smell a fair bit, but it’s still there. There was cassava and macaroni in the sauce – two starches? – and it had the texture of a cheesy sauce despite probably containing no dairy. I had a few mouthfuls, but I was full already, so I went and threw it in the fridge.

Back to writing! In the background, thunder rumbled away around Mt Kinabalu. The neighbours were trying to clear their yard with fire.

I was clicking through Cinematherapy’s page for inspiration when I realized someone was trying to get my attention. It was Ismail’s son, standing next to his car.

I threw my headphones off. “Yes?”

“I’m going to cafe, want to come?”

What prompted this? “Sure!” I rushed to put my things away and jumped in the passenger seat.

We drove away through the rice fields. Immediately I realized we were going to the cafe I had stopped at the other day.

He did a loop around a side road to show me the mountain, but it was hiding behind the clouds. He tells me he’s working on his master’s in “media”, writing a thesis about influencers.

“You know your dad asked me for video to post on Tiktok, right?” I laugh. He did not know!

We stopped at the cafe. They indeed remembered me.

We chatted for a bit. “What do you do all day here? Aren’t you bored?”

“Well, I’m writing a book-“

“A book! Are you famous?”

“No!”

“What about?”

I tell him a bit about the book. He asks what novels I’ve read and gives me his list in return. Kafka, Dostoevsky… heavy hitters. This kid has depth.

He also mentions a Japanese philosopher, Osamu Dazai. I look him up quickly; he wrote a book much like Steppenwolf, then committed suicide before it was published. Talk about marketing potential.

We sat around chatting for half an hour, then he dropped me off at home and left.

As I started working on my writing again, I realized it was raining ashes.

I glanced around. Ismail was walking around, doing this and that. The ashfall was normal.

The way they casually burn things here will never stop giving me palpatations.

I had the rest of the durian dish for dinner. Some guests show up that turn out to be painters, finishing the house the tilers were at before.

Lots of our guests show up last minute. It seems to be a common Malaysian thing, to go on a road trip and just stop wherever. Most only stay for one night and head out in the morning.

I feel like crap the next day. My period is late; I’ve spent the last four days dealing with low energy and feeling bloated. Still, I try to summon some energy. Vlad is arriving today! I prepare the other room as part of my morning chores. The entire place is coated in a fine layer of ash.

Vlad doesn’t have data, so around 11 he headed out. I told him I’d be at the bus stop around 1:30; that gives the hour and a half for drive, plus the driver not leaving for an hour. Even that seemed a little too generous.

I went to lay down to cool down for a minute, and the Curse struck.

My period’s been backwards the whole trip. Late, early, now late again. Apparently it happened all at once; I instantly bled through my pad and through the sheets of the bed (dammit). With it came an attendant low blood pressure dizziness, not helped by the heat, obviously.

I ate some lunch and headed out around 12:40.

That was a mistake.

I made it about halfway down the road before dizziness overwhelmed me. My vision get progressively more and more washed out until everything in front of me was a white blur. I wisely decided to sit down before I passed out.

Now what? I didn’t have enough cash to call a Maxim. I should probably go lay down, but Vlad would be waiting for me at the bus stop, with no way for me to tell him I was suddenly unwell. I’d have to just push through and take it slow.

Every 200 meters in the midday sun, I stopped, sat down, and had a drink of cool water until my vision cleared and I could stumble another 200 meters.

As the footbridge came into view, another thing happened.

I stopped in front of someone’s house. A Malay woman asked if I was ok – the dizziness was taking longer and longer to clear – and when I couldn’t really answer her, she yelled around the back in Malay. A man appeared on a scooter and I presumed she had summoned him to take me into town, since I was clearly unwell. He asked if I wanted to go to Kota Belud and I agreed and hoped on.

Of course, this meant going in the opposite direction of the footbridge.

About halfway back down the road, he turned left down a side road.

A shortcut?

He stopped outside a small pagoda. He gestured for me to sit inside and again, trusting idiot, I thought maybe I looked like I was going to pass out and he wanted me to sit in the shade for a minute.

Then he started undoing his pants.

Umm, what? I immediately jumped up and, propelled by adrenaline and indignation – because I really doubted I was misinterpreting that action – stomped off back to the road without looking back.

He quickly got back on the bike and chased me. He stopped next to me and gestured for me to get on the bike again.

“I want to go to Kota Belud!” I exclaimed.

“Two minutes.” He replied.

I flipped him off. He understood that gesture and took off on his scooter, without looking back.

I walked down the road without getting dizzy for a bit, energized by my anger. As I came back within view of the house, the dizziness came back and a little bit of my self-assuredness slipped.

What the hell had that been? Had that really just happened? Was I that stupid? What if I had passed out?

A chill went down my spine.

Presumably he figured all white women are God-less sluts, and I was in no real danger, but it was still… jarring isn’t strong enough a word.

I sat down to gather my strength before I got closer to the house. This time, I powered through the other side of the footbridge.

I managed to stagger my way to the bus stop around 2:30. I was also worried I had let Vlad down again, but it turned out he had only just got there – his bus driver took his sweet time.

“Vlad!” I yelled, and threw myself in his arms, practically sobbing.

“I’m glad to see you too.” He says, smiling.

I explained to him what happened. After he makes double sure that I’m not hurt, he guides me over to a store and tries to buy me something to ease my pain. There’s no explaining to him that it’s just my period and nothing will fix it, so I let him buy me an electrolyte drink and sit down on the sidewalk to drink it.

A man wanders by and chats with Vlad. He asks what his wife’s name is.

I start laughing and choke on my drink. It takes Vlad far too long to realize the man is assuming I am his wife. “No, no, no, she is not my wife.”

When I can breathe again, I choke out, “You should be so lucky to marry me.”

“Hah hah.” He says, in his usual stoic Russian way. “Now how are we getting you home?”

I do still have to go get some cash out of the bank, but I make sure I grab enough to last the rest of my trip here.

There’s no option but to take a Maxim back. I barely survived the walk here, let’s not push it further.

When we arrive at the homestay, Ismail is not there. I show Vlad around and Vlad manages to break the steps into my side of the hut.

About an hour later, Ismail arrives, with dinner. In direct juxtaposition to Vlad being nervous about being unwanted, Ismail is the happiest I have ever seen him. He immediately starts asking Vlad if he can weld, and I realize why. Despite me saying I can weld, I am still “just a woman”. Ismail is happy there’s a ‘man’ here.

After dinner, me and Vlad go for a walk. We walk past coconut and banana trees, and at least one mulberry bush.

I still can’t believe he is here, that is the hardest part to process. I know how it makes sense, logically; he had to leave Vietnam to reset his visa; he has no home or job to return to, so where he is doesn’t matter; and he’s travelled for his other friends, most recently to Brazil to try and get residency there.

But emotionally! Everywhere I go, every time someone asks me “by yourself?” I think in my head “who would want to travel with me?”. I wonder how these people got such friends, that they can convince them to spend thousands of dollars and get on a plane. I’m quite unlovable, it seems.

Until now.

It’s breaking my brain. It keeps drifting back to romance; that seems the only “logical” choice.

Of course, that’s reductive. And it discounts my other friends who would come with me, in other circumstances. Me and Paul have been planning a roadtrip to Barrie later on in the year. But it’s hard to square logic with emotion.

The sun goes down.

We take a circuitous route and run across a booth selling “corn milk”. 3 ringgit. Vlad buys one for me because I’ve never tried it, but I don’t like it. I drink half of it to be polite and then I throw it out.

We get back around 7 and I excuse myself for bed. Vlad asks the direction to go back to Kota Belud before I go. He also spends the first part of the night adjusting the overhead light in the kitchen so it works better.

I’m still a little traumatized by what happened. I keep flashing back to it and debating what I should have done differently and whether I should tell Ismail. I’m glad Vlad is here now, because I’ve become anxious about going out for walks now. The boys catcalling me are no longer local curiosities… now it feels like a threat.

When I get up in the morning, I realize I’ve lost a bunch of weight. I’ve probably been losing weight for a couple of weeks, but I couldn’t tell because I was all bloated from my late period. Now it’s happened, every single pair of pants I own is hanging off of me again.

Vlad actually did walk all the way to Kota Belud and go grocery shopping at 7PM. I knew he would, and I still find it hard to believe. I wake up at the usual time, have breakfast, and finish my chores before he even pries himself out of bed. But then, he was probably up until 1 or 2 AM. Or later.

The painters worked late into the night and left instead of sleeping and continuing today, so that room has to be turned over.

Again, Ismail is so excited Vlad is here that he bought breakfast. Well, that’s not quite true. He did buy some food for me my first week as well, and to be honest, he continues to buy me treats every 2-3 days. But he does still seem more excited by Vlad’s presence. I make Vlad a coffee and we talk about the work. I point out the coconut tree in the backyard and Ismail says we can grab coconuts down anytime.

When they start working, I realize I’m not wanted – by Ismail, anyway – and go back to writing, while glancing over at them. Ismail’s got a little electric welder he wants Vlad to use. He admits it is new because the local boys have a tendency to steal anything that isn’t nailed down. Watching the two of them struggle to weld a steel sign together when I have a freakin’ license to weld is painful, but I try to find the humor in it. When Vlad comes over for his second coffee, I point it out.

“You could certainly do a better job that me, but it doesn’t matter, right?” He admits. I’ve shown him pictures of my work.

“I suppose.” We get to stay here, together, for basically free. I should focus on that.

I paid him back the American money he gave me for Cambodia. He smiles and declares himself a rich man, before I point out how far 150USD goes in Vietnam.

The days settle easily back into the pattern we had in Vietnam. Me and Vlad wordlessly adjust our days and expectations for each other. Most days, I make him coffee and breakfast, mostly because I’m up already and slightly bored. By the same token, he usually makes dinner, as I’m deeply engrossed in my writing. We take long walks, watch movies, and play Mario Kart. You would be forgiven for thinking we’d been friends for years and not a month. No one believes that we aren’t dating, but Ismail doesn’t seem to mind whatever we are as long as there’s no PDA’s.

In the afternoon, Vlad remembers the coconut conversation. I go to do something for a minute and I come back and he’s trying to hack open a coconut with a cleaver.

“Wow, I didn’t think you’d actually climb a tree for a coconut.” I say.

“Why not? It’s free.” Succeeding, he offers me the coconut.

“I’m good, thanks.” I watch him drink from the coconut. He picks bits of flesh off the inside and tosses them to a chicken wandering around the yard. “Coconut chicken?” I ask.

We both break into laughter.

“Don’t feed them, though, they’ll keep coming back and it’ll be a problem.” I point out.

At 3, we leave to walk to the coffee shop. It’s about an hour walk. Since my boots are still broken, I wear the cheap flip flops, which was a mistake. By the time we get back, my feet are blistered and bleeding.

It doesn’t help that it was raining for most of the walk, although I prefer the rain to the sun. Thunder booms and lightning lances overhead. Me and Vlad walk under umbrellas.

“I’ve never seen rain like this.” He says.

“Really? We have rain like this all the time.”

The guy at the cafe is thrilled and confused to see me again. We order a couple of drinks and sit around talking. They call us over and ask to take pictures with us, like we’re celebrities and not two random white people. The owner tells me I look like Meridia, from Brave.

After an hour, we head home.

I ran out of bread. Vlad likes the little banana fritters and they’re only a ringgit, so I’ve developed a habit of buying breakfast instead of cooking it. Economies of scale are fun. If I buy and make my own breakfast, it’s like 30 cents, or I can buy a fresh, hot breakfast every morning for 1 ringgit. It adds up but it’s tempting.

Saturday morning, Paul is on nightshift, so I call him while I do my morning chores and we chat for a bit.

One of the problems with this situation is that, at the end of the day, I don’t have feelings for Vlad, or at least strong enough feelings to act on them. It has underlined for me that my most recent set of strong feelings were, in fact, real, which reopens that wound. Not helped by the spectre that I will soon (soon being relative) be back in Canada.

Vlad has discovered it was not the dogs that ate my backpack. It was a mouse in the hut. It took a bite out of his bar of soap thinking it was fruit!

Vlad’s painting today. He doesn’t mind working in the noon sun, so sleeping in is a choice he continues to make. Somehow, we don’t disrupt each other’s sleep, even though thin walls are a thing (he always says ‘bless you’ whenever I sneeze).

As I relaxed in front of the fan, I ended up clicking around things to do in the Philippines. I had anothe week-ish to kill, and I narrowed down what I wanted to do to either swimming with whale sharks, or hiking in north Luzon (the island Manilla is on). I eventually decided on hiking; it’s cheaper and I don’t have to worry about trying to get back to Manilla. I book a flight back to Manilla.

I went on GetYourGuide to scope out hiking ideas, and was immediately sidetracked. There was an ad for a hike to a tattooist called Apo Whang-od. She’s a 109 year old Filipino woman who doesn’t even speak English, but she has some idea that she’s famous and she’s more than happy to mug for the camera. Her tattoes are one of a kind because in her tribe, you can only learn to do them from a relative, and she has no kids and no one in her tribe has learned to do them, so once she’s gone that’s the end of it.

Before I can decide to book it, Vlad interrupts me. He convinced Ismail to drive him to town, do I want to go?

Yes! I need ear plugs, badly. I notice Ismail loading laundry into the car and hastily grab mine. I’m not hand-washing my sheets!

The first place Ismail takes us is the weekend market, or Tamu. I’ve been wanting to go for days because I want to buy real fruit. There’s stalls of grain, whole fish, and fruit! I find an old lady willing to sell me an entire pineapple for 5 ringgit (1.75 Canadian). Buying a whole fresh fish is tempting, as is some other things. I buy some dried salted anchovies. Vlad gets some sundried shrimp and some fresh shrimp to cook.

“Let’s get out of here.” He says, as I wandered around looking at the stalls.

“Why? You could buy anything here, it’s so cool.”

The market turned out to be too much for poor Vlad’s introverted side, which I find slightly ironic considering how much time he spent in HCMC.

We drive through town next. Ismail needs to grab something from a shop. Then we stop so I can buy my ear plugs from a pharmacy. For some reason, whenever I ask for ear plugs, everyone thinks I mean for swimming.

Then on to laundry!

Laundry takes about an hour.

Back home. Vlad is still recovering from the market. He cooks up all the shrimp for dinner and boils some potatoes to go with them. We watch movies until the sun goes down and the mosquitoes come out.

This is paradise, isn’t it?