MistiKo's Musings

"Yeow!" I yelp. The sole of my foot just got a sharp jab. The young man sitting in front of me looks up and scolds: “You need to go to the bathroom more often. You have bladder trouble.”

I laugh. Pit toilets are common here and I have not perfected my squatting technique – I have indeed been “holding it” until I return to the porcelain comfort in my hotel room each evening.

The reflexology salon is crowded today. The windowless interior gives no clues to its exotic setting in the Malaysian part of Borneo. There are four of us here for this Asian foot massage that is uses your soles as a map to uncover ailments in other parts of your body. Despite the inevitable pain, my feet become giant marshmallows afterwards.

Today, I thought I would get a bonus with my massage, that elusive thing I seek out in my travels – a chance to hang with the locals. I appear to be the only tourist in the group. An older couple sits together on my left. Their eyes twinkle through their matching wire rim glasses. When they laugh, I can see they have several gold teeth each. Clad in flowing robes – his light coloured cotton, and hers brightly patterned polyester with a matching head scarf – they look like typical Muslim Malaysians. The fellow to my right wears a neatly pressed suit with a severe looking necktie. His slender build and typically Asian features peg him as a Chinese Malaysian.

Everyone else in the room is talking and laughing, but I have a problem. I cannot understand a word they are saying. They are not speaking English. I sulk and hope that they are not laughing at me.

"How about you, do you know why zebras have stripes?"

Someone is speaking to me, and in English.

My brain wrestles with the question. Camouflage isn't it: lets the herd blend together as protection from predators - outsiders. Yes, I’m sure that’s the answer. Then, I realize, this is another joke.

Embarrassment averted, I deliver the required straight line, "I don't know."

"Well then," comes the reply, "you’re just as stupid as I am, because I don't know either." More laughter.

The conversation continues in English. The couple aren't Malaysian after all. They are visiting from the nearby country of Brunei. They are surprised to learn that I’m from Canada as they say with my brown skin; I look like a local. The fellow in the suit is a Korean tourist who does not speak a word of English, or Malay.

We are a herd of zebras.