The Dress

Jan had been in Bangkok approximately 14 hours when she fell prey to the city’s most common scam. That first morning, she had opened the balcony door to a stunning pink and orange sunrise bouncing off a sea of golden stupas. She was eager to visit these temples that looked like palaces of jewels compared to the sombre stone and glass she was used to. She dressed in a long brown peasant skirt and long sleeved white blouse and went to the rooftop to enjoy the complementary coffee, fruit, and a mild tea flavoured cake, marvelling that at 8:10 a.m. she could already feel beads of sweat forming above her lip.

As she sipped coffee, she looked again at her map. The night before over a meal of an omelette and spicy papaya salad, she had marked the routes she had planned to take to visit the temples of Wat Chanasankram, Wat Mahathat, Wat Pho, and Wat Phra Kaew. 15 minutes after she left the comfort of the hotel, she was stopped by a young well-dressed man, who told her with an impeccable English accent that there was a funeral for the King’s cousin and that most of the major sites were closed. He was so apologetic and lamented that there weren’t signs or information posted for foreigners.

Having neglected to do much research prior to the trip, Jan had no idea she had just become the man’s first victim of the day. So happily oblivious and feeling lucky to have met someone willing to take her on a private tour of lesser-known and less sacred sites (and for a mere 50 baht!), she eagerly climbed into a tuk-tuk with Ton.

They did indeed go to a temple, a small, quiet place where a man sat on a chair in the corner, flipping through a magazine, a few metal Buddhas placed on a table in front of him. Ton told her these were extremely sacred because they were blessed by the city’s oldest monk, so she bought two.

As the tuk-tuk zipped in and out between pedestrians and exhaust fumes, Jan tried to open every part of herself to drink it all in. she couldn’t see one thing—not a tree, sign, house, or shop—that remotely reminded her of the Midwest. The heat, the noise, and the smells were nothing like the pervasive aroma of fresh cut grass or the sound of the mowers, and the occasional rattle of a train. The sensation of being completely uprooted and placed upon another planet filled her with such unexpected joy, she realized there were tears in her eyes and her face was hurting from smiling.

And so it was with this big smile, that she entered a shop that was filled floor to ceiling with the most beautiful fabrics she’d ever seen. They made her think of temple gables, the sea, and ancient kingdoms. They shimmered and sparkled; some were bold and others were understated. They whispered exotic and shouted of royalty.

A small man with thick-rimmed glasses spoke to her, “You are an actress or maybe CEO.” She couldn’t tell from the intonation if it was a question or statement and responded a bit slowly, “Ah, no. I’m a teacher. I’m going to teach here. I mean, in this country.”

“Ah! A teacher! In Thailand it is a most revered job. A woman teacher, especially foreigner, must be dressed very respectfully.”

“Oh, but I brought a wardrobe and I’ve been told it is fine.”

Jan was starting to understand that something was expected of her and this wasn’t an excursion to see how fabrics were made.

“Then you need the special dress that you can wear on any occasion like wedding or holiday party”

Jan had only packed one suitcase for her year in Thailand, and though she had brought an assortment of mix and match skirts and blouses that were conservative and wouldn’t show her sweating, she didn’t have a “nice dress”—one that stays in the back of a closet in a protected bag until it can be brought out to dazzle and entice.

She thought about how cool she’d look at a wedding in the States wearing a sexy and elegant "Asian style" dress. It would be a unique and practical souvenir of her journey. Within minutes she was being measured and shown swaths of fabrics. Ton and thoughts of the sacred sites had suddenly disappeared. She chose a satiny pale silver with tiny intricate flowers in varying shades of colour.

She was presented with a bill and told to come back in two days. She gasped when she saw that the total was more than twice her budget of spending money that month. She’d been with the shop owner for nearly four hours so not wanting to be disrespectful, she paid the money and rode in silence with Ton back to the hotel. When he asked for triple what they’d agreed on earlier, she handed it over, silently, heart stinging.

She did pick up the dress and though it looked beautiful on the hanger, it bunched and pulled on parts of her body that it shouldn’t. She had met other foreigners who were aghast that she had fallen for the scam and she felt a fresh burst of hot shame each time she hung the dress in a new place. The dress followed her for five years and three countries, until she donated it to a charity shop when she returned home.

A few weeks later at her 10-year class reunion, still feeling the lingering effects of reverse culture shock and trying not to bore her ex-classmates with tales of her journeys abroad, she saw a group forming around a woman she didn’t recognize though she couldn’t mistake the shimmering silver that had transformed her into a breath-taking site.

“I saw it by chance. Never worn!! I got it for 10 bucks and altered it myself. I can’t believe someone gave this up. What a sucker!”