When I returned to Bangkok I checked my e-mail, and Samantha had finally written back. She was also in Bangkok, having just returned from northern Thailand and Laos. "Let's meet up," she suggested, suggestively. "Want to head south together?" These words blared so loudly at me from the screen, I had to look around the air-conditioned e-mail shop to make sure they weren't disturbing anybody else.

I knew not to take anything from Sam at face value, but my hopes rose faster than the ash from a slash-and-burn Chiang Mai field. The woman had loosened the vice grip on my heart a couple of twists. That night, as travelers on Khao San road traded adventure tales over 50-baht Carlsburgs, I went for a stroll.

She was impossible to overlook, walking down the sidewalk, tan, strikingly familiar and yet unreal. I didn't have time to think before I was smiling. "Hi, Samantha," I said. She processed my image, let her eyes sparkle a moment and hugged me. Then, abruptly, she asked me to follow her while she phoned her parents.

I followed her around for a while as she ran errands -- apparently not moved much by the fact that we had just randomly bumped into each other -- and ended up back with her current traveling group, a nice gang of regular folks drinking at a bar. One Kiwi guy played with Sam's dreadlocks teasingly. I tried to sit casually and drink, as Sam and the rest were doing, but I couldn't. Samantha played the cool, experienced, befriended traveler, while I must have exuded the nervous, never-been-anywhere vibe. Had she really forgotten all about me?

"I've been thinking about you," I told her.

"Yeah?" she answered. And that was all.

I should have left right then and there, but some scabs are meant to be tugged at.

"So, do you want to head south, perhaps?" I asked.

"Oh, yeah, I'm definitely going south," she shrugged.

"I meant, did you want to head south together," I sighed. It was obvious I had no hand here.

Confusion over the last drink order with the transvestite waitress offered Samantha a chance to ignore my last question. Maybe she didn't want me there, but didn't have the nerve to ask me to leave her alone. Maybe she wrote that inviting e-mail knowing that the chances of our meeting up were slim. But here we were; there she was.

"Wanna go?" she asked me.

"Sure," I said, not knowing where she meant.

We walked out of the bar, and she turned to face me.

"Reuben ..." she started. Here it came -- whatever it would be, I was anxious to hear it and move on. "All I can tell you is, I'll e-mail you when I'm back in Bangkok next week. Good luck to you."

We hugged and walked opposite ways down Khao San Road. I turned to look back but she didn't.

Heading north alone, I trekked in Chiang Mai, took a massage course in Pai, hiked through a hailstorm near the Burma border and returned to Chiang Mai to plan my route to Laos. There I met a crazy English guy named Wilt, who was also traveling with a broken heart. We traded tales of our honeys over Chang beers until sunrise. It turned out he and a small group he had formed were heading to Laos. In addition to three other English types there was Katarine, a dark-haired Norwegian girl with a lovely smile.

The two single English guys had been trying to win Katarine's affection since Bangkok. I wasn't very interested, which is probably why she picked me.

The gang traveled through hot, dry Laos together, and then Katarine and I took an overnight train back into Thailand as visions of the islands danced in our heads. Maybe it shouldn't have, but traveling with a beautiful girl improved the trip dramatically. Though I am a loner at heart and quite content to enjoy loneliness in melancholy satisfaction, I couldn't turn down this opinionated Scandinavian, who had fair skin, red lips, dark black eyelashes and the sexiest English I've ever heard. We traveled to Ko Tao together, a postcard-quality island in the Gulf of Thailand. We took a scuba course together, sharing bungalows, cozying up to each other and, one night on a very quiet beach, kissing slowly, pacifically. It wasn't as much sexual as it was comfort; I didn't have strong feelings for her, she didn't have strong feelings for me and we'd be parting soon -- but it felt nice, for the time being.

After our last day of scuba diving, I bid Katarine farewell as she boarded the ferry, her first step towards Malaysia. I myself was to head to the limestone cliffs of Krabi on the west coast of Thailand the following day.

Next page | Rolling around on the beach, groping each other through the sand