Before I finish telling the trek,

I've been meaning to tell about the Sightless Market Minstrel.

We saw her at the really killer Night Market in Prachuap Khiri Khan, wending her way slowly up and down the long crowded, grease-billowy aisles between booths selling watches, fried squid, pet kittens, ball gowns and pineapple watermelon smoothies. (Most Night Markets also have one weapons and knives booth. Throwing stars!) There she was, taking steps so impossible small she couldn't be moving but she was, he eyes pinched close, a blind person's walking stick in her elbow, a music box speaker hung from her neck, spouting all manner of traditional and modern Thai hits, a tupperware balanced on top containing a couple small coins, and a microphone clutched in her hand, pressed to her sweetly singing lips.

Her voice was being filtered through some sort of electronic echo device, and her speaker-box was set at volume HIGH. And there she was! I asked Kyle if I could take a picture. He said no and gave her 10 Baht. That's almost 30 cents. Very generous. She practically owed us a picture, but I abstained, because I'm becoming a monk. Anyway, we fell instantly in love, and saw her several other times that night, somehow navigating the irregular and frenzied walkways, always singing with that echoing voice that sounded almost as pinched as her eyes, like she was squeezing it out of a dry lemon. Beautiful stuff.

But here's the real gem of the story. No less than one week and hundreds of kilometers later, as we were browsing the fried delights in Phitsanulok's own thriving Night Market, what should we hear caught on the oily breeze? Why, the haunted melodies of the Sightless Market Minstrel! And then, round the bend she came, tottering along, all 50 years, 4 feet and change of her, the squat, chubby, wandering little woman of our dreams. But how had she arrived there? Was someone carting her all around the country, sucking up the sympathy one Night Market at a time? Was she a captive slave performer for some heartless opium warlord, milking her talents for a few sorry dimes? Or was this all completely standard? Was she simply completing her weekly circuit? There was no way to know.

But, whatever the case may be, I still regret not exploiting her, and she still owes me a topless photo.