Same same. Different different.

Here, in a strange country with a life entirely displaced from my ordinary routines, I’ve become a regular.

I walk into the Pyramid Café each morning, and the Thai guy who runs the cafe calls from behind the counter, “Same same?”



It’s the same kind of repetition heard from the boatmen, who twice call out the destinations they’d like to drive you or guess you might be going. “Tonsai Tonsai?” “Ao Nang Ao Nang?”

Instead of shaking my head at him off like I do the boatmen, I nod, kick my shoes off, and take my seat on the broad platform by the road. The reading happens at the two-seater tables at the back; the socializing happens up front. And I say “platform” because that’s what most of the restaurants here have for seating: platforms strewn with pillows and woven mats. Shoes are banned from the platforms. There are more rules here for having your shoes off than having shoes on.

I sit chatting with other regulars long after my coffee and muesli have come and gone. The talk is mostly of climbing, but we tread into other territory sometimes. My list of coveted climbing destinations is growing: Switzerland, Greece, Sweden, Squamish. Not to mention, of course, the legends I’m hearing about climbs here. I’m also exposed to different approaches for climbing, like people who take one “rest day” for every two they spend climbing, meaning one in every three days is spent lounging around on the beach, doing a bit of yoga and reading. Rest days are a foreign concept to me but I’ve finally conceded to taking something that resembles them, and every few days, limiting myself to just one route or some bouldering and matching it with swimming and yoga and yes, a bit of reading on the beach, and perhaps shooting some photos or video... Right. “Rest” day. I don’t even linger that long over breakfast, though I know they wouldn’t throw me out. I’m a regular, after all.

In Denver, the waitstaff at the café I have frequented for three years merely blink in a manner that suggests familiarity. They never try to guess at my order or so much as say hello in a way that confidently indicates they know they’ve seen me before, even if I was in there earlier in the week and had the same waitress. It’s the perfect isolation of strangers that, perhaps, is necessary to survive in a city where you’re actually rarely alone and when you are “alone” it means in your apartment, which is stacked on other apartments full of other people laboring under the impression that they are also alone. The comfort of routines is forgiven by people who perpetually pretend they don’t know that you’ll be in for coffee twice this week and at least once for the biscuits and gravy—and maybe that’s the safety net, because if that many people knew admitted they your business, and had some idea for how often you’d be in to buy a cinnamon roll, well, how would we cling to that glorious autonomy of solitude?

Somehow, nothing beats “Same same?” when your life is different different.