Once Again Hostel.  Bangkok, Thailand.

“Where did you go?” he asked me.

I was still holding the small bag of phuang malai, or Thai ceremonial flowers, that Timo had picked up down the street from the hostel when I looked up to find his eyes warmly fixed on me, intent with curiosity. The flowers are sold in almost every market in Bangkok, and really in every other main city I’ve been to so far in Thailand. But, somehow in my two weeks so far in Thailand, I hadn’t actually stopped to smell them, or even look at them much less.

He smiled lightly as he slowly rocked back and forth in his chair.

“I just…I just couldn’t place the smell of the flowers,” I said.

“How do you mean?” His intrigue seemed genuine.

I tried to gather my thoughts. “Well, it’s just so strange. But my grandma had this hand soap in her bathroom. The flowers – they just really smelled like it,” I explained.

He smiled. “So, where did you go…in your memory?” Timo asked again.

His question struck me. I don’t know if anyone’s ever asked me before where I’ve gone in a memory.

I paused as I reflected on the scent. It wasn’t like I had had this epic flashback or anything. In fact, it was so much simpler than that. And there I was, if only for a brief moment, twelve or so again, washing my hands in her downstairs bathroom. The colors and details of the walls and furniture were somewhat muted as I tried to arrange them all correctly in my mind, but there was that unmistakable crisp, fragrant smell of my grandma’s hand soap and those flowers, now both one and the same, helping to put the pieces of my memory’s puzzle back together.

I think Timo could sense my initial reservation in wanting to share, or maybe my own reflection had made him want to offer his own similar experience. He smiled, paused briefly, and then started.

The other day, he was walking though town and caught a whiff of the scent of wood burning for cooking. Back in Germany, his opa was a tall man, much like Timo, and had a bit of a belly. He’d often wear wife beaters that hugged his body. In his large backyard, he would let the children play with the rabbits that he kept in small cages. Timo smiled as he mimed petting the rabbits. The sad part, Timo said, was that as children, they didn’t realize they were about to eat the rabbits. The smell of the wood burning in town was what triggered his memory.

What may be unique to meeting people while traveling is the unspoken mutual understanding that your time together is likely limited, so the many usual formalities that seem to govern the progression of traditional relationships don’t seem to apply in the same sense. Sure, you’re polite and mind your manners, but the timeline of when it seems appropriate to ask certain questions moves at a different pace, and in some instances, just may not exist altogether.

If you’re curious enough about something about someone, you just tend to ask because there’s some innate, underlying understanding that you both don’t really know if you’ll have the time to wait for when the time is right to ask. You’re curious? You just ask.