At different times in our lives, we probably all exhibit traits that cause others to put us into one category or another, whether it’s an accurate fit or not. Typecasting people is unfair, but I probably judge others with a perfunctory glance more than I’d like to admit.

As a school kid in rural Upstate New York, I was known as the smart girl who skipped a grade and graduated as high school valedictorian at age 16. That was one aspect of who I was, but I didn’t want to be stereotyped as a studious goody-two-shoes. I admired people who had adventurous stories to tell, and I wanted to be one of them.

I graduated college at age 20, and was determined to do something exciting before settling into a career and family. I rode the 1980s wave when it was possible to fly to Japan on a tourist visa, find an English teaching job, and switch to a work visa. I planned to live in Kyoto for a couple of years, but stayed for five and a half.

At that time, I was easily categorized as a young American expat living in Japan. There were many of us in those days. Like many other North American and European resident foreigners in Japan, I took every opportunity to travel around Asia during breaks from my job.

This was my opportunity to be an international adventurer. In those years, I traveled to Korea, the Philippines, Okinawa, China, Hong Kong (not under Chinese rule at that time), Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, and Thailand. I spent my honeymoon in Bali, Indonesia. I also visited Burma (now called Myanmar, but I’ll refer to it as Burma as it was at the time of the story) twice, once under the radar, and once with an official visa.

With an eye on my upcoming vacation break, I visited my favorite Kyoto travel agency (pre-internet days when you didn’t book your own anything). I saw a poster that said, “1987: Visit Thailand Year.” Why not? Southeast Asia was on my list of places to go.

I arranged for a ten-day visit to Thailand. Once I reached Bangkok, I immediately caught a plane north to Chiang Mai. I read about a guest house in Chiang Mai that was inexpensive and almost always had at least one room available. I checked into the guest house in Chiang Mai, and befriended an 18-year-old local girl who was helping her family run the guest house.

At the guest house, I met an English guy who was on an international backpacking escape from his job as a chimney sweep in the San Francisco Bay Area. I had spent time in San Francisco and hoped to live there long term in the future, so we had plenty to talk about.

Like me, he was traveling alone, and was looking for a travel partner to do a motorcycle trip north to the Golden Triangle, the juncture of Thailand, Burma, and Laos. I jumped at the chance. I received my first and only motorcycle driving lesson (he was also an avid motorcyclist) in the remote mountains of Thailand on our way to the somewhat notorious Golden Triangle, known at the time as an opium producing region, but also the site of historic temples.

We stayed in the town of Chiang Rai. After eating excellent Thai food for dinner, we took an evening stroll along the Mekong River. My dad’s best friend used to tell stories about water skiing on the Mekong River when he was a young aerospace electronics engineer supporting defense systems during the Vietnam War.

We found a spot where I could bend down and touch the water of the Mekong, to connect with the memory of my dad’s friend in his adventurous youth. After the chimney sweep travel companion and I got back to the hostel we were staying at, I read in my travel book that walking along the Mekong at night was a no-no. Lesson learned with no harm.

I’d left my main luggage back at the guest house in Chiang Mai during this short two-night excursion to the Golden Triangle. When the English chimney sweep and I returned to Chiang Mai, I was warmly welcomed by the 18-year-old Thai guest house worker. I was in my twenties, and we naturally struck a little-sister-big-sister chord.

She was leaving on a trip to visit relatives in a beautiful part of Thailand close to Burma. Did I want to go with her? Count me in! I thought. Here was my chance for another adventure, with a local native who could speak the language!

We took a long, dusty bus ride to Mae Hong Son, and got to her aunt’s house. I was welcomed to lunch with the family. We sat on the floor, each holding a bowl of rice. A variety of shared dishes to put on top of our rice sat in the middle of our circle. There were individual bowls containing fish in a golden broth, fried egg, vegetables, and one bowl filled with crunchy black beetles. My friend and her family looked at me as I stared at the beetles. They laughed. I passed on that culinary experience.

We woke up early and walked to a field where farmers were herding large brown cattle that looked very different from the black and white dairy cows I grew up with. The rising sun shone in a golden haze over the cattle. It was still morning when my friend announced that a truck driver had room for the two of us to hitch a ride along with cargo and livestock that he was delivering to a village along the Irrawaddy River across the border in Burma. Did I want to go? Yes I did.

We hovered about for an hour as the driver waited for other items people wanted him to transport to Burma. When we started, there were three people: the driver, my young Thai friend, and me, sitting three across on the front seat. In the back of the truck, the driver eventually loaded two cows, three chickens, a big fish, and several baskets of goods. The cows stood side by side facing forward, secured loosely with rope.

The truck rode low to the ground and moved very slowly under the weight of the cows. We drove along a rough dirt road and had to slow down when we came to ruts filled with muddy water. The truck almost got stuck two or three times, but we got through the low bumpy crossings and rose up to higher ground under tree cover.

At one point, three young men carrying rifles emerged from the forest. They stood along the road like they expected us to stop for them. I read numerous warning notes posted by visitors in Chiang Rai about not wandering over the border into Burma. Notes warned that soldiers were often hiding a short way into the forest, waiting to rough up anyone who dared cross the border unlawfully.

“Are these soldiers?” I asked my Thai friend quietly.

Her English was reasonably good. The driver only spoke Thai. The young men weren’t wearing uniforms. They spoke to the driver and he motioned for them to climb onto the back of the truck. They had to hang on with the limited space left beside the cows, one of which was not looking too steady.

“They’re probably hunting tigers,” my friend said calmly. If she wasn’t worried, I guessed I shouldn’t worry either. They rode for half an hour and got off at another forested area.

We had been in the truck for about three hours though we hadn’t covered many miles. The driver looked at me and spoke. He pointed to another totally nondescript water-filled rut crossing. “Here is Thailand,” my friend interpreted as the driver gestured, “and now we are in Burma.”

I was now in Burma, without a visa, but in a remote place where it seemed it didn’t matter. A short while later, the driver stopped the truck at the edge of a village. The driver mumbled when he got out of the truck and checked his cargo. One of the cows had died on the way. I could see in his eyes that he was calculating how he could transfer the cow as planned, dead or alive.

He told my friend how much time we had to visit this Burmese village before we needed to meet him for the truck ride back to Mae Hong Son. There would be no taxi service or bus to get us back over the rough dirt road. We couldn’t afford to miss our ride back.

My friend and I ambled around the village. Not far over the border into Burma, it apparently was a place where Thai people came regularly to buy and sell things. I always kept a roll of toilet paper in my daypack for remote emergencies. This came in handy as I was struck suddenly with a bloody nose as my friend and I walked around under the hot sun.

“It is very hot and dry,” she said to me. “Don’t worry. I get a bloody nose sometimes, too.”

We visited the wide Irrawaddy River, a beautiful place. Young children, some in worn shorts and T-shirts, and some in traditional clothing, ran up to us. They were clearly asking for money. Even my Thai girlfriend looked like a rich tourist to them.

It was getting close to the time we needed to find the truck driver, and we went to a market area which had a roof for shade. There was a noisy crowd of people gathering around one table or another looking at produce and merchandise.

“This area is famous for honey,” my friend said. “People come here to buy wild honey. It is expensive.”

“Wow,” I said, looking around at the noisy bartering crowds.

Across the room, an older man wearing a frayed straw hat, holes visible in the hat as well in a couple of spots where teeth should be, kept staring at me and my Thai friend. I couldn’t help but look back at him.

My friend noticed, too. He kept staring.

“He’s selling honey,” she said.

He looked the part of a wild honey gatherer, earning his subsistence living in his hole-filled hat, teeth perhaps missing due to malnutrition, I thought to myself.

The man kept looking. He called across the noisy crowd to my friend.

“He asks where you’re from,” she interpreted in a deadpan voice.

“You can tell him I’m from America,” I said.

She relayed that back. He spoke again. What was it with this poor honey gatherer? Maybe he had not seen foreigners before?

“He’s asking where in America?” she relayed.

“Well, he’s not going to know, probably, but tell him I’m from New York State. Not New York City, but the countryside.”

She told the man. He spoke again.

“He asks where in New York State,” she said.

Was he perhaps just looking to extend his “conversation” with a foreigner? What could it possibly mean to him?

“You can tell him I was born in Utica,” I said, knowing that a specific name like that would fall flat.

She came back with another reply. “He asks Ithaca?”

“No, Utica. It’s near Ithaca,” I said.

I was really thrown for a loop now. Between our cross-the-room interpreting session, he was busy selling honey to eager buyers, adjusting his battered straw hat. Now it was my turn to ask.

“Can you ask him how he knows the name Ithaca?” I said.

My friend called over to him, and the man looked across the room and spoke directly to me this time, in perfect English.

“I got my Masters at Cornell,” he said, and went back to selling honey.

That, right there, was the biggest lesson I ever learned about not judging a book by its cover.

We may look the part of something we imagine ourselves to be, or perhaps even try to disguise our identity by dressing as something else. From the beholder side, we judge people by their looks at the risk of revealing our own foolishness.

This piece’s featured image is a textural shot of traditional hill tribe textiles from the north of Thailand, where the story is set. Photo courtesy of the author.