Recently, writing a post about the Montri Hotel in Chiang Mai brought back a lot of fond memories of my first trip there with my dyke friends Ann and Char. We’d discovered Thailand the year before and on a subsequent trip broadened our horizons by swapping Bangkok for the rose of the north. The internet was still in its infancy back then, so other than guidebooks written in previous decades there was no easy source of info on what to do, see, and where to stay in Chiang Mai. You were pretty much on your own. Hit town, look around, and hope you found all the really cool things to do and see. Without falling prey to a scam.

If you stay at a upscale hotel there’s a concierge to use to discover the lay of the land. But the Montri didn’t come close to being upscale. And the staff at the check-in desk had limited English. But not so one of the bellboys. His English was pretty good and we frequently grilled him about what we should do and see while in town. So much so that it became our routine when we got back to the hotel after each day’s outing, he’d sit down in the lobby with us for a long discussion about what else there was to do, providing us with advice and suggestions for that night and the next day.

You can’t really abuse someone, strip them clean of their knowledge, and then ignore everything else about them. Even if you tip well. So we also got to know him on a more personal level, hearing about his life, his dreams, his family, and his career plans. His name was Lek. In his early thirties, he looked about fifteen and was the size of an eight year old. Cute as all hell, too. Ann kept saying she wanted to take him home and place him on her mantle. Lek wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but got the gist of it and thought it was pretty funny.

One night we tried to take him out to dinner with us after he finished work. He was touched that we wanted to include him in our evening, but explained he needed to head home. His wife was waiting with his first born, a new baby boy three months old. Lek drove an old motorscooter and the trip between home and work was close to an hour. He’d like to have joined us, but familial obligations came first.

The day before we were scheduled to leave we agreed among ourselves that it would be a nice gesture to leave Lek a tip, a special thanks for all the help he’d been and for being such a nice guy. We didn’t set a price that each of us would kick in, but rather agreed it’d be whatever each felt was affordable. We all pulled out wads of cash, tried to figure out how much the multicolored bills were worth, and passed respectable sized bundles over to Ann who tallied the haul. All of us made good money and with four chipping in it totaled just short of $200. A pretty impressive ‘tip’. We debated a bit whether that was too much and then agreed our initial instincts should rule. Ann stuck the money in an envelope, wrote Lek’s name on it, and asked the front desk to give it to him when he arrived at work the next morning, our last day in town.

You can imagine his reaction when he got the envelope the next morning. When we came down for breakfast, he was waiting, thankful, flabbergasted, wai-ing his little ass off. Our tip was more money than he made in a month. Lek kept attempting new ways of saying thank you, he must have wai-ed a good hundred times. But it was our last day in town and the girls had some more shopping to do so we headed out for a quick morning jaunt for last minute purchases.

When we got back to pack and check out, the girl at the front desk told us Lek had gone home, was coming back, and that we couldn’t leave until he returned. His long trip home and back again was a bit nerve wracking as we had a plane to catch. We waited in the lobby and were about to give up when he finally arrived. He wanted to give us a gift and had to run home to get it. From an old paper bag, Lek pulled out three blue glasses. Water glasses with dimpled sides. He explained that they were part of a set he’d inherited from his father who had passed away two years before, part of a family heirloom. He had one for Ann and Char, one for me, and one for Karen, our other friend who had joined us on the trip.

Of course we tried to refuse his gift. But he wasn’t having any of it. It was difficult for any of us to accept what obviously had great emotional value to him, but we finally did realizing the importance of the gift in Lek’s mind. Back in Bangkok, packing my glass I laughed when I saw the manufacturer stamp, Libby, a common and cheap brand of tableware from America.

A single cheap blue water glass isn’t the type of souvenir one would normally treasure. But I found a place for it when I got home, and noticed visiting Ann and Char that they too had their blue water glass displayed. It was sitting on their mantle, a place of honor in lieu of Lek.

A few years later I was headed back to Thailand and Chiang Mai again, remembered Lek and the drinking glass, and thought maybe it was time that glass went home. Ann and Char agreed when told them I planned on returning my glass and gave me their’s too. When I got to Chiang Mai, Lek no longer worked at the Montri. But one of the staff members knew him and knew the hotel he had moved to. I trekked across town and found him working that day

Lek’s eyes lit up when I walked in to the lobby. He remembered me immediately and was full of questions about my life and Ann and Char. He was able to take a break so we had lunch together and caught up. He’d had a daughter the year before, his son was growing quickly, his new job at a more prestigious hotel offered a better salary, his life meandering down a course he was content with. Lek brought up the ‘tip’ and got a little teary eyed trying to explain what it had meant to him, then laughed and tried to provide me with a day’s worth of activities for my current trip for old time’s sake.

After lunch, as I was ready to leave I pulled out the glasses and gave them to him telling him we had enjoyed having them but thought they should remain with his family. I presented them as a gift for his son, telling Lek that though the glasses were a pleasant memory of our first trip to Chiang Mai, they had more meaning to him and his family and it was only right his son had something from the grandfather he never knew. Like the last time they’d changed hands, he wanted to refuse accepting them, but also understood the thought behind the gift.

So those cheap drinking glasses made the trip from America to Thailand, back to America and back to Thailand once again. I’ve no doubt they still are treasured by his family and carry with them a story often told.