Paula Brukmüller - Flowers from Greece - The Autobiography of the Journalist Who Turned a Personal Tragedy into an Inspiring World Tour

When Laurent and I stopped talking in Turkey, it was a few days before the anniversary of my father’s death, which was also a painful separation. If our emotions, together with our thoughts, create our reality, I was trying to understand how unconscious emotions can be interfering all the time with the outcomes of our choices.

That was too much to rationalize. I closed my eyes inside the plane and only woke up when I landed in Bangkok.

- Thank you so much for everything, my Paulinha. It was the most beautiful folly of love you could have done. Enjoy the rest of your trip, as you know how to do. If you really go to Chile, I’ll be waiting with open arms. I send you a kiss and an infinite hug.

Cristián’s message bothered me. When I sent my message hours earlier, while he was in the shower, I raised the expectation that he would respond with the same intensity as me. But that was my fault, and I couldn’t even complain.

The mountains of northern Thailand were as amazing as their paradisiacal beaches. Despite my suffocating longing for Cristián, I was glad to be back. Chiang Mai was charming, cheap and full of temples as impressive as those of Bangkok. I stayed only two nights and went to Pai, which won me right away.

After the sickening 762 curves between Chiang Mai and Pai, I got off the van in the middle of the street market. Dozens of stalls with crafts, clothes and delicious sweet and savory foods. Pai has something of a hippie village that fascinates backpackers. The bed I booked cost less than $15 a night and a fairly tidy restaurant by Thai standards sold pad thai at 30 baht. In addition, several bars were hiring staff.

It would be a great place to spend a few weeks, but Juliana and I had plans to board the boat for Laos soon. It would be a three-day trip across the Mekong River, one of the largest in the world, and it was great to meet a friend who was willing to live that adventure with me.

I hadn’t spoken to Cristian since I landed in Bangkok. After two nights of touring all the charming little bars with exceptional Thai bands, Ju and I were ready to leave the next day, but my German credit card, yes, the same one I thought I lost in Koh Phangan, was gone.

From then on, Juliana and I began to go through an endless saga trying to leave Pai’s village. Ironically, I discovered a few days later that Pai in Thai means “to go.” It sounded like a bad joke.

Everything in my bag was intact. The wallet, Thai and Vietnamese money, documents and my credit card from Brazil. I looked around my backpacks more than three times just to be sure I hadn’t lost anything. Believing I would find the card in one of the bars, I asked Juliana to stay one more night. I didn’t know how I would do it this time to apply for another card without being sure of my whereabouts within the next two weeks.

The next day I canceled the card and requested a new one for the address of a hostel in Bangkok. Returning to Thailand was not in my plans, but the German bank did not agree to send the card to any other country. I sent an email to the hostel in Bangkok stating the approximate delivery date of the card and told Juliana I was ready to go. This time, she asked us to postpone the trip because she had met a beautiful Frenchman the night before.

I went out one more night to have fun with my new group of friends. I met Lila and Barcelona, a Brazilian and a Spanish again. We had worked together at the beach bar in Koh Phi Phi. A Chilean and an Argentinian joined us.

In the morning Juliana told me that she got stood up by the French and we decided to leave the next day. We rented a motorcycle to brave Pai’s surroundings together on our last day. I didn’t know how to drive and Juliana was a little insecure, but we still faced the challenge.

Less than 15 minutes after leaving the motorcycle shop, while we were on our way to the gas station, Juliana was confused about driving on the left side of the road when we entered a busy avenue, throwing the scooter to the right as to avoid crashing into a car that came in our direction.

As the motorcycle began to lie to the left, I accepted that the fall was inevitable. I felt my left knee and arms scalping on the boulders and, with my eyes closed, just wished the motorcycle would stop crawling on the floor. We spent a few seconds asking each other if we were okay and reassuring each other that we were.

When we got up, we saw that our clothes were torn at the knees and two girls ran with hydrogen peroxide and gauze to help us. We fell right in front of an emergency medical clinic. My wounds burned, but Juliana’s knee was noticeably worse than mine.

The motorcycle had been on the roadside with the key in the ignition. I pushed it closer to the clinic and discussed with Juliana what to do. Besides feeling a lot of pain, she was not feeling secure to ride the scooter back. We called the owner of the hostel where she was working in exchange for accommodation. Juliana came back on the back of his motorcycle and me on his girlfriend’s, who rode our rented scooters.

The next day, I went with a friend to return the scooter. Thanks to Buddha, no one noticed that it suffered a fall. But Juliana’s wound required care and we delayed our boat adventure to Laos once again. We decided to stay in Pai three more nights.

It was very hot in Pai during the day, but the temperature dropped sharply with the sunset. Juliana’s boss was very generous letting us stay in a small thatched bungalow on the banks of the Pai River for a few more nights without paying. It was a very simple cabin, with room only for the double mattress on the floor, with a mosquito netting attached to the ceiling. Juliana finally managed to find the Frenchman again, and I had to stay out of the cabin every night until later, since with her injured leg she couldn’t wander around the village. But that was a problem I easily solved, drinking cheap beer while listening to the great bands in Pai’s bars.

When we finally decided to set off on our adventure to Laos, I went through the city’s dozens of travel agencies to buy our tickets. The plan was to board the next day, but there were no more seats available on the long boat that made the three-day journey. There were only seats left on the half-price bus, which took only one day, but it was nowhere near the trip we both wanted to make.

I texted Juliana and we decided that two more nights in Pai would make no difference. It was even comical. It had been a week since we repeated the same sentence to each other.

To make sure we were actually leaving Thailand this time, I left with purchased tickets and booked a taxi to pick us up at the hostel. The starting point wasn’t far, but Juliana’s leg was our priority.

Felipe cried a lot as he put his uniforms in a gray suitcase. The furniture in our house was covered with yellow sheets and a bright light came through the balcony window where the fern had been waiting for water for several days. It was a long time since everything was abandoned inside that house which had been once the home of our dreams.

I wasn’t feeling the same despair inside me as before. I just watched Felipe’s pain and felt helpless that I couldn’t take it from him. One day, he couldn’t take away the pain that plagued me either.

Already inside the car, while a thin, colorless rain wet the windshield, he banged his hands on the steering wheel.

- I fucking love you! You don’t believe me anymore, but I love you.