Three years ago I was laid off from my job. Since I'd been with the company for five years, they gave me a great severance package, so I decided I'd take an extended vacation before looking for work. After all, I'd just turned thirty and I'd never even left the country. During my travels, I ended up in a town called Suraha, in the lowland jungles of the Nepal/India border. Suraha is one of those remote towns at the end of a long and potholed road, a six hour bus ride without air conditioning. Other than the wildlife viewing in the national park there, there isn't much. It's a very small town, with few services and only a handful of hotels.
On my first evening there, I was sitting at an open air bar near the river when I heard a woman speaking English with an American accent. It had been a while since I'd been with a woman in any sense of the word, and I eavesdropped to get a feel for if she'd be a potential companion. It was immediately clear that she wasn't worth it.
She was being incredibly rude to the waiter. "Cold. I asked for my beer to be cold. Cold like ice, not warm like piss." She was speaking as if the waiter didn't speak English, although everyone here did. "If I'd wanted a warm beer, I would have brought my own." She said it loud enough for the whole bar to hear, and more than a few people turned their heads.
She was a smallish woman, no more than 5'5", and was pretty thin, with wavy black hair that went well past her shoulders. She was wearing tight fitting khaki shorts, and a blue nylon shell. She had her back to me, so all I could tell was that she had a great ass and smooth tan legs. Her rear was what the guys on my rugby team used to call a "high school ass," none of that sagging fat that so many girls pick up when they go from teens to twenties.
The bartender looked very apologetic, and started digging around in the back of the fridge to find a colder beer. She turned around and I got a glimpse of her face. She had olive skin and full lips, high cheekbones and enormous brown eyes with long eye lashes. If she wasn't such a bitch, I'd have gone after her there and then. As it was, I'm sure everyone in the bar hated her. With looks like hers, to be traveling alone was a real testament to a nasty personality. I turned back to watch the sun set over the river and drank my own beer. What happened to her after that I didn't know.
I didn't see her again until the next afternoon. It was on the one street the town had and she was swearing at a policeman, screaming at him really. I had to stop and listen. "What the fuck am I supposed to do?"
The man shrugged, "What am I to do, miss?"
"You are to get my fucking stuff back, and arrest the piece of shit that took it." So, the little bitch had been robbed. It was probably done by a coalition of everyone in the town that had to deal with her. She was waving her hands at the cop. "Where am I supposed to sleep? How am I supposed to eat?"
More than robbed, I realized. She'd been cleaned out completely. Probably had all her stuff in one bag. Rookie travelers do that. To make her life worse, it sounded like her hotel kicked her out when they found out she didn't have the means to pay them. Hell, they were probably the ones that did it.
The policeman began to walk away, and she screamed at him, but he just walked faster, and she broke down sobbing. Serves her right, I thought, and started to walk back towards my hotel. But then a little guilty pang hit me, and I looked back. She was sitting on the curb, with her head in her hands. This was actually a pretty bad town to get stranded in. I wouldn't have known to do if it was me. Besides, she was completely hot.
