Chapter 3: A Little Stranger

by LASZLO September 21, 2025

After Holland, we went East.
Vietnam first.
Then Thailand.
Eventually Cambodia.

I don’t remember when exactly one country ended and the next began —
it all blended together in the way childhood does when you’re always unpacking in a new timezone.

The streets were alive — loud, colorful, chaotic in the best way.
I was just a kid, wide-eyed, soaking it all in.
And always, everywhere… different.

Blonde, pale, and clearly foreign.
I wasn’t just another face in the crowd — I was a walking question mark.
People stared. Kids laughed. Adults smiled too long.
And I learned fast how to read a room without understanding the language.

School was a blur of unfamiliar alphabets, plastic chairs, fans that barely worked, and teachers with soft voices and sharp eyes.
I was one of the only white kids in class.
Again.
But by now, being the outsider was starting to feel normal.
Expected, even.

And then — hip-hop found me.
Not through music at first.
Through fashion.

Cambodia’s markets were full of misprinted imports — FUBU shirts stitched crooked, Jordans with misplaced logos, jeans too baggy for any practical use.
But to me, it was treasure.
It was rebellion wrapped in denim.
I’d dig through piles of rejects, hunting for the one shirt that looked almost perfect.
I didn’t have the words for it yet, but something about that style said:
This is how to speak when no one understands you.

That’s what hip-hop gave me —
a language made of attitude, angles, and oversized clothes.

And then, there was Thylia.

Our house was split into two levels.
My family lived upstairs — me, my mom, my dad, and my little sister.
Downstairs lived our house help, her husband, and their daughter, Thylia.

She was about my age.
We became friends fast — the kind of friendship only kids can form, built on nothing but time and proximity and curiosity.

But Cambodia, for all its warmth and color, had shadows too.
There were nights we’d hear gunshots in the distance.
Whispers of danger. A tension just beneath the surface.

And then one day, Thylia disappeared.

Kidnapped.

They thought she was our daughter — a little brown girl living with a white family.
They thought ransom.
Money.
Leverage.

We searched everywhere.
My parents made calls, spoke to neighbors, drove in circles.
And finally — days later — we found her.
Alone. On the side of a road.
Alive, but changed.
She didn’t speak much after that.

That moment marked me.
Not like a scar — more like a crack in the wall of childhood.

The world wasn’t just unpredictable.
It was dangerous.
And I was learning how thin the line was between normal and nightmare.

Still, life kept moving.

New countries. New cities.
And with each move, I picked up pieces —
sounds, styles, gestures, rhythms.
I didn’t have roots, but I was building something else:
range.

By the time we left Cambodia, I still didn’t know who I was…
But I was starting to understand who I wasn’t.
And that was a start.