Country Roads and a Thai Saloon

Hat Yai is known as southern Thailand's transportation hub and sex capital. But too few know it has the West Side Saloon, where bar tenders and waitstaff are dressed in cowboy gear, serving jovial customers -- mostly Malaysians who've hopped across the border for a short holiday -- as a band plays the likes of Dolly Parton, the Carpenters, and the Cranberries. In my journeys through Southeast Asia in recent years, I've stopped here four times, thankful for the taste of home. For a guy from Appalachia (as much as he’s from anyplace), there's nothing like hearing a Thai band sing John Denver’s classic after months on the road:

Country roads take me home
To the place I belong
West Virginia mountain momma
Take me home country roads

All my memories gather round her
Miner's lady stranger to blue water
Dark and dusty painted on the sky
Misty taste of moonshine teardrops in my eyes

To my amazement and joy, several Malay tourists were able to mouth the words as the band sang.  Who cares that none of us were from West Virginia – we all knew the beauty of roads that take us home.