May 30th, Tuesday
After a month in the sticks of Australia, Bangkok was quite a change of pace. Rena met us at the airport, much of which is new and vast. As we exited the airport the hot moist air hit us…Wow!!! This is humidity on a whole another level from anything I had ever experienced, I almost felt like I was suffocating there was so much moisture in the air. And the heat is intense, it just presses down on you it is so hot.
Rena had a nice 2-bedroom apartment in a small 2-story complex, with only 4 units. All around her are big high-rise condos as this is a desirable area of Bangkok, relatively close to the sky train and shopping. During the year Rena has lived in Bangkok she has lived in two different places and had various roommates. The street she currently lives on is a busy three-lane, one-way street, and about half a mile away is the Sky Train, a very efficient method of travel for many Bangkokians. The Sky Train is much smoother than the “EL” in Chicago and has trains coming much more frequently, however it is not nearly as extensive, there are only two lines. They are working on completing one line that will run out to the Airport in hopefully about 7 months we were told.
It amazes me how many people have cars in Bangkok with the traffic what it is. There are many taxis, both motorscotter and cars, and then there is the Sky Train and some buses. You also see many folks on motorbikes. You can tell a taxi by its’ color (a green and yellow one means the driver owns his own car) and the taxi motor bikes wear a vest so you can tell them apart from just someone on a motor bike. I think it is interesting that taxi drivers will turn down fares. One night we wanted to go to dinner and hailed a cab, when he found out where we wanted to go he refused and drove off. I think the only other time we took a cab was to and from the airport. We did a lot of hoofing it in the time we were in Bangkok! Good thing we were in shape, although the heat adds a new dimension. Another factor about walking in Bangkok is the unevenness of the sidewalk; with holes, cracks, uplifted pavement, you name it. With so many sights to see it is hard to keep your eyes on the pavement, but you risk crippling yourself if you don’t.
Along most of the streets we were on you will find food vendors selling just about anything you could want from a cold coconut to sip, all kinds of fruit, stir-fry, (they love meat on a stick, and I don’t mean hot dogs), Thai tea, and the list goes on. Rena said most Thais don’t cook at home they just get take away from the street to take home with them.
Thais love to give you everything in a small bag. If you get watermelon they cut it nicely for you and deftly slide it into a bag with their knife, and then they put that bag in another bag. The fruit was the best, watermelon, many kinds of mango, papaya, melon and yummy small pineapples plus a slew of fruit I couldn’t name. So for about $.50 you could get a nice slice of watermelon, or any of the others, and a little bamboo stick to eat it with. The Thais are such immaculate people there didn’t seem to be any worry about getting anything nasty along with your fruit or whatever, although I did not eat any meat off the street.
The other food that fascinated me was the use of lotus leaves and banana leaves to wrap up mostly sticky rice with other goodies and then steaming them. I want to emphasize that all the cooking took place on the street in the little carts they owned. Most of them used gas, but some of them used charcoal that was compressed into these 4” diameter “plugs” that fit into this brick “holder” that you then rested the wok on. I see a lot of that here in Vietnam as well. It was amazing to sometimes just walk by a stand when they were cooking and start coughing from the chili fumes!! They also liked to roast chestnuts in a big wok with broken coffee beans to help conduct the heat and give them some flavor. On a hot humid day when the sweat is already pouring off me I don’t know how they did it, but there they were cooking up whatever their “thing” was and smiling!! Wow we have life so easy.
I wondered how these people could make a living on what they were making form their little stands, but they all had their “corner” so to speak where they would set up shop. Sometimes the whole family would be there as was the case with this one husband and wife and their son that Rena always waved to on her way home. I waved to them too and wondered if they knew I was Rena’s mom.
There are many ethnic sections of Bangkok and we saw a few of them. We went to the Chinese section of town for some shopping from small street type vendors one day. We do not have this type of shopping in the US, where a person is able to set up shop in a small stall or a spot on the street. I think for most second and third world countries this is how most transactions are done, not from big box stores. Rena and I went to the weekend market (Greg opted to stay home) and I am telling you it was incredible, what a mass of humanity and goods!! We’re talking a huge area the size of 6 football fields set up with big canvas tarps spread out to form roofs with the stalls set up underneath. The walkways between the stalls were about 3’ and each stall was approximately 6-8’ wide. Talk about a crush of humanity! Add to that the 90-degree temp and you have a fun shopping experience (I am glad Greg was not along). I am really glad we did it because I can’t imagine having that experience anywhere else. Being the big shopper I am I bought two origami animals made of bamboo on little bamboo sticks (one was a crane and one a fish) from a little old lady for $.75.
Greg and I had the experience of having some suits made for us here in Bangkok.
We were walking by a tailor on the street Rena lived on and Greg saw these nice suits in the window and went in to inquire about them. Not that Greg wears a suit that much, but the one he wore to his Mom and Dad’s funerals we had to put tape on the back side of the pant leg and then color it in with a black sharpie to cover up the moth hole. Well before you know it he had ordered two suits, along with 6 or 7 shirts, and as a bonus they threw in a suit for me with pants and a skirt plus 3 blouses. The material we picked out was beautiful cashmere/wool English cloth, Greg got grey and navy and I got a lovely unusual chocolaty color. They took our measurements and we went back two days later and they made some adjustments, we will go in on our return thru Bangkok to have the final fittings and then they will send them back to the States for us. I guess we are both going to have to get a real job so we can wear our new duds. I have never had a suit so I am excited about it. It was so hard trying them on as even with the bit of air conditioning they had in the shop with all those clothes on it was sweltering!!! Aaron if you ever get a job where you need a suit you will have to make a trip to Bangkok to have some suits made!
We also went to the Japanese section of town one day for a very lovely two-hour scrub and massage. For desert we had some beautiful chocolate treats that were delicious. And one evening we went out to a Middle Eastern restaurant for dinner. If you like diversity Bangkok is definitely a melting pot.
Greg and I had one very traumatic experience while we were in Bangkok. One evening we were coming home from dinner alone as Rena had stayed to socialize with some of her friends with whom we had had drinks with earlier in the evening. There is a big iron gate in front of the apartment, as is common in Bangkok and at a certain time of night a padlock is put on it that needs to be unlocked by putting your hands thru the gate and working the lock without being able to see it. So Greg and I were fiddling with it and two of the kitties I had been friendly with since we arrived were just on the inside. These kitties have the run of the place and each morning I would talk to them on Rena’s porch. One of them jumped thru the fence and when we opened the gate a moment later the other one came to the sidewalk as well. Next thing I knew the gray one darts out in the street and proceeds to get hit by two cars. Then the tabby one darts across the street and miraculously makes it to the other side. We are talking 3 lanes of fast continuous traffic. The tabby is cowering on the other side of the street under a car so when there is a break in traffic I run across the street and try to call the kitty to the sidewalk side of the car so I can carry it back across the street. There is so much traffic there is no way I am going to stick my hinny out in the street while I try to grab the cat from under the car. No dice, the cat tries to dart back across the street to home but doesn’t make it and is hit by at least one car, it does at least make it to the sidewalk. I never saw what happened to the grey one I think it got caught under someone’s car. So I dash back across the street and the cat is trying to get back in the way it originally came out but was all messed up. I put my hands on the poor thing and just started to do reiki on it, and it immediately calmed down. I sat with it for maybe 3-5 minutes until it died.
Both Greg and I were pretty upset, I felt like a Mac truck had run over me as well. It is something to witness violence against life, even two alley cats like these were. I stayed up for a couple of hours hoping Rena would come home and could tell me whose cats they were. I finally went to bed got a couple of hours sleep and woke up about 2, Rena still wasn’t home and being the mom I am I stared to worry about her. Of course I was reasoning that she had managed alone in Bangkok for a year without her mommy to worry about her, but I was still worrying anyway, the whole cat incident had really thrown me. She finally got home at 5, she had been out dancing!!
The last day Greg and I were in Bangkok one of Rena’s friends arranged a driver for us that we spent the day with who spoke reasonably good English. He took us out to the country so we were able to see some of rural Thailand. We went to a floating market that was interesting more for the use of canals and their boats as a way for the people in this small town to get around and conduct their daily business. I wasn’t much interested in the tourist junk they were selling.
We also went and visited an elephant farm and got to feed some bananas to one and pet a couple of them. Did you know an elephant could live to be 100 years old? It was pretty cool. We also went to a place where they were doing the hand carving that I am sure you have all seen on tables and furniture that was really amazing. Wow! It is all done by hand. We visited a river and swam it water that was warm as bath water, although rivers can be kind of scary, something nibbled on Greg’s toe. We had lunch at a funky little roadside stand that was one of the best Thai meals we had.
The last night we were in Bangkok Rena invited about 20 of her friends to come and have dinner together at a nice restaurant called Curry And More. What an eclectic group of interesting people. I spoke to as many of them as I could and found them to be a well-informed, interesting group.
Both Greg and I are very glad we were able to take the time and made the effort to come and visit Rena before she left Bangkok. I certainly have a far greater appreciation for what she has accomplished this year in living in Bangkok, on so many different levels this was not an easy thing to do. I am very proud of her for sticking with it and in the end I think she has gained much grace and maturity through the experience, not to mention the experience she has gained in such a short time as a yoga teacher. Rena, Greg and I all left Bangkok the same day, Rena to go to Singapore, and Greg and I to go on to Hanoi and other parts of Viet Nam.
