I'm not going to add much to the following, save for how amazed I am that my wife can remember all of this and in such detail. We have over 2,000 photos from the trip to cull through before posting to Flickr, so be on the lookout for those. A few small notes to assist the reading, "soi" is Thai for "street," Baan Ananda is the apartment complex Brent lives in, Brent is Robin's brother, Patra is his girlfriend, Kuhn Jeewunon is Brent's driver, and Martin is his cat.
So, without further ado, Rock and Robin's trip to Bangkok, as narrated by Dr. Robin Jinnett Norris (reprinted with permission):
Tuesday, February 10, 2009Rock and I both worked a typical full day, then went to drop the dogs off at Happy Doggie, our dogsitter. I was immediately depressed to be at home alone without the dogs, as I always am, but knew they just would have been underfoot and anxious while we were packing. We stayed up late to clean the place up a bit and try to pre-empt the jet lag. Turns out, when we got home, we were surprised by how messy we left everything, but it's usually a disaster zone by the time I've finished packing for a trip.
Wednesday, February 114:00 AM taxi to the airport for a 6:15 AM flight. Layover in Chicago was annoying because we walked through the very nice domestic terminals, then had to go outside and over to the crappy international terminal to finish out the layover. The flight to Tokyo was good because it wasn't very full. Rock and I each had a mini-row of two seats to ourselves. Japan Airlines was definitely the best airline we've ever flown. I always got my vegetarian meals first, and they were pretty good. Excellent Japanese rice crackers (of which I am a connoisseur) instead of airline peanuts. I learned a lesson about pronouncing sake after confounding a flight attendant: it's "sock-A," not "sock-E." Rock found the flight attendants' elaborately tied scarves to be quite "charming." And he liked the map that showed our location (with a chart of ETA, time remaining, local times at departure and arrival, temperature outside, altitude, etc.) and the nose-of-plane camera they turned on for take-off and landing (I could have done without having to see that myself).
Thursday, February 12Arrived in Tokyo at 3:05 PM. Layover was disappointing because the airport was totally westernized, and full of typical duty free shops. We ate a meal of familiar Japanese food, but it was about what you'd expect for airport quality. The flight to Bangkok was another seven hours (this time totally full) and we arrived at 11:50 PM. Brent and Patra (to my surprise) picked us up at the airport. I was sorry that Patra's first impression of me was so spacey and bedraggled, but it was very sweet of them both to stay up so late on a work night to pick us up in person.
Friday, February 13Brent went to work so Rock and I were left to our own devices. He had us very well set up, and even had bought pomelo and coffee for our breakfast. Rock and I slept straight through the night and felt pretty good the next morning, and the first thing we wanted to do was to get our bearings and see the immediate neighborhood near Baan Ananda and what it had to offer. So we walked several skytrain stops down Sukhumvit to Baan Kamthieng, the Lanna house museum. This was a couple of teak houses on stilts with nineteenth-century stuff inside to show what the rural way of life would have been like a hundred years ago. The surroundings were pretty leafy. We saw crab pots made from bamboo that appeared to work just like the modern chickenwire variety they use in Beaufort. I loved walking barefoot on those teak floors, made of wide wooden planks. I liked the earth goddess who makes the rice grow and the wooden cowbells for the oxen. Lunch was at the Black Canyon Coffee next door, with a menu with English and pictures, and most importantly air con (as they say). I ordered pad thai, thinking that was a safe bet for my first Bangkok meal. With his lunch, Rock had a yummy watermelon "frappe," and I had the lime one. The waitress tried to say something in Thai (I think just reading the order back to us), and then she said, "Understand?" When we said no, she just laughed and walked away.
Next we went to the Lingam Shrine, which my guidebook had really talked up. It is a fertility shrine at a big ficus tree near a major canal, where people have brought dozens of penis statues and figurines of every color and size. This was less thrilling than I'd hoped, and we had to deal with an out-of-date map and some road construction to get back to where we were going. Instead of feeling lost, we asserted our western privilege and took a break inside the super fancy Swissotel. From there, it was a straight shot to walk to the skytrain, but we got off after just a couple of stops to see Benjasiri Park, which had caught my eye on our way west. The pigeons there refused to move when we tried to walk through a flock of them. There were also lots of turtles in the front pond, which I like because we saw them often in Louisiana, but never in Ottawa. We walked the rest of the way back to Brent's down the south side of Sukhumvit, but it was not as interesting as the north side had been that morning - I could not believe how many street vendors we saw, and everything they were selling looked delicious. We had our first swim in Brent's gorgeous and underutilized pool to cool off; it is totally shady in the afternoon, so no risk of sunburn for me. We liked the dark blue tile and the fountain at one end.
That night, he and Patra and Kuhn Jeewunon tried to take us to Waterside restaurant, but the wait was too long due to Valentine's Day. So we went to a less subdued outdoor seafood restaurant instead. Brent and Patra ordered all kinds of things for us to try, including our first shrimp cakes and morning glory, which were favorites for the rest of the trip. We also had a tower of Singha beer. There was a Thai band performing loudly in the middle of a big manmade pond, often doing 80s covers that we hadn't heard in years, and making liberal use of the jazz sax, even for the songs in Thai. For dessert, Patra bought me some heart-shaped coconut jellies that were delicious.
Saturday, February 14We left that morning in a rental SUV (with Brent driving) for our weekend trip to Khao Yai. At a toll booth, we were given two red heart-shaped boxes of "Jumbo" candies for Valentine's Day. One of the interesting things about driving on the freeway was the tour buses that we saw from time to time, all of which seem to be elaborately airbrushed with Disney, anime, or American imagery, etc. One of the, um, less interesting things was the bathroom stops; they were readily available at gas stations, but squat toilets and manual flushing take some getting used to, to say the least. I was however prepared with my own inventory of tissues, b/c apparently you can't count on finding toilet paper in Thai bathrooms.
We had a great lunch on a high, rickety deck overlooking a lake, complete with chickens and cows roaming down below. This was the kind of place that I would not have known to stop at, even though there were people out front of all these places flagging down cars to get them to stop at this restaurant versus the one next door. Som tum thai is my new favorite food - I think it's not more popular in North America only because green papaya is hard to come by. Khao Yai national park is very nice, kind of like the blue ridge parkway in concept. It was weird to be somewhere mountainous but still seeing tropical plants. I also wondered how much greener it must get in the rainy season. The coolest thing we saw today was monkeys. I had never seen wild monkeys before. I think these are a species called "pig tailed." They were brave enough to wait around for food, explore parked pick-up trucks, etc. We also took a very nice nature walk on a trail; at one point I thought I heard something like a squirrel, but it turned out to be a couple of monkeys way up high in the trees overhead. We also saw two kinds of deer around the park, many of the large ones up close. At the end of our visit, we drove to the highest point in the park, where we had a drink at an overlook. I noticed a beautiful orchid someone had hung on a tree - apparently they can grow just about anywhere in Thailand, even though they are hard to keep happy as a houseplant. I had a Leo beer with a spotted leopard on the label; Patra had soymilk in a glass bottle, which I'd never seen before. We drove over to check into the Lilawalai resort before dark, and it was just full of flowers and gardens - bougainvillea, plumeria, countless zinnias. I managed to get some nice pictures right around sunset while Rock took a nap. The rooms were very comfortable, with a firm mattress on the bed and nice hardwood floors. The bathroom was open-air; you could literally see the trees and the sky while you were showering, and nice potted plants while pottying.
We decided to have dinner at the resort restaurant to avoid driving further and at night, and we pretty much had the outdoor restaurant to ourselves, except that there was a cowboy themed corporate office party going on someplace else outside, a short distance away. We could hear the karaoke and speeches but not see the crowd, so I could pretty well tune it out since they weren't speaking English. The service was also slow as a result, but that gave us plenty of time to talk, though I wondered whether I should have said so much to Patra about her impending visit to NC this summer. Finally, as Rock and I were getting ready for bed, we discovered a visitor in our toilet: a sizable green tree frog. I wasn't sure how to get him/her out of there and didn't want to hurt it, but luckily the flash from my camera scared it away.
Sunday, February 15Rock and I wandered around the gardens at the Lilawalai resort this morning. Our cottage was cute, complete with a small private deck, but elsewhere on the property were Bali style teak houses, gazebos, palm trees, and plenty of flowers. We even saw a Thai chipmunk, which was larger than our version (and a pen full of mostly white rabbits - pets? dinner?). Breakfast was a buffet in the larger section of the outdoor restaurant, featuring pad see ew, which is not bad first thing in the morning. I had never had such wide noodles. We tried to go for a little bike ride, but Rock is not sized for a Thai bike (i.e., his knees would have hit the handlebars).
Probably the coolest thing I saw the entire trip was the white Buddha we visited on the side of a mountain (I think it's Wat Pra Kao). The temple complex down below felt full of activity, with chickens and peacocks wandering around (I got to see a couple spread their tails when visiting the washrooms on the way out). There were various statues, shrines and rituals - on the way out, Patra read her fortune, and had Rock and me make a wish and pour oil into a tall lantern (to my dismay, our oil raised the level over the wick, so the flame went out). On the way in, Brent and I rang a row of hanging bells. Then we climbed a zillion stairs up the mountain to see the Buddha. Patra was told that one way was the shortest, but then that the other way had fewer steps, was the correct direction to go up, etc., but it was too late to turn back, and most likely both ways were pretty brutal. We rested at the top for awhile, enjoying the view and sitting near the shrine at the Buddha's base, where people had made various offerings. I definitely had the sense that it was a sacred space. I also enjoyed the occasional lovely flowers that you could see along the stairway. At the entrance of the temple were a few fruit vendors, so Patra bought some candied tamarind, which Brent in particular seemed to enjoy. We didn't want to eat too much due to the laxative effect. We drove through a tree tunnel, where some young Japanese tourists were taking crazy pictures of themselves, as they are wont to do. Then Brent drove us to a random resort that he had discovered - this wasn't as fancy as Lilawalai, but for some reason had huge colorful sculptures, featuring all 12 signs of the Chinese zodiac, so we all took pictures with our year. We stopped to see another, newer white Buddha, with two beautiful dragons flanking the low staircase that led up to it. After driving behind a dam, and beside a herd of water buffalo, we stopped at another very local restaurant, this one specializing in seafood. We had grilled river prawns (which they had in an outdoor tank) and shrimp cakes, another newly discovered favorite.
By the time we got back to Bangkok, I was exhausted (due to both stair climbing and jet lag). We went to the spectacular restaurant MK Gold for dinner, and had sukiyaki, which Brent and Patra prepared for us, and I had never eaten. I wish I had been a little more alert for this dinner. I did have a nice watermelon slushy though. Then we went to Tops Market, a grocery store, where we bought mangosteens, baby pineapples, papaya, more pomelo, and coconut yogurt (overrated but beloved by mom) for our breakfasts. I had never had mangosteen, but had heard on NPR that it was not available in the US for awhile, and then sold in New York City for like $15 per fruit (ok, when in Bangkok, I could have sworn that they going rate was $75, but I am getting senile). They have a thick purple rind which you have to peel off to get to the white fruit inside, which is slightly mushy but delicious. It also has inedible seed in the middle, so that's a bit of effort for your $15.
Monday, February 16Rock and I were left to our own devices in the city once again. Our day started with small waffles at the skytrain station. This was a bit of a whim, but we both thought of a Japanese TV character named Hiro whose favorite food is waffles: "More waffles please," he says. Hiro is right. Then we found our way to the Cabbage Palace, which is (like Friday's Lanna house museum) a series of stilt houses surrounded by pretty gardens. We were off to a strong start with a royal barge and the lacquer pavilion (real gold leaf murals moved here from a monastery), and enjoyed the display on Thai puppetry and the epic Ramakian. But eventually we started to feel like we were in a "museum" full of some rich person's antique collection, which we were. We were also getting hungry.
Mom and Patra had mentioned that MBK is a Thai style mall that is worth checking out, and I had read something about a food court; most importantly, it was in the right location for our lunch. We could get into MBK pretty directly from the skytrain, and once inside, it was a bit like a maze. There were many levels, all with fairly low ceilings, and lots of small stores and kiosks, instead of big department stores. We saw signs for the international food hall, so we headed for that level. But once there, we were very disappointed - too much foreign food (pizza and Mexican), overpriced even by western mall standards, and "too many farang," Rock declared. So we gave up and left - surely there was someplace more "Thai" to eat in this huge mall. By chance, we took the escalator up, and like entering the pearly gates, there stood a genuine Thai food court. There were countless vendors to choose from, and fortunately they each had an English sign, one of which read "Thai Vegetarian Food." To buy food at a food court, I had read that you needed to buy tickets from a central stall. Since I had B400 in my pocket, and figured $12 should buy us two lunch, I ended up with a fistful of color-coded monopoly style money. We hit the vegetarian food stall and pointed to a few things that looked good, and to which I gave fake names in my bad Thai food vocab - morning glory over reddish rice, glass noodles, and Tofu with bean sprouts. (We went to a different stall for drinks - iced green tea is very popular in Asia, and very refreshing. Tomorrow we would discover genmai, or rice, flavored green tea which we then sought out at every opportunity.) Our next course was like fried Japanese meatballs, except these were filled with salmon, and covered with Japanese mayonnaise, bonito flakes, and the kind of brown sauce they serve with eel sushi - I had never seen this before, but love Japanese food, so it was fun to try, though for some reason we had to pay cash at this booth. By the time we got our leftover "tickets" refunded, we had spent maybe $4 on a great lunch, and with drinks a total of $6.
Our final destination for the afternoon was the Jim Thompson house, last of the three stilt-house-in-garden places to visit in Bangkok. You have to take a guided tour, which seems annoying, but our tour guide was great. She answered my questions well (one, that neighboring countries Burma, Laos, and Cambodia were all colonies, and Thailand was not - which tells me why we would have never thought those other places would be fun to visit over reading week) and had a very cute habit of repeating all the key words twice: chamberpot, chamberpot; shaped like flog, flog (by which she meant 'frog'); mouse house, mouse house. While we were in the house, we could hear the Muslim call to prayer from the neighborhood across the canal, which I thought was very cool, since it was done by a real chanter, I had never heard this in real life, and b/c historically the Muslim neighborhood was where Thompson's weaving took place. The gardens here were also exceptionally beautiful, with lovely orchids and banana-type flowers. Even the spirit house seemed to resemble Jim Thompson's own house.
On the way home, Rock and I stopped at the Major Cineplex mall at the end of Brent's soi to have a treat from my childhood - a Mr. San Francisco at the Swensen's; macadamia nut ice cream was the most exotic flavor they had. We had earned our afternoon swim, and I actually put in ten laps in the very nice lap lane to burn off Mr. SF. Before dinner, we made a visit to the Erawan Shrine, which I am glad we saw at night because it was very dramatic with the incense in the air and the traditional dancers performing. There was a lot of activity there. Patra bought flowers and incense for each of us to place on the four sides of the shrine. Then we went for Indian at a place owned by the parents of Patra's high school classmate.
Tuesday, February 17Rock and I asked Kuhn Jeewunon to drive us to Ayutthaya to see the ruins of the city that was the capital prior to Bangkok. Ayutthaya was the largest city in the world in the Middle Ages, and traded with the west for centuries. We started at the historical study center to get our bearings, but didn't find it all that educational. Then we got Kuhn Jeewunon to drop us off to see the ruins on foot - bless his heart, he doesn't have a good sense of direction, but at least he takes direction well, and I can read a map. The first thing we saw was actually a huge gold Buddha, a shrine still very much in use today. I have never been so hot and sweaty in my entire life. This at times made it feel like the ruins, and walking through the dust in between them, kind of looked all the same. I think part of me also resented, on some level, having to do something medieval on my time off. Also, we had to go down some dangerous stairs, that smelled of pigeon poop, to see one of the putative highlights at Wat Ratchaburana - a mural that was really not very well preserved. There were not enough signs to help us find our way, the map from the tourist office was not quite to scale, and when we finally found the bathroom and refreshments area, the prices were set for hot and desperate tourists - our genmai green tea at a 150-200% markup. So clearly they were expecting tourists, but not in the way that I would have hoped. There were, however, some cool things to see. Elephant rides, though we did not take one. Squirrels. Mynah birds singing. Soi puppies, and a dog that looked like Champ. A famous Buddha head embraced by tree roots at Wat Mahathat. We also got a good chance to listen to a distinctive bird call that we often heard, even at Baan Ananda, and which I think came from a large black bird.
But the best thing we saw was a minor ruined site, featuring Chinese style lion/dog statues, on which there is now an active local temple: Wat Thammikarat. There was a reclining gold Buddha that was large enough to be impressive but small enough to take in all at once, which I enjoyed far more than the more famous one at Wat Pho. It was also covered in flakes of gold leaf, which I'll come back to below. There was a monk meditating next to said Buddha. There were many shrines and rituals and statues that I did not understand. There was also a box for donations for dog food and medicine, claiming that the temple cared for 70 soi dogs - having seen two dog crates (I think) when I used the bathroom, I think they might have been caring for the local dogs. There was a place to buy water and seaweed flavored Lays, which we ate in a gazebo for shade for a fee of 10B, according to the sign (and noticed that a soi dog was sleeping on the bench in the gazebo next to ours). This turned out to be one of my favorite temples because it was not beautiful or touristy, but interesting, and clearly a site of local devotion. After we had enough ruins, we found Kuhn Jeewunon and drove over to the lunch site that mom had recommended: we ate on a floating platform right on the river. We ordered morning glory, our new favorite vegetable; tom yum goong, which was different but delicious every time we had it; and the biggest grilled prawns I have ever seen, cooked with garlic. There were big rice barges pulled by small tug boats, longboats, monks, and floating plant life going down the river. We also bought a bag of fish food, which caused a huge feeding frenzy of two species.
When we got back to Brent's, there was an elephant walking right past the end of the soi. That night Rock and I went to dinner on our own, at Ana Garden, which was a little two westernized by our new standards. I'll leave out the part here about getting slightly lost and starting to bicker on the way back. But after dinner, we had an hour long foot massage, really more like a chair massage, at the place at the end of Brent's soi.
Wednesday, February 18This time we left prepared to round out our fruity breakfast with skytrain waffles. We went to the central pier, hoping to get the "ferry" to Chinatown, but there didn't seem to be any public ferry system like my map had implied. So instead, we hired a longboat, which left immediately to take just me and Rock to the Chinatown area. We were going pretty fast, but there were low blue tarps along the sides to keep us from getting splashed by the (very polluted) Chao Praya River. Upon our arrival, a muscular and very tan man helped us out of the boat - he seems to be stationed at the pier with this as his sole responsibility. Next we had to walk to the part of Chinatown where we needed to begin the walking tour suggested by my guidebook. I also wanted to see Little India, which I have to say pales in comparison to Toronto's (which is admittedly the largest South Asian neighborhood outside of South Asia). I also wanted to eat Indian food at a small restaurant in an alleyway which mom had prided herself on finding. We wandered briefly into a Little India shopping mall for more air con and to have a bathroom handy; there we saw an older woman belting out karaoke to a pretty empty food court.
Then we hit the streets. Some of which were not streets, per se, but laneways mostly or entirely roofed in an ad hoc fashion, some so that you could occasionally look up to see the sky, others so effective that vendors had installed huge air conditioners to keep that area cool. There were lots of strolling merchants (selling good looking grape tomatoes and strawberries, for instance) and non-stop shops and booths lining both sides. It was very crowded but plenty to see. Eventually it occurred to me that I could actually shop, instead of just sightseeing, so I bought a strand of large square glass beads at a bead store. I also bought a bracelet at a jewelry store. I had specifically read that you have to haggle for the price in Chinatown, and both times, I tried, with no success. One of the most fabulous things we saw was a very crowded temple that had lots of Chinese style decorations, and was supposed to include Confucian and Taoist shrines. We saw large warrior statues and a room full of people trying to read their fortune for the new year. Outside the temple there were vendors selling various things to leave for offerings. At the end of our walking tour, we went to see the golden Buddha, and next door, they a huge new temple is under construction. On the way there, we accidentally saw a temple that was not in the guidebook or on the map, small but active and pretty, and I think also with some Chinese influence - I liked that one more than the nearby Golden Buddha actually. This was near the Chinatown gate, which was surrounded by scaffolding. (Why does every Chinatown need a gate?)
Next we walked to the metro, which Rock had some reservations about in theory, but in practice it turned out to be the fanciest subway either of us has ever seen. Great air con, for one thing, plus a guard searched all bags on the way in, so it was secure, and instead of buying a ticket or token we bought a flat black disk that had a microchip or something scannable inside. We came out at Lumphini Park, which was advertised as shady, but not shady enough to entice us to take any extra steps. So we walked over to the snake farm, where a live exhibition was underway. I was slowly and politely walking up to the amphitheater where the speaker had already begun his presentation, but stopped in my tracks when I realized that a cobra was staring me in the face (from a safe distance away, but with nothing at all in between me and Mr. Snake). An attendant kindly gestured that it was ok to go ahead and take a seat in the stands. Then I realized that there were two snake handlers in charge of this cobra, in addition to the speaker who was ignoring it altogether, and none of them had a net or stick or gloves or any of the accoutrements that I would have wanted to handle a poisonous snake. Of course, the speaker was also telling in detail about exactly how poisonous these snakes are, and they proceeded to swap out several different species, some of which seemed more irritated than others, and several of which they simply allowed to slither and hiss around on the floor while being described. After the show was over, the main attraction of the indoor area was for me the air con, rather than the dozens of snakes housed in terrariums. Clearly it was time for another swim, in addition to a kiwi juice and vodka cocktail - kiwi juice is yum, why don't we have that in N. America?
That night Rock and I took Brent and Patra out for Japanese, since that is one of our particular favorites, and for once I could actually order for myself (i.e., by pointing to the pictures on the menu). One thing we'd never tried before was grilled mochi (like sticky rice), and they also had triangular sushi with pickled apricot in the middle. We also had the best green tea and black sesame ice cream ever. After dinner, we went to a Moroccan style bar for drinks outdoors, seated low to the ground - very relaxing.
Thursday, February 19Alas, the waffle lady had abandoned her post, so we started the day without breakfast. Bad move - this was our last full day in Bangkok, and we'd saved the biggest tourist attraction in Bangkok for last: the grand palace. Having done a bit more research on the "ferry" system, we went back to the central pier and got tickets for the Chao Praya Express Boat, which arrived shortly thereafter. This was full of tourists (and some locals), but we got good seats and enjoyed the scenery and breeze on the river, including the spire of Wat Arun on the other side. The pier where we disembarked had a crowded food market, and when we got outside, we realized that we were in a more touristy and more annoying area. There were lots of hawkers and also lots of scam artists, one of whom tried to tell us that the palace was open only to Thai people until 1:00, and that we needed to go see a big Buddha that he would show us on the map, which I refused to pull out. One of the hawkers, however, was selling big parasols, and this seemed to be a wise purchase, because there was less shade here than anywhere else in Bangkok. The woman was asking B400, which was excessive, so I said, "No, too much. 200." And she said ok. $6 for portable shade seemed like a good deal to me, but Rock said that I had just bought a sign to tell every hawker in the vicinity that I was a gullible farang.
At any rate, we managed to find the entrance to the palace and get inside, where we headed for the air conditioned museum to cool off for a bit. The first part of the palace that we saw was the temple area, and it was breathtaking - colorful, sparkly, ornate, huge but cluttered yet open to the sky. We spent the most palace time here, where the famous emerald Buddha was the least of the incredible things to see. Following the signposted path to leave the temple section, we were overjoyed to see a drink vendor, where we bought two juices: ginger and lychee. The more palatial part of the palace was also impressive, but nothing could beat the temple section, and in fact we left thinking that perhaps we had not managed to see every area of the site, which would have taken the entire day. We rested at the snack bar near the exit, where we ate ice cream bars: one with corn, one with green peas in the middle, a purple one that might have been black sesame. After an air con break in a Au Bon Pain (overpriced western cafe), we headed to Wat Pho. Along the way, we were told that Wat Pho was in precisely 180 degrees the opposite direction, which I knew for a fact wasn't true, so we completely ignored this guy and kept walking, but I couldn't imagine why someone would be there specifically to give the wrong directions - what kind of scam is that?
The first and most famous thing to see at Wat Pho is the reclining Buddha, which is just too big to take in all at once, and so had less appeal for me. The rest of Wat Pho was amazing - even more spectacular than the palace's temple. We took so many pictures, which defy description. At the snack bar area, I bought a green maneki neko, the Japanese lucky cat statue; green is for academic success, they are hard to find, and this one was decorated in a Thai style. There was also an orange mama cat and playful orange kitten; mama was crying from time to time, but I had nothing to give her. She would not have liked my guava juice or the spicy seafood Lays potato chips that we were munching on. Starved for some real food and stricken by the heat, we finally got some lunch at almost 4:00, at a Thai cafe the guidebook said was an ok choice, considering the area. I had enjoyed pad see ew for breakfast at the resort and wanted to order it again, but when I tried to say, "Chan gin mangsawilat" (I am vegetarian - the phrase that I had worked so hard on!) the guy had no clue. After the English word "vegetarian" came out, he brought me an entire vegetarian menu, in English; that did the trick, but left me wishing that I had learned more Thai or practiced the tones more, but we really didn't have time. The wait for the Chao Praya Express Boat was a bit longer for the return trip, but that gave us time to scope out which boat to look for and how to spot it coming, so we beat some of the crowd when boarding.
This was the first night that Brent and Patra had beaten us back to Baan Ananda, and Brent laughed when we walked in, asking if we'd been in a sauna; actually, we had come back looking like that everyday, which was the reason for our afternoon swims. We went to dinner at a Laotian restaurant, which had great food, live traditional music/dancing, and seating on the floor, but Brent ordered "extra spicy" som tum thai from our ladyboy waitress, and I couldn't eat very much of that at all; in fact, my stomach was not right for the rest of the trip. We drank Beer Lao, which I had just heard about on NPR, and a tortoiseshell soi cat came and hung out under our low table. After dinner, Rock and I had our first (and last) Thai massage, which was actually a bit painful at times, but worthwhile.
Friday, February 20The last thing we really wanted to see in Bangkok was the golden mount, which is not easily accessible on foot or via transit, so we had Khun Jeewunon drive us over there, which took an hour and a half (due to traffic, not his wrong turns). This was another favorite - you walk up a path to the top of the manmade mount, from which you can see all of Bangkok. Along the way are different areas with flowers, shady gardens, or bells in the sun. The top of the mount had an indoor section with a shop, and an outdoor section on the roof with a huge golden spire. Inside was a green reclining Buddha flaked with gold leaf that I found particularly beautiful; the gold leaf fluttering in the breeze had struck me as a symbol of ephemeral materiality, and lo and behold, a square piece of it was blowing around outside - I caught it before it hit the ground, and kept it. At the shop, we bought a couple of symbolic items, including two of the small gold bells that we could hear jingling like wind chimes at every temple.
On the way back to Baan Ananda, we stopped at Big C grocery store because we wanted to get some spice mixes and wacky snack foods to take home. Little did we realize that Big C is more like a Walmart, so we also bought soaps, pens, and melamine dishes. I couldn't find the pad thai sauce that Patra had recommended, so I stole the unopened bottle from Brent's kitchen. We still have not managed to completely unpack and sort out all the bags of groceries that are sitting on our dining room table. For our lunch that day, we bought sushi, coconut ice cream, and the only spring rolls that we had in Thailand, which came with a delicious but hot green chili based sauce. Too soon it was time to pile in the car and pick up Brent and Patra from work (more traffic - at least we finally got good pictures of the Chang Building, an elephant-shaped skyscraper), and then drive down to Ko Samet. It was dark by the time we arrived, but I found the speedboat ride calming - boats just have that effect on me. We checked into our spartan rooms (the bathroom was just that - shower right over the toilet) and went to dinner on the beach. We sat on cushions on the very fine sand, picked out our seafood (some of which, e.g. crabs, was still alive), and watched the fire show going on across the way. I loved hearing the waves and seeing the colored lanterns. The steamed fish was the best fish dish we had in Thailand - it came with some kind of gingery mango salad kind of thing on top. We also ate grilled rock lobsters by pulling the tails right out of the halved shells.
Saturday, February 21Last day! We got an early start in our beach chairs under a large umbrella, and a soi dog almost immediately decided to come and lay underneath; she moved to Brent's chair and then stayed there the entire day, never leaving, begging, or moving. I didn't feel like eating anything today, but I did drink a coconut with the top lopped off, and a pineapple milkshake. Rock had grilled chicken cooked by a guy walking around with a portable makeshift grill. I didn't want to swim alone, and there was a good bit of litter and debris up near the shore, but if you could get out deep enough, the water cleared up and there were perfect waves for floating. So eventually I swam with Brent (who finally opened up about his personal business, all of which seems to be going well), and later made Rock go back out with me. (Both swims were less than 15 minutes, but this was enough equatorial sun near high noon to give me an awful full-body sunburn, which I would not realize until just before the 30 hour flight ordeal). The best part was getting an hour-long massage, right there in our beach chairs. Yes, the soi dog was in position this whole time. Also, shortly before we left, Patra gave me a really nice home spa kit; I have already been using the lemongrass aromatherapy oil and green tea soap.
Sadly, Rock and I had to take the speedboat to meet Kuhn Jeewunon around 3:00, and drive back to Baan Ananda. We bid a fond farewell to Martin - he had always been an evil beast, but now he is the sweetest cat, and definitely the fattest one in Thailand. He would do things like climb on the sofa between me and Rock to lay there and purr right between us, and only once this trip did he bite me. For once traffic was not too bad, so we got to the airport in plenty of time for our 10:30 PM flight, and it was definitely the fanciest airport that we had ever visited. Lots of good food in the terminal area, and so many shops, including a Boots, my favorite British drug store, but I knew I couldn't get any of those liquids (like lotion) through security (so why sell them here!?). The flight to Tokyo was packed, and the plane was not up to snuff - no overhead air vents, no seat reclining, etc. Very uncomfortable.
Sunday, February 22At the Tokyo airport, we got a dayroom, which is a miniature hotel room, and slept in our firm little twin beds for about three hours. I also took another shower, which had become an afternoon ritual over the past week. The flight to Chicago was also packed, but I didn't feel the same pressure to sleep that I had on other legs. Plus, this plane was back up to Japan Airlines standards.
After all this, the six-hour layover in Chicago was a little hard to take, but I had school work to do - prepping for the course that I would teach the next day in my jet lagged stupor. Remember the "extra spicy" som tum thai from Thursday night? Seriously, my stomach had still not recovered, though luckily there were no major outcomes at inconvenient times. Still, I was nauseous in Chicago and actually tried to make myself throw up (which I despise) but no results. Well, as soon as we got on the cramped and crowded, old American Airlines plane, where we had to sit on the runway for an inordinate amount of time, with the air reeking of jet fuel, a smell that I particularly hate, I knew it was bad news - I puked in my little barf bag right as the plane took off. And of course there was a hole in the bottom of said barf bag. Very embarrassing. But we got to Ottawa, got through customs, got a cab, got home, got in the car, and picked up the dogs from the dogsitter, all before I collapsed in bed.
Saturday, March 7It took us about a week to get out of super jet lag mode, and about that long to get our digestive systems completely back online. But every time a colleague asked about my reading week, I could feel myself grinning like an idiot. I have even had a few dreams about Thailand since we got back. Now that we've been home for two weeks, the jet lag is (I think) completely gone, and I can contemplate the possibility of eating spicy things again (maybe... one day). We are hoping to have a few friends over to drink Singha beer and vodka with kiwi juice (brought back a carton) and eat spicy squid flavored Lays, watermelon seeds, and the fried seaweed that Patra introduced me to, among other things.
Things I learned from this experienceI am glad to know that a place exists far enough away from home that I will not think about work or even worry about the dogs while I am away.
Facts about meI hate sitting in traffic, I love to swim, and I choose to exhaust myself on every vacation I take. Life in Louisiana was good practice for dealing with heat and humidity, crowds, suboptimal toilet facilities, rumors of corruption, and tropical smells both good and bad. My favorite experiences were multisensual: colorful to see, with ringing bells to hear, incense to smell, and breezes to feel. I would really like to learn more about Thai Buddhism (which is not at all just about silence and meditation, as I expected). But it was a good experience for me as an intellectual to be in beautiful places and know that they were special even though I could not understand what was happening around me.
Finally, we obviously had a fabulous time in Thailand, but it was also important to me to see what Brent's life there has been like, and now I know how lucky he is. We are indebted to him and Patra for making all of this possible for us.
