A month (actually, nearly three months now… two since I started writing this!) goes by pretty quickly when you’re keeping busy, and I guess I have been. Mostly I just have my head down working, although there have been a few side trips that I will write about when I find the time. But I was wondering if I would find Bangkok more or less distracting this time around, and the answer, it seems, is that it’s pretty much the same as it was before.
I got a condo in the same building I was in last year, so everything is almost freakishly familiar. I hadn’t forgotten much–the lady on the corner with the delicious chicken on a stick, the one-dollar bag of croissants and my favorite Vanilla Cereal at Big C, the way you’re expected to mash the door close button on the elevator incessantly, the way to ask the clerk at the 7-11 to nuke your burger-in-a-bag for you.
Same cats littering the Caturday Cafe.
I even remembered what little of the language I had memorized… yes, no, thank you, sorry, never mind, pork, chicken, etc… although from the giggles I get anytime I say those things near Thai people I infer that my pronunciation is still atrocious.
There’s new things to experience, of course…
New friends to make…New foods to try……like fried bugs.
But my feet find their own way around, to the gym, to the pool, to the BTS station, to the bus stop. I have a new route, down the road to Monica’s new condo, walking past the now fully constructed and functional International School that I watched being built last year. More buildings are going up down that street now, low-rise condos lining the khlong, part of a continuing building boom in the little T77 community here.
I still haven’t found out what T77 means.
I have realized why I like this spot so much, though. It’s not exactly a gated community, nor is it entirely planned–there are little chunks of property in the development that seem to be privately owned, with traditional neighborhood houses or small businesses in them. But the area is slightly segregated, sitting on a peninsula formed between the khlong and an expressway, and vehicle access is limited. That makes it a lot more peaceful than just about anywhere else in Bangkok. The modern Habito mall across the street is full of all the modern shops and conveniences you could ask for. You needn’t ever venture out if you prefer not to.
I ran into an expat at the gym and he had noticed it as well. Outside, the frenetic activity of a global megacity. Inside, a quiet, lush oasis in which to relax and recharge.
But at the same time, half a block away, crossing below the expressway, you’re right in the impenetrable heart of the city, a soi lined with food and mystery (and sometimes mystery foods!). A public washing machine sits in the entry to a massage parlor. A dark hallway disappears into an apparently endless building. Through an open door, you might see a factory floor in full swing or a family sitting down to dinner, all on the same block. There’s the suggestion that every door, every alley, every hallway, holds a microcosm of the human experience that you could spend a lifetime diving into and learning about.
Multiply it all by the nearly 1 million rai that Bangkok covers and it boggles the mind. Still. I noted in my post about Bangkok living last year that the city is “…fascinating, and perhaps endlessly so.”
So far, that’s still proving correct.
I also posted a picture last time highlighting a local neighborhood concern, stray cats:
There’s nothing more Thai than a brazen disregard for posted notices–although the notice is aimed at farang.
The picture was taken at the exit of the Thong Lo BTS station, which isn’t really my neighborhood, but I happened to stop there to go to a specific restaurant last week (Beccofino, which was excellent, if you happen to be in the neighborhood).
As I’m walking down the steps, I see this at the exact same spot:
Note: I thought I had published this, from Day One of this trip, but apparently it didn’t post. So, out of order and sans-pictures, here it is.
I woke up to flickers on the wall of the bedroom, jagged flashes darting through the gaps at the edges of the heavy, dark curtains stretching across the full-length window that makes up one wall. A low and intermittent rumble that had convinced my still-sleeping brain that it was train traffic, which would have been the most likely source of such noise if I were slumbering in Seattle still, suddenly made a different sort of sense. A bright, sharp flare was punctuated with a loud, sharp crack.
It was morning in Bangkok.
I got up and opened all the windows and the deck slider in the condo, taking advantage of nature’s air conditioning. The temperature dropped five degrees as the dense rain closed in, cloaking the buildings of On Nut like a heavy Seattle fog.
It was a long way from the milky blue sky that had greeted me when I stepped off the plane the day before, feeling the thick, fetid Bangkok air leaking in through the gaps between the jetway and the big 777 and smelling the unique tang of vegetation, sewage, and delectable food cooking that stamps the city indelibly into your olfactory records.
My flights from Vancouver had gone reasonably well, as well as such extended overseas cruising ever does go in my experience. I’d drawn the short straw of seating assignments, next to another big farang instead of one of the hundreds of diminutive Asians on the plane. I flew EVA this time, transferring through Taipei to avoid the unpleasantness I will forever associate with the Beijing airport and with China generally. In terms of seating and service, it was no better and no worse than Air China from last year… although on the Taipei-Bangkok leg I was greeted with the delightful prospect of a flight attendant whose name tag proudly proclaimed her to be “Lemon Li.” It made me smile every time she walked past.
So did the inventive in-flight safety video.
Taipei was indeed a better layover and transfer point than Beijing. It was moderately inefficient and chaotic but without the oppressive, bureaucratic, Big Brotherishness incorporated into the experience. The weather was essentially identical to what I’d left behind in Seattle: upper forties and rain. I didn’t bother to change.
That left me in long sleeves and long pants when I got off the plane in Bangkok four hours later, but by then I was too tired to think about changing.
My friend Maxx, who has been living in Bangkok for the past year, met me at the airport. He’s not nearly as tan as he should be after a year in the tropics. But otherwise, he appeared happy and in good health.
My first stop at the airport was a cellular company booth, where I got a local tourist SIM card for 30 days for service. After the polite young man at the booth activated it and installed it in my phone, a flood of communiques from my AirBnb host arrived. I had been having trouble getting ahold of him (he’s located in Singapore; I have the idea that this condo is but one of a far-flung empire of Asian rentals he manages), but he reassured me that all was well and that he’d left the keys for me at the juristic office at the condo. The previous tenant, he noted vaguely, had possible damaged the couch; he would take care of it later.
If this had been my first visit, I would have had no clue what a juristic office was or how to find it, but since this was the same building I stayed in here last year, I knew exactly where to go. The building discourages AirBnb uses (although the sign technically says “short-stay” rentals… I think two months probably isn’t outside the letter of the law) so I also knew to be discreet about what I told them. It’s all nodded and winked at, but the forms must be observed.
When I checked in, though, there was more bad news–the electric bill hadn’t been paid and the electricity had been turned off. (also some good news, though; my friend Monica, who lives nearby, had left me a small care package at the office on her way to work that morning, with some snacks to tide me over until I could make it to a store.)
This, of course, meant no air conditioning, which is a no-go in Thailand for a farang. So I texted the owner again to hassle him about it, and also sent him pictures of the other damage–scarred up walls, busted cupboard doors, a broken coffee table, and a crushed couch. I don’t even know how you do that to a couch.
It was such a long list that I didn’t even bother to confront him with the fact that the place was advertised as having a laptop-friendly workspace, but in fact (even assuming the couch to be in good working order) didn’t have anywhere to sit and work.
These are not things you want to deal with after spending more than 24 straight hours in transit, so Maxx and I repaired across the compound to Tom n Toms coffee shop in Habito Mall–air conditioning and smoothies to soothe the weary traveler.
Eventually, I got too tired to wait for the owner’s text, and Maxx had to get to work, so I went back to the condo and took a shower in the dark (cold, but I wanted it cold anyway in the sweltering condo!) and laid down to rest.
Fortunately, the lights came on after an hour or so and I turned on the AC. Blissful mechanically chilled air cascaded out and I lay down again. I fell asleep and missed Monica’s texts when she got home from work. But something woke me up a little later, around 8, and she stays up late, so I got up and wandered over to check out her new place.
Last year, she was renting a condo in the Base Park West, the mirror building to where I was (and am) staying at the Base Park East. But she had already put money down on a place in the newest building being built in the complex (just on the opposite side of East, alongside the klong), and this fall she finally moved in.
I was surprised when I walked over to it. It had been a construction site the year before, so it was no surprise that it was finished, but the surrounding areas, which had just been big green swaths of unreclaimed swamp, were now also brand new buildings or new construction sites. The company that owns the complex had been busy. A new school was right across the road, and a bunch of restaurants and shops had sprung up.
The new condos were low-rise and built around a pool and garden that give the place a much quieter aspect then the Base buildings. Monica says she likes it, but she’s still getting settled in. I spent many hours over the summer texting with her about painting and other minor mechanical duties concordant with homeownership. So I had been anxious to see the place in person, and it didn’t disappoint.
With Monica, it’s hard to tell what is simply post-move-in organizational issues and what is the natural state of disarray she is willing to countenance in her personal space. But beneath the debris, I liked the new fixtures, design, and subtle improvements on the older buildings–strip lighting in closets and cupboards, a fold-away table built in to the kitchen island, windows for the deck that could be closed against the noise and heat, a storage closet with a door off one end for the air-conditioning equipment and washing machine.
Mostly Monica told me what she didn’t like about it, though, and when I asked her if she was happy there, she had trouble answering. She wants to stay and make it her home, she said. But clearly it wasn’t there just yet.
I wasn’t sure what time I left but I had no trouble getting to sleep when I stumbled back to my own condo. At least, until the thunderstorm started.
Now, it’s just raining, and I am strongly considering using the umbrella provided here in the condo to make a trip over to Big C to go shopping. In Seattle, of course, it’s considered a sign of ill-breeding to use an umbrella, so I am strongly conditioned against it. But it’s madness to wear a rain jacket, or any sort of jacket, here in this heat. So maybe I’ll swallow my pride, go work at Tom n Tom’s for a bit, and then make the trek to the store.
