Home

Sigh....home. The bed was like heaven, the shower a miracle, the weather mid-January bright low traveling sun on a cold crisp day. And I am glad to be home, but already my mind is slipping back to the sly, mysterious last two weeks. I know some things now. Two weeks is not enough. It takes at least a week for your body to adjust to the rhythms of Southeast Asia, for you not to feel like a complete alien. By that time, its almost time to come home. After the romance wears off, I find I am still inamoured of Thailand and Laos. What is that?
Don't worry, Somchai. Even if I don't go back right away, I have thousands of stories. I could re-post some of my old travel writings...Nepal, Burma, Thailand and Laos....believe me, I have stories and the pictures to prove it.

Bangkok Redoux

We left Luang Prabang at 8:00am, cold and foggy. The young man at the Sayo forgot to order our van so we were running a little behind and tried to negotiate with the other boys but they were on Lao time so we settled for a tuk tuk, Lao style and were dropped outside the entrance to the airport because the driver didn't have permission to go all the way in. As I shivered in the cold, Sarah roundly berated the young man in Lao about the price he charged us and the advantage he took of us. We just kept thinking about what Du, Sarah's Thai co-worker, said about merit and how the blessing is on the giver. Kristen kept saying that perhaps he would buy his wife a new sinh(skirt) and pay his children's school tuition with the money.

I miss the moderate temperature of the mountains here in Bangkok. We spent our first night in BKK at the restaurant overlooking the new Rama V bridge. The name means something like "cool breezes and view of the bridge". Its good to say what you mean. Muzzy and I discovered it last year when we were here. It is a very nice restaurant for middle class young Thais and a place where Thai people take their falang friends. The food is fantastic, unfortunately I was still a little behind the girls in my appetite recovery, but Sarah ordered for us and I managed to get down some of the yummy twiced fried fish stuff that she has a real name for, OH MY GOD it is so good! After a shower, I gratefully collapsed in the New Siam and geared myself for the final push of shopping at Chatuchak on Sunday.

Du met us at Ricky's Sunday morning and after waiting for the cooks to arrive so we could have something besides coffee(it was, after all, Sunday morning!), we headed out to the market. There was actually less humidity and it seemed cooler to me than the week before. Of course, all of that is only an illusion when you step into the warren of asiles in the great shopping mecca of Chatuchak. I had a mission and two Thai speakers. It was a much better experience. I made my purchases, had an iced tea at the little bar in the midst of the market, ate lunch at the somtam and gai yang stand, shopped more and headed back to the hotel for another shower and repacking in prep for the journey home. I suppose it is a chore to come and do this, but it is also an adventure, no matter how brief. We played cards in the lobby of the New Siam and headed out to our little alley restaurant, Jok Pochana, where we had clams in basil, chilis and garlic, squid in red curry, pak boon, mixed veggies and rice. And while theThai food at home is good, none of it is as good as sitting in the squalor of BKK on the side of a klong while cars and motorbikes drive right through your restaurant, katoey's get hair makeovers in the mani-pedi salon across the lane, traffic roars by at the end of the alley on a busy Bangkok night, and you try to figure out how the seating works for the little food stalls. I am ready to come home. I miss my soft bed and powerful shower, but I think it will only be a short time until I miss Southeast Asia again. Maybe the mosquitos have innoculated me with an addictive venom that makes me want to come again and again.

Fried Fish and Bats

Its all about the food. Baguettes smeared with Laughing Cow cheese, grilled chicken, tiny tomatoes, long slices of cucumber and carrot, chilis, topped with Dipping for Chicken. Searching for real "Cafe Lao" and trying to explain that we want the kind with real sweetened condensed milk in the bottom. Why is this so difficult? It never was this difficult before. Is it just that there are so many falang now that we just get what they think we should have? It is preverse logic. The night food market is down a grimy alley lined with long tables, precarious benches that kill your knees, and portable barbeques with smoke from slabs of organ meats, chicken and fish. We point to a crispy fish that the woman puts back on the grill to heat up and eat it with a side of khao niaw, fresh spring rolls, and a bottle of Beer Lao. Yesterday it was pho at a table across the way from our guesthouse. A big bowl of fresh noodles on top of chopped veggies, cilantro and mint, peanuts and hot broth. We eat with chopsticks and spoons looking across the table at a bowl of congealed blood squares, an option to add that we decline. I finally found a fruit shake without added sugar and salt. Now I know to ask them to leave these out.



This morning we walked through the local morning vegetable market. Fresh long beans, water cress, mustard greens, unfamiliar herbs and suddenly it turns sinister; bowls of small crawling crickets, individual servings of worms on their own banana leaf, ready for packaging, and then there is a cat stretched out that looks vaguely like a regular housecatbut is really a small ocelot. It is an expensive item that draws interest but no buyers. Rounding the corner there are shallow pans of slithering live eel, gasping fish neatly laid in rows on a table next to one huge grouper-like behemoth, a cluster of live bats are struggling to get away, and the cooked bodies of small birds and rats finish out the bizzare foods section. We hurry by, on our way to coffee, clutching our can of condensed milk and trying not to linger except to buy 2 limes and a bunch of the tiny bananas that taste like heaven.



Its been one of those Traveller Tummy days.

Luang Prabang

Foggy, chilly, damp, inadequately clothed. Luang Prabang has both changed and not. The Night Market has another incarnation that runs right in front of our guesthouse. It meanders all around the old Royal Palace now and last night we discovered the food market down a dank alley. Yummmm! We moved from the cramped, noisy Sayo Riverside to the old Sayo and the lavishly roomy upstairs corner "family room". I am deposited up the scary staircase to the loft bed. That way I can snore to my heart's content and listen to the slightly ominous whistle of the electric water heater housed up here with me. The bathroom is big enough to swing a cat in, as my grandmother would say, that is, if you are inclined to swinging cats. This is a luxurious thing in Laos....large bathrooms, not swinging cats.

Luang Prabang retains all of its charm, though you must pay more for it now. The beers are ridiculously cheap, perhaps to offset the sting of the price of a room. Building and rebuilding is everywhere. Prosperity abounds, as do French, German and Thai tourists. The silk is still beautiful, the food even better, if you work to find traditional Lao food. The views of the Mekong are still stunning at sunset and mysterious at sunrise. I am grateful to be here. I am happy in this place.

Chatuchak Weekend Market

The city is clothed in black for the mandatory 30 day mourning period for the King's sister. Chatuchak is as busy as ever. It is hot, humid and hard to believe that I left 32 degree weather to find myself drenched after the first 5 minutes outside the AC room at the New See-am II. 93 degrees, 100% humidity. Anything you want at the weekend market. After 2 hours I have to stop and refuel and after 3 hours I am suffering the first effects of dehydration. We stop for lunch right as I begin to realize I can';t make one more decision. Lunch is delicious...somtam, khao niew, gai yang, cold cold water, cries of the kanom krock vendor in my ear, high sing song pleas for one more sale, someone in a cartoon character suit strutting up and down the uncovered asile that separates the sections of the steamy tin roofed market. How hot he must be, it is impossible to comprehend. The market swings into full blown mid-day action...colors, textures, throngs of people so thick you have to walk sideways clutching your bags, the sweat pouring off your skin, trying to remember to drink more water. I suddenly realize I have reached my limit as my stomach cramps and my head begins to explode. Sarah and Du deposit me in the back of an air con taxi with multiple admonitions to the driver to use the meter, to get me back to the hotel safely.

My second shower of the day. I lay like a loaf of sodden bread in my phasin, waiting for the AC and fan to do their work. I drink more water. I read. Then its back downstairs into the heat. Its an illusion, lying there and thinking that this time you won't be so hot when you step outside the room. A bit more conversation, a fruit shake, dress for dinner, and out again. After dinner the others take a stroll down Saturday night on Kao San. I opt for the banana roti and a walk back to the hotel, my room, and one more shower.

Tomorrow is Laos and I hope it will be cooler, at least at night.

Bangkok

Early Friday morning Bangkok. Wat Po and the Reclining Buddha. I can't believe I've been here so many times and never done the tourist things, but getting OUT of Bangkok has always been our first priority. Fighting jetlag all the way, we hopped a river taxi and made our way down the choppy churning Chao Praya. The wat itself is just a few metres away from the pier. What a magnificent temple! Huge spires of mosaic shoot up to the moon and giant Chinese warrior guardians abound. The Reclining Buddha rests magnificently in a building covered with paintings of the lives of the Buddha. The constant clink clink clink of coin offerings being dropped into bowls accompanies us as we circumambulate his peaceful figure. His massive feet are completely inlaid with mother of pearl and the symbols sacred to the dharma.

We found the massage center in its in temporary quarters and sat under an obliging tree to wait our turn. Traditional Thai massage is taught at Wat Po. Sarah and I went in together, me to much laughing as they give me a pair of loose pants to wear and I indicated that they may not be so loose on me. I mime to my masseuse, a small compact little man, that I am having trouble with my thumb and have some tenderness in my ankle. I think he thought I needed MORE work on those sore areas so he doggedly ground his way into my thumb until I had tears in my eyes. He then gestured for me to move it around and by god that thumb felt better than it had in weeks...but I think the secret of Thai massage is the relief you feel when they end the torture! On the whole I felt much better when we were done. It was a miracle! No backache, no ankle distress and a moveable thumb!
It was nap time.

Traveling with Sarah is a treat. She is fearless about finding little holes in the wall to eat and we had a delicious meal in an alley off a klong...green lipped clams, tom ka and pak boon! Today we are off to see the Emerald Buddha and some shopping at the Thieves Market, sometimes called the Amulet Market. Elephants and Buddhas abound!

I miss my Muzzy. Bangkok is hot, humid, conjested, and dirty. We leave for Luang Prabang Sunday mornimg. Chautuchak is tomorrow. Sawadee ka!

Another Journey

This is a new thing, this "blog". Since Muz and I send copious emails home every time we travel, we thought this might be easier to read and post. etc., so I'm going to give it a try. Up until this year, I have never traveled without Mr. Muzzy. I'm going to miss him. This is a shopping trip, short, a dry run to see just how this works. I'll be in Bangkok for 3 days, in Luang Prabang, Laos, for 5, and back to Bangkok to finish up shopping and head for home. I leave January 8th, return January 22nd. Sarah is meeting me in Bangkok and will be my trusty shopping partner. I am excited to see what we find!