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.