I Am Not Making Any of This Up

As I walk along the street, scanning the broken tiles and cement, pocked with holes and barriers, trying not to stumble off into the ceaseless traffic, I also have to be aware of signs and awnings that are suspended over the sidewalk.  These are suspended at what for me is about eye level and the cross beams supporting the awnings and signs, running parallel to the sidewalk, are often made of metal.  I assume the short Thai people are fine with this but I'm constantly in danger of being impaled on a metal sign support.  Some of the ends have balls of tape wrapped around them, evidence, I assume, of past impalings.  

You know what they say about Thailand: "If the sidewalk doesn't fracture your ankle then the sign supports will put out your eye."  This is - and I'm not making this up - inscribed on the tails side of the 10 baht coin.

In the Gratitude List department I neglected to say that, after a second polite request, we got moved to a side-view room much closer to the river and much farther from the karaoke bar from hell.  On night one I stepped out onto our balcony overlooking a sea of jumbled humanity and was surprised to hear that the musician was calmer and quieter that night - but on nights two and three the rock and roll people were back and the sound cannonballed down the alley between buildings so that it was still possible to hear the crash of the drums and the thump of the bass in our room, although much muted.  On the two nights we had in the street-facing room I cannot emphasize enough how loud it was.  When, exhausted from a long day of being thoroughly and completely Bangkoked, I turned out the light, unable to keep my eyes open, I was forced into Airplane Technique as I lay there.  Airplane Technique is the method where an individual - pinned into a narrow seat, sitting up, with blabbering people and squalling infants all around me . . . I mean him or her . . . says this to myself . . . I mean himself or herself . . . : "You are not even trying to sleep - you're just going to sit here and relax."  It can be surprisingly effective.  On night one I fell asleep after a bit.  On night two I fell asleep almost immediately. Proof that I am equal parts calm, tired, and old.  I was too embarrassed to admit this to SuperK who had the normal reaction to loud music at bedtime.

That Kind of Day

Poor, old Bangkok.  I'm ragging on the 'kok, no doubt about it.  No real reason for it but I'm on a roll, you feel me?  Mostly, I think, it's the end of a long vacation and I'm tired; on top of that I really am in a pretty hectic environment right now.  This place never stops coming at you with the noise and the traffic and the commotion.  It's wearying if you're fresh and I'm coming in weary.  On top of that it's a place with no sense of coherence.  I have no idea where the downtown business district is or the tourist area or the old town - it's a big jumble of everything stirred together.  It's soup, an appetizer, the main course, and dessert all tossed into a blender and served piping hot.  

We took a walk today up to see the Big Buddha, the one that's standing up, the one mentioned by every last tuk-tuk driver in the city as they try to get you to make the circuit between the Big Standing Buddha, The Big Sitting Buddha - which we saw and he wasn't that big and frankly, needed a little Buddha rehab - and the Big Reclining Buddha - totally worth it, that Buddha, really quite big and covered in gold leaf.  We walk on a roiling street past the location of the Big Standing Buddha, unbeknownst to us, until I yell in to an old woman in a noodle shop: "Big Buddha?"  She stares at me blankly.  A little dude on the street overhears me, gives me directions, turns out he did graduate school at the U of Missouri in the '60s, "loves Americans." We backtrack and eventually find this ridiculously small, unmarked alley - Urine Alley, SuperK nicknamed it - that leads back to the Big Standing Buddha.  It is damn big.  It also looks like it was made out of preformed plastic and then sloppily painted at the same shop that made the Lard Lad of Simpson's fame.

We soldier on, out of the wat.  We have as a destination this big park complex that contains these structures: Anantasamakhom Throne Hall: not open to the public; King Chula Longkorn Statue: in the middle of - I am not making this up - a sea of asphalt that is the size of dozens of football fields put together with cars and motorcycles zooming across it at weird angles and at high rates of speed; and the Dusit Zoo.  The first two don't cause us to linger.  On the way to the zoo we start to see signs for the Golden Place Arts and Crafts Center.  Remember when it was legal to put many, many signs along the road saying: "See Mammoth Cave."  Then 100 yards later: "Mammoth Cave - Ahead."  And on and on?  It was like that with the signs: big red arrows pointing the way.  We follow the signs into this parking lot and enter the Center.  It was a small 7-11, basically, with a couple of souvenirs hung up.  It was so disorienting, so unbelievable that anyone could call this an arts and crafts center that we went back outside and asked the guard at the gate where the Center was.  He looked at us like: "Fuck's the matter with you?" as he pointed out the convenience store . . . er . . . arts and crafts center.

We're done at this point and head for home.  Close to the hotel is a restaurant that serves Italian food except there's only a couple of Italian dishes mixed in with the Thai offerings on the menu.  We take the hint and order a Thai dish each plus an egg roll appetizer from an uninterested young woman.  After a while she comes out with a plate of burnt egg rolls and says, roughly translated: "These are burnt.  I can take them off the bill if you want."  We give it a shot but they're burnt.  The waitress doesn't come back.  Some guy comes over and gives me my plate of food - which I finish before SuperK gets served - and takes away the burnt egg rolls.  No one comes back after that. I go into the restaurant and corral the waitress who does indeed give me the corrected bill, for which I was grateful, although a better solution would have been to not bring out food that was messed up and hope I liked it.  I admit to admiring the technique: "Hey, we fucked this up.  Deal with it."  

I did not tip anyone at this particular restaurant where I HUGELY enjoyed the experience.

Standing Eight Count

Every time I travel I think of this anecdote involving a friend of mine - it is one of my most enduring of my Recurrent Loops.  I'll be interested in hearing the recollection of the parties involved someday to see if it matches in any way with mine, or if it indeed even happened.  This may be from a dream or fugue state or an LSD flashback.

My buddy somewhere in Mexico looking at a giant Aztec or Mayan pyramid ruin.  I assume other family members were present.  

Dude: "I wonder how fast I can get to the top."

So I arrive in Bangkok and I think - mentally, spiritually, physically, emotionally: "I'm going to see everything, understand everything, move relentlessly but take time to relax and just be, go seamlessly from one spectacular to another."

I was explaining to SuperK in the pool yesterday the differences between a KO, a TKO, and a standing eight count.

Day One: I was on the mat twice, quickly.  Smelling salts between rounds and I survived.

Day Two: A couple of standing eight counts, the second one I disputed.  Still reeling, backpedaling, trying not to get killed.

Day Three:  Got my feet under me, cuts taped up, water splashed in my face, but I'm in a crouch, paws up, not even attempting to go offensive. Lots of cinches, crowd booing, I bounce cockily to my corner when the bell rings, grateful to be upright but acting like I took care of business.

Day Four: On the horizon.

Selfie-Stick

I have been amazed at the selfies curse that seems to have struck mankind.  I understand that people want to have pictures of themselves and to have pictures of themselves at specific times and places - we all have a need to leave a legacy, we all want to be able to say: "Yes, I have been there."  But I have never seen so many people taking so many pictures of themselves.  I have watched individuals snap a dozen pictures of beautiful sites but only after holding up a selfie-stick, positioning themselves carefully, smiling, posing, mugging, it's all disgusting.  I can only imagine what it must be like to see a hundred pictures of a smiling person mostly obscuring a thousand year old temple behind him.  I'm tempted to suggest to someone: "Hey, have your photo professionally taken - good lighting, staging, and film - then post this picture on the first page of your photo album.  Then, if someone wants to see your face in every fucking picture they can just flip back to the first page as often as they want."  I have not done this yet.

Thai Talk Radio

I marvel at the street food vendors here who blow in and set up pretty large and elaborate operations every day.  I wonder if they have a pre-assigned spot on the curb, officially or otherwise.  Whipping up food, plates washed in buckets of water on the ground and god knows where that water comes from and how often that water is changed, hand towels draped over traffic barriers that magically appear and disappear.  At night random but official looking guards will block off a small section of street and charge people to park there.

I'm sitting outside on my balcony looking over a sea of . . . well, sheet-metal in every kind of condition, some new, some the rusted-through spots patched with scraps of rusted-through repair material.  Right in the middle a new hotel will pop up or what looks like an office building.  Thai talk radio is cranking somewhere, roosters are crowing somewhere else, incredibly loud squawks coming from some kind of bird that we've not yet managed to put eyeballs on, and not for lack of trying.

I like hot weather and I don't like air-conditioning and I can tolerate really hot and humid weather but this place is off the goddam chart, and this is winter.  This is the cool time of year. Every now and then a local will comment on how nice the weather is.  I literally can't get my arms around what it must be like when it's hot here.  It's 8 in the morning and I have a thick sheen of grease on my body already, and I'm in the shade.  It's seriously scary.  It has been a series of scuttlings into the shade and the air-conditioning and the pool.  I have been in more pools for non-exercise, recreational reasons in the last month than I've been in over the last 20 years, and I am not making that up.  I don't even differentiate between clean and dirty clothes anymore - their condition is predicated on wet or dry because five minutes after you step outside you can forget about it.  Dirty clothes don't even stink - they smell like a shirt that has been dunked in water then hung out to dry over and over and over.  Kind of musty but not stinky.

Bangkok is delivering body blows.  I'm definitely still standing but I'm going to go down soon.

Yeah, Well, OK

Resort:  A place where people go for recreation, especially one with facilities such as lodgings, entertainment, and a relaxing environment. 
Relax:  To calm down; to become less severe or tense.

This place if fried.  This place is a fried egg.  What a collection of bums and ne'er-do-wells and very rich people.  Again, with the sweeping of the leaves on the dirty, crusty, oil-stained streets. A woman was working the curb across from me, three flights down, and she actually made a cab driver, slurping noodles, sitting on the back of his car, lift his feet so she could sweep under them.  There are buses puffing by, engines clackety-clacking or roaring or whining, in an astounding state of disrepair.  Guys in uniforms, all different but official looking, with ties sometimes, batons, orange reflector vests, jump into the street, whistle blowing, to try to stop the flow of traffic so that that cars can pull out without being T-boned.  The sidewalks are jammed with the seemingly impromptu, probably permanent street kitchens.  The scruffy parade streams by unabated.

How this all works together is beyond me.  Right behind our "resort" is the Chao Phraya River where tourist boats, water taxis, and huge commercial barges fly around, blowing into docks, deckhands with whistles signaling with different tones - long, short, staccato - to alert the skipper to Go!  Stay!  Move forward a little! - before jetting back into the mayhem.

In the middle of the city is a big ovoid city park.  It is many acres of burnt looking grass.  No trees or bushes or water.  It looks like the result of a slash and burn campaign.  Around and around go tuk-tuks and cabs and cars and the infamous buses, although they actually stop when you're in a crosswalk.  I think this place could blow-up spontaneously.  I think everywhere here is working undercover or is a snitch or looking for someplace to escape the long arm of the law.

Right across the street the karaoke bar, shuttered, crouches malevolently, dozing, waiting, scarfing a little rice and dirty water - that's all it needs.

There will be no relaxing here.

Bangkok

So about 9PM last night, tired after a long day of travel, in our new, much quieter room one floor up, slightly to the right, we noticed, after much concentration and discussion, that there was an OPEN AIR, LIVE MUSIC BAR across the street.  I sit here this morning, slightly stunned, that the concierge could take the time to move us to a new room while saying "this will be quieter."  That guy must be an alcoholic to have developed the ability to lie like that while maintaining composure and keeping a straight face.  I don't mean you could hear the sounds of the music through our closed door - you could hear the music.  I know some of us can fall asleep with the TV on but I'm not one of those people.  This was like hooking up earbuds and playing, at an elevated level, some crappy, bass-heavy, drum-obsessed pop music.

I went downstairs to ask, very politely, about the music and when it would stop.  Midnight was the answer.  The young woman there mentioned something about being fully-booked and . . . hmmm . . . our stay was a pretty long one.  I booked the hotel and paid for the room for six nights three months ago.  I would have hoped that this degree of foresight would have bought me a little consideration when the rooms were being doled out.

This, I think, is Bangkok.  I think this is what it's going to be.  I think that fighting this fight would only put me in the loser's corner.  Bangkok has me down on the ground, leather jack-boot on my throat, and I'm still trying to figure out if there's a move I can make to get the upper hand. 

A smarter man would say no.