Bangkok, Day 2

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Minutes trickle by.
Shrikes in the frangipani,
back of my neck burnt.

Up from 1:00-6:00 dealing with an issue in one of my classes, requiring unbearably slow work on Blackboard, which is slow even on campus. I stayed up and finished Shutter Island, then had for breakfast what I had yesterday for lunch.

I decided to walk up On-Nut, the main drag, to the park. I poked down side streets, wandered through a market, where the pungent smell of fish almost made me gag. I saw the fish from the river—maybe catfish? Mudfish? I also watched a woman club several of them and chop them to bits. I think I'll have dried pineapple for lunch today, thanks.

I caught the end of a parade (inexplicably, the marching band was playing "The Caissons Go Rolling Along”).The park was very pleasant and I saw several Chinese pond herons, a pied fantail, two ashy wood swallows, what must be juvenile yellow-vented bulbuls but looked like flavescent bulbuls totally out of their range, and red turtledoves (which look like pigeons in rust-colored jackets). By chance I looked up in a tree and caught an astonishing bird, the coppersmith barbet. Look at this photo by somebody else—it's quite a bird!

The lizards were still there, too. Probably monitors, though I'm not sure. A lot of the trees were in flower, and it seemed generally that there were more people around.

I walked to less than two kilometers from the airport, but there's a big freeway ramp to get you there and I didn't care to try to find a pedestrian route without a map.

Now it's mid-day. I plan to nap, eat an early dinner, pack up for my Cambodia flight, and go to sleep early. I'll add a photo of the Thai Airways Premium Economy cabin to that entry.

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Comments

[Nancy]

Hmmmn
That's one serious lizard. Yikes.