The World is Now Twice Our Oyster

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While you are beginning your day in the States, we are winding down ours. Maybe by most standards we had a rather uneventful day. But, while we are ahead of you on the clock, time moves more slowly here. The people move more slowly. If there was a horn to honk at folks blocking up a sidewalk, us Bostonians would blow it. In our world we move too fast, speeding by sights and sounds and activity without ever truly perceiving it. But here in Thailand, the people amble rather than stride. They stop for cold drinks under a shady bridge. They stop to watch two white Americans spin in circles with a map in their hands. And through them, we can slow, stop, and experience.

The jet lag is finally relenting to the endless cocktails of melatonin and fruit juice. Exhaustion only reached out to crush us once today on the taxi rides to and from Lumpini Stadium, where we saw our first Muay Thai fights. The heat slows everyone, even the locals, and so we migrate across the city in droves in search of air-conditioned comfort. Even the Thai boxers received showers of ice water from their corners between rounds. It is the hot season here, and today reached a peak of 100* with 70% humidity. Even now, at 11:20PM, it is 87* that feels like 102*. It's a lot harder to explore the city when a wrong turn means potential heatstroke as you struggle to regain the path!



Luckily, our search for two cheap Thai burner cell phones took us into the Nirvana of A/C; MKB Center Mall. Ladies and gentlemen, you haven't been inside a mall. Not once in your lives. I realize we talked about the mall yesterday as something impressive, but that was Detroit compared to the New York City we experienced at MBK. Did you know that there are arcades with Mario Kart driving games and 360 degree 3D holographic shooters? Seth was in Pinball heaven. Food courts where elderly Thai rockers plug into Wifi while slurping noodles and jamming on electric guitars at their tables? Can you even comprehend the smell of 172 competing aromatherapy stalls? Until today, neither did we.



It's almost impossible to pick and choose details to share with you. Cats crawling across the awnings above street vendors. Children running through crowds of gamblers while the roar of "KNEE! KNEE!!! OOOOOAAAAIIIEEEUEUEUUUYYYY!!!!!!" shakes the concrete beneath you. The way the skyscrapers, half-built and then abandoned during the economic crash of the 90s, swarm with greenery on every floor. How the canals cut the markets into districts, and then become mini-markets themselves as the hawkers crowd into longboats and cruise past the locals. And the fruit juices! Today, Kendall drank a "No Virgin Passion Smash", which contained passionfruit, papaya, kiwi, crushed ice, and nothing else. The coconuts are stacked like bricks, ready to be lopped open and chugged by any overheated local that passes by. And the skytrain that soars over the city, where you practically have to know a little muay thai just to get a seat before the doors close. The city is so big, you can only grasp it in slices of detail, whiffs of scent, fragments of texture that linger in your mind until the next one engulfs you.



Tomorrow we grab our last piece of the city before we go off on the next adventure, to the island of Koh Lanta. We will see the Wat Pho and Royal Palace, where crocodile pits border thousand year old Buddhas and royal massage schools (oh boy!). Perhaps we will let fish eat our toe skin. On to the home of Robert Foster, the original farang silk seller who took Thai silk from a cottage industry to an empire. Perhaps a few drinks at a rooftop bar, and then an overnight bus to the land of beaches and coral and white sandstone towers two hundred feet high. Our words cannot do this city justice, so all we can say is: the fruit is fresh, the beer is cold, and the pork is fried.

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Comments

[K&V]

Coolness & Captain America!
Glad to hear you're adjusting to the jet lag (and to the heat?) Can't begin to imagine the madhouse that must be the mall! Did you pick up anything good, or just basics for the trip, for now? Looking forward to hearing about Koh Lanta - sounds really beautiful & interesting.

[David King]

Ah, the scents!
Kendall and Seth, I'm loving reading about this adventure - and so glad that you're sharing this together. Keep writing - and remember everything!