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Published: October 3rd 2016
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This is how it ends. The door closes and the lock clicks on apartment 4J, 251 Seaman Avenue. We take the elevator downstairs, catch a cab to JFK, and fly away with a baby, a black cat, and three bulging suitcases of the wrong things. Though we’ve done this before, the baby is a fairly significant new wrinkle. Twenty-two hours later, we land in Bangkok, retrieve the cat and the suitcases, take a cab to the aparthotel, pour two very stiff drinks, look out the window, and start trying to figure out our new life. This is how it begins.
"It's like the future," she whispers. Eight million, two hundred eighty thousand points of blinking light pierce Bangkok's night. The sky train, silver and sleek, gleaming in the ambient light, snakes through the thicket of skyscrapers stretching out to, and then beyond, the horizon. From the air-conditioned 27th floor, the semi-darkness of night seems cool, quiet, and orderly.
Things look different in the searing light of day. The street, Sukhumwit Soi 11, is a haphazard mix of restaurants, bars, massage parlors, construction sites, high-rise hotels, curbside spirit houses, cash exchanges, 7-11s, food carts, ribbon wrapped banyan trees, telephone wires,
and people: Thais busy living, pasty older white men drinking cold beer, younger waifish Thai women feigning interest, Arabs in burkhas, Chinese tourists, Japanese tourists, Korean tourists, Indian tourists, European tourists, swarms of Australian tourists, high-heeled prostitutes, higher-heeled transvestite, street-side Cialis-Viagra-sex toy peddlers, uniformed students, brown suited policemen, bored rickshaw drivers, cooks, diners, more sex-patriots, two saffron robed monks – one taking pictures with a smart phone, a few skinny scavenging cats, and two fat waddly sewer rats. No dogs. No monkeys. No beggars. Little trash.
Even discounting the human parade, the street smells, sounds, and feels properly other. Broken sidewalks are clogged with umbrellas, small tables, plastic stools, and push carts laden with fleshy orange papaya, red jeweled pomegranate, machete topped green coconuts, sizzling woks, charcoaled meat skewers, fried chicken, baskets of mollusks and crabs, grilled whole fish and other unknowns. Sing songy tonal Thai lilts amongst the vendors and customers, rising and falling with the snarling traffic. Rainbow-colored tuk tuks, pink, tangerine, and green-yellow taxi cabs, and too many cars choke the street. Roughly a million orange-vested moto-taxis also weave in and out of the sluggish traffic, occasionally veering onto the sidewalk. The Co2 and diesel mix
with the basil, lemon grass, grilled flesh, fry grease, and the fetid stench of the sewery canals off the Chao Phraya River to produce a palpable lung searing miasma.
From a shady bar veranda, beer in hand, it’s probably pleasant enough to watch. Under the sun, carrying a baby, it’s not. It’s hot - tropical oozy, eye stinging, clothes sticking muggy. But you wear pants because it is culturally appropriate. And anyway, it’s going to get a lot worse.
Superimposed on this congested seething pot of mostly overcooked foreignness is the apotheosis of modern civilization celebrated in all of its glory - The Mall. The malls are great multi-story glittering modern temples of global consumerism. Baʿal, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Prada, Tiffany & Co., Gucci, Cartier, Hermes; an ostentatious flaunting of Italian, French, English, American, Spanish, and Japanese branded fancery. Thousands of square feet of polish, glass, opulence, frippery, foppery, and purchasable prestige idolatry. All icily air conditioned so the class doesn’t sweat. If you are rich enough or foreign enough, you breeze past the smartly uniformed saluting door guard, through the metal detector, and into these sanctuaries of coolness. So we do.
In truth, there may be
more to Bangkok than two streets and three malls. There is certainly also a royal family, a military junta, an enormous river, cheap medical/dental care, a sprawling weekend market, an infamous red light district, delicious street food, a UN commission, several hundred golden temples, and a particularly large reclining buddha. One day, these will inevitably be sought out.
However, I live in Rapunzel’s Tower with a 17 month old. Her interest in any culture beyond the hotel is limited. Morning is breakfast, playroom, nap. After napping, the next hour or so is spent disinterestedly lunching while simultaneously trying to pull the cat’s tail, master the way the cowboy rides, cut the pickle, excavate the litter box, and remove anything with the audacity to be contained from whatever it is that contains it. In the afternoon, when the pool is shaded, we swim. We later watch the lightning flicker of passing thunderstorms. Mama returns. Then dinner, books, bath, bed. A circumscribed unglamorous existence. The stuff of dreams.
Some afternoons, however, in the sweet spot between lunch and pool, we brave the streets, plunging into the world to hunt apartments, cell phone service, playdates, or groceries. The stroller is less
than worthless, so the baby must be carried. This complicates leaving the tower. Strapping 27 pounds of hot, back-arching squirm into a baby carrier and then walking through exhaust and humidity while dodging traffic is wildly unpopular with everyone involved. Inevitably, either the heat or an afternoon street-flooding squall send us scurrying for shelter. From rain or sun, the malls offer air conditioned refuge. They also provide the incomparable joy of riding up and down escalators. And the food courts are excellent.
Next week, we will perhaps begin our search for the Buddha.
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Michael
non-member comment
Welcome back, Colin!
I'll certainly stay tuned for the next installment. Thank you, my friend. You're a delightful read. Grace and good fortune to the three of you (and the cat, now that I think about it).