It is 95 degrees and sweltering with some palm trees in view. Springtime in Thailand, excellent!
Arriving from India, Bangkok looks pristine and litter free; the driving looks sane; the food stalls look safe; the street smells good, and you don’t have to constantly watch where you step. It is a culture shock again. We recognize brand names everywhere, from Dunkin’ Donuts to Starbucks to O’Neil’s and Levi’s to The Economist and New York Times. And we don’t recognize an equivalent number of brands, which gives the city a good exotic tinge. So far, people have been unexpectedly helpful. The airport bus kiosk girls came over to where we were sitting after we bought tickets with a free map marked showing us where to get off the bus, what to look for outside the bus, and later made sure we got on the correct bus.. and not one word about a cheap hotel, friend that is a taxi driver or friend that is a guide. (We are still in shock. The tourist industry here can’t be real.) To continue our new arrival glow, the noise level on the street is a normal buzz of heavy traffic. (The Indian honking protocol will soon be just a distant memory, although our hearing loss will unfortunately still be permanent.) And cars seem to stop at crosswalks. (A bit of disbelief still lurks in us about this, but if it proves to be true, we may faint in complete awe.)
I suppose if you arrived from anywhere but a noisy big city, Bangkok would be a handful with lots of shoppers that bump into you while walking, tourists randomly stopping dead in their tracks and looking around in a daze on the sidewalks, souvenier stands jutting out at odd angles, twenty year-olds thrusting papers about massages at you, and heavy traffic. Yet to us… 8 million people living in a modernized world with sewage systems and paved roads looks like heaven found a spot to land. We may never leave.
So far we’ve found good food and the prices are outrageously low. Or sitdown restaurant lunch consisting of two noodle bowls, an iced coffee and bottled water with ice and cost 80 Baht ($2 US). And we’ve found good coffee. There must be 50 coffee shops within walking distance of our hotel in Thnom Silom. And we are listening to good ambient music in an air-conditioned Internet cafe with a reasonably fast connection. It really may take us awhile before you can get us to leave.
I suppose if we stay we will need to pick up some Thai communication skills, and that seems challenging. The Thai written language is a complete flowery mystery to us and the (uh-oh, tonal) language is equally a mystery. Consider the same word meaning five different things depending on your intonation (high, mid, low, rising, falling) then throw in some long and short vowels and some unknown (to the west) consonants to further complicate matters, and you come to the conclusion that pantomiming and nodding at everyone may be safer than calling your waitress a purple fish. So, I suppose until we make that first critical blunder, our enchantment with the city will stay high?
