our Last Day in Bangkok

Yay! Chris is coming home from work early today!  I admit I was in tears this morning thinking that I was going to spend 10 of our last 12 hours in  Bangkok alone.  Oh, I was so sad!  

While eating lunch, I started to compile two lists---1) things I will miss, and 2) things I will be glad to leave here!  

Here's a preview of "things" (not counting people, of course!):

1) The smells---definitely will NOT miss!  I think I once mentioned the olfactory tour of the walk from our apartment to Sukhumvit.  Along the route I had to take every day was first the smell of cooking meat (which wasn't too bad); then there was the seafood restaurant/mini market and on some days, the garbage from the little restaurant would make my head spin (this was the garbage pile where I became very familiar with the rats living in the pile).  Then, there was the smell of little sausages being deep fried and puffed even makes Chris (who loves meat) cringe.  My father could even smell it---and he has an awful sense of smell!  Imagine sticking your head in a package of uncooked hotdogs, add some fat, and some other random flavors (not to mention the smell of the fuel all of the foodcarts use---it alone makes Chris cough!), and then the whole thing gets deep fried.  Ew!  

Then, right after the mystery meat cart, there was more trash (that is most awful in April, the hottest month of the year) from another restaurant mingling with the cigarette smoke of the motorbike taxi drivers who lean up against the wall waiting for customers.  Then, there's another alley lined with food carts, and sometimes the sweet smell of watermelon would make it to my nose.  Then, of course, there was the minty menthol (faux-mint it must have been) aroma oozing from the massage parlor.  Somehow, that smell mixed with feet and all the other odors to create a not-so-relaxing atmosphere.  After that, the smells calmed down a little bit depending on the time of the day.  As you near Sukhumvit, of course the exhaust fumes from the motorbikes and cars on Sukhumvit would grow stronger when it was near rush hour.  In the mornings, there would be essentially an entire cafeteria line on the corner with huge bowls of food and people dishing out all sorts of Thai food.  I usually held my breath and made it up to the BTS as quickly as possible.  

Now, living at the Westin Hotel, I have some smells to add to this collage.  Oh, sometimes you get the smell of elephant or wet dog if it has rained.  Then again, rain really does change things anyway, and as I mentioned, you just don't think about the streets when they are filled with water.  It makes you feel better that way!  I hope I have not become more sensitive to smell having lived here---

2) Something I WILL (oddly) miss:  The obstacle course encountered on every sidewalk and street.  Yes, oddly, I have come to enjoy this craziness of uneven tiles that are wobbly at times and squish water when you step on them (GROSS!), uneven edges, pipes and wires jetting out onto the walking area or poking up from the sidewalk, and the moving obstacles on the path to anywhere you want to go.  Now, this is the first place I've lived where to just walk down the street (mainly in touristy places), you have to maneuver between cars, taxis, pedestrians, motorbikes, food carts (push carts and those attached to motorbikes), motorbikes, elephants 

3) I will NOT miss: trying passing an elephant on a busy street or sidewalk that is meandering down the sidewalk being led by a handler pandering to tourists who thrive in the exoticism of feeding elephants whose lives are spent in captivity, beggars (oh, this part is sooooooo hard to witness, and I look forward to, in a twisted way, seeing able-bodied street people----in the extreme, missing arms, legs, hands, fingers, with burns and various other sores, suckling children, sleeping children), and tuk-tuk drivers---and basically anyone else who sees the "farang" synomous to an ATM machine.  

I know we have access to more money in a day than most local Thai people have access to in a year or more, but it does not mean that we are all the same (a Western person who has a lot of debt is not the same as a Westerner who is debt free---the budget-traveler still desires to save money!!) and that we appreciate spending 400 Baht to enter a national park when our partners with Working Permits pay 20 Baht...I will not miss feeling so conflicted in my "status" as a Western woman, and how my heart aches to see the suffering I see here.  There is even a different price given to tourists versus expatriates---as shown in the question we were asked at the salon in the hotel after we got our nails done: are you staying in the hotel?  There is a significant difference between the price charged to tourists and the people living locally. I will not miss standing OUT as a foreigner.  

At the same time, I see many people who are working very hard and making do with smiles in situations that would make many Westerners crumble!  

It is amazing what you can get used to seeing and doing.  

4)  I WILL miss grilled corn from the street vendors, fresh pineapple, pomelo (I LOVE this citrus fruit!!!), and the sweetest mango EVER all readily available. 

5) I WILL miss the idea of living in a "foreign" country.  I've learned a lot from this experience, and I am so glad that we have had this opportunity---all the hard times and the good times.  What a great way to begin a partnership, eh? :)  I will miss the "Funny English" signs and translations. Sometimes the meaning of the signs are completely incomprehensible---and quite funny!  (like the sign at the top of the post: eck, what's a few letters!) 

**I am not mentioning the friends, because quite frankly, we WILL see them again---though we will miss them in the interim! :)  (oh, there I go starting to cry again....this has been our home for 6 months, and well, overall, we've been very lucky....) 

ramblings 36 hours until departure

(This flower is one of the things I will miss...)
There are approximately 36 hours before we board the plane to head back to the US.  We will be arriving to Boston on Friday afternoon.  This adventure is coming to a close, and I believe that both of us are eager to be home.  

We left our apartment last week and moved to the hotel.  It is fitting that we began and are finishing our time in Bangkok in the hotel.  I spent last Tuesday doing laundry and organizing our things.  The movers came on Wednesday and packed everything into boxes.  Chris stayed home from work on Wednesday.  He had planned on coming home early on Tuesday, but right after he landed in Bangkok around 5pm, he was needed in the factory.  He did not get home until after 11pm Tuesday evening.  That hardly left any time for him to sort out what things he needed for the next 1.5 weeks.  I should be used to his work schedule after 6 months of it, but it still surprises me.  

This past weekend, we had a lovely time in Kanchanaburi.  It is about 3 hours drive from Bangkok.  Chris was incredible in his driving skills.  Apparently, he has been paying attention to traffic flow and patterns and other Bangkok drivers in his 2+ hours in the car each day!  It was so nice to spend the weekend together.  He only had one work-related call, too!  In the beginning, we were planning on having 2 weeks together at the end of this adventure.  Then, two weeks got reduced to one week, and then that was reduced to a 3 day weekend.  As a trade off, I suppose, he will be able to take the summer off before he heads to Malaysia for a new job there in August.  Then, he will be working in Malaysia for 3-4 weeks at a time, and then come home to Philadelphia for 2 weeks.  This is the plan until December.  

One of the saving graces on this whole gig is that Chris really and truly loves the work.  He loves solving problems, and he gets to use not only managerial skills but his engineering skills as well.  As exhausted as he is now, he genuinely enjoys the work, and that is so important.  He is also very good at his job.  He says that is why he is excited about the Malaysia job, too.  I think it will be a huge burden lifted off of us that he is employed through December.  Plus, we can spend time together this summer.  

Oh, but I'm still so very sad we did not travel much at all while being here.  I kept planning trips expecting us to get a vacation, but it never happened.  I was going to go to Laos to volunteer on an organic farm, but then with everyone getting nervous for me (especially my Dad) and for what I knew about the country and government of Laos, I did not feel comfortable going there by myself.  I could have been very lucky and not run into any trouble at all or I could have been unlucky and have had very little recourse if something did go wrong.  In the end, it just seemed too much to risk---oh, this decision to not go there most certainly did not help my feelings of feeling trapped in this city of Bangkok.  

Overall, though, it has been an important and interesting learning experience, and I'm so glad Chris and I were able to do this together.  I know I keep saying I plan to write more.  I have experienced the excitement and "honeymoon" phase of our first few weeks here, then the return to the US, and the lows of seeing things that still make me feel very uncomfortable (like seeing people with open sores and missing limbs begging on the street), and now that we are just about to leave, I'm feeling more adjusted to life here.  Six months is an awkward amount of time to be some place, as I've written before.  It is long enough to just get a taste of ex-patriate life, but it isn't long enough to truly get a routine or to really feel like an ex-pat.  

Off to Khao Yai National Park

Chris and I are heading to Khao Yai National Park with our friends Mair and Mike for the weekend.  We're really looking forward to spending a weekend away from the city--as usual---and to spending time with Mair and Mike.  We're really going to miss them!  It will be good to relax a bit this weekend while we ponder the future (Chris's job, more precisely, and me starting school in a few months, etc.) We're moving to the hotel on Wednesday after the movers pack up our stuff to ship it back to the US.  Yes, our time is winding down.  Next week is going to be busy! 

For now, here are 

some random pictures from around Bangkok!

A lovely evening with friends and a wet walk home!

Last night, we had another "rare" thunderstorm that dumped buckets and buckets of water on the streets of Bangkok.  (I say, "rare" because this is not the rainy season and everyone seems surprised that we are getting hit with such heavy storms this time of year.  I can only imagine how absolutely flooded this place must get in the rainy season!)  The storm started as we were having dinner with our friends, Mair and Mike (I absolutely love spending time with them!  I will miss them very much---and I think Chris will, too!  Mike is a chemical engineer and the two of them get along very well!), at a very tasty Italian restaurant off of Soi 11 at the Nana BTS Station.  We had dinner with Mike and Mair at the same restaurant last week, and it was so good to have delicious Italian pizza that we all decided to eat there again!  We thought we could wait it out and that it was a passing storm.  However, after at least an hour of heavy rain, thunder, and lightening, we decided to make it to the Skytrain (BTS) before it stopped running at midnight.  It is near impossible to get into a taxi when it is raining.   This is something no one has been able to explain to us, but for some reason, taxis refuse to stop and pick up new passengers as soon as it starts raining.  Yet, they drive around (or sit in traffic---same difference!) empty while people scramble to reach the BTS station.  

So, last night we waded through knee deep water to get to the Nana BTS station.  Sukhumvit looked like a river instead of a road.  Now we understand why the curbs to the sidewalks are so high---so the water stays mostly in the streets!  It was a bit tricky for me walking in flipflops, but Chris was completely fine in his Keens.  You try not to think about what is floating in the water when you are knee deep in it.  The thing that still amazes me is how motorcycles ride through the water.  

While we wondered about our apartment with the hard rain, we were hopeful that the flooding was just a rare event from a bad set of conditions until we got to our floor.  When I saw the door to the apartment down the hall from us and chairs outside the apartment, I knew chances were high we had flooding, too.  This time, it wasn't as bad as last time---the living room rug soaked up most of the water.  Some water flowed into the kitchen and the bedroom carpet is very soggy (stepping on a cold and soggy carpet is not a good way to wake up in the morning!) but it is not nearly as bad as it was last time.  At least the water in our living room came directly from the sky and didn't run in the streets of Bangkok first!

Now, we are even more seriously considering calling the moving company this week and have our stuff shipped to the US.  Next week, we plan to take a week vacation (some is better than none), and then we might spend the last week here in Thailand in a hotel.  That is fitting since we began our time here in a hotel.  

Last night, I dreamed that an ocean filled with sealife was in our living room and the glass balcony felt more like a tank at an aquarium.  I was swimming with squid (like the ones on skewers and grills on streetcarts), prawns, goldfish, and even a baby whale.  I was relieved to see that the apartment was dry this morning! 

Random thoughts: on a day, and Chiang Mai

1) I love the bookshop down the street!  What a little oasis! 

2) Today is another holiday: Coronation Day. His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej was crowned as Rama IX, the 9th king of the Chakri dynasty, on the 5th of May in 1950. The anniversary of this day has been observed as a public holiday ever since. I really should know by now to check to see if the post office is open before I walk the 25 minutes or so it takes to get there.  

3)  Chris and I rented a motorbike this weekend when we were up in Chiang Mai.  We rented it for a few hours on Sunday.  This probably goes in the list of the things that you tell your parents AFTER you do it and not before.  That way, they don't have to worry!  It was a lot of fun, and fortunately for us, the locals gave us lots of room.  Driving on the left side wasn't too difficult if you just followed traffic, which we did.  Chris drove us up the mountain and I drove us down.  Fortunately for us, the motorbike was an automatic!  It was weird to be on two wheels and not use the clutch and shift gears, but we were both relieved to have it as simple as possible.  It was the first time either one of us had driven any motorized vehicle in 5 months, so it was good to keep it as easy as possible!  And, Chris did a good job driving a motorcycle for the first time! :) 

4) I absolutely love, love, love Chiang Mai!!  For one thing, we had the best food---and all of it was vegetarian!  The particular type of Buddhism practiced up there promotes the vegetarian life style and as a result, there are many opportunities for some absolutely DELICIOUS food!  Oh, it was such a relief!  

5) We are picking up Chris's tuxedo this evening!  Yay! 

On that note, I will write more later...