Author: karenswenson7289095

I was up with no difficulty at 5 and, since Khun Chakkrit doesn’t like early hours, into a cruising taxi at 6. At the airport I decided not to lay myself open to the tender culinary mercies of Air India, heading to The Mango Tree for a breakfast of tamarind shrimp. I love The Mango Tree despite its wait staff that seems to consistently be engaged in contacting ectoplasm on another planet.

It is a cheerful busy place with quite good food and if you get a seat near the outer railing you can leave your cart less than an arm’s reach away while you eat.

The flight was empty. People stretched out. I wrote lots of postcards.

Delhi airport is large with good signage but it tends to have nonfunctioning walkways and escalators. With no difficulty I found the prepaid taxi stand where, not thinking about traffic and heat, I entered a debilitated cab with a saintly driver. Were there aircon cabs that I didn’t see? It took us an hour through dense, barely crawling traffic, to get to my destination, which is close, about 20 minutes, from the airport. I thought I would have lung cancer on arrival the pollution was so intense. I felt terrible for the driver who does this everyday of his life, which is going to be short.

R was at work so A and I had lunch, talking about our children and mutual friends, after which I napped. A is an exceptionally pretty woman, an actress in four languages. Impressive.

Waking from sleep I saw on the balcony rail outside my window a chipmunk like creature stretched out at full length. Its partner with infinite care, starting at the mouth and snout and working around the ears and then down the spine, nibbled and groomed it, while chipmunk 1 lay flat in palpable bliss. Then they changed places. They appear to live in the white flowering vine that climbs the wall next to the balcony. I hope they have a long and happy life safe from crows, cats and dogs.

We were slated to go to a party that night at which, A told me, there would be a 96-year-old woman who wanted to meet me. I have been to a few Indian parties and I am always intimidated because not only am I unsure as to who is who but I cannot keep track of the relationships that crisscross the room like some sort of three dimensional weaving. Everyone is related to everyone else. I was, therefore exhilarated to recognize K whom I hadn’t seen in 12 years but whom I know is R’s nephew. I was amazed that he remembered me.
I met the 96 year old, who is someone’s aunt but I don’t know whose, and was tickled with delight when she told me that she has recently, for the first time, been feeling a decided decline in energy. I told her that I felt between 79 and 80 my energy had been cut in half. If I’ve got this right, she handles the finances of all the members of her family. She made me feel like a do-nothing younger sister.

The food was heavenly and endless. Two men came in and circled the room, bending down to touch each person’s feet. I am not sure who they were but it is a vassal to lord or lady gesture that I have seen a few times. It makes me cringe. That this gesture of homage and subservience should still be allowed in modern India tells the visitor all kinds of things she would rather not know. R told me later that he and his brother were forbidden by their parents to allow any to touch their feet in homage or to touch anyone’s feet.

Ethan, my grandson was to arrive the next evening, so I went to bed elated with anticipation. He is 23, and this would be his first time to India, although we were only staying three days before going on the trek in Nepal.

I had a very quiet day, much of it in the company of the street dog that A and R have taken in, against R’s vehement protests. He has a torn ear and must be treated with caution because the feral in him can surface suddenly. He is startlingly intelligent, totally independent in character, knows how to open doors both inward and outward, as well as how to open drawers. Because I had dog biscuits in my room, he was interested in being my companion. He hasn’t yet learned how to open the cupboard. I am sure he is working on it.

Ethan, brilliantly, had his driver call R to get instructions on how to locate the house. A went to bed but R and I waited by the gate until Ethan arrived. I was feeling decidedly worried and antsy, but Ethan looked fresh and vigorous, although he couldn’t have had much sleep. As he got out of the cab, which was several decades younger than the one I had taken, I realized he was speaking Hindi. Who knew he had taken Hindi in college? R took him off to the kitchen and dinning room to settle down to eat and talk. I went to bed.

After breakfast Ethan and I took off in a taxi for Chandni Chowk, Old Delhi, where we were almost immediately gathered up by a man with a crutch who was missing his right foot and ankle. He sighted my confusion about which entrance to use, where to leave our shoes at a Hindu temple and just segued in. I would have had to make a very firm stand, which I was not up for. Also I had no map and only a meager recollection of the area. So he seemed a good idea. We entered the temple, which had shrine after shrine with doll like gods carved out of alabaster and dressed in exuberant costumes in outrageous colors. Marigolds, the flower of the gods, were everywhere. I particularly liked the Hanuman, the monkey god who helped Ram rescue Sita and defeat Ravanna the demon who lived on Sri Lanka.

As we left there were people chanting to a drum and other instruments I couldn’t identify.

We went on, the order is no longer at all clear to me, to the street of wedding dresses—great extravagances of red emphasized by beads, sequins, “jewels”—men’s wedding clothes which are equally magnificent with flamboyant turbans, and the street of wedding decorations—extraordinary imaginings of tinsel—to a Jain temple.

It was not the Jain temple I had expected which has a hospital for birds and small animals, but an older building of great delicacy. We made a contribution to enter. It was not at all crowded so that we could relax rather than dodging about worrying if we were getting in the way of people’s rituals. The paintings on the ceiling were delicate; the whole structure had the precise, rather static quality of a miniature. It was very peaceful.

We walked through endless lanes, seeing fellow foreigners only occasionally and always in rickshaws, never on foot.

The Sikh temple was last and certainly the most modern in its splendor, with walls and floors of white marble, red carpets and gold ornamentation. It has a much more open feeling than the other two, more expansive, also and I can’t explain this, somehow more middle class. Here they were singing to a gold covered keyboard and a silver tabla, an Indian drum. There was an electronic screen on which the words were displayed in three languages and three alphabets. There is a feeling of prosperity and comfort.

On we twisted our way between fellow pedestrians to the spice market but didn’t stay long despite the ecstatic odors issuing from burlap bags, the plethora of dates, pistachios, almonds, but headed to the mosque, too late to get in, as it was time for prayers.

As it became obvious that we were now finished our one legged guide suggested we go into an emporium opposite the mosque. I knew I was likely to be proof against temptations but it is always interesting to look. To our guide and the shopkeeper’s obvious disappointment, Ethan bought only one pillow cover for about what it would have cost in the US.

Returning to R and A’s was a three-wheeled nightmare. We fought one young cowboy down to 200R, taking off in a great blast of, what Ethan informed me was Techno music, I would not have known, passing, by way of contrast and irony, through the Imperial-Luyten’s section of town. The kid didn’t really know where he was going and finally dumped us somewhere. We paid him and got another three-wheeler, which took us home for another 100R. We had a delicious lunch; followed by a nap, follow by lots of good talk which went on after dinner into the night.

R and I discovered that we have similar reading tastes and love many of the same authors, Eric Newby (A SHORT WALK IN THE HINDU KUSH, SLOWLY DOWN THE GANGES), Patrick Leigh Fermor (A TIME OF GIFTS, BETWEEN THE WOODS AND THE WATER, THE BROKEN ROAD), William Dalrymple (FROM THE HOLY MOUNTAIN, THE AGE OF KALI), and Rory Stewart (THE PRINCE OF THE MARSHES).

The next morning Ethan and I had the dinning room to ourselves for breakfast where he consumed huge quantities of eggs, toast and whatever else was available. When R came in we arranged our day—the Qtub Minar, lunch, the Lotus Park, which someone had suggested to Ethan.

R went with us, although he has seen all these things a thousand times. At the Qtub we acquired a guide who took pictures of us every ten feet but was quite a good guide. R peeled off to sit under a tree while Ethan and I went around in the heat. The Qtub is over a thousand years old; I’ve lost the exact number. Qtub was the Moslem conqueror who tore down the Hindu temple that had been on this spot and, thriftily, used the stones to build his mosque so that quite inappropriate Hindu motifs turn up on pillars and lateral supports. There is a sort of Hindu revenge in this that I find appealing. The meld between stone caving and architectural intent makes an interesting statement about the problems of cultural integration. The minar itself, the minaret, is one of my favorite things in Delhi with its dark traceries of dancing, curvaceous Arabic lettering. It is now shorter than it used to be because of an earthquake.

R took us to his and his brother’s offices in a sort of office park. They built their own building, which is interesting and ecological. The bricks are recycled from old buildings. They have a cafeteria that became so popular that they had to restrict entrance to it. The view from the top is extraordinary over a sea of treetops. It is a reserve that R told us is full of cobras, kraits as well as the largest antelope in the world. It is beautiful to look down on that undulating carpet of varying greens separating you from smoggy Delhi.

R took us to a village, which is a sort of mall, full of wonderful shops. Ethan bought a chess set carved from stone; I bought a pair of inexpensive earrings. I don’t like to flash gold in Nepal where people are severely poor. There was once a fort here and the stones and a terrace remain. Looking out from the terrace across a small, very green scummy lake you watch swans floating serenely on it.

We had lunch at a south Indian restaurant—two vegetable curries (Ethan is a vegetarian), one slightly hot, a superb prawn curry and, most specially a white, dome shaped bread made from rice. I had a buttermilk masala. A superb lunch.

I nixed the Lotus Temple when I realized it was the Baha’i temple I had been to years ago and had found to have an oddly missionary and commercial quality to it. Instead we went to a tiny, crammed, heavenly bookstore that I’ve been to before. R bought me IN AN ANTIQUE LAND by Amitav Ghosh and I bought a book he recommended, THE EMPEROR by Ryszard Kapuscinski. We had a lovely time comparing notes on our favorite authors but could not find Rory Stewart’s book on Afghanistan for R.

So early to bed, because our flight to Kathmandu was at 6:30 am. Again, R saw us into the taxi at 4 something am.

I nixed the Lotus Temple when I realized it was the Baha’i temple I had been to years ago and had found to have an oddly missionary and commercial quality to it. Instead we went to a tiny, crammed, heavenly bookstore that I’ve been to before. R bought me IN AN ANTIQUE LAND by Amitav Ghosh and I bought a book he recommended, THE EMPEROR by Ryszard Kapuscinski. We had a lovely time comparing notes on our favorite authors but could not find Rory Stewart’s book on Afghanistan for R.

So early to bed, because our flight to Kathmandu was at 6:30 am. Again, R saw us into the taxi at 4 something am.

I arrived in Bangkok and took a taxi to the A One. When they asked for my passport to register me, I couldn’t find it. One of the things you have to accept as part of life as a rolling stone, if you travel to less known places, is your own idiocy, misjudgments, and moments of delusion. I thought maybe I’d left it at the Zzziesta and called Mike. While waiting to hear from him I called the US Embassy and found that I could get a new passport in 3 days. This was comforting until I recalled my Indian visa, which I knew I could not get again in the time I had. Mike returned my call to say that my passport was not at the hotel.

I went upstairs with my bags to unpack and get things into the laundry before going to the Embassy. I found my passport in my day- pack. I had transferred it from my purse, thinking it would be safer in the pack. I called Mike. Big sighs all around.

I met my friend C for lunch, feeling a bit fragile from the night on the train which, while less sleepless than on the trip up country, had not given me a full night’s rest. I really didn’t want to take even a short Sky Train ride to lunch. The result of this was that I got to eat at a place that has piqued my curiosity for years.

If you stand on the platform of the Sky Train at the Rachadamri stop, you look out over the green expanse of a golf course, with trees whose isolated shapes are unusual and a bit African, a little pond, and on the far side, the stadium of a racetrack. This is smack in the center of Bangkok. Next to the stadium is a very rarified institution, The Bangkok Royal Jockey Club. To my delight, C took me to lunch there, a very excellent Thai lunch, although one can order Western food as well, but why would you do that?

The membership tends to be elderly, as is true in my New York City club. Some of the women wore death masks of make up. I suppose you get into the habit of putting on your base, your powder, your rouge, your mascara, your eye shadow and it never occurs to you to stop. They were extravagantly jeweled and dressed in a way one would not see in New York. But Thai women go to the office in jewelry that American women would hesitate to go to a ball in. However, at one table there was a woman in quite, nondescript clothes having lunch with her eight year old and my friend C broke the pattern with her handsome salt and pepper hair and understated clothes.

The men were in elegant suits. Most, male and female, had jet-black hair. As the landlady of my old guesthouse once said, “No one in Thailand has grey hair.” This is less true than it used to be.

The room is spacious, paneled with teak, and looks out on the racecourse. It feels very civilized and far from Bangkok’s frenzy. To me the essence of a private club, anywhere, is that feeling of quite, assured civilization.

Before we left the club a woman came up to C and asked her something. I have no Thai. C applied pressure to her right arm in various places for about five minutes, which obviously gave relief.

C had some errands. We drove and chatted through the byways, which she is expert at, toward Sukhumvit. It is thirty years that we have known each other and we have the same birthday, although she is at least twenty years my junior. We stopped at the house of a friend of hers who is going to Barcelona but the dates weren’t right. Too bad. As we came to the Nana Sky Train station, C’s son, who is studying in London, called and I had a chance to talk to him for the first time in many years.

Bangkok, for me, is a succession of malls—there is no point in concealing the fact that I become a mall rat in Bangkok—and lunches. This blog, I fear, reflects that.

The next day I had lunch with my friends T and W going to a Som Tam restaurant on Rama IV, a branch of a place I had been to years ago, I think in the Silom area. Som Tam is the Thai salad made from unripe papaya to which base a huge variety of other ingredients, rice- noodles to raw crab, may be added. We had it with both fresh water and ocean crab. I always let my friends do the ordering with invariably wondrous results. In this case we had fried chicken, cabbage cooked in pork fat and, after W asked if I ate escargot, an amazing snail curry. One of the best things I’ve eaten on this trip.

W eats like an 18 year old so after we had cleaned up all of that we went into an adjacent mall and ordered durian with sticky rice in coconut milk, yellow soy bits in same, and black beans in same. My favorite was the durian, which has a strong flavor and the texture of Crème Brule. I was astonished that a fruit could have such a dairy texture the first time I ate it. Yes, it has a strong odor, but I love Camembert which smells much like a week-old-unwashed human. I once traveled in an elevator in Fortnum and Masons with a ripe Camembert and was amused as my fellow travelers looked about to identify the unwashed.

Part of the delight of eating with T and W is not just their enjoyment of Thai food but the obvious tenderness and care they have for each other as a couple. Rarely have I seen two people take such pains to ensure the quality of their relationship. It is wonderful and something of an honor to be around their marriage.

I went to see Moon and try on the patterns of a shirt and jacket and then home to address 50 postcards.

The next day, Sunday was another lunch. This time with my Chinese- Thai friend P whose partner has worked until recently for the royal family. P has been for many years a source of political insight for me but on my last few visits to Thailand I found him unwilling to discuss the political situation. This time, however, over a Chinese meal of many dishes, he was less guarded, telling me that his partner had been told by a friend in the palace “to order his blacks.” In other words the King was expected to die soon. The general belief is that he is probably on life support. Now, over a month later, as I write this, Bangkok is black.

Leaving P, I went into my mall rat mode and wandered the Paragon Mall. Do not think of an American mall. Thai malls have high ceilings, wide corridors, of course escalators, and contain everything from Hermes to popcorn, to Lamborghinis. On the fourth floor I saw in the window of a shop, which resembles an old Thai house, three masks, one of which was a really good Ganesh, an elephant mask, with a broken tusk. It was love at first sight.

But let me explain about Ganesh, the Indian elephant-headed god, how he received his head and how his tusk was broken.

GANESH
While the god Shiva was away, and he was away a very long time, his wife, Paravati, gave birth to a son. When Shiva returned home he found a handsome young man in Paravati’s apartments; in a jealous fury he pulled his sword and struck off the young man’s head. Paravati, entering the room at this point, told her husband that it was his son he had beheaded and that he should go immediately into the street and find him a new head, which Shiva did, beheading the first creature he saw, an elephant and placing the head on his son’s body. Therefore, we have Ganesh, the elephant headed god who removes obstacles from the path of his devotees. But be wary, for he also puts obstacles in people’s paths.

HOW GANESH’S TUSK WAS BROKEN
A warrior named Parashurama having won a battle through Shiva’s help—the gift of a battle axe—started on his way to Mount Kailash, the sacred mountain where Shiva and Paravati relax, wanting to express gratitude for his victory. On his way he met Ganesh who had come out to meet him because he didn’t want any one to waken his parents or to come upon them when they were engaged in amorous dalliance. He stopped Parashurama who attacked him with the axe that Shiva had given him. Out of respect for his father, Ganesh took the blow on his right tusk, which was shattered from the impact.

Inside the shop I asked an elderly, big-bellied man about the mask. Recognizing my lack of Thai, he waved me toward a younger, big-bellied man. At first he said they would only sell the three as a set. When I started to walk away, since that was a deal killer, he changed his mind. They both seemed rather edgy and unfriendly, perhaps because I do not speak Thai. When the younger said that the mask was an antique, 60 years old, I unfortunately said, “Usually things are not considered to be antique until they are 100 years old.” This made him decidedly irritable, even confrontational. The price was high but not outrageous. If it is still there when I return from Nepal and Tibet I may do it.

After the gym on Monday I went to see an old friend of mine Kai, the grand daddy, the maestro, of Thai dress designers. I have been trying to get him to retire and come visit me in Barcelona with his partner, Noi for years. I worry about him. He is under constant tension, although he has reduced the number of his shops, and he takes far to many prescriptions.

We had lunch at the restaurant in the old Peninsula Plaza where, since Kai is a celebrity, people kept stopping by the table. Some of them I knew, others I was introduced to. In between visits Kai told me a very odd story.

Many years ago Kai had taken into his employment and apartment a woman who had married a Thai playboy, by whom she had a daughter, with the usual results. The divorce left her with little to live on or raise a child with. She had worked hard for Kai, creating an outlet for his unsold clothes, helping him furnish apartments he bought to rent, managing his household staff when they were new and recently escaped from Burma. The relationship had always seemed to me very smooth. He had often helped her when she had financial difficulties.

Over fish patties and green curry for me, he told me that the woman had a sister with a husband and daughter who lived in a compound which had in the back a little cottage and servants’ quarters. The husband died; the daughter married. The woman, saying nothing to Kai, renovated and enlarged the cottage. Then, again, saying nothing, she moved her things out bit by bit.

Noi, Kai’s partner, suspecting something went into her room in Kai’s apartment and showed Kai that it was half empty. Kai asked her about it and she said she was just clearing old things out. Nothing more was said and one day they found the room empty. She didn’t say good-bye. She has not spoken to Kai since she left.

There was no reason why she shouldn’t live with her sister but why the silence? Kai and I talked about having to forgive because to do anything else will only cause you trouble and do nothing to the other person.

Finally, I think Kai may be going to retire in the next few years.

The next day I had lunch at MK’s shabushabu restaurant in the Paragon’s basement with a friend from Israel who was in town. It turned out that the people she was staying with are friends with the children of my landlady at the A One. The web of the world is amazing.

Then I went down to see Moon, to pick up a white dress they had lined for me and drop off some material for a jumpsuit. I collected laundry, pack up, put things in storage and went to bed early because I needed to be up at 5 am to make it to the airport for my flight to Delhi where I was going to meet my grandson Ethan.

The Bangkok rail station is a Victorian relic with digital screen additions, a pleasant empty space with large arched windows filled with plain stained glass, as I remember, primarily in pink. I found my platform and talked with a young couple, traveling first class, happy and exhilarated because they were going on an elephant trek.

The first class attendant looked at me disparagingly and sent me down the platform to second class where, after figuring out the system, or so I thought, I seated myself. An attendant came along and removed me to the next car. As I settled in, another attendant showed up and moved me back to where I had originally seated myself.

My companions in the cubicle, which is not closed off from the corridor, were three young Thai men, with phones, cameras and backpacks. I can remember when no Thai knew what a backpack was. I felt I was the local anomaly.

We crawled out of Bangkok in darkness alternately passing great avenues of light halted for our benefit and through desperate slums of houses fabricated from whatever can be found, scrounged or stolen lit from inside by small charcoal cooking fires, their outer walls hedged by squalid heaps of garbage.

I slept neither well nor much that night. I was awakened by the restaurant waitress’s voice, a Thai version of Ethel Merman. I ordered rice soup with chicken for breakfast. It arrived with some lethal looking orange juice of chemical origin. But the coffee was quite okay.

A delightful mystery, last night the john at the end of the car was spotless and odorless. This morning it was a little damp but still spotless and odorless. On a Chinese train it would have been awash in urine and stinking.

As I ate my rice and chicken breakfast we passed through, on either side right up to the tracks, the greenest, most luxuriant jungle, plant clambering on top of plant for sun, vines climbing ruthlessly over everything. I had forgotten how the bamboo throws its high feathery arches over its lowly neighbors. Not one flower anywhere, just a seething wave of green rising and falling from its tree heights up the hills, which are the early, ripples of the Himalayas.

There were open spaces planted with orderly rows of rice in squares with a brown thatched hut beside them on skinny poles. The paddies were green velvet carpets in the most vivid shade of yellow green.

A military man came through to tell us we would be two hours late but that the scenery would be lovely. The young men sitting opposite me were unimpressed. I wondered if this is a friendliness ploy by the military who are in control.

I was met by my friend Mike who has recently moved to Chiangmai from Taipei. We caught a bright red song taew, a sort of truck with an open back and hurtled through a city where I recognized nothing, not surprising after an absence of twenty-five years. The air pollution was not dire but it was definitely there. Leaving the four-lane highway we had been on we wound through little lanes to a charming, small hotel, the Zzziesta, cuddled up in trees. There are cupboards at the foot of the open stairs for your shoes. Behind the stair is a long fishpond full of yellow, purple and the usual red and white koi lazing about. They come to the edge of the pool to gaze up at you if you approach. My room was large, airy with a handsome black stone bathroom and a balcony looking out on nothing in particular.

I took a shower, hung my clothes in the cupboard and then Mike and I walked to a restaurant down the lane and around the corner called K’s which serves excellent Tom Kha Gai and a very hot pork dish that was superb. I wish there were some way to store up these lovely Thai food experiences for the doldrums of Barcelona’s Thai restaurants.

We caught another song taew to the center of town and Wat Chedi Luang, which I did recognize, but oh my, it is so clean, neat, spiffy and manicured now. The wat I remember was crumbling, sprouting trees and flowers from it joints, in a sort of vegetable slumber. Behind the sparkling wat is a brick structure, some centuries old, surrounded by perhaps half life sized elephants, their ears spread and their trunks curling down. Many of the elephants are missing but enough remain to give an idea of how impressive the structure must have been. I remember them well but surely their ears, so thin and fragile are redos. Behind the elephants are two small wats one in dark wood that I also recalled because it’s façade has inlays of, purple, gold and clear mirrors that are striking against the darkness of the teak.

Another song taew to the Temple of the Golden Mountain with pleasant views and then, at the urging of our song taew driver another wat, even higher, where one takes a form of transport halfway between a tram and an elevator that pulls one up the steep hill sideways. The hill ends in a series of terraces many of which, oddly, considering the orchid growing abilities of Thailand, are covered with bushels and bushels or plastic orchids, roses, frangipanis, tulips, very strange, and any other bloom you can think of.

Coming down we tried to find postcards in the hotel’s neighborhood but there were not any, not even in the very dull mall on the main highway. Conceding defeat I went happily to my motionless bed.

I came down stairs to find it was raining, not the heavy, “let’s get this over with”, pour of a monsoon, but the slow, “I think I’ll do this all day,” sort of rain.

There are two breakfasts available at the Zzziesta. One is western. I never tried it. The other is a Lanna breakfast of four different kinds of pork with black and white sticky rice covered with sesame seeds, chemical orange juice, coffee, and Thai bean deserts. There was as well a heavenly hot sauce with the pork.

A song taew took us to Chedi Chang Lom that is sort of at the back of Wat Chiangman. It was quiet, serene with few people about. There is another old chedi with elephants whose ears surely have been repaired. A gold top has been added. The elephant’s trunks touch the ground and curl up. People have put into that curl three or four short pieces or sugar cane.

The grounds are perfectly kept and wandering in them with an air of imperial possession, erect tail and large green eyes was a grey mottled cat, obviously a monk’s pet. It did not encourage gestures of intimacy. As Mike and I circled we came to a new building, where we sat down out of the heat, with modern, not very terrific paintings, but there was one of my favorite Buddhist scenes. Buddha, in the maelstrom of temptations thrown at him by Mara, the demon, called upon Earth to help him. She wrang out of her hair all the offerings he had made to her of clear, pure water that drowned all the demons. A lovely little parable of what goes around comes around.

Having asked for a store that sold postcards, we took a red song taew there. It was run by a chubby middle-aged man who was arranging his stamps for sale. We agreed on a bargain price for 100 postcards—I write in the vicinity of 300 every year—and I harvested them from their slots on the stands outside his door. When I came back in to pay, he had been joined by a companion with a female form and a deep voice. Mike and I speculated on this being a case of a Lady-Boy.

We then, foolishly, considering what experienced people Mike and I are in this eastern world, allowed our tuktuk driver to take us to a “handicrafts place”. I think this was my fault. It turned out to be an endless stream of “handicraft places” starting with the silk weaving store with very ordinary, not particularly good silk and none of the really extraordinary silk one used to be able to buy in this region of Thailand, a silver shop, then a dress shop, followed by a really bad jewelry shop and a carpet shop. Here we were greeted by that East of Suez phenomenon, the Kashmiri salesman. These are gentlemen of infinite wheedling charm. Never have I bargained with one successfully. I own a beautiful silk carpet that you can’t walk on because of one of these mesmerizers. He showed us carpets. He explained weaving methods, materials, dyes. I enjoyed the entire process but was not tempted by the extremely low price he offered.

Mike managed to kill off the driver’s eager offers of further buying opportunities. He took us to a wat; I’ve no idea which one. As I removed my shoes, I could hear chanting. We went in and listened to the monks in their orange rows, their voices making the same pattern over and over. Mike translated for me, “Take refuge in the Buddha; take refuge in the Dharma; take refuge in the Sana.” At the end of one of the orange rows, a large white dog with brown spots lay comfortably on the carpet before the altar.

I could have stood a long time listening. That repetition can either be soothing and hypnotic or totally irritating. Our sullen driver pounced on us as we came out the door. He would only give us fifteen minutes more. That was enough, however, to see a small building at the back whose walls were covered with delicate faded, blue murals, largely destroyed by water damage, but still beautiful.

And so to bed at the very nice Zzziesta. The next day, both Mike and I being watted out, we went to the Lanna Museum. The Lanna are the original inhabitants of northern Thailand. It is a beautiful little place, just the right size, constructed from dark, honey colored wood, high ceilings, with all kinds of details, such as etched glass guardian figures. The first floor is full of things peculiar to the Lanna—amulet bowls and boxes, carvings from temples, bronze work. Upstairs is room after room of glorious silk and embroidered fabrics or clothes that the men and women wore—short quilted jackets, long, full trousers.

After lunch we returned to the Zzziesta to pick up my bag and go to the station, allowing me the chance to really look at. It is memorable because it is an open-air station. There are practically no walls. You look out at trees, green and tracks from a roofed shelter that’s painted a creamy yellow.

Once on board I wrote, and watched the jungle come and go as night fell until the attendant came to make up my berth with crisp white sheets.

I was headed to the gym in the five star hotel I don’t stay in, but stopped first in their coffee shop hoping for a pomelo salad. Since it was all gone, I had an excellent pastry stuffed with chicken and mushrooms with a small Caesar salad glutinous with dressing.

Sitting at the little table next to me was a Twiggy thin, elderly Chinese looking woman with acute cheekbones, gleaming, dyed, black hair, in a stunning Kelly green silk outfit of trousers with a green and black figured blouse and a magnificently, unquestionably, cashmere shawl in the same vivid green. She made me think of the last Empress of China. With her was a nicely dressed, but without the same sense of color or drama, young woman, who, (A relative? A hired companion?) I could tell, even though she was speaking in Thai, was whinging. The elder in green somehow silenced this with absolutely no expenditure of energy.

When I went to the gym, I was surprised and delighted at how little I was charged for two weeks. There is a charming pair of lesbians who practically live in the gym. The more masculine one teased me about Trump. I told her that I was ashamed of my country to which she replied, “We should elect him. He would be better than what we have.”

I was touched when her partner wanted to know how much I had paid for two weeks and approved the amount. It was a lovely protective gesture.

As I hurtled along on the elliptical I wondered if the tall elegant Thai woman who used to be a model is still around. With the change in management in the hotel there have been defections. She is wonderful to look at but definitely a retarded rabbit. She once remarked to me smugly, “This is a very exclusive gym,” causing me to recall a similar comment from a member when I belonged to the Peninsula gym in NYC. A woman, having discovered I taught as an adjunct, said, “How come there are so many people without money in this expensive gym?” Different continents, same snobbery.

I went to the elegant shopping mall where Rudi has her shop and was momentarily upset when I saw it empty. Just at that moment she arrived looking like a racing boat under full sails in a gold and brown silk outfit, necklace, earrings and at least one superb, big topaz ring on her slender old hands all in gold. In her new shop we talked over what I want her to make, moving on to gossip.

I told her I had just turned 80. She trumped me with 81. Age brought us to discuss Paa whose amazing shop, from which I have never been able to afford anything, is around the corner. Paa, 86, comes to work every day. She has, consistently, year after year, the most extraordinary art nouveau and deco jewelry I have ever seen. She started as a street pawnbroker and buyer/seller of gold carrying her balance to weigh things around on her back. She is a small legend and Thai women who have any contact with her are strongly protective because she is a living example of female rags to riches in Bangkok.

The next morning I had hot water because after I complained to my favorite girl on the desk of the lack of it, she said, “Oh, in room 203 you turn to the right for hot rather than to the left.”

I went to lunch with my friend N and her husband T at a Vietnamese restaurant, lovely and quiet where we had the best, most exquisite crab I have ever eaten. I have tears in my eyes knowing, never, will I be able reproduce that dish in any Thai restaurant in Barcelona.

That night, having packed up for my trip to Chiangmai, I was about to go to bed when I noticed a delicate, almond brown gecko above my door. I thought pollution had killed or driven his tribe out of Bangkok. He had brilliant, proverbially ruby eyes. I was about to turn on the aircon and felt it would be an unhealthy atmosphere for him so I gently urged him through the crack at the top of the door.

My favorite driver, Khun Chakkrit who had whisked my bags into the A One on my arrival took me to the train the next evening. Chakkrit’s father, who died a few years ago, was my driver, therefore, when we drive anywhere Chakkrit takes his own license and picture out of the holder on the dashboard and inserts his father’s. Thus we drove to the station under Daddy’s benign supervision.

This blog will start in Thailand, although I am now in Kathmandu. There will be few pictures until we get to Nepal and, if I can’t transfer them from my phone, there won’t be any.

So here we go.
SEPT 1, 2016

Barcelona – Helsinki—Bangkok

What joy when all falls effortlessly into place. The Meals on Wheels man, who delivers to my downstairs’ neighbor, arrived just as my tenant, another neighbor and I exited the elevator. He kindly hauled the monster black bag down the stairs and we three women trotted down with the rest, including the ever-annoying trekking poles. As I opened the street door a free taxi passed but backed up at my shout and I was off.

Across the aisle from me on the plane to Helsinki was a family whose father, immediately upon taking his seat, called the stewardess over to order a bottle of white wine. He was a small, balding, slender man, desperately nervous and trying to stay in control. Although he asked repeatedly, he didn’t get his bottle until we were air borne. His wife was warm to him but not solicitous.

Between Barcelona and Helsinki he consumed 3 airline bottles of white wine that I saw but I slept a lot of the trip. Just before they announced our landing he ordered another but didn’t get to drink it all. Then he lurched to the bathroom, but was stopped because we were in steep descent. He barely made it back to his seat.

Getting off the plane the son and I locked eyes. His gaze was defensive. I gave him my best full, warm smile. The least I could do after having stared so much and I am sure judgmentally.

Waiting in Helsinki for the flight to Bangkok I was delighted as my world shifted west to east. Darker, smiling faces with lots of children being fed, rocked, entertained and the music of Thai swinging in the cradle of its tones.

I had a good taxi driver to the A One Inn. He presumed I was a new visitor and was suitably surprised when I was greeted by my favorite driver who hauled my bags out of the trunk with a big grin and put them down in front of the reception desk with a flourish.

They are still serving their humungous breakfast at the A One but don’t have the wonderful Thai coffee they used to grind individually for you. Having eaten and deposited my laundry at Wendy House I took off.

The Sky Train, a haven of sanity considering the traffic in Bangkok, has TV in each car, continuously showing ads. My favorite this year features a glamorous young western woman, made up to the arch of her eyelashes and dressed in an amazing, shining, green silk evening dress that wraps her back so as to show an upper and lower triangle of faultless, pale skin. She reaches out daintily to pick up a six inch long grey sausage inserting it between lips, shiny and red as a lacquered apple. I crack up every time I see it.

At Taksin I left the train to ride the river bus. The Chao (Cow) Phaya (Pie-ah, the tone goes down on the ie and the ah should be up in tone ,elongated, singing a little) is beautiful, carrying the many boats, little and big, upon its fullness with calm. The only disturbers are the Tiger Boats, marine adolescents, with their long yellow banana shape that come roaring along on their V8 engines (the engines we abandoned during the Vietnam War were adapted to this new purpose.) with flowers dangling from their prows. I adore the boat trip up to Wat Artit. I love how the bus boat comes up to the pier stop, pushing in with it sharp snout like a determined dog at a rabbit hole.

Mr. Thai, surely not his name, is a most un-Thai man, loud and brassy, maybe thirty years old, with no fingers on his right hand. The shark only left him his thumb. He is my travel agent. His sister was in the office with a delightful baby girl, less than six month, not hers but her other brother’s who is helping in the agency and seems willing but jejune.

This is a decidedly Thai arrangement. There is usually one member of the family with real savvy and ambition. Everyone else lines up behind him and does what he says. Once in a while someone gets an idea of his or her own which is always a disaster. It took him under an hour to get me a round trip train ticket to Chiangmai, a flight to New Delhi, another to Kathmandu on the same plane as my grandson Ethan whom I was to meet in Delhi, another flight to Bangkok and a round trip to Hong Kong.

He offered me lunch, pad thai, in a street restaurant and told me his plans to open a guesthouse next year. So glad the shark only took four fingers.

On the boat trip back we passed deep-breasted rice barges of dark teak, being pulled by a determined little tug, as they rode high in the water because they were empty, going up stream to be loaded with harvested grain.

I raced back to the A One, picked up my small, orange suitcase, took the Sky Train back down to Taksin and walked to my dress maker on Chaoronkrung Road taking shelter from a monsoon down pour with a bunch of Boy Scouts under an awning.

Moon, my dressmaker, and I sorted out this year’s blouses, trousers and dress while I asked her how her sister, a very clever dressmaker, was. She said, “Too often sick.” I inquired further and was told a tale that I found muddling but Thai. It goes something like this.

Her sister, I’m not sure which one, is married with a son. Either the husband or son took out a loan from a bank on the family business which he put into a girl friend, or friends, not the business, also giving a large chunk to the other person—husband or son. The business collapsed. They could not repay the bank. Someone went off with a girl friend and money. All through this Moon kept saying, “But he good boy.”

Finally, I said, “Maybe he’s a good boy to his father but not to his mother.”

With tickets and clothes all sorted out I went home to the A One, dinner and bed.