3 nights in bangkok make a family tired

...but also very well fed, albeit with some chili-pepper tummy side effects; well-knowledgeable about the new subway system, albeit with some lung damage from the toxic fumes at street level; excited about teaching prospects, albeit with some concerns about transportation difficulties; content in the understanding that there are good condos available for rent, albeit at exorbitant prices; and last but not least quite sure that our son will live a full and happy life in Thailand so long as he is allowed to spend all his waking hours in a tuk-tuk. No albeit.

THE DEVIL LIVES IN SHAH ALAM

Our flight departs at 8, and we are a bit late leaving the house. Phet is still stuffing shirts into our bag when the cab man calls from downstairs to tell us to c'mon down, goddammit. The ride out to the airport is, as always, surprisingly long. I figure everytime 'Ah, in the cab, won't be long no', but that is not the case. The airport is like, light years distant from the city centre. You get on the highway all ready to rumble and then drive, drive, drive, drive forevvvvver. The landscape is as unfortunate as the distance: miles upon miles of palm plantation trees.

Those of you from temperate climate zones may think that a horizon of palm trees sounds pretty picturesque. Wrong. ANYTHING planted in line ups is tedious after the first 12 miles. Think of children of the corn. Gets spooky.

I entertained myself by 'reading' the cab man's Chinese newspaper, and chortled at the picture subtitled "Ben Afleek". Still, Ji was in fine form in the role of Grampa. The whole one hour ride was taken up with the ongoing dialoge between him and me ("Gramma"):

JI: How was work today?
ME: Fine thanks, how was school?
JI: It was ok. I was teaching history.
ME: What were you teaching?
JI: You KNOW! About the PAST!
ME: I see.
JI: What do you want me to cook on my barbeque tonight?
ME: How about steak? JI: You are a vegetarian! (laughs) You can't eat steak! I will cook shrimp and fish.
ME: Great!
PHET: (SNORE)

Ji is also on a big space kick these days and is obsessed with the concept of black holes. He knows that anything that comes near to a black hole will get sucked into it. He likes to make black holes out of playdo, and yesterday he pulled a short, wide piece of plastic tubing over his waist and went around saying 'I'm in a black hole! I'm in a black hole.'

"What is on the other side of a black hole?" he asked the other day while we were in Kit and Nelson's car. "No one knows, Ji," is my best answer. "But what happens if you go through a black hole?" Ji still wonders. Adrienne saves the day and tells him, "If you go through a black hole, you will come out in Shah Alam. If you go through a white hole, you will come out in Toronto!"

Shah Alam is a scarborough-type suburb outside of KL. Adrienne carries on, "The devil lives in Shah Alam!" It's good that there's someone around to set the scientific record straight. With the slowed-down-time speed at which we travel to the airport, and with the way I spy the Shah Alam sign after ages in the car, I'm begining to think that we are in a black hole. Here we come, devil!

A DIFFERENCE IN APPROACH

My top three reasons why I hate travelling to the United States:

#1: The goddamned immigration officials who are bastards when you arrive.*
#2: The goddamned immigration officials who are bastards when you leave.*
#3: The goddamned service staff at the LA airport who are bastards no matter what, and also the airlines themselves, one of which actually served me a POP TART as food product on my flight, and finally the goddamned airline officials who make travellers go through customs and immigration in the US when they are IN TRANSIT and do not even want to leave the airport lounge.

*Like I would EVER entertain the NOTION of staying in the US!!!

On the other hand, travelling in Asia is generally a delightful experience. I was very impressed on this trip how both on departure and return we were waved into the fancy diplomatic line ups at immigration because we were travelling with a little kid. Kudos to all the staff in Bangkok and KL! With your help we avoided having any breakdowns in line and were spared the public shame of having to wallop our child in public.

After we checked in and got on the plane, we relaxed and enjoyed the lovely Thai service. Mmm, lamb curry! Free toys for Ji! Free newspapers! Hm, though, the last option should've been opted out from - opened up the Bangkok Post only to see a giant headline on the front page "78 Muslim protesters killed in South".

After a demonstration near the Malaysian border, Thai police and military arrested hundreds of protesters, strapped their arms behind their backs, and threw them in piles into military trucks with no air or water for hours and hours during transport to a far-off holding area, and lo and behold 78 died of suffocation. No marks on the bodies. So, helpfully enough, Thaksin Shinawatra (PM of Thailand) says that his guys did nothing wrong, the Muslims were all 'tired out from fasting for Ramadan'. Riiiight. Two days later there are mass calls from across the country for his resignation. He continues to say the deaths were accidental, but does issue a limited apology. Too little, too late. Does not bode well for stability in Thailand.

Still and all, the airlines are great. And we get waved over to the empty line up at Immigration.

COUGH, COUGH

We get out of Don Muang airport to wait for our cab, and BEHOLD, Thailand. The land of smiles, of golden temples and orange-garbed monks. Of tom yum and pad thai (hm, or do they just call it 'pad' here?). Beautiful babes. White sand beaches. And traffic. Oh, yes, and traffic.

There is a palpable vehicular haze particularly at night. When I say palpable I mean that the smog is so dense you could reach out and grasp it with your hands. It presses against your eyeballs. It makes your nose hairs black. It ages you. It might not be so bad if it weren't ALWAYS 34 degrees celsius and 100% humid. Perhaps then the haze might take a step back. But that doesn't happen. That is why everything is air conditioned in Bangkok. There is no such thing as a cool, fresh breeze. We stand and wait at the cab stand. It's Wednesday night and it's bananas -- our cabbie tells us it's a holiday. We can't figure out which one, but we take his word for it. I sit back and wonder if my Malaysia Malaise from the year before wouldn't have been cured by a quick trip to Bangkok. Do I really want to live in a city where I can't breathe?

MORNING

When I wake up, though, I remember why I like Bangkok. It's smoggy, yeah, but during the day the sun is so bright and the sky is so crystal blue that you can look up and forget the insanity you're enmeshed in. There is also a certain smell in Bangkok - hot, humid, with a hint of incense - that I love. Ji comments during our morning walk down Sukhumivit Street mainly on the stinky smell of the garbage, but I'm happy. There are fresh fruit vendors selling chunks of luscious pineapple for the equivalent of ten cents, there are the wee temples at the sides of all the buildings, there are tuk tuks, there are noodle ladies, and there is the iced coffee lady. All good things will converge here. Albeit in a haze.

STREET 1 LODGE

My Dad can tell you: Street 1 Lodge, #38, Sukhumvit Soi 1 is not the Hilton. It is not even the Days Inn. Phet is tired of staying here, but I like it because it is familiar and I know all the nearby corner stores, and more importantly I stayed there when I went for my first ultrasound and first saw Ji.

On the bad side: - very butt ugly blankets, brown on one side, yellow on the other side (which Ji enjoys putting over his head and wandering around pretending to be the poo monster) - ants on one wall of our room (but they don't actually diverge from their path and bother us, so really what's the problem?) - the odd bug in the bathroom - a clientele of fairly spivy old geezers (one really icky old English guy checked in and was like 'I think I'll stay for a month like last year.' Ewww.) - the jekyll and hyde of front desk clerks. One guy is cheery smiley and friendly. The other guy is scary and skinny and doesn't look up from the phone. - pretty suspect carpeting - 80 baht (2$) extra per day for an extra blankie and pillow for Ji On the good side: - CNN - HBO - The Cartoon Network (albeit in Thai...which makes it pretty funny to watch Ji watching the Power Puff Girls, trying to figure out what in god's name they are doing and why stuff keeps exploding) - Only $15 per night. Ok, $17 with the extra pillow charge.

BIDNISS

On the Thursday, Phet heads off to a meeting at the official UN digs. He gets to go into the super high powered heads of agencies session. All the other lackeys sit behind their bosses, but Phet sits at the big boys' table. Everyone scratches their heads wondering who the hell this young punk is.

Phet comes back and we all grab a cab to go to the Singapore International School for my interview. It's down a small street at Sukhumvit Soi 63. If you take the subway from Soi 1 to Soi 63, it's 3 stops and about 5 minutes. In a cab it can take anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour plus. We got the slow lane. 35 minutes into the cab ride I was getting anxious, but fortunately we arrived just a few minutes late. It's hard in Bangkok; it's not so much the long ride as the fact that you have no idea whether the ride will be long or short. Very unbalancing.

SISB is a small school, only goes up to gr 4 at the moment, has one portable, a nice lawn and play area, and apparently a new building is in the works for next year. Ji and Phet went off to play on the kiddie cars and I went to meet the Principal. We chatted for about an hour and the conversation went well. As I said to Phet, I'm not entirely sure whether they'll hire me, perhaps they'll find someone with primary experience who they prefer. We shall see.

FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES

In the evening after a helpful post-cab ride recover nap, we went to find the restaurant owned by a friend of the aunts'. We'd met this friend while she was visiting Toronto a month earlier and we'd had a big buffet dinner with her and had chatted her up about getting help house hunting while we were in Bangkok. The friend, Sengphet, had gone to school with the aunts in Pakse, and had helped them out when they were in the camp in Thailand and then when they came back to Bangkok from Canada on their way over to Laos for their visit. It also turned out that she is the owner of not one but two classy new Vietnamese restaurants in Bangkok, so we were even more motivated to seek her out.

We hopped on a tuk tuk after letting Ji play at the indoor play area of the KFC (we had some fries) and motored though the haze to the restaurant. It turned out to be right at Siam Square, in a very, very good location. The shop is on two levels, and as soon as we came in Sengphet recognized us, which was nice. She sat us down, ordered us food, and promised to take us house hunting the next day. We stuffed ourselves with roll-ups, banh cuon, pho, and those excellent shrimp paste on sugar cane thingies. At the end of the meal we tried to pay and were thrilled to discover it was all gratis. Hurray, aunts! Ji had eaten basically his own weight in food, and Phet and I were likewise happy and fat. After a post-feast walk through the mall, we headed home to good ol' street one lodge, and fell fast asleep.

*** A few random notes from Ji, from while I was typing this: ["ssshhhrmm..." "What's that?" "I'm talking without moving my lips. But it makes drools."] [Ji lurches around like a zombie, with his eyes shut. "Ji, what are you doing?" "I'm sleeping in my walk."] [Ji comes in crying quietly. "What's the matter darling?" "After you die you can't come back as the same person, I'm sorry." (verbatim) "That's true, it is kind of sad." "And you would swat away your own boy!" (the other night during a long cab drive Ji was talking about being reincarnated as a pigeon and I said jokingly that that might not be so good because I might swat him away, and at the time he got really sad about that, and is apparently still thinking about it) "Darling, you know, I think that my spirit would know your spirit no matter what. I'm sorry I said I'd swat you away." "Sniff. Sniff."] [Last night I pulled out the Tom Thompson stamps, and said to Phet "Hey, check out these stamps Tom Thompson designed." Ji: "Tom Thompson sunk." Me: "GOOD GOD Ji, how do you remember things like that? I told you about him drowning once, like 3 months ago, and haven't mentioned it since!!!"]

"MR P"

Forgot to mention our only frivolous spending during the trip to Bangkok... While at the mall after our serious chow down on Vietnamese food, we walked past a kind of furniture 'n t-shirts and doo dads kind of shop. The shop was called Propaganda, and it had some funky looking stuff so we went in. When what to my wondering eyes should I see but a whole line of very funny and quirky and slightly naughty stuff featuring a character called "Mr. P". Heh heh. I immediately snapped up a black t-shirt with Mr. P on it - he's a funny line drawn cartoon, naked, and on the shirt he's got wee devil's horns and is lying back with his arms behind his head, and there's a little "Mr. P" logo. Phet's birthday present! They also had things like the 'one man shy' lamp which you can see below, and the 'one man try' tape dispenser, image also below.

NO SOUL DRUNKERS NEED APPLY

The next morning - Friday - I got up early to call a couple of schools to see about possible appointments. I managed to arrange to meet a fellow named Vin at a Thai school that offers an extended English program, so that was good. He'd actually offered me a job a week earlier, but it would've been teaching grade 2 and I would've had to go immediately, so no go.

I stepped out from ye olde streete lodge one to go do some internet checking - I have a bit of an obsessive compulsive disorder about looking at a site that posts all kinds of teaching jobs in Thailand. It's called ajarn.com and I am awful and check it at least twice daily, this despite the fact that I know the guy who runs it only updates it once a day. Ah well, I check Planet Simpson twice daily too. Found a great ad on ajarn.com while roving around, a school looking for folks who wanted to work outside of Bangkok in the boonies, and the ad actually said "The cost of living is so cheap, you will be crazy if you love Thai iced coffee here, a very big bag of it costs only 10 baht that you can drink it the whole day." Unfortunately, the ad also went on to explain that requirements included: "3. teacher mind with high responsibility 4. energetic and love kids with a sense of humor 5. dress up and behave appropriately according to Thai society, not a soul drunker/smoker ". Dang, no good for me!

I also checked out the handy thaiapartment.com website to look at condos and such (feel free to check it out yourselves to get an idea of the prices in Bangkok. Crazy, man, craaaazy!). We set up an appointment with a rep from the company, a Miss Wipaporn, to take us out the next day to see a few places. Having read the tantalizing ad about iced coffee, I made sure we got 2 big bags of it after having our lunchtime noodles, and well caffeinated we headed off for my appointment by cab.

A very, very, very loooong cab ride later (past a whole area of town I'd never been to before) we got to the school. It's a lovely place - right in the middle of busy, busy Bangkok (Yannawa district, for anyone following our adventures on a map) but off the street with a giant courtyard at the centre, trees, a pool, grass, and a nice play area. There were heaps and heaps of kids milling around and getting their lunches. Ji and Phet headed off to have some ice cream nearby and I waited to meet Vin. He turned out to be a nice fellow; British, around 50ish, reddish hair. Ish-ish. We chatted for awhile, then went up to the english department for a slightly more formal chat, and then walked around the campus for a tour. The basic deal with the school would be that I'd get about 40K baht per month (about a thousand US), and FREE LUNCHES. For basically any job in Thailand, I have to show original copies of my diplomas (thus the reason for making Emma run around to get my U of T diploma). It's lucky that I have my BEd, because nowadays the government also required at least a BEd and 2 years of teaching experience to get your offical teaching / working visa. Of course there's lots of under the table work that you can get, but best to be on the safe side.

The best thing I saw at the school was all the kindergarden kids napping. It was capital-A adorable. They were all in this long room behind their classrooms, and there were heaps of kids, and it appeared that every single one really was sleeping on their tidily-lined-up little mats on the floor. Plus of course they were in their school uniforms, which increased the cuteness factor by about six million.

I hope Ji likes going to school when he finally gets to go to one! In the end I thought the school was nice and I liked the way it was set up. I think there are at least 30 other foreign teachers - but that may be spread out among this group of schools, because I only saw 2 other falangs. I also really like the idea of working at a Thai school...I'm a little bit in-between on things at the moment because I'm not sure what will transpire. On one hand I'd really like to be at a school where Ji can go, but that may mean teaching primary. In one way that's good because there are lots of primary jobs available and it might be good to have the experience. On the other hand, I don't really have the background to know 'yes, this would be how I'd do things'.

HOUSE HUNTING: WE'RE NOT IN VIENTIANE ANYMORE, TOTO

After our afternoon nap we met Sengphet (the aunts' friend) who took us to go see a couple of apartments. The first one was too expensive and also too dark (dark wood, hotely furniture) and too high up. About 50K or $1200 US. It also featured a very, very spooky maid's room, a tiny room with no window and a bunkbed in it. Creepy. But Ji liked it just fine! He also enjoyed taking his shoes off and running around on the very dusty floors of the apartment, much to my consternation.

The second apartment we saw we quite liked, it was at a place called The Waterford (you can check it out online, I think at www.thewaterford.com) - a big condo complex with lots of Japanese kids all decked out in halloween costumes - once more, this particular day featured a very high cuteness factor. There was a very nice pool and the two condos we saw were both on low levels. The only problem was that they were 2 bedrooms, and the guest room had just a single bed. Still, the price was not bad. Sengphet chatted them down to about 30K, which is about our budget goal. So, we'll keep our eyes on that.

Ji was EXhausted by the time we finished with apt 2, and he zonked out while we were still talking to the condo folks. We kind of wanted to head home, but Sengphet asked us to drop by her to her other restaurant to have some juice, so we did that, and then finally dragged Ji home in another endless cab ride.

For dinner we had thought we'd go over to Chinatown for seafood, but the traffic was nuts. We got in a cab and spent 15 minutes going nowhere, looking at nice middle eastern restaurant right outside our windows, and then finally gave up on chinatown and just ate where we were. Tasty turnip pickles and stewed chicken with biryani. Ji was awesome throughout dinner, but when he got up after eating he was walking and not looking where he was going, and he walked backwards right into a potted plant and fell into the pot. It was pretty funny. I could tell he wasn't going to hurt himself and I let him fall in the pot for humour's sake, but the waiter went to swoop down, only to laugh out loud himself at Ji's predicament. Then I lectured Ji about being more careful not to smash into stuff, and then he started to sniffle and tear up because he was worried he had killed the potted plant. Then Phet bought him an ice cream to cheer him up. Ah, the life of Ji. One third absurd two thirds kingly.

GIANT BUDDHA, POST POST HASTE

Sunday was our tour day. It was nuts. A List of All The Kinds Of Transportation We Used On Sunday (in order of use): 1. Skytrain 2. Taxi 3. Tuk Tuk 4. Subway 4.5 Skytrain (forgot that and had to add it later) 5. Feet 6. Taxi 7. Taxi 8. Airplane 9. Airport train 10. Taxi Good god! And repeat #5 after every other number.

We started off the day by skytraining to see an apartment as close to Phet's office as I could find. It turned out to be a spooky hotel with a very dark lobby and frightening halloween decorations (it was halloween, after all). Phet DID NOT like the Victory Apartments. I thought yet again it would be educational to see a cheaper place. Dumb. It was not very nice. We left quickly and caught a cab to see how far it was from the Skytrain to Phet's office.

The UN building is very, very fancy and very big. I quote from their website: "The UN Buildings complex in Bangkok is the 3rd largest complex owned by the United Nations. The UN Building houses the offices of ESCAP, UNDP, UNEP, UNCDP, UNFPA, UNAIDS, UNIFEM, UNHCR, ILO and UNIS. It also includes the UN Conference Centre, one of the largest convention facilities in Asia." Blah blah blah acronyms. Soon APDIP will join them! In a broom closet somewhere!

Anyways, the UN building is in the middle of all the big palaces, ministries and government buildings that are completely removed from the subway or skytrain. It took a looong time to get there on a Sunday; likely Phet will have to take a xe om to get to work on time. Or just live at the office. Wait, I guess if he doesn't have a physical office, he can't live there. Hm, he shall exist in some form of architectural paradox.

We passed by the UN and then decided to carry on to go see the giant gold Buddha and pray at the temple. As always, we got let off on the wrong side of the building and had to walk aaaaalllll the way around to the falang entrance in the burning sun. Good news for the drink sellers, mind you. Ji was suitably impressed with the giant gold reclining Buddha, and really enjoyed buying a pot of coins to drop into the alms-bowls in the wat. Very, very, very good activity for an almost three year old! Bring good karma to your family, move slowly, practice your hand-eye coordination, wow.

We drank lots of water after the wat, and headed out quickly to grab a tuk tuk to get to the subway. Ji LOVED the tuk tuk of course, as it kareemed and karrooomed through the haze and heat of Chinatown. The subway stop we went to is very, very handily located right beside the big central train station, and looks just like the brand new subway in KL and the one in Hong Kong. Very classy, very nice, very clean and tidy. There were plenty of people on it, but it wasn't cramped. Plus, cheap. And fast. I liked it very, very much.

We got off and transfered to the Skytrain to go back over to Soi 63 and look at just a few more apartments. It was a loooooong walk up the street...Ji managed to keep going.....despite.....the.....lack.....of.....drinks. We got not-great noodles at a shop along the way, and then went hunting. Saw a few places on the same soi - a few places with very big and fairly ugly and extremely expensive condos, and then one place that was nice with very big but nicely set up apartments, some for 37K. So we will keep our eye on that one, the Charoenjai Place.

And then, it was time to get ready to leave. I went and bought Thai instant noodles for Phet and some snacks for Ji and I, then we got Ji up and ready to go, packed the bag, checked out, grabbed a cab and headed for the airport. Good god. And that was just a weekend! What will it be like when we live there??? Still and all, we saw enough to say that we will find a good place to live, I'll probably find a decent job, Ji will look very cute in whatever school uniform he ends up in, we will rant and rave about traffic and cheer about the subway and skytrain, we will eat like Kings, and we will love having our friends and family come here and visit us. [Bangkok-November-2004]