happy holidays

Hurrah, Ji and I are officially on holiday now. We've been going to school from 9-3 for the past week but now we are through, through, through with all that schooling, all those books, and all those teachers' dirty looks. The weather here is faaaantastic; cool enough in the evening last night to leave the air con off in the living room while I was reading, and still nice and hot in the sun during the day. I've made the comparison before and I'll make it again: the coldest day in Bangkok is basically the same as the hottest day in Calgary. Light breeze, low humidity, sparklingly clear sunshine, and crisp blue skies. Of course here people are wearing sweatshirts and jeans while in Calgary they'd be wearing not much but exposed pasty flesh.

Speaking of jeans, I got myself a new pair today at the Big C. For those of you who don't live in Thailand, Big C is a perfect amalgamation of a Walmart-style low cost outlet store with a Loblaws-style supermarket. The Big C rocks. At Big C I've picked up everything from duvets and lightbulbs to mango 'n sticky rice to today's three dollar jeans. Best of all is that I can now shop close to home. I used to have to take the subway six stops to get to the mega Big C, but now a location has been opened up on Ekkamai a mere two blocks from my house. Next to the Big C is a Starbucks and upstairs is the awesome office supply shop where we got our curvilinear family-set of desks, and beside that is the VCD/DVD rental shop. What more could I ask for? And of course if you walk two blocks in the opposite direction on Ekkamai, you can enjoy a crazy-strong cup of coffee and the super-handsome Thai university boys at the Baan Ree coffee shop which has also just opened a beer garden that is hopping in the evenings now. If you're all caffeined out, you can pop across the street for a massage (cheap with the blind dudes or more expensive with the sighted ladies) or your choice of Japanese, Korean, or Thai food. I have to say that aside from the psychotic traffic, Ekkamai is a great street.

On Monday Ji and I had the day off as did the rest of Bangkok except for the employees at the United Nations. In celebration of the reduced trafficular congestion Ji and I made the trek over to see Phet.

Here, let me explain a little something about Phet's commute. You see, when we moved here I said we'd have to find an apartment near the school that Ji and I would have to go to every day. The traffic here is so overwhelming that there is no way I was prepared to take Ji into it on a daily basis. Phet very fortunately agreed to look for a place that would be within walking distance of our school. It just so happened, however, that I got hired by a school that is located just about as far away from the UN building as is possible without being outside Bangkok city limits. Here, let me demonstrate. We live at 'a' on Ekkamai. Phet works at 'b' on Ratchadamnern Nok Avenue:

In between points a and b is an entire city. There is no direct route from a to b. However, just to give you an idea of what kind of pall the traffic puts on any kind of travelling here, on Monday when Phet went to work it took him 17 minutes to get there because everyone else was on holiday. On a regular day, it takes him an hour and a half to get home. So the actual distance is not that tremendous but the cloggage is. As I was saying, Ji and I went over to see Phet on that very same holiday and we took the Skytrain and then a cab and were there in no time.

The UN building in Bangkok is pretty damn impressive. It is on the most important avenue in town, a street lined with all the ministries and home to the massive royal portraiture that is on display year-round. The palace is a hop, skip, and a jump away as are several spectacular temple complexes. The UN building itself is vast and exceedingly important-looking. It's my vote for most imposing and iconic UN building after the NY headquarters. Handily, the buildings are structured around a lovely garden courtyard inhabited by orchids and friendly cats. On Fridays there's a staff happy hour in the garden. Ji and I went once, but I swore I'd never go again after it took us two hours to get to our second destination that night and then another hour and a half to get home after that. On Monday, however, we waltzed in speedily and then Ji got to go get coddled and stuffed by the office ladies. He has developed an absolutely devastatingly cute facial expression when in the presence of women who have chocolate in their desk drawers. He actually stops yakking for a few minutes, looks abashed but with sparkly eyes and a secret smile, and then dances delightfully while candy is hunted down. In this manner he managed to pirate off three cookies, a chocolate, a page of press-on tattoos (see image below), and innummerable kisses. We checked out Phet's office too. It's classy looking with its sleek furniture and laptop docking station and double computer screens, but there's no window. It would kill me to work there. Actually, I think it's killing Phet too. On holiday he's always super healthy and then goes back into the windowless morgue and gets sore throats and headaches. I think that any mine shaft canary worth its salt would keel over dead in a matter of minutes if subjected to that office air.

Luckily for us, though, we didn't have to stay inside the building for long. We headed out for dinner at a restaurant Phet had mentioned was near the river. I thought that since we were going all the way downtown we might as well enjoy sitting by the water. The restaurant turned out to be in the perfect location, right next to the Thawet pier and within sight of the gorgeous Rama VIII bridge. The service was a little slow but the soft shell crabs and tom yum more than made up for that. Visitors who would like to dine at the In Love restaurant should note, however, that there is a very particular attraction at this establishment. The Thawet pier is well-known as a place to feed the Chao Praya river fish. Next to the pier are several stalls that sell GIGANTIC clear plastic bags of stale, sliced white bread. Visitors - be they local or international - can buy the bags and then stand on the pier or at the built-in-the-water restaurant and fling bread out into the river. The word 'swarm' does not in any way do justice to the seething mass of fish flesh that then slaps and wallops itself to the surface to gulp at the bread. The surface of the water in about a 3 metre diameter becomes nothing but roiling fish with gaping mouths. Ji was pretty thrilled about getting to jettison his shrimp shells into the ravenous maws, but other diners might not be quite so chuffed. Fixed address also highly recommends that you do not drink too much while eating next to Thawet pier lest you slip and tumble over the rails and into a very certain fishly death.

Tomorrow Ji and I are off to try and get the ipod fixed. We're hoping its just a battery problem. Wait, no, I lie. I am hoping it's a battery problem. Phet is hoping that it is a problem that is so devastatingly expensive to fix that it will be cheaper to just buy a new ipod in replacement. I've also promised to take Ji to the science shop to check out if they have any chemistry sets (he's decided that he will spend 50% of his time inventing things and the other 50% of his time doing chemistry experiments when he grows up, so gosh knows I better get him some equipment pronto). [Bangkok-14-December-2005]