bangkok! pakse! bangkok! aw yeah spring break '10!

Currently kicking back with Ji Hong in the master bedroom of our dramatically large and luxurious 'family suite' here at the President Park Hotel in Bangkok. We're watching the bedroom TV - not to be confused with the other TV in the living room. Seung Yi is crashed out in the lesser bedroom after a very long and busy day filled with walking and shopping and shopping and walking. It's our last day on holiday, sadly, but we've had a terrific spring break. We started out with a late night departure from Delhi that sucked rocks. Why, for a three hour flight, they need to schedule departures after midnight, I DON'T KNOW. It is baffling. You stay awake until, like, 1 am, get on the plane, sit for 3 hours, which isn't really long enough to actually sleep-sleep, then you arrive in Bangkok at 6:00 am, just in time to start the day utterly wrecked. We immediately checked into our hotel and slept till noon, and then went out to enjoy an entirely miraculous day in terms of weather. Somehow, there was a cold front that hit Bangkok and it was the coolest, most perfect, most pleasant day I have ever experienced in Thailand. And I lived here for two full years! It was so cool that I actually wore a linen jacket outside just after noon - unheard of, I tell you. We even took the kids to play at the crazy dangerous play park at Queen Sirikit park outside Emporium, and they played for an hour without even breaking a sweat. When we went back to the hotel after enjoying all the spinky-spanky, non-dusty goods at the mall, Phet went in swimming with the kids while I relaxed and fell completely asleep in a poolside deck chair. It was the perfect way to recover from several months of very, very busy and very worky days and nights.

The next day we left early - but not quite early enough - for Pakse. Phet had mis-read the tickets, and we thought we were leaving an hour and a half early from the hotel, but it was actually only 45 minutes early. Luckily we zipped out to Don Meaung airport without any trouble, and easily made our Nok Air flight. In Ubon we got off and the cold front was still colding things up. It was actually brisk on the tarmac. We commandeered a taxi to take us to the border and didn't even turn on the air con until halfway through the drive. At the border, we started our visa applications and then Phet's Dad turned up with a nifty Toyota pick up truck to take us to Pakse. He was in fine form and Seung Yi was really excited to see him. Phet and the kids sat in the back of the truck all the way into town and I chatted with Phet's Dad the whole way and got the round up on everything happening with the family. Here's the latest, from him and from the rest of the fam: his new house is almost complete and looks wonderful; Long's been helping him out with the building; Ming's wife, Nek, is 3 months pregnant; Meh is doing well, following doctor's orders not to eat meat, not to drink much, and she's also cut down quite a bit on her smoking; Ing is good, and her little daughter is adorable; Ling was supposed to get married to this old friend of hers who is living in the States, but it was called off - no one knows by who or why - at the last minute. Suki is 12 which is completely impossible, and as cute as can be, and just about as tall as me. Yaki is not super skinny anymore and he is a lovely boy. Fuji remains C-R-A-Z-Y but not quite as violent.

We spent our week in Pakse chilling out at Phet's Mom's. Mornings we breakfasted in the backyard under a huge tree and feasted on crispy baguettes (never, ever, ever seen in Delhi) stuffed with pate (also never seen in Delhi) and crunchy pickled veg. On the side we enjoyed fresh-from-the-wok Chinese bread donuts and sesame circle-donut-thingies. [Ooooh, speaking of donuts, I saw a commercial today for little wee rectangular donuts for sale here in Bangkok at Mr. Donut that are decorated to look like SUSHI!] Freshly iced Lao style coffee finished things off. For lunch and dinner we had all our favourites: pho, grilled fish, home-made barbeque sukiyaki, pork sausages, spicy bamboo shoots, meatballs, and more, more, more. The best dish was the noodles Phet's Dad made with, get this, the massive noodle-maker that Phet's Grandfather used at his noodle house!!! It was a big metal contraption with a spinning wheel, and then he fed more than a kilo of noodle dough into it to get rolled out thinly, and then it sliced up the dough into perfect noodles. I stuffed and stuffed myself with the noodles, which I had dry-style: instead of adding broth to the noodles, you put the noodles (cooked, of course) in a bowl, and top them with all the fixins like green onion, chewy deep-fried garlic, bits of crunchy pork skin crumbled up, sliced cooked meat, coriander, and so on, and then you sauce the noodles up with a little oil and seasonings and lime and special vinegar and fish sauce and oh boy are they ever good.

We were also lucky enough to get to go to the waterfall outside of town and had one dinner out on a floating restaurant in the Mekong. Other than that, it was lots of showers, playstation, and naturally, endless card games!

Here in Bangkok we've done our favourite things: we've eaten, slept, shopped, and gone to see movies. I can report that Training Your Dragon is quite wonderful, and Alice In Wonderland is pretty much what you might expect from Tim Burton. Nice costuming, a little not-quite-the-greatest in terms of stoyline. Seung Yi has had a few very saucy moments the past few days. She's great almost all of the time, but recently if Phet "gets mad" at her, she'll cross her little arms, frown her little eyebrows, and glare at him! It's totally hilarious and very naughty. She'll also come up with stuff like, Me: "No more candy today." SY: "That's impossible!" and Me: "Pa is not happy that you weren't listening to him and wouldn't go with him when he called you." SY: "I am angry at him." Me: "For wanting to go on a nice walk with you and have fun with you?" SY: "I am weally, weally angry at him!"

Ok, must run - bed calls.

[Bangkok-3-April-2010]