We stay in a guest house several narrow, winding side streets off of the main road in Banglamphu, an older, residential section of Bangkok that runs along the river. Almost every other house prepares and sells food: noodle soups, sate sticks of grilled meats with sticky rice, pad thai, omelets over rice, geometrically carved fresh fruit. They sell to their neighbors and trade dishes with each other.
Every morning we buy our sweet, milky Thai iced tea from the family who has taught us how to say “two iced teas, please” and “thank you” in Thai. The tea is served in a clear, plastic bag with handles and a straw and goes perfectly with the crispy, golden chicken fried in a wok by the woman who appears only on the weekends.
We have become familiar faces in our neighborhood. The dogs next door no longer bark at us (though they continue to bark throughout the night) and the old man who sits shirtless in his doorway, reading his paper and scratching his back with a backscratcher when he isn’t napping in his hammock, saves a small mango from his tree for Willa when we walk by.
We are across the canal from Khao San, temporary home to masses of backpackers, crowded with cheap accommodations, street carts, bars, cafes and massage salons. It is Khao San that often represents Bangkok in movies and on television. I imagine that at night it looks as it does on the screen, but I’m on Willa’s schedule and have yet to stay awake past 10PM. The Khao San we see is one of vendors setting up, street cleaners and tourists nursing hangovers with late breakfasts in the cafes that border the street.
Early in the mornings we wander through the giant markets or ride the river taxi to random stops then slowly walk back. We visit museums and temples. Unfortunately for Johnny, both Willa and I have a low threshold for temples and can visit no more than one a day before we get bored and cranky from the heat.
This morning we take the ferry across the river. Walking along the white-washed halls of the alleys we come upon a small temple with no tourists, only Thais who’ve come to pray. We join the line of people and ring the row of bells that end at two card tables where old women are selling lottery tickets. You select your ticket/s from those printed and laid out on the table. We slip off our shoes and step inside the dark temple, cooled by the shade and electric standing fans. In front of the gold statues of serene Buddha, monks wrapped in saffron-colored cloth are gathered, kneeling and chanting. The faint scent of incense floats in from outside as we sit, listening to the monks’ beautiful voices, gazing up at the ornately painted, high wooden ceiling. In the alley behind the temple, a monk tosses handfuls of water at the open hood of a car, blessing the engine. Several other monks stand around watching.
We continue on our walk, in search of drinking water and another temple Johnny wants to see. But even by 10:00AM, it’s too hot to be out. We make our way through a live fish market to the nearest dock to catch the river taxi. Willa screams and cries, worn down by fatigue and heat, frustrated that we won’t stay and watch the fish and eels in the giant tubs. But it is too hot and I can’t bear the smell. At the dock, in the water, hundreds of huge catfish swarm, writhing and splashing, competing for the crumbs being thrown. The scene is surreal and grotesque to me, but Willa quiets. She and Johnny are fascinated by the fish. When our boat pulls away her wails resume.
We seek relief from the afternoon heat in the giant, air-conditioned MBK mall. The mall takes up about two whole city blocks, rises 10 stories high and, still, it’s claustrophobically crowded with people. Clusters of women in burkas, teenage boys wearing tight jeans, rock t-shirts and shaggy, “Klute” haircuts; tiny women pairing peasant blouses with short shorts or skirts and strappy sandals; backpackers, tourists and, here and there, no-nonsense shoppers. Stores selling pirated DVDs and software programs sandwich beauty salons. On display behind the glass walls women lie in rows, receiving facials and eyelash tintings.
We ride the escalators up and down - furniture floor, clothing floor, food floor, electronics floor, make-up floor - looking at ourselves in the ceiling mirrors, getting lost in the mall maze and re-orienting ourselves with the enormous multi-floor poster of the King of Thailand.
The King’s image is everywhere in Bangkok. Photos of him as a young man in the army, older in a business suit and, as he is now, elderly and draped in a silk, yellow robe. Yellow t-shirts and polo shirts with national insignias are very popular and flocks of yellow blur past us as we sit on the bus. We sometimes walk a block and only a handful of people will be wearing non-yellow shirts. I’ve seen several Lance Armstrong books promoted for sale and “Live Strong” rubber bracelets on people’s wrists. I wonder if there is really a large Lance Armstrong fan-base in Bangkok, or is it his association with the color yellow that endears him to Thais?
In the evening, we walk to the park near our house. Sharing the lawns are jugglers, capoeira dancers, children flying cheap, plastic kites; violinists who can’t help but slide into the rhythm of the capoeira drums; an aerobics class with participants drifting off into their own routines when the instructor loses them; and breakdancers, dancing to heavy metal cassettes, incredibly spinning straight on tile with no cardboard. Willa holds Johnny’s hand and they walk in circles. She laughs and runs, chases birds and children. We spread out on the grass, eating mangoes with sticky rice, enjoying the setting sun and the breeze off of the river.
