As can happen at the start of a trip, the travellers are enthusiastic and gung-ho: “Yes, we’ll be up early and go see all the sights,” they say.  But then a little jet lag or just the relaxing effects of being on holiday took hold and it was about ten in the morning before I heard from Brad and Silvia.

Our main destination today: the Chatchuchak Weekend Market.  This huge bazaar provides thousands of vendors an opportunity to sell everything from clothing to household goods to candles to artwork to anything under the sun. 

The older section of the market is extremely crowded and can be very hot even though most of the aisles are covered.  The newer section has aisles that are wider and includes better ventilation, but overall the market is still a warm place to be.

Thankfully the weather was threatening to thunderstorm so large dark clouds sheltered us from the sun most of the time.  It didn’t rain until later in the afternoon, a good thing as the market floods when it rains too hard. 

Silvia shopped and shopped, Brad bought a few things and tried to moderate Silvia’s purchasing enthusiasm.  A fun time was had by all.  After a few hours we stopped at Foontalope, an outdoors but covered Issan (Northeastern Thailand) style restaurant.  The name of the restaurant means “dust covers everything,” referencing not the hygenic standards but the type of food: typical road-side truck stop cuisine.

This means fried chicken, som tam (green papaya salad), laarb muu (minced pork salad), Issan-style sausage, and khaow nieaw (sticky rice).  Tawn provided me with a cheat sheet so when we showed up and were waiting for a seat I was able to go ahead and place our order (in Thai) with the manager.  Left: Brad and Silvia standing in front of the open-air kitchen where dozens of kilos of som tam are produced each hour.

While waiting for our food, Tawn called us.  He was with his mother, whose mouth was “itching” to speak Italian, so I handed the phone to Sivlia and she and Khun Nui visited for a few minutes.  Hopefully she’ll be able to join us sometime during Brad and Silvia’s visit so she can scratch that itch some more!

After about four hours at the market, we had exhausted our resources – both financial and energetic – so we headed home via the subway.  With the memory of yesterday’s massages still strong, Brad and Silvia indicated they’d like to go back for more.  So later in the afternoon they walked over to our apartment, getting caught in a sudden and brief thundershower, and then we continued to the massage parlour after the rain stopped.

Right: The owner of the massage parlor (or perhaps the husband/boyfriend of the lady who owns/runs it – we’re not sure of the relationship), a dapper middle aged Thai-proficient Japanese man, gets a massage with Achi, the parlor’s mascot Chuhuahua puppy, who falls asleep in his lap.

Brad and Silvia enjoyed full-body Thai style massages while Tawn and I had foot and leg massages.  It would be very easy to do this every day!

Thoroughly relaxed, we continued to dinner at T Restaurant, a well-known seafood restaurant that is owned by the family of one of Tawn’s former United Airlines colleagues.  We enjoyed curry crab, black pepper crab, river prawns in vermicilli, and salt-baked fish. From left to right: Patti (Tawn’s former colleague), Poun, Tawn, Silvia, Brad, Tam and me.

From 2bangkok.com here’s a photo of one of our recent afternoon thunderstorms.  Very typical this time of year.

The first stop after the hotel was a massage.  Just a simple, traditional, 60-minute Thai massage at our local massage parlour over on Sukhumvit Soi 23.  Not a fancy place, to be sure.  But the people are friendly and the massages are inexpensive. 

Once Brad and Silvia called to say they were unpacked and refreshed, I walked over to the Bangkok Botique Hotel, five minutes up the street from us.  Arriving, I took a seat in the lobby to wait for them and the busboy, recognizing me from earlier in the afternoon, told the front desk that they should ring room 210 for me.  Overhearing him, I told him in Thai that I had called them already.

So this piqued his interest and he started talking with me in Thai, calling over the three ladies at the front desk so they could see this farang attempt some Thai.  I was doing well until he asked how long I had been in Thailand, to which I mispronounced my answer and said that I had been here “about eight round objects,” substituting the word duang (classified for stamps and round objects like planets) for deuan (months).  They thought that was very humourous.

Brad, Silvia and I walked back to the apartment and visited for a few minutes while Tawn got ready to go.  Then we walked a few blocks in the other direction over to the massage parlour.  Having stopped by the evening before to alert them to our arrival, a staff of extra masseuses were on duty.  Brad, Silvia and Tawn opted for the Thai-style body massage while I went for the leg and foot massage, my “usual.”

For the hour that I was being massaged, I didn’t hear any screams of pain coming from upstairs so I took that as a good sign.  Meanwhile, I practiced my Thai a bit more with the masseuses downstairs – they were teasing one guy who had spilled his dish of massage lotion, then they teased me because I kept glancing at the clock on the wall which I figured out eventually was broken.  Then the owner’s chihuahua came over to play with me for a while, sitting on my lap and nipping at me with razor-sharp teeth.  Finally, he callmed down and just laid his head on my arm and zoned out.

When Brad and Silvia came downstairs an hour later, they were completely relaxed and I could tell immediately that we had converted another two people to the laid-back Thai lifestyle!  They’ve decided they want to do massages every day.

After the massage we drove to Harmonique, a Thai restaurant located in and outside of a century-old shop house in the older part of the city.  Surrounded by kitschy Chinese and Thai antiques, the food is very good albeit westernized. 

Service was less attentive than it used to be: the waiter was a bit brusque (unusual for Thais) and our request for a second bottle of water later in the dinner went unfilled even though we asked twice. 

All in all, I think it is a nice place to take visitors on their first night.  Kind of like entering Thai cuisine on the shallow end of the pool!  We’ll go for full-fledged Thai style dining today.

Afterwards we drove into the old city, went down to the river and saw Wat Arun lit by floodlights on the western bank of the Chao Praya River.

Brad and Silvia arrived from Italy this afternoon in one piece.  Although we managed to be on opposite sides of the arrivals hall, we found each other eventually.  They’re getting settled into their hotel right now, Tawn is taking a nap, and I’m blogging.

Their trip in was smooth and it seems they had an interesting seat mate for one of the flights, a Turkish woman who had studied in both the US and Italy and is fluent in both languages.  She told them a lot of things to see when they pass back through Istanbul on their way home, when they’ll have about nine hours of time to spend there.

After Brad and Silvia are ready, we’ll take them to our local massage parlour and then dinner at Harmonique.

Also received an email from Ty (another Xangan) who is passing thorugh Bangkok on his way to Cambodia and will arrive this evening.  Don’t know if schedules will allow it, but perhaps we can meet up for dinner or drinks afterwards.

Speaking of comings and goings, Masakazu and Mitsu, the Japanese couple we know, are back in town after being in Japan for a few weeks.  They’ve just moved into a new apartment, leaving the 49th floor of the State Tower because after a small earthquake we had here a few months ago they decided that the swaying was too noticeable and the seismic construction standards nonexistent. 

Markus was in town for twenty-four hours between his trip to Japan and a Germany-US-Canada jaunt.  Hopefully Tam and his sister Poun will be able to join us for dinner tomorrow despite Markus’ absence.

Well, Brad has called and they are ready to go.  So I’m off.

Tomorrow, Thursday, is my final exam for Module 4 at Union Language School.  Module 4, which I repeated, is the second half of the reading and writing program.  So, in theory at least, as I complete this module I have all the tools I need read and write Thai.  All that is left is to fukhat – practice.

Along the way I’ve had my misgivings about the school’s structure.  The instructors are very good, but the system hasn’t worked very well for me.  Essentially, I think the cart got ahead of the horse because I now know reading and writing but am far away from mastering the grammar and structure that were taught back in Module 2.  Taught, I might add, using the phoenetic language that was introduced in Module 1 and then started being replaced by Thai script in Module 3.

The net result: I can read a sentence and pronounce it reasonably well, but still not know what it really means.  Sure, I can identify many of the words, but don’t understand how they’re being used.

So after recognizing this “I don’t think this is working for me as effectively as I’d like it to” feeling for the past few months, I’ll finally take action and walk away from the school for a while.  Maybe forever.

In the meantime, so my investment in the language doesn’t melt away, I have hired a tutor to meet for twice-weekly, two-hour sessions.  She seems very good and I need to work with her to craft a way to go back and review the contents of Module 2, but to do it in written Thai rather than that nutty phoenetic language.

For all of you who are considering learning Thai (or any other language not written in Roman script): it may be tough at first, but learn the written language from day 1.  Do not, repeat do not, accept a phoenetic language as a substitute.

From Saturday dinner at Markus and Tam’s apartment, here’s a shot of Tam and his sister Poun, preparing some tasty Northern Thai-style dishes.  Actually Poun did the preparing.  Tam was just the dish-washer.

But dish-washing is an important way to contribute to the dinner, right?

After returning from my Sunday morning bike ride and resting for a while, I headed back out to ProBike to find a kick stand.  The bicycle rack at the apartment is not very high and is on a sloped floor, so the bike spokes lean against the metal rack in a way that probably isn’t good for the spokes.  The biggest challenge with shopping for bicycle parts here in Thailand seems to be that the selection of certain parts is quite limited.  For example, there is just one type of kick stand at ProBike and I would imagine at most other shops, too.

Tod’s friend Brian is in town from Vancouver, so I met up with them about 5:30 and we went for dinner at Big Momma’s, a small Italian restaurant across Asoke from us.  It is a nice, low-key place and we ordered a Tom Yum Gai spaghetti, which contains all the flavors from the spicy-hot Tom Yum chicken soup, but as a light spaghetti sauce.  It was fantastic.  Sadly, when I ordered their delectable chocolate cake for dessert, the waitress told me, Khaake chokolaat mote, kha – we’re out!

Afterwards, we drove into the old part of the city so Brian could take some nighttime photos.  We didn’t get there until after 9:00, so the lights of the Grand Palace were already off.  But the lights of the adjacent Wat Pho (temple of the reclining Buddha) were still illuminated so he took pictures of that.  Then we noticed that a small soi leading to the river offered a great view of Wat Arun (temple of dawn) which was illuminated, too.  There was a nearly-full moon right overhead and the usual humidity-induced haze had cleared off and a few stars were visible, too.

Monday is a holiday for many people in Thailand, although tomorrow is the official holiday – the beginning of Buddhist Lent.  So today will be spent mostly on the computer, working, as Buddhist Lent isn’t a recognized holiday in the United States, where my job is based.  Also, I’ll do some studying, too.  I’ve found that in the past week I’ve had more opportunities to practice speaking Thai and that it is a very good thing for improving it.

Some interesting shots that I’ve been meaning to share for a few days and haven’t:

Oishi (“tasty” in Japanese) is an inexpensive chain of Japanese (duh!) restaurants here in Bangkok.  The food is good quality and tasty even if it isn’t terribly fancy.  Best of all, it is very reasonably priced.

We learned recently that Oishi offers home delivery, free if you order at least 300 baht.  So we tried it out, each ordering a different bento box-type meal that included miso soup, rice, sushi, gyoza dumplings, salad, and the main course – plus a bottle of Oishi-brand green tea.  All this for only 380 baht, about US$10. 

Most fascinating was the packaging.  Talk about wasteful: the food came in a plastic tray that was then in a cardboard box.  The soup was in small plastic bags (very Thai style) which were then placed in plastic soup bowls with a plastic spoon, then secured with a lid and tape.  Another plastic bag contained salad dressing, wasabi dressing, chopsticks, napkins, soy sauce, etc.  Then all of this was in yet another large plastic bag.

So we face a delima: inexpensive, reasonably nutritious food that we don’t have to leave home for after a busy day working, weighed against the tremendous amount of waste it produces that may or may not get recycled downstream.  I’ve already stopped taking my lunch away from the local restaurants, preferring to eat there on a reusable plate with metal utensils instead of coming home each afternoon with yet another styrofoam container.  A friend from Kuala Lumpur who recently visiting challenged my thinking about the importance of reduce, reuse, recycle, arguing that as long as it all goes into landfill or dumps, that can eventually be covered over and becoe usable land.

I think that doesn’t capture the complexity of the issue.

Other news, Tawn is in Bali this weekend with his office colleagues as part of the annual company trip.  Each team of employees has to do a skit at tonight’s formal dinner, as do the managers.  So one of the skits that Tawn is involved in has a theme that requires Tawn to play an Indian Maharaja.  Friday afternoon he returned home after work carrying a bag from a local costume rental shop.  Here’s what was in it:

There’s also a full topless photo, but I don’t think Tawn wants me to share that.

Yesterday, Markus, Tam and I went to ProBike – the large bike shop adjacent to Lumpini Park – and went shopping.  Markus and I ended up buying the same type of bike, a TREK 3900, although he bought the 2007 model and I went for one of the remaining 2006 models. 

After purchasing the necessary supplies – pump, bike rack for the car, spare tube, chain lubricant – I spent about 15,000 baht, net a 15% discount.  Pricey, about US$400, but a good investment that should last many years.

To ensure that the bikes didn’t start gathering dust from lack of use, we set out this morning to get our bikes covered with dust from the trail.  A friend of Tam’s had recommended biking in Phra Pradaeng (indicated by the red circle on the map), the so-called “Lungs of Bangkok.”

It is a peninsular bend in the Chao Praya River, directly across from Khlong Toey, where the port of Bangkok resides.  Unlike the rest of the city around it, Phra Pradaeng is still a jungle and is much more typical of provinces further to the west of Bangkok.  There is a large park in the center of it with paved paths, lakes, etc. 

This was a good adventure for Markus and I, as we made the trip without the aid of any Thai-fluent partners.  Fortunately, I’ve discovered that when put to the test, my Thai is good enough to navigate.  Our first challenge was figuring out where to park.  The first thought was to park at the temple, Wat Khlong Toey Nok.  When we pulled in, we found much less of a courtyard than we expected and it wasn’t clear that we could actually park anywhere.  Finally, a monk indicated a spot where would could park: directly in front (and I mean right in front) of a standing Buddha statue about 2.5 meters tall. 

I looked around the wat but none of the chapels were open so there didn’t seem to be anywhere to donate money.  On the next trip I’ll have to search some more so I can contribute to the temple for their hospitality.

The boat pier was just outside the temple wall so we made our way there and took a small ferry across the river for 10 baht each.  Just behind the houses on the other side the river, a wall of coconut palms and other lush trees stood, a green demarkation between the progress of civilization and the tropical jungle.

Some of our time was spent on concrete one-lane roads and the park’s bike paths, but we quickly deviated off these onto the small elevated concrete pathways that have been added above the narrow canals.  Think of these as small alleys, except that none are wide enough for cars.  The picture below (taken from the travel report linked below) shows a typical pathway.  Some had railings on one side; most didn’t.

We passed small houses in the midst of banana and coconut plantations.  Friendly people waved, childred shouted, “hello, hello!”  Dogs barked.  A few very mean-looking ones did a bit more than barked and ran after us for a few feet before falling behind.  I have yet to decide how to best deal with angry street dogs when riding: one school of thought says to ride fast and hopefully tire them out.  The other school of thought says to stop and confront them as they will chicken out and go back.  A third school of thought would be to carry a weapon or some rocks or a slingshot.

We rode about 27 km, taking about two hours.  Because of the bend in the river, every direction we rode we ended up back at the river.  We visited three temples along the way, stopped a street vendor to buy some sweet roti, and then stumbled across something akin to a farmer’s market.  This section of a canal had been rennovated with wide sidewalks and actual vendor stands and it was very busy with many Thais shopping.  But it sold more than just the usual fruits and vegetables.  Instead, it had many desserts, specialty foods, prepared meals, and crafts.  There were no other farang there, but it looked like an event that attracted people from other areas; not just locals.

It was really interesting and we stopped to snack on some sweet dumplings with peanut and palm sugar filling wrapped in a very thin, steamed rice crepe.

We headed back across the river a little before noon and as traffic was light, I was home before 1:00.  All in all, a very successful first ride.

Another person’s travel essay on a bike ride in Phra Pradaeng.

Speaking with my family on Skype today (everyone was at Jenn and Kevin’s for dinner so they gathered around the computer much in the way that families gathered around the television back when it was first introduced), my father asked why I hadn’t updated my blog in a week.  Sensing that his may be a representative voice, I decided I must yield to the wishes of my readers and post another entry.

The reason for the delay was simple: I’ve spent the better part of the past week editing the video footage I took last Saturday during the dinner at Ja’s house.  Tawn’s friend Ja owns a cooking school with her mother, and from time to time she’ll host dinners for their group of friends.  So on Saturday, Tawn and I went over there in the middle of the afternoon and went with Ja to the local market.  We shopped for veggies, meats, seafood, and curry paste before heading home to chop, wash, slice, peel and cook the food.

The cuisine for the day: traditional Thai Royal Palace cuisine.  These are largely dishes that were at some point reserved only for the royal family and the residents of the inner court.  Tasty stuff.

At one point in the kitchen, there were three different curry dishes going along with some chili sauces.  The kitchen was filled with fumes and even the Mae Krhrua Yai (master chef), Ja was coughing, eyes watering.

Here are some pictures:

Left and below left: Tawn and Ja at one of the many vegetable stands, making purchases.  Ja goes to this local market almost every day, so she knows all of the vendors and is a tough bargainer.

Below right: Still life of the talat (market).

Right: Notice the spider in the upper right-hand corner of the picture, having spun a web in the corner above the lime vendor.  In accordance with Buddhist beliefs, the vendors do not disturb the spiders.

Above left: Chicken, chicken, and more chicken.   Above right: Fish, fish and more fish.

Left: Ja selects fresh river prawns, the bodies of each about 6-8 inches (15-20 cm), ready to be thrown on the charcoal grill.  The price: about US$1.00 a piece.

Above: Back in Ja’s cooking school kitchen, the entire gang is engaged in prep work.  From left to right: Tawn, Jack, Eddy, Pim, Sa, and Ja.  Below: Dinner is served!

Two videos below showing our adventure:

What else happened this week?  Well, some things.  But I’ll write about those later.  But not a week later!

Surprisingly, I received a call this morning from the lady at Orient Thai airlines and she had worked with her main office to secure access to another ticket on the special test flight they will run July 29th from the old Bangkok airport to the new one. 

See the entry below for more details.

So I walked on down to the ticket office to secure my ticket, ignoring the light spits of rain that were beginning to fall. 

By the time I walked back twenty minutes later, the light spits were a steady light rain and I was pretty wet.  But at least I have my tickets!  Yeah!     Picture right: me, wet and blurry.