Thailand Sawadee

We had our honeymoon in Thailand 10 years ago. Hot and sweaty sums up the experience, it being the rainy season and all. We ate and walked our way around the country for about six weeks. It was an amazing time, getting used to each other in an intensely close environment, in a strange land, where we could hardly string two words together to get ourselves out of trouble. There was the odd meltdown of course, like the time in the train coming back from Chaing Mai, when it was miserably hot and I wasn't feeling well and we moved to different seats so we didn't have to look at each other.
We hooked up with Kazuya and Bobby again this time and both couples being parents now, our time together revolved around feeding kids and bed times, rather than games of gin at romantic beach locations. Bangkok has changed as well. It still has the traffic jams and pollution, but there's more presence of big companies and more money has been thrown at public transport, with the sky train and the development of a subway.
Something that has not changed is the food. It is still as delicious and spicy as ever. The kids have stayed with the blander menu options and I've encouraged this, as I don't want them to get 'Bangkok belly'.
We're at the tail end of the rainy season, but the weather has been wild. Two nights ago we found ourselves helping out our friends deal with major flooding of their home from torrential rains that wreaked havoc with their patio drain and allowed a steady flow of water inside the house. We had been watching a movie downstairs when an almighty crack of thunder had me jumping off the couch in fright, knocking over and smashing a glass in the process. Brian found it very amusing, but as I bent over sweeping up all the broken glass, we realized it was probably a good idea to shut off the tv and DVD player, as it was intensifing into an incredible electric storm.
We went upstairs then to see if the kids had woken from the thunder. They were fast as asleep, amazingly and we resignedly went to bed, as the house became dark with a power outage. Meanwhile the rain began coming down in earnest and the thunder just seemed to be getting louder and louder. I was curled up in a ball recoiling from each crack overhead, and Brian just lay there chuckling away at my expense. Then I realized I was really thirsty, and begged him to go downstairs in the dark to get me a drink. As he walked across the room, he started treading in deep puddles of water on the wooden floorboards and called me out of bed to see. I went out onto the landing and realized water was pouring in under the french doors that lead onto the patio.
We raced over to Bobby and Kazuya’s room, loudly knocking on their door. “The house is full of water!” we yelled, and Bobby woke up the maid to help start bailing water. In moments all five of us were scooping water out of the patio which had filled up like a bath tub over the edge of the second story balcony, using buckets and dustpans. Then we were using towels to push it all down the stairs, and mops and towels to swoosh it out the front door. It was a couple of hours work, and when we finally finished wiping the last of the water, we realized that while we were battling away, hundreds of mosquitos had come inside the house(the rain didn’t seems to bother them) and were swarming all over us. We played a surreal game of mosquito-tennis, batting away at the black specks flying around with portable bug-zappers, until their batteries ran out.
Realizing we couldn’t get them all, we smothered ourselves in insect repellent and fell into bed, exhausted.
The next day, in his usual style of recalling stories of disaster with an incredible dose of mirthful laughter, Kazuya gleefully stated that he had never been so amused, as to see us all in our underwear, illuminated only by flashes of lightning, bailing water over his verandah like it was a sinking ship! If it hadn’t been so imperative that we stop the water from seriously damaging his house, we might have found ourselves laughing at the time too. It must have looked quite the sight!
Apart from experiencing amazing weather, we also had the pleasure of eating out every day, since food is just another amazingly cheap consumer good in Thailand. It is not only cheap, but absolutely delicious. We ordered out from a local kitchen and had it delivered to the house almost every night and it was consistently good, although varingly spicy, depending on whether the cooks thought it was for Bobby’s or her farang guest’s consumption.
We did try tp protect the kids’ delicate tummies, and ordered them more bland dishes like padsi iew, but they were adventurous nonetheless, and tried everything we suggested they would enjoy. We ate at two restaurants at Seicom Square where they really got into the dining experience. One was Hot Pot, a popular Japanese style restaurant which has taken the idea of Japanese nabe, with a steel pot filled with a clear broth bubbling away in the middle of the table, to which diners add a variety of ingredients which they select from the menu. We added fish balls, fish, noodles, cabbage, mushrooms, and squid. It was the perfect way for a group of people with different tastes to enjoy one dish, because we only took from the nabe food we liked. The other restaurant was a similar concept, but with individual pots bubbling away in front of each of us, and the raw ingredients rolling by on a conveyor belt, a bit like a sushi train.
It is a strange situation to become accustomed to in a Thai household, when there are maids and other house helpers. Strange for a westerner, that is, for anyone with a decent income there, it is the norm. I struggled with realizing that I was someone with a priveleged background, and that there it was acceptable for me to have another person wash and clean after me. I don’t think I could ever feel comfortable having a maid, but as Bobby explained, she was offering her ladies the opportunity to live in decent conditions and earn an income, whereas in their own country of Myanmar, they would be struggling to eat.
It is not the first time I have experienced the disparity that exists between a life of privelege like mine, and the life of someone from a developing world. However it is the first time we have experienced it on this trip, and we are nearing the end. It is maybe the strongest influential factor in getting us to put our lives into perspective.
We left Australia comlaining about the lack of culture, prevailing negative attitudes about various issues, including schooling and childrearing, increasing traffic congestion and high cost of living.
The chaos of Bangkok tells us we have little to complain about, in comparison. Of course, when we are in the midst of daily life, it is impossible to hold that perspective.