In Which I Get My Kicks Above the Waistline, Sunshine

AND THEN TODAY HAPPENED, OH MY GOD.

So, I’m in Bangkok.  On an adventure!  Roughing it in my authentic Thai guesthouse with – um – air conditioning and high-speed wifi, within walking distance of one of the poshest malls I have ever seen.  Ahem.

A few points, since I know you’re all wondering:

1)      I am not underwater.

2)      I am actually not going to be in Bangkok for six weeks; they’ve decided to lump my in-country training together with the training for a clutch of volunteers arriving in February.  And that training may be taking place in Chiang Mai instead.  So I’m off to Chiang Mai on Wednesday (by plane – the flooding did a number on ground transport).

3)      The flight was good (brought to you by Qantas:  We Give You More Stuff In Tiny Bags Than Any Other Airline!).

4)      The food here is GORGEOUS.  Oh, man, you were all so right about that.

5)      I’ll apparently be inheriting a motorcycle from a volunteer who’s off home next week.  To say I am nervous about this is an understatement.  I’m freaking terrified.  I’ve been meaning to post about my run-ins with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (or, in Catherine-World, Thai Buddhism and the Art of Why The &$% Is This Thing Going So Bloody Fast?), but if I haven’t babbled extensively about this to you already, suffice to say that my first time on a motorcycle lasted roughly eight seconds.  I screamed.  The instructor screamed.  I lost all sense of how to operate my own body, let alone the bike, skidded out of control, fell, pulled the bike down on top of me, and did something to my right knee that means I’m still limping almost a week later.  I did get back on, and managed a day and a half of training, all told, but given that the last time I rode a bicycle was as a teenager, I had to re-learn balance and steering to an extent.  I got to the point where I can ride in big, lazy figure-eights and ovals, but only when I’m reasonably relaxed – and the more I think about how badly I’m doing, the less relaxed I get.  I think I’m just going to have to be very clear about the fact that I will put in whatever time it takes to learn this, but that I’m struggling and I’m not going anywhere near a road until I’m confident that I can ride safely.

And now, without further ado, Catherine’s Excellent Adventure to Thailand, or, Dude, Where’s My Continent?

Margaret and Malcolm saw me off last night at Paddington station, and about fourteen hours later, I was emerging from a greenhouse-hot jetway into the space-aged-shininess of Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport.  One of the programme support managers, Bank (his actual name is Navim, but Thai kids are given nicknames shortly after birth and tend to go by those their entire lives), met me outside Starbucks.  (See how the intrepid explorer forsakes the familiar and embraces her exotic new surroundings!)

Bank is incredibly nice.  Everyone I’ve spoken to at VSO Thailand so far has been incredibly nice.  Either this is going to be a very pleasant two years, or they’re all secretly plotting to kill and possibly eat me.  I’m gambling on the first one.

At any rate, Bank took me back to the hotel where I’ll be spending the next few nights.  Here's the hotel, as I was too exhausted to take pictures of anything else:

My purple curtains are bordello-tastic!

The minibar:  Instant noodles, nuts, crisps, Oreos, and CONDOMS

After I’d taken a shower cold enough to make me feel human again after fifteen hours of travel (I must be the only Western traveller to Thailand who spends her time figuring out how to turn the hot water off), Bank kindly showed me around a bit of downtown Bangkok.  We’re right in the heart of the tourist district here; the hotel lies almost literally under the shadow of four massive malls and the SkyTrain.  (I was ridiculously proud of myself for getting the gist of a short conversation in Thai between Bank and the cab driver as we wove in and out between groups of Western and Indian tourists; I don’t recognise many Thai words yet, but “farang” I do know. :))  Heading down the sidewalk means threading your way between a row of handicraft stalls on one side (beautiful wooden pots and sculptures) and cookshops on the other; none of the vendors seemed very pushy, possibly because I was with a Thai person, or maybe because their locations guarantee them a decent trade in any case.  There are also many, many beggars sitting in the darker corners, or in one case, lying prone on the sidewalk with a begging bowl in front of him.  They, too, seem very reserved despite their numbers; occasionally, one will speak quietly to passersby, but that’s about it. 

We sat down at a table on the pavement outside one of the small cookshops (under a pretty trellis of vines, probably set up to try and cut the heat a little), and I asked Bank to pick out a few dishes from the mind-bogglingly long menu.  I’m so glad I did:  he went for a really good tom yam soup with seaweed, some fried chicken with cashews, and a lemongrass-and-coconut-milk seafood soup dosed up with chillies.  The first two were basically high-quality versions of what you’ll find in a Thai restaurant in the UK, but the last dish was amazing – the flavours were familiar, but it was like they were suddenly three-dimensional, fresh and subtle in a way that the English approximations can’t quite capture.  Over dinner, I peppered Bank with questions about the city and Thai etiquette, and he asked me about London and about regional accents in English-speaking countries; it was pretty cool, because it meant it wasn’t just me grilling him for an hour (and because I’m a linguistic nerd, so sue me :)).

After dinner, Bank took me to the “cheap” mall (the one Bangkok residents prefer, as opposed to the “luxury” mall, where Chinese tourists tend to shop) to get a universal plug adapter.  It was like all of New Jersey in a single building.  White lino, huge escalators, rows of electronics, and (okay, you won’t find this in New Jersey) a whole hall full of posh imported foods.  (Bank pointed out that the instant-noodle shelf had been stripped bare by people stocking up for the floods.)  It’s possible that I caved and spent 40 baht (a little under a pound) on a pack of Ferraro Rocher, but I figure that a small taste of home to take the edge of the culture shock is okay. :)  (I also don’t want to crack into the mountain of chocolate Margaret bought for me just yet.  I’m saving it.)  In my defence, I also got a takeaway dessert of sticky rice with coconut cream and mango from a street vendor (it was very nice).

On the walk back, we found an open-air venue (I think it’s a market during the day – a big concrete space set under one of the fancier hotels) where a band was holding a rock concert for flood relief.

“Do you know them?  The band playing?” I asked.

“Nah.”  Bank laughed.  “All these boy bands and girl bands, and I never know their names!  All the bands my own age, I know, but I’m getting old now.”

It turns out there are some parts of being in your late twenties that span cultures. :)

So, tomorrow I have off for rest/tourism (I have a sneaking suspicion that more of the former than the latter is going to happen), and then I’m meeting the rest of the VSO staff for dinner.

I am not processing.  At all.  My brain thinks I’m on a jolly little jaunt to Asia, like my trip to India in the spring, and the idea that this is going to be my home for two years is sliding right off the surface of my mind without any hope of sinking in just yet.

But I hope this is a good beginning.