Saturday, February 17, 2007
Things that go bump in Bangkok
There's a new airport in Bkk. I'm not sure if I like it so much. You see, I may have written before that there is a certain smell I'm used to encountering when I get home. When I step off the plane, there's a smell that's a mix of jasmine and pollution, humidity and sewage that combines in such a perfect way as to simply smell like home to me. But Suvanabhumi airport is so sterile. So gray. Nothing convinces me I'm in Thailand. There are some posters on the wall of antique Thai artwork - the kind with the demurely sitting Thai women with impossibly round and firm breasts peeking through some very thin silk fabric. These pictures make me feel like I'm in some sick art collectors home, or at best a badly laid out museum. But a portal for welcoming to Thailand? No.
In fact, the first thing that let me know where I was was the water. In the toilet. I rinsed my mouth and the water tasted Thai. I find my Thailand in the gritty details. It's my home and it's honest to me. I don't recognise it by the costumes it wears.
Of course, the next thing that has to happen is my 'pick-up'. My brother has convinced everyone that there is only one exit from the international terminal. He's wrong - there are two. So I wait for about half an hour for people who are already there. My mother, brother, Indy, Inc and both their nannies wait at the other exit whilst my brother gets angrier and angrier. When we finally DO find each other, my brother walks ahead and refuses at first to say hi because that would be nearly an admission that he was wrong. Oh - and naturally, he has once again updated his car. A white Honda has replaced the Black KIA van. Pretty much the same features (including built-in DVD player and two screens) except now the doors slide open automatically and I get told off for trying to manually open them.
Indy and Inc are very smily and sweet, and I haven't heard them cry since I came. They are also avid TV watchers. I find it funny that before Inc said anything to me, she whacked me on the head for disrupting the line of vision between her and the car-TV.
Conan hasn't stopped barking since I arrived.
Cola was more interested in sniffing my bag to see if he could pee on it.
Alba pissed herself when she saw me, as usual, and was still a bit angry that I had left her in Bkk for so long that she didn't come and spend the night with me yet on my first night.
What would my first day in Bkk be without a platter or fruit in Na Julie's garden? I always seem to feel more at ease hanging around with my Aunties (meaning actual aunties and also my mothers millions of school friends) than with people my own age. Plus, her garden is beautiful. That, followed by some shopping at Central and the customary bumping into ten aunties that I don't remember but all seem to consider me their favourite niece with the way they carry on. Just a reminder, again - I use auntie loosely to mean 'old-lady-acquainted-with-my-mother', and niece here to mean 'acquaintance's-friend'.
My brother doesn't have Xenosaga III in English. Or so I discovered.
I cut my finger peeling a raw mango and trying to get through a battle in Final Fantasy X2.
Alba and I share some similar habits. She settled on my pillow while I was taking a shower. Then, I thought I would compromise and get her another pillow on the corner of my bed. But no. She has to be somewhere central, so she sleeps on the exact middle of my bed and on top of the blanket. I have to curve around her to sleep. Fortunately, she is not big enough to push me off the bed. Apparently I take up the whole bed and don't share the blanket either.
Today I'm off to see P'Plern sing at Emporium and after that, catching up with P'Ant... and going to Na Neaows house for a quiet Chinese New Year after that.
Things should start looking up. Pig year coming up!
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