So Where Were We Really?

To follow along on the journey that Joy and I took, look up “Samut Songkhram” in your favorite atlas or on Google Earth. If you’ve got a really good info source, you’ll discover that this part of the country is home to endless fields of salt, or at least that’s what “grows” there during the right season, which the current one is not.

Apparently the windmills we saw in the distance are used to help get salt water over the earthworks and into the paddies, where it is allowed to evaporate and leave behind a thick layer of white crystals. These are then raked into little salt mountains for further drying by people who have among the sweatiest jobs on the planet.

We hopped off the train too early—distracted by salt fields?—and had to catch up by hopping a motorcycle to a ferry, which took us across a river to Samut Sakhon. The people there acted as if they’d never heard a foreigner speak Thai before. This was quite good for my ego.

Seven or eight hours after setting out, we arrived back in Bangkok, but on the far side of town from where Jip and I live. For a few minutes we waited along a canal to catch a long-tailed boat that we thought might provide our seventh different kind of public transportation. But some tattooed boys who were diving backwards off the pier told us we’d missed the last one of the day, so we settle for a tuk-tuk instead. We both felt we’d gotten out of whatever ruts we’d been in.

The Local

I figure Joy and I logged about 100 miles, give or take, which to me qualifies as getting out of the rut. At one stage we were forced to literally hop a train as it chugged through what minutes before had been a fully functioning market along its tracks. Vendors pulled back (just far enough) the awnings and umbrellas that had been shading them all afternoon, as the two-car train passed centimeters away from their produce and fish.

Being veteran travelers, we figured out after about half an hour that this was not the express. Most of the other passengers weren’t heading all the way into Bangkok, but instead waited for their village to come into view and then started hauling a week’s worth of purchases toward the open door.

Eventually Joy’s seatmate got up as if the next stop were hers. As the train slid into a station she surprised me by flinging a full bag full of papayas onto the platform. Many of our fellow voyagers followed suit, tossing fruit of every description through the windows. Yet not a soul stepped down out of the train, for fear of being bowled over by monkeys. At the first sight of the too-ripe food, a stampede descended from who knows where to begin what apparently is a regularly scheduled feast.

A Day Out

We’ve been here long enough now to have outlasted some of the regulars in the neighborhood. A few of the familiar faces at the markets and along the sidewalks have begun to turn over, and many of the other tenants in our building have moved on to some other city or hemisphere. In a word, we’re achieving veteran status. Clearly it’s time to stir the stew.

Luckily an old acquaintance provided me an excuse to do just that. Joy Patman passed through on summer break from Seattle Schools—she and I taught together way back in the day—and we spent a delightful afternoon-into-evening traveling to the end of the line, hopping a new mode of transportation to see where it would take us, and then doing it all over again. Before we were through, we could claim SkyTrain, taxi, long-distance bus, two regular trains, a motorcycle, a ferry, and a tuk-tuk.

(Speaking of those two-stroke marvels, if you haven’t been following the misadventures of the two English lasses who are traveling from Bangkok to England in a pink tuk-tuk they’ve named Ting Tong, then drop everything right now and follow this link. You’ll be well rewarded.)

Ask Her for Her Autograph

Here’s Jip at the standing frame, imitating her favorite Major League pitchers. (Talent scouts please note: throws both right and left.) Though she hadn’t used the device for more than a year, as soon as she was vertical again, instinct took over and she began limbering up.

Reassembling this specialized piece equipment was made easier by a great set of directions written out by Greg. (Step number 4 reads: “Woo hoo! The tricky bits are now over! Have a Singha on me”!) He had taken it apart and helped ship it, after storing it for nearly a year in the basement.

At first Jip’s posture seemed off. I began tinkering with all the adjustable pads and levers, but somehow I couldn’t get them lined up so that her body was standing at attention. She was unusually patient—a sign of how important this activity is to her—as I sweated and swore and wished for a professional to come to my rescue.

In desperation I emailed the manufacturer. I confess my expectations for a helpful reply were low. But in less than 24 hours I had heard back, from the company vice president no less:

… It sounds to me like you have an issue with the knee placement or the sling strap length … forward me your serial number … take a picture of her from each side and from the back … If I can see her in the unit I can tell you what adjustments need to be done, no problem.

Who says you can’t get good customer service these days?

Ask Me for My Autograph

Middle age has made me thin enough up on top that I decided there was no point in trying to grow hair there anymore. So I walked into a barber shop yesterday and asked for the Zidane look. The row of haircutters, all going through World Cup withdrawal, knew exactly what I meant. They got out the clipper attachment number one, and pretty soon I could almost have passed for the head-butter himself. Can you tell who is who?

Anniversary

Today marks a year since our arrival in Bangkok. Immigrants, I find, almost always remember the day they first passed through customs. It is a kind of birthday, I suppose.

I confess that when we first came I thought it might be a short stay, that Jip wasn’t really going the right direction, that Thailand wasn’t necessarily going to improve her health any. But recently I watched her harness up in the standing frame for the first time since we’ve been here (it took me a few days to piece it all back together) and I thought, my god, she’s stronger than she was THREE years ago, let alone the day we showed up here. It really is remarkable how her physical health has steadied, and perhaps even made some gains, in this weather, which we’d been told so long to avoid.

We’ve been to see a doctor exactly twice over the year, once to simply introduce ourselves to a general practitioner, the second time to fix yet another hyponatremia episode. Granted, that second trip was a serious event, requiring a couple nights in the hospital, but even so, it was much simpler to deal with in Bangkok than it would have been in the States. And Jip has shown zero interest in visiting a neurologist, even though I’m told that there are several good ones in town, some who even have experience with her condition. A few folks have speculated that there is an Asian version of the disease, which for all we know prefers hot conditions to what we lived with in Seattle.

Thailand has also steadied me. My blood pressure is likely lower than it’s been for some time, certainly lower than during the fast and furious days just before and after we flew here. The pace then was pretty quick, as we emptied a house and looked for an apartment, at the same time that we were combining so many goodbyes with so many introductions. Today, the same nice place we’ve lived in all along here still serves us well, as do the same two young women, who still come every twelve hours, six days a week, to take care of Jip.

Training: Chugging Along

Jip’s standing frame arrived this week, so she’s ready to get vertical again. Exercise is already a high priority for her, sometimes taking up two or three hours of the afternoon. Adding this old friend to her arsenal of equipment will probably increase her appetite even more.

Look over these pics of her doing some trunk twisting on the edge of the bed. Even though she still doesn’t have complete control over those muscles, her balance is pretty good. I hardly needed to support her at all.


















My exercise routine is also changing slightly. I have a new running partner, in the tradition of the early morning weekend club that supported me in countless ways when we lived in Seattle. This guy is more serious than I am, and seems to handle the climate better, but we each manage to get what we need out of the arrangement.

He meets me at the corner shortly before 6am, at which point he’s already run for twenty minutes. Then we run to a large park, where we do a lap together. Then I rest for 11 minutes (his stopwatch) while he does another lap. Finally we run back to our place, I quit, and he continues on home for another twenty minutes. Everybody wins!

Stuffed

Speaking of taking football seriously, our British neighbors were frantic when I popped ‘round to watch England vs. Paraguay the other night. “Can you believe this?” he said, pointing at images of the king on nearly every television channel. She said, “We’ve been stuffed.”

We had no choice but to speedwalk to a nearby pub, The Black Swan, where a satellite dish was picking up the action. An international mix of fellow fans there agreed on one thing: England’s play was rubbish.

The good news is that every World Cup game since then has been broadcast live on regular TV, start to finish. The bad news, for Thailand, is that this month will not go down in history as the country’s most productive.

All the news media are dominated by coverage of the results. Gambling is apparently outrunning prostitution and illegal drugs as contributors to the gross domestic product. And bedtimes are not being respected—the last game of the day here begins at 2am Bangkok time.

I’m a good case in point. While blearily waiting for my second bus the other morning, I hopped on the wrong one, and proceeded to find myself on a highway going right back the way I had just come. I got to work an hour late.

Bangkok Masters Football Tournament, brought to you by Tesco Lotus

A special tournament for older soccer players was Organized, with a capital “O,” by the British Chamber of Commerce. When I signed up, I anticipated seeing some of the same faces that I had grown to have some sympathy with during the regular season, which ended recently. I’m talking about the greyhairs.

A few of those players were around, but most of the participants were strangers. Not surprising, considering that many had flown in to play this tourney. And not just flown from Chiang Mai or Phuket: our first match, in the morning, was against a team from Brunei. Before playing Malaysians in the afternoon, we watched Singaporeans go head to head with Australians.

Turns out this event was a pretty big deal. A slick 40-page brochure, meal coupons, and commemorative shirts (splashed with names of several big corporate sponsors) were handed to everyone who registered. An all-star team of ex-English professional stars put on a clinic in the morning, played an exhibition in the afternoon, and keynoted at the evening banquet.

It’s amazing how seriously people take their football in these parts. Who needs the World Cup? when you have over-35s willing to pay for plane fare, hotels, entry fees, and perhaps a couple nights’ worth of booze and wom…

…wait … I think I get it now.

Hush Comes Over the Crowds

Something was wrong as I came out of the movies a few nights ago. Bangkok was silent. This never happens.

Soon I arrived at a corner to find a dozen police. Two more cops blocked the stairway leading to the sky train. Any other week, I might have suspected a murder investigation. That corner houses a shrine that Bangkokians take very seriously. A few months back, when a deranged guy tried to destroy the shrine with a hammer, some nearby maintenance men destroyed him with a shovel.

But on this night I figured the quiet was the result of police redirecting traffic to accommodate a visiting monarch. Rather than wait to catch a glimpse of a royal Rolls, I walked home, enjoying the rare stillness along the normally busy road.

Not long before, when Murph was still in town, the king’s celebration produced another atypical calm. We assembled along the river to watch a practice session of the 52 royal boats, rowed by over 2,000 boatmen, who lift their paddles into the air like wings after every stroke. This ancient ceremony is relatively rare these days; it has happened only 14 times in my lifetime.

For the practice, the river was closed to other traffic, meaning that the usual mixture of tugboats and ferries and long-tailed power boats were all sidelined for the afternoon. Murph and I marveled at being able to hear the water lapping at the bank. Usually, like in most of the rest of the city, traffic noise there drowns out most natural sounds.

Our viewing spot happened to be the place where Jip trained as a nurse, many years ago. The current batch of students sold tickets and set out chairs along the water, as a fundraiser. It was fun to look at them and imagine Jip as she was then. She also enjoyed hearing us tell her afterwards about where we were. Based on her reactions to our descriptions, I gather it hasn’t changed much in the meantime.

Big Anniversary

King Bhumibol is the focus of a nationwide gala. Thailand is in holiday mode, big-time. I can’t think what the equivalent would be in the States. Probably what’s happening here this week simply couldn’t happen there at this moment in history. In a nutshell, the celebration is about unanimity.

Everyone agrees that the king is a great guy. And because as of yesterday he had been on the throne for sixty years, making him the longest-serving monarch on the planet, everyone feels drawn to hit the streets, or to put on a yellow shirt, or at least to light a candle, in his honor.

Granted, I’m not reading the Thai press, or following the many commemorative events with the perspective of a native. So if there are critics out there who feel that this massive party is too much, I probably wouldn’t know about them. But on the surface, the depth of feeling seems genuine. A Thai woman at work told me, “If anything happened to the king, I would cry for three months.” From what I’ve seen, she speaks for millions.

So, for a few more days, the fireworks and barge processions and exhibits and banquets for royals from 25 other countries will continue, and the traffic will snarl, and the regular street vendors will be forbidden on the sidewalks. And then when it’s all over, even though the political situation in Thailand is as messy as it is in most places in the world, moving forward will be a little bit easier. The glow from this week’s events should last a long time.

Comfort from Home

My sister Murph came to visit, bearing gifts. It happened to be my birthday, so I made out well. But Jip really scored. She had put together a request list of provisions that are difficult to get here. Murph succeeded on every count.

For the record, here was Jip’s inventory: dried blueberries (a staple at breakfast, but very expensive in Bangkok), colorful cotton socks (Jip still claims her feet are cold, and that locally made socks won’t warm them up), a collection of hairdresser’s capes that don’t smell like plastic (the better to keep her comfortable at tooth brushing time), brown rice crackers (you’d think they’d be easy to find here, but the Thai brands are flavored with things Jip doesn’t like), and, as a bonus, a just-published book by my cousin’s husband that Jip is enjoying having read to her (Miracles on the Water, by Tom Nagorski, Hyperion).

Then there was an envelope full of cash, provided by a very generous aunt, which allowed Murph and me to live large on an island while she got over jet lag. Normally we’d have opted for the bungalow-with-a-fan accommodations. Our bigger expense account led us to a VIP room on an isolated beach, where we had the very fine restaurant to ourselves.

A good time had by all!

Just What the Doctor Ordered

We had a few issues this week with the people who help Jip out. And the rainy season seems to have suddenly begun in earnest, so her legs are feeling stiffer than usual. And the pace picked up at my job. And I stayed up too late one night watching a movie that turned out not to be worth it. Long story short, Friday afternoon came and I was dragging.

Of course, some weeks are bound to go that way. That’s why the world has pubs, I suppose, and shopping malls, and karaoke.

What I did Friday evening to put the week behind me was walk ten minutes from the office to a nondescript storefront, where four matronly women wearing lab coats looked up as I pushed through the door. “Massage?” they asked. “Please,” I said. Soon I had changed into a pair of cotton pajamas and was lying on one of the dozen mattresses spread around the open room.

I had first heard about this place from a colleague at CDC. She had arrived ahead of me and was two mattresses away. “Make sure you tell them you want two hours,” she mumbled, before apparently slipping off to sleep.

The woman who worked on me had probably acquired her strong hands by harvesting rice in an upcountry village. She and her fellow lab coats laughed as they worked, gossiped about who was passing by outside, and commented on the action in a soap opera that was blaring from a TV.

Of course I have other massage options in Bangkok. At this place, clothing was not optional. It was free of candles and incense. The only decoration in the room was a set of Buddha images on the top shelf of a bookcase by the desk. But my cares wouldn’t have melted any faster in a fancier setting. The price, with a generous tip, came to under ten dollars.

Chiang Mai III

The last two times I went to the north, I was upfront about looking for a job. My approach during this sequel was less direct. I asked people at health-related organizations if they had considered teaming up with the CDC. I reasoned that if a small collaboration grew and took off, then they would have to hire me to manage it.

I know, I know, you’re thinking, “he’s dreaming WHAT?” I agree, the “information interview” strategy will take a long time to bear fruit, assuming it ever does. But I’m not in any hurry. Jip rarely talks about wanting to move to Chiang Mai anymore, having settled into her Bangkok schedule.

Also, salaries that would support caregivers and our other special needs are rare in Chiang Mai. I visited a former housemate of mine from the refugee camp days, who now lives there. She says she can afford a cool teak house and a new baby mostly because her husband works in Bangkok and commutes home on weekends.

Speaking of commuting, one potential collaborator I called on pointed out that considering Bangkok’s traffic jams, he could probably get to CDC faster by plane and cab from Chiang Mai than I get there via my daily combination of sky train, shared van, and motorcycle taxi.

So who knows where we’ll be living and working at this time next year? I’d still like to find a way to take advantage of Chiang Mai’s cooler weather, higher hills, and emptier roads. But if it takes us a while to pull it off, then as the Thais say, “mai pen rai” (never mind, don’t worry about it)!