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!