Loy Krathong in Nonthaburi

As usual Jip this year took a Scrooge-like attitude toward Loy Krathong, saying as she did in 2005, 2006, and 2009 that the holiday has been commercialized and romanticized. She’s right about that part. But here we are in new quarters, with a new place to float, so in the end tonight she went along for the ride and the spectacle was beautiful.

A big banana leaf snipped from the garden out back provided plenty of raw material for more than enough krathongs. Jip’s caregiver and I pushed Jip to a prime spot near the swimming pool where she could hear the frogs as they began to celebrate the evening. We thought we had the place to ourselves, but just as we launched the last of our floating candles, a neighbor family, walking toward the parking lot, noticed what we were up to.

I think the parents had planned to celebrate down at the river, but their children couldn’t wait. Soon the whole pool was illuminated by our combined efforts. The kids were squealing, the frogs were answering, the world was shimmering. Jip grudgingly cracked a smile.

Four Hands

The Angkor Wat half marathon is coming up again. In trying to get ready without getting injured, I altered my training routine this year to include massages on rest days. Considering that every other day is a rest day, you might call this schedule pretty decadent.

Guilty as charged… but I’m pain-free so far, so maybe the plan is working.

One complication I hadn’t foreseen: massage shops close early in our new part of town. At some of them, if you’re not in the door by 7pm, there’s a risk of being told to come back tomorrow. That’s nearly what happened the other day. I showed up around 7:15, figuring I was safe because I asked for just the one-hour, feet-and-legs-only variety. The three staff had plans to be somewhere at 8. No problem, I said, starting to devise my Plan B.

They beat me to it. “How about I do your right leg, and at the same time she does your left leg, and we wrap up in 30 minutes?” Deal.

Old Pals, New Script

Jip had a visit from a few college classmates over the weekend. This group developed strong ties 30 years ago through lots of late night bull sessions. Their interest at that time was student activism.

The political pendulum swung fast in those days. Democratic experiments alternated with direct military rule. Conservative governments were brought down by leftist protests, only to return with the support of large movements that were concerned about the spread of communism. Thousands of dissidents went into the jungle and challenged the government from there about all kinds of issues.

Thailand had been a strong American ally during the war in Vietnam, which was still fresh in the minds of the Thai public when Jip entered college. Many students resented that American airbases inside Thailand weren’t being dismantled.

Jip says she and the friends who came to see us a few days ago protested “American hegemony” in front of the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok. They also chanted over what they said were unfair subsidies given to American rice farmers, which made it impossible for Thai farmers to compete in world markets.

This weekend, they talked about other things. The first one to show up hadn’t seen Jip since graduation. I was surprised to find that he too uses a wheelchair. He arrived in a specially equipped van, with a caregiver in tow. It wasn’t long before he asked Jip about how she prevents bedsores!

His disability has affected his speech. I imagine that some people meeting him for the first time might have trouble understanding him, as happens with Jip. Yet the two of them seemed to catch each other’s words easily, never needing to repeat themselves. Jip’s caregiver and his caregiver when off in a corner to compare notes.

After the others arrived, everyone soon began joking and laughing. They caught up on who has changed jobs, been divorced, gotten which advanced degrees—the usual old stuff. Jip never said so directly, but I sensed that for her the most special part of the afternoon was the new stuff.

Great Sleeping Weather

Historical average temperatures for October 30:

                         High           Low

Chicago, Illinois        57 (14)        37 (3)
Seattle, Washington      55 (13)        43 (6)
Bangkok, Thailand        88 (31)        73 (23)

Conditions don’t get much better than this here. It’s been cooler than normal for late October. Tonight the mercury dipped below 70—a record low for this date in Thailand.

There was none of the usual sweaty forehead on Jip, whose wacky internal thermostat usually leads her to request more blankets than she really needs. I tucked her in at bedtime and then went for a run. In the wonderful humidity-free air, I felt like I could keep going till sunrise.

Now I’m finally home again, googling historical average temperatures. In a minute I’ll look around for whatever blankets are left over, and sleep like a brick.

No Looking Back

We’ve now been in our new apartment about two months. It’s been a good move in almost every way. There are only two things I miss from our old neighborhood.

One is a pad thai cart that sold a very impressive plate of noodles. I ate there about once a week. I even made a point of stopping to say goodbye to the wok-meister before we left.

The other is a decent DVD rental place. There are video stores where we live now, but mostly the movies are for sale only. Also, the categories are very different from what I was used to. Here is a representative sample of the shelf labels at one of the shops I wandered into this afternoon:

Car Action
Hardboiled
Panic
Sky Action
Splatter

I am not making these up.

Double Birthday in the Midwest

The blurry picture below, taken around 1980, got a nice update last weekend as we all gathered for a double celebration of the big round-numbered birthdays of our parents, who were born a month apart in 1930. Fall Midwestern temperatures were perfect for a Saturday picnic and slumber party.

The highlight was watching the beaming smiles on the two guests of honor, as they floated around chatting with their seven kids, six grandkids, and a swarm of significant others. If Jip had made it, we would have had 100% attendance. That turnout—21 showed up for Sunday brunch, from four different time zones—was a fitting tribute to these two marvelous people.

Thai Politics, Update

Thailand remains a tinderbox, nearly five months after the capital burned as opposition protesters scattered following a military crackdown on their extended central-city demonstration. Since then, opposition leadership has been silenced through jailings and selective blocking of radio and web communication. Nobody can say how many back-channel conversations are taking place that might lead to reconciliation between people at opposite ends of the political spectrum here.

A bomb went off yesterday in another part of the province next to Bangkok where we just moved. The explosion was quite a distance from our place, but it does serve as a reminder that lots of bitterness remains, in spite of a “Together We Can” campaign started by people representing the silent majority.

An emergency decree outlawing gatherings of more than five people remains in place for Bangkok and surrounding provinces. If elections were held tomorrow, the prime minister’s party would lose and the current government would be replaced by one that would like to bring back Thaksin. It’s still a potent mix here of globalization coming to the villages, obstinacy coming from the old guard, testosterone, fear, and legal mumbo-jumbo.

Somehow, Thailand’s economy churns along. Tourism seems to be rebounding, and the baht has rarely been stronger.

Nailbiter

Tennis doesn’t fill stadiums here the way that soccer and Thai boxing do. Just the same, net sports get lots of play—it seems like there’s a game of badminton or takraw in every side street—and some well-regarded pro tennis players have emerged from Thailand in the last decade.

A friend called to offer me a spare ticket to the qualifying rounds of the annual Thailand Open, sounding almost apologetic about the no-names who would be on the program. I didn’t care about seeing Nadal. A day out sounded fun, and it had been a long time since my last chance to see professional sports.

We settled in as Warut Korkiatthaworn took on Alex Bogomolov. It was easy to tell these two apart. One of them won nearly all the points. Isn’t that how things are supposed to turn out on the first day of a pro tournament?

Next up were Dmitry Tursonov, on our left, against Marinko Motosevic, on our right. Or was it the other way around? Who knew? Each of them won his serve. Every time. After an hour of remarkably even play, the first tiebreaker finished 10-8. I was exhausted.

Now I know this wasn’t Roger vs. Rafa at Wimbledon. In the grand scheme of things, these guys were competing for peanuts, in a match that next week will be long forgotten. Yet I wasn’t sure my poor old tired body could handle another set like the first one. It wasn’t just that an hour’s labor had come down to a single point. Nor that tennis etiquette discourages yelling among the spectators, even when yelling is clearly called for.

No, the true cause of my tension was the full-blast air conditioning. This match was taking place in a refrigerated arena, which at that moment housed only a sprinkling of people. If by some chance one of the players hit a ball out of the court and into the stands, most likely it would have landed in an empty seat.

Where were all the tennis fans? Outside, shopping for gear at the crowded exhibition hall. Snapping photos next to the life-size cutouts of Paradorn and his glamorous wife. Lunching on countless varieties of fast food.

Hardly anyone besides my friend and me knew about the battle of nerves going on inside the deep freeze.

The second set followed the same pattern as the first. By this time we had finally identified Tursonov as the one most anxious to move things along. Unlike Motosevic, he never argued a line call or dawdled during the breaks between games. Perhaps his confidence came from experience: we learned later that at the 2006 Thailand Open, he had won the whole tournament.

Whatever the reason, he prevailed in this match… barely. This time the tiebreaker ended 7-3. Out of 194 points played, Tursonov won only 12 more than Motosevic did. As they walked off the court after two hours, both players looked relieved that it was over. Yet their emancipation was nothing compared to the joy I felt as I walked out into the thawing mid-afternoon sun. I would gladly watch a rematch some day. As long as it is played at room temperature.

New Digs, cont.

I already knew that I liked our new neighborhood. Lately I’m appreciating more and more the apartment itself. Though built a couple decades before our previous spot, it has gorgeous and well-maintained gardens, a little lake out back, no peeling paint. The cheerful staff even encourages recycling—not many places in Thailand can say that!

New Digs

Jip and I moved to a new section of the city this week. Technically, we’re in a new province, just over the official Bangkok boundary. On our first morning in the new apartment, Jip identified bird sounds outside the window that she hadn’t heard at our old place. She asked if we had moved to the countryside.

I didn’t want to tell her right away that Nonthaburi no longer looks the way it did before she moved to the U.S. nearly twenty years ago, and that in 2010 it might as well be a part of the Big Mango. If Jip wants to picture the area as mostly open space, I’m not going to pop her balloon.

We’re now surrounded by fewer shophouses and sky train stations, but more car repair chains and coffee shops. The neighborhood includes a small university and a golf driving range. Instead of the elephant carvings that are traditionally offered at Thai temples in appreciation of answered prayers, wooden zebras surround some Nonthaburi temples.

There’s no less traffic here than where we were, but the distance to my office is much shorter— the major reason for the move. We’re also now further from the areas most likely to be centers of political protest. I wish we didn’t have to consider that factor, but it was no fun watching Bangkok burn from our balcony last May. It would be unrealistic to believe that Thailand has seen its final demonstration of the year.

After just a few days, no regrets. In fact, I’m walking around wondering why everybody doesn’t live here. We’re saving tons on the cost of an apartment. An inexpensive van leaves for downtown every 15 minutes or so from a nearby parking lot. Just beyond that is a good massage shop. What more does a body need?

Best of all for us, Jip’s entire caregiver team came along enthusiastically. I had expected we would lose at least one of them in the move. When I first brought up the subject, I was pleased to learn that one has a sister living close by, and another would be shortening her commute considerably. That left the one who is completing her bachelor’s degree at a campus far across town. Even she didn’t mind our new location—it’s just down the road from the mall where her boyfriend recently got a job.

Not Muzak

At our offices on the campus of the Ministry of Public Health, outdoor loudspeakers sometimes broadcast background music—pleasant, traditional sounds, usually a woman singing softly. Never a loud guitar, never an advertisement. The kind of thing you might hear at a trendy cafe.

So it’s been quite a jarring and reverberating change to have big construction happening next door. We’re treated throughout the day to the poundpoundpound of a giant hammer, several stories tall. This device whacks its business end against an eighteen-inch-wide, one-hundred-foot-high cement chopstick, again and again and again, until only a tiny fraction of the piling is still visible above the ground. Then the huge machine rolls a few feet and clobbers a new piling, overandoverandover.

Hundreds of pilings await their turn to be brutally pummeled into the earth. Why not drill many holes first, and then bury these long poles that will become the foundation of a future building? Because apparently you have to dig a long way down in Bangkok before you reach anything that can be considered solid. The Earth’s crust in this corner of the continent—once known as the “Venice of Asia”—is mostly muck. We’re talking sea level and below! Can you say “water table?” Can you say “we’re sinking!?”

No wonder nobody in this town props up their structures on rectangles of concrete. Instead, every new project, from simple garden wall all the way up to high-rise hotel, starts with the pounding of pilings. That way, the finished product has a pretty good chance of staying level.

The engineer who explained all this for me also solved a mystery that had been bugging me for some time: he said that Bangkok’s sidewalks crinkle because they rarely have pilings underneath them. Unlike the buildings they pass in front of, the sidewalks float on the city’s slurry soil. That’s why they often consist of small pavers or bricks instead of poured cement blocks, and why it’s not unusual to see large gaps form between the sidewalks and the steps of buildings.

Some day I’m sure we’ll forget these few weeks of trying to tune out what sounds like a hardcore punk rock club next door. Today, I’d rather have Muzak.

Leap of Faith

Going back to a place can be tricky when your memories are happy but dated. I knew I was taking a risk returning to Koh Si Chang, the island with the deceptively industrial façade off Thailand’s eastern coast. It had been two years since a pleasing day trip there made me think an overnight would be twice the fun.

But when on arrival we couldn’t find a decent spot for lunch after several minutes of sweaty walking, my friends began to make noises about suddenly needing to be back in town that evening. Things looked up after we hailed a passing “skylab” (the dominant transportation on the island has a unique shape), though our plans remained decidedly uncertain throughout the afternoon.

We had tracked down food and explored a well curated museum of marine life (lots of touch tanks) before we again broached the subject of where to sleep. Our skylab driver mentioned Paree Huts, a new resort at a far corner of the island. However, his credibility had suffered somewhat after we discovered that he had been double dipping—ferrying around other passengers rather than waiting for us at each new circle tour destination as promised, and as my driver two years before had done. I began to have the return-trip-is-never-as-good blues.

That was before we reached Paree Huts. Looking out at an empty Gulf of Thailand rather than at the expanse of supertankers we had navigated on the way to the island, the resort felt far removed from the big city. The manager welcomed us warmly before sending us off across a series of limestone ledges with an intrepid guide to look over the available bungalows.

These bamboo structures seemed to have been designed for the African veldt rather than for the steep side of a rock-strewn island—they were tall and tufty, as though spores had blown in on the wind and established themselves randomly among the crags. Each hut was an engineering marvel, perched on skinny scaffolding but solid when walked in. They never swayed, even when the wind picked up and a rainstorm passed through during the night.

Equally impressive was the design of the swimming pool, which integrated rock outcroppings and cement to form a strange shape that hugged the contour of the hillside. I took a quick dip, my habit when surveying any new lodgings, and quickly determined that the true star among the resort’s water attractions was elsewhere. Sure enough, when we registered, a sign caught our eyes that began, “Please wear a life preserver when jumping off the cliff.” As soon as I saw that, the blues were gone for good.

My friends talked me into waiting until morning to make the leap. The light will be better then, they said, rightly suspecting that I would want photo documentation. I couldn’t wait to get out of bed the next day and head for the edge. Nobody else on land seemed to be awake, so I waited in a life jacket for my cameraman as a seabird and a fisherman each plied the now calm waters in search of sunrise catches.


When the time came to jump, I never hesitated. New memories were being made. Koh Si Chang had risen to the occasion once again.

Grandma Rests

Jip’s grandma passed away peacefully on Monday. She took a nap around noon and never woke up. That morning she refused breakfast for the first time in the 99 years and seven months of this existence (rounded up to 100 years by the designer of a large banner that hung outside the house all week).

Everyone in the village knew her. She wasn’t born there, but since arriving in the 1920s she hadn’t left often. For both of the relatively long periods she spent away from Ban Krud, she was with Jip. They lived together during Jip’s tween years, when her parents sent her to the next province north to attend middle school, a luxury that Ban Krud couldn’t afford at that time. Several years later, Jip took a job in the far north of the country, and invited Grandma to join her for a year. While there, Grandma added a few new basket making tricks to her repertoire.

Just as it takes a village to raise a child, everyone also participates in sending a grandma on to her resting place. This week dozens of people helped cook, put up tents, arrange flowers, and hang the blankets that recently have replaced wreaths as the tribute of choice. It used to be that a coffin would sit surrounded by decorative wreaths, many of them on tripods bearing a sash with the name of the donor. Nobody ever recycled those wreaths. Somewhere along the line a new tradition was born, which allows the merit associated with such a gift to keep on accumulating as the blanket gets donated to a monk at a temple or some other worthy recipient.

Five Thai kings reigned during Grandma’s life. Many years’ worth of stories about her got told during the mourning rituals at the house each evening. This afternoon’s cremation ceremony at the temple was filled to overflowing. At around 11 a.m., loud explosions were set off to let the whole village know that the ceremony would begin soon. By noon every seat was taken and the big open room was buzzing with conversation.

Jip chuckled and grinned throughout, glad to be surrounded by old acquaintances. We brought along two caregivers, which meant that she didn’t have to repeat her story endlessly to the many neighbors and classmates who hadn’t seen her for a while—in some cases over thirty years! Jip’s mom was also in a good mood. Grandma’s health had been good until about ten months ago. Since then the demands on Mom have been pretty exhausting.

Monks chanted. Boe, the only great-granddaughter, did a fine job reading a biography of Grandma that Jip’s brother Chao had done a fine job of writing. Various people went to the altar for various reasons. And then with a minimum of melodrama, the simple casket was delivered to the crematorium that is a standard part of Thai temples. Chao lifted the large photo of Grandma off its stand and walked it away from the altar, never looking back.

For much of this afternoon’s drive back to Bangkok, Jip closed her eyes and smiled. She had worn the same expression all weekend, shedding a tear only once when Boe read aloud a mention of the time Grandma had spent up north. We both were tired. Outside our bedroom window, card playing, dominoes, and chatting had lasted into the wee hours. Most likely they’ll continue till dawn tonight, as often happens on the seventh and final night of a Thai funeral.

French Street Scene

Five weeks after a fantastic reunion in Europe with mes amis and mis amigos, the memories were just starting to fade. Then Jennifer sent these pictures and instantly I was right back there.