Tarmac Troubles

The runways at the country’s newly-opened showcase airport may be cracked. Depends who you ask. I went to a discussion at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club (motto: “You don’t have to be foreign and you don’t have to be a correspondent”) to listen to some local authorities.

I knew I wouldn’t hear “the truth.” Already the country has lost face. The blame and spin phase still has a long way to go before it peaks. But I was interested in the Thai way of dealing with the press.

Somebody asked how far back the alleged problems could be traced. (Planning for this project began forty years ago.) Referring to the possibility that corruption had led to corner cutting when the runway’s foundation layers were laid, the answer was, “I don’t have to tell you which administration was in power then. Everybody knows that.”

That kind of indirect response struck me as different from the American style of throwing mud. But when a German questioner wondered why not bring in international experts to fix whatever is wrong, the same speaker leveled his gaze, changed his tone, and made it crystal clear that he thought the credentials of Thai engineers were second to none.

What will happen next? To minimize the chance that faults at the new airport will cause an accident, most likely the former one will reopen. Some flights will land there while parts of the new airstrip are repaired. Unfortunately, it’s too late to mend the damage done to the national pride.

No Secrets

In some countries I’ve visited, people have stared and pointed at me because I look different. Here in Thailand, it’s generally no big deal when a farang (foreigner) passes by. Sometimes I hear Thais talk about me, when they think I don’t understand, but mostly I get lulled into thinking I’m blending in.

An exception is with merchants. I’ve been asked if I want what I had last time—at shops where my only previous visit was months beforehand. Or consider the dozens of motorcycle taxi drivers at one end of our street. They take several passengers a day to various government buildings in the neighborhood. But I’ve only ridden home with them a few times since we’ve lived in this neighborhood. Usually I’d rather walk.

One night last week I was tired and it was late. I caught the eye of one of the drivers, a guy I’m sure I had never seen before. But he must have seen me. As I got on the back of his motorcycle, he called out the name of our apartment. So much for invisibility.

Change Just One Letter

Jip’s physical abilities had been stable for a long time. Then recently she began having trouble gripping with one of her hands. She could still eat on her own, but she struggled when brushing her hair.

It spurred me to call upon a doctor whose name I had come across while doing some Internet searching a while ago. This woman appears to be the neurologist most interested in studying Jip’s disease as it appears in Asians. She has published several articles suggesting that a uniquely Asian version may exist.

I showed up at her clinic without an appointment and without Jip, but she generously agreed to see me. We talked for half an hour. She was very easy to know, and seemed interested in Jip’s case. I ended up offering to chat with any spouses of her patients who might be confused or angry or wondering about what might come next. A guy from across town has already called me, and we’ve agreed to meet for lunch some day.

As I got ready to go, I asked the doctor if there was anything she would advise us to try that we hadn’t already. I didn’t have any expectations that she would have a miracle cure, but I thought she might suggest a treatment or diet. Instead she said, “in your wife’s case I recommend meditation.”

Which of course Jip already does. But the point is that no doctor has ever mentioned it to us before. Medication, yes. But never Meditation. I appreciated her avoiding what must be a temptation in her profession to tinker with small symptoms, or to talk about experimental therapies that in our case have always turned out be false hopes. It was very refreshing. Yet another reason why I’m glad we came to this country.

We’ll Get There When We Get There

I prefer public transportation over driving because I can get some reading or some language study done instead of getting stuck behind the wheel in traffic. Bangkok offers lots of options for getting around, some of which are world class, definitely much better than what Seattle had to offer when we lived there.

My favorite of these options is the bus. It’s not the fastest or the cleanest or the quietest, but it does have a few advantages that the Skytrain, river taxi, subway, shared van, and canal boat cannot claim.

For one thing, it’s dirt cheap. Going pretty much anywhere in this town on the bus costs less than fifty cents. I’m talking here about the high end, air conditioned, most-everybody-gets-a-seat brand of bus. You can pay less and breathe fumes.

Fares are collected by so-called bus hostesses, who seem to me remarkably cheerful considering the repetitiveness of their jobs. Perhaps they enjoy the conversations with the drivers, or the music that is sometimes playing on elaborately wired speakers throughout the bus. The polyester uniforms worn by these bus hostesses often have a strange sheen that comes from having been ironed too aggressively.

If you were the stereotyping type, you could even say these women are representative of Thailand—they’re easy going, they’re cute, and they’re dressed as smartly as their budgets will allow (one won my heart the other day with her Chicago Cubs ankle socks). Their first priority doesn’t seem to be climbing the career ladder. The adventure offered by a life on the road, with its interminable backups, followed by quick bursts forward and sudden swerves, satisfies for now. Tomorrow will take care of itself.

Bombs Come to Bangkok

Jip and I had a few fine, slow days before and after New Year’s. We set no goals and therefore had no trouble meeting our targets. I got out of town a couple of times, once together with Jip to the farm that our friend Therese invited us to once before. It's a place we both feel comfortable and relaxed.

The peace was shattered when bombs went off simultaneously in Bangkok, early on New Year’s Eve. Jip claims she heard explosions. The best reports I’ve read say that all told there were eight bombs. Each was detonated remotely in a different part of town. These places were not as crowded that day as they are typically, because many Bangkokians had gone away for the weekend. Yet three people were killed, and roughly thirty more were hurt.

Nobody has taken credit for causing this misery, though plenty of analysts have been willing to explain it in ways that serve their interests. We already knew which groups in the region don’t like each other and why (those who lost power in the coup, separatists from the south, the police, Al Qaeda—take your pick), so these events are like sharpening stones for people with axes to grind.

To me what matters is that a certain innocence seems to have been lost here. Bangkok joins the ranks of cities worldwide where people think twice about going out. Violence has happened here before, certainly, but on the whole the place has always felt safer than places I’ve lived before. Crime is rare, walking anywhere anytime is taken for granted, and large scale feuding of the kind that makes international headlines has seemed like a problem reserved for other countries.

I have no reason to think that explosions will now suddenly become common, or even that I should or could take extra precautions. Yet it saddens me that some people think spreading fear in this way is a good way to advance their cause. Especially because it won’t. No message was sent really by this act. Or perhaps countless messages were sent. Because no one has claimed the bombs, we’re all free to assign our own reasons for them, thus fanning the flames of our own personal fires. Quite a shame.

Meet and Greet

Jip’s reaction to visitors may be changing slowly. Until a few months ago, she rejected most people’s offers to drop by. If guests came over unexpectedly, she often deflected their attempts at conversation, or made it clear that she wanted to get back to her schedule.

When I knew in advance that someone would arrive, I usually didn’t warn her. That way, she didn’t have time to think of all the reasons why she didn’t want company. Sometimes she had a good time in spite of herself.

Jip hardly said a word about my parents staying with us when they were here not long ago. Then we had a call from a couple Jip hadn’t seen since the mid-‘80s. They came over with old pictures that looked familiar. (Sure enough, I found a near perfect match for one of them in a photo album of ours. Clearly it had been taken on the same day.) These folks stayed more than two hours—a Bangkok record—and Jip hardly stopped talking the whole time.

If you asked her, Jip would still say she prefers an extremely consistent routine. But now and then she can deal with little swerves and surprises.

Home for the Holidays

Ten years to the day after our Thai wedding, my parents and Jip and I all re-lived the event with a visit to Jip’s mom and grandma in the village. Their house is where Jip grew up, and is the only one Jip’s mom (right) has ever lived in. Last time we were there , 96-year-old Grandma told Jip, “It’s good you came. I might never get to see you again.”

But she seems in good form. Our welcome, this time mid-afternoon instead of after midnight, again made the six-hour drive worthwhile. Everyone just lit up. And by going down during the day, I remembered how pretty it is in the part of the country. The hills of Burma look inviting in the distance. Beachcombers gauge their progress by how much they can see of the glistening clifftop temple.

Jip’s older brother acted like a chamber of commerce director, touring Ma and Pa, as well as a couple of CDC friends who came along for the ride. After dropping them at a hotel, he and his wife took me to a bustling Saturday night market where the food choices beat anything I’d seen in Bangkok.

The routine at the house was slow and easy. Jip seemed content from start to finish. I could get used to this.

Reason Number 322 Why We’ve Got a Pretty Sweet Deal Going Here

My nose hairs have never had it so good.

When I go to the barber in this country, it’s an hour-long event, complete with multiple kinds of clippers, razors, scissors, brushes, powders, and antiseptic liquids of undetermined origin and purpose.

The goal of all this is to produce the skinhead look that I’ve decided is practical here. In theory, the whole job could get done in under five minutes. But Thais take their hair care seriously.

By the time we’re done, my whole head has been trimmed, not just my scalp. Thus the nose hairs, ear hairs, chin hairs, and even eyebrows have all gotten attention. If I’m lucky and there aren’t too many people waiting, a shoulder rub might get thrown into the deal. It sets me back two bucks, including tip.

A friend of Chao’s cuts Jip's hair. She comes to our place, and does both Chao and Jip in less time than I spend in the chair. Then again, Jip doesn't have nose hair issues like I do.

It seems never to be too late for a haircut here. On almost any street, you can find a barber open after dinner. Yet many people consider it bad luck to get clipped on Wednesday. This week, I forgot about that taboo. Could that explain why our evening caregiver failed to show up yesterday? Or why, as I write this, thousands of tiny ants are pouring out of my computer modem? (I really wish I was making up that last bit.)

Reunion

Since I left it in 1989, I hadn’t been back to the little town near the former site of the refugee camp. Our travels last week took us that way, so we stopped for lunch. Picking out the old landmarks was fairly easy. Things hadn’t changed much.

Soon Ma, Pa, and I found ourselves outside a corner shop where Jip and I used to meet up most nights, in our courtship days. Now, somebody sells mobile phones there, but back then it was a restaurant run by Mrs. Aun, a woman who came from the same province that Jip does. She and Jip had bonded , and before long she became like our mom, telling us when to get our hair cut, what to wear, and eventually who to marry (each other).

As I reminisced with my parents about Aun, along the street came a slow-moving motorbike. Hey!

Few things in life are more agreeable than reconnecting with an old friend or a long-lost relative, especially by accident. Aun was also moved by our reunion. She hadn’t known that Jip and I had really tied the knot (it took us several more years to figure out that she had been right all along), nor that Jip hasn’t been healthy (my eyes got surprisingly misty telling Aun that part—with most other people that never happens).

When I asked for news of the little daughter who used to hang around our tables at the restaurant, Aun told me “don’t move, be right back.” A few minutes later, the motorbike pulled up again, this time with both of them riding it. As you can see, the five-year-old I remembered has grown up.

Already Aun has been in touch with Jip by phone, and she may stop to visit us over New Year’s when she passes through Bangkok. The next time we see her won’t compare, though, to the lift I got from our chance meetup in the street last week. I’ll be living off it for some time to come.

Familiar and First

Ma and Pa are visiting from the States. Thanksgiving is a nice time to be together for me—I first set foot in Thailand 20 years ago, almost to the day. I remember calling home from the Bangkok central post office (back then making international phone calls was a big deal), reporting that I had arrived, had celebrated Turkey Day with some other Americans, and had found a job, all in the space of a week.

This year we marked the holiday overlooking the Mekong River. Jip passed on the chance to do some touring along the Lao and Cambodian borders, but she gave the three of us her blessing as we headed off for nine days away—the longest time she and I have been apart for several years.

On the first morning I went for a run on a small road near our hotel. The cooking fire smells, and the kids heading to the river with their little baskets full of toothpaste and soap, and the rooster soundtrack—all those things took me back twenty years, to life at the Cambodian border, where Jip and I met.

But I also experienced a first. As I ran between two villages, I caught up with an unaccompanied herd of cows, trotting along the road with their cowbells in full swing. They seemed surprised but not alarmed that their party had suddenly grown by one, and so I jogged along in the middle of the pack, feeling like I was in Pamplona, keeping an eye out for lunging horns, enjoying the music, very thankful to be on the road, out of the big city for a while, surrounded by family.

Running Around Town

My running partner and I no longer have a weekly rendezvous, now that Jip and I have moved to another part of town, but we still motivate each other by email. Recently he and I and 10,000 of our closest friends ran a 10K race in honor of UN Day.

Road races Thai style turn out to be well-organized affairs, starting at the coolest times of day and ending with free rice soup for everyone. The gun went off for this one at 6am. I had no idea beforehand about what my finishing time would be. When I train these days, I only pay attention to minutes, not distance. I’m also not used to keeping track of my splits in kilometers. I’d assumed that the rising sun and my advancing age would mean I would fade fairly quickly.

But when I got home I did some calculations and figured out that my pace was faster than I’ve run in about twenty years. I give credit to Dan, who claims his time was a personal record. Our results either mean that our partnership is working magic, or that somebody measured the course wrong.

As a warmup for the 10K, about three weeks earlier I ran without Dan in the annual Bangkok midnight run. I was drawn to it because it was short, and because it supports a good cause, an AIDS hospice at an upcountry temple. A few days beforehand, I headed out around 11pm for a training run, telling myself that I needed to understand real time conditions.

The night watchman at our place thought I was nuts, but it was fun to see who else was up and around at that hour. No other runners crossed my path, but more people than I expected were walking and playing and cleaning up around the streets. Back at the apartment, I figured I’d take a dip rather than wake Jip with the shower. Trouble was, all the lights were off at the pool. I wasn’t sure where the edge left off and the water began.

You guessed it. Big splash. Soaked shoes. Giggles from the watchman.

Dan asked, when I told him the story, if I had thought I was preparing for a midnight triathlon instead of a simple road race.

Loy Krathong with Jip

Loyal readers will recall that Jip doesn’t care much for the annual holiday honoring the river goddess, and so it was with low expectations that I proposed that the two of us float our krathong at the little lake down the lane. Sure enough, her first instinct was to scoff and wonder what part of no I didn’t understand.

Yet I persisted and was glad of it. When I came home from the market armed with banana leaves and toothpicks, she started to come around. I told her I would build the krathong myself (biodegradable, no styrofoam), and that after launching it we wouldn’t even have to wait around to see it capsize…a quick, five-minute ritual. OK, said Jip, but the lake was still out of the question. She suggested the bathtub.


We compromised on a little fountain right inside the entrance to our apartment. It was lovely. You’ll have to take my word that the spot of light at right is the candle in the middle of a very professional-looking boat made from banana leaves. (I’m a better krathong builder than photographer.)

Speaking of water craft, I was recruited as bow man for CDC’s entry in the annual embassy Loy Krathong boat race. We didn’t win, but neither did we sink, and several people commented on our excellent paddling form.

Sundays with the Vets

Soccer season started up again here. Thinking it best not to wait until the team captain took me aside and asked about my retirement plans, I voluntarily scratched myself from the lineup of the British Club’s Casuals team and instead joined its Veterans’ League squad.

For us older gents, team size, game length, field measurement, and net width are all scaled back. We also play less often: one Sunday a month, all afternoon, tournament style. There’s some down time between matches, which is nice for socializing. Everything gets organized by an exuberant Turk; a French team apparently always brings the sandwiches; the Germans pick up the beverages; while us Brits provide the witty repartee.


It’s not the World Cup, to be sure. Some guys look exhausted after the first half a game. But for me it’s great simply to be out there, chatting about Chelsea and Liverpool and the know-nothing refs, getting a little exercise and a lot of sun, knowing that Jip is getting good care from somebody else. It’s been a while since I’ve had a two-day weekend.

Full Squad

It seems that the hunt for a third caregiver is finally over, more than a month after it began. Ya, our rock, who’s taken care of Jip nearly since the day we arrived, happened to talk on the phone with her cousin. They both hail from a province in the north that has been underwater for much of the rainy season.

The worst flooding in several years has meant that jobs are harder to come by up there, so the cousin was happy to return to the big city. She’s worked here in the past, for the same agency that sent us Ya. Jip gets along with her quite well. In fact Jip is already muttering about how Ya could learn a thing or two from her cousin’s technique.

Meanwhile, I’ve reflected on the conversation I had with the woman in our office, about whether or not I was thinking enough of Jip’s needs. I conclude that she was projecting a little bit—she may have noticed her kids at home acting out whenever she gets busy with adult concerns.

Nonetheless, I think she is right to suggest that I watch out for things that may be going on with me whenever I see that Jip is unhappy. After all, the monks here say that peace in the world will begin first in the hearts and minds of each of us. Re-learning that lesson from an unexpected teacher reminded me that wisdom comes in many guises.