Krung Thep: "City of Angels, Great City of Immortals"

Dear Friends,

Bangkok's official title, in Pali and Sanskrit, goes on for quite awhile. I just gave the first few passages of its long name above; the abbreviation "Krung Thep" is the Thai name for the city.

I’ve been here for 3.5 weeks, which is hard to believe in that it seems both like such a short time and such a long time.  Asians are comfortable with paradox, and I suppose I’m embracing that mentality.

Monday will start the 3rd week of classes, which is a wildly misleading number.  The first day of classes was Thursday, August 7th, and then the we got a 4-day weekend, because the following Monday was Mother’s Day (in honor of the Queen), and Tuesday was the Queen’s birthday.  So the term started with a 2-day week followed by a 3-day week.  This is a civilized system.

Most of my colleagues went off traveling over the holiday, but I myself went to city center Bangkok, to be a tourist.  My school and neighborhood are in the boondocks of the city, which makes for clean air (in a notoriously polluted city) and a serene environment, but also for a feeling of isolation.  One can get astonishingly good rates on gorgeous hotel rooms, so it isn’t extravagant for a middle-class gal to go stay for a few nights in a 5 star hotel in what is technically her own city.  I will try to make a point of getting into Bangkok proper for a night or a weekend at least once a month, so I don’t get too narrowly-focused here in Min Buri (the district where the Ruamrudee International School is located).

I am having trouble synching my Android phone to my Mac computer (you’re getting the theme, right, that tech issues are not my strong suit?), so until I get that figured out, I can’t upload the photos that I took over my holiday.  My friends therefore will have here the “thousand words” and not the “picture” that ideally substitutes for them, in the famous formulation.  

I had contacted a Facebook friend who is a longtime Bangkok resident, LR, to ask if he would like to meet in person, while I was staying in his neighborhood. He and his girlfriend invited me to join their Saturday excursion to take another couple on a tour of the tea shops of Chinatown.  

It was so great to meet new people, to hear the insights, tips, and suggestions of Bangkok denizens (the two men were American and German, respectively, and the two women were Thai), and to make some friends who have nothing to do with my job.  

I’m especially sorry not to be able to attach the Chinatown photos here, but I’ll be in Bangkok for several years, so there will be other opportunities.  It was total sensory overload, in a great way (unlike the shopping malls, which are total sensory overload in a jarring way).  

When we took a break from the crowded streets in a delightful, air-conditioned, quiet tea shop (our third on the tour), I brought out my hand-sanitizer, as I habitually do, and offered it around.  The two women and the American each took some, with surprised gestures of “Oh, you do that? How quaint.”  The German just laughed good-naturedly and declined, saying that I was new to the country, and would soon learn not to worry about such things (after getting sick once or twice).  

I definitely seem to care more about sun protection here than anyone else does,  but that can be the case elsewhere, too.  In Arkansas, people thought it was so peculiar that I always wore a hat to protect my skin that they would ask me at night, or indoors, why I wasn’t wearing my hat, since apparently that was such a thing for me.  People considered that to be a deep eccentricity of mine, and commented on it constantly.  I still seem to be the only person around who wears a hat (those of us with Irish and German ancestors fall somewhere on the spectrum between vampire and albino, and therefore can’t be cavalier), and I daresay I’ll continue to be someone who also pulls out the hand sanitizer.  For all that my new friend anticipated my developing a devil-may-care attitude to match his own, I’ll emphasize the word “new” in the above description.  He doesn’t know me very well!  Germ protection,  skin protection, bug spray . . . I try to be prepared.  

Which brings me to my next point: I did register with the State Department’s “Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP),” so that they have all of my contact information in case of emergency.  (Everyone should do this when traveling abroad:  https://step.state.gov/step/).  Three years ago, RIS was closed for 5 weeks due to bad flooding in Bangkok, and the school evacuated all the teachers to the beach for that time.  People taught their classes via the web and made the best of a weird situation.  Should anything happen that would require me to leave town, I’ve been assured that the school would handle everything. And should I find myself feeling unsafe and thinking that regardless, I should take steps on my own, I live near the airport and can hop a plane to Singapore, or wherever, and sort out from there what my next move should be.

A dame who always ventures forth with sunscreen, a hat, and antibacterial gel isn’t one to take serious risks, even though she’s enjoying this great adventure of living abroad.  

During my downtown Bangkok weekend, I stopped in to one of the English-language bookstores (the only part of the mall that I truly enjoyed), and gleefully perused the “South East Asia” shelves of the Travel section.  In mid-October, I have to attend an IB training workshop in Jakarta, and I was happy to realize that it takes place the weekend before our week-long October break, so I can stay in Indonesia with my plane fare paid-for and enjoy a real visit before returning home.  (When I mention this to co-workers, every single one responds, “So you’ll go to Bali?”  Message received; I guess that’s the thing to do.)  It felt so exciting to be reading about all the places to which I will travel during my time here in SE Asia.

And to return to my point above about hotel prices, one can do these things on a teacher’s salary, here.  Stay in great hotels, go on international trips, head to beach resorts on every long weekend, take taxis everywhere, eat out as often as one likes, get massages/foot rubs/pedicures on a regular basis, etc.  It’s a strangely luxurious life, yet one that is sometimes combined with a vexatious absence of Western comforts--clothes dryers, hot water heaters, and in my case, an indoor kitchen!  My townhouse’s big drawback is that it has a traditional Thai kitchen in a nook out the back door. I insisted that the landlord put in a glass door, to seal it off from bugs, etc, and he seemed surprised by the request.  The newly installed door does make it much better, but all the same, it’s hard for Westerners to imagine such a thing: a lovely, clean, modern, new home without an indoor kitchen.  It feels like camping, except with a roof over my head.

When faced with such things, I’m trying to adopt an open-minded perspective: “Oh, that’s one of the ways they do things here?  How interesting!  I did come half-way around the world to try new things, so it’s good, in a way, that I’m not just reproducing familiar experiences.”  Sometimes it’s an effort, and I have to work my way out of what can be my default mode: “This sucks. Why don’t they do things the right way, the real way, the way we do it back in America?”

Because it’s a different country/culture/continent, and I’m here to expand my horizons. And boy, am I ever!