Pleasantly inert

When I told Joe I was going to do a blog posting, he asked what on earth I was going to write about. I said that I would say, "Joe saw an elephant. I saw a snake. Love, Dick."

And that about sums it up. We did have a very pleasant five days visiting our friends Poe and Simon in Hua Hin (Wah-HEEN). That's a resort town 100 miles south of Bangkok on the Gulf of Thailand. While there, however, we didn't do much except sit by their lovely cobalt-blue-tile pool in the shade of their sour tamarind and quinine trees. We did rouse ourselves from time to time to walk on the nearby beach, where seried rank upon seried rank of immense middle-aged Swedes were voluntarily barbecuing themselves to death. Whatever happened to the gaunt white Swedes of The Seventh Seal?

Thanks to Poe and Simon, there were motoring excursions, too. We went to Petchburi, with its summer palace of King Mongkut (a scientist and linguist who never hopped around blurting "Is a puzzlement!"), and a temple with three magnificent golden Buddhas. We also wandered around the pleasant old town, which Simon judged a success because it contains relatively few people like himself in it. That is, British ex-pats living princely lives with their vaults overflowing with dollars and pounds. The farang tourists are starting to return, incidentally, following the political crisis that closed the Bangkok airports for ten days in December. But the economy was irrepairably damaged and nearly all the political factions seem determined not to let that happen again.

Our other outing was to an agricultural research farm that specializes in medicinal herbs. The place is famous for its traditional Thai massages. These are two-hour splendid indulgences that finish up with a hot poultice of camphor and tumeric. The four of us lay on adjoining platforms under a high thatched roof and were worked over by local ladies who train for years in this arcane style of massage. It seems to involve insinuating the masseuse's complete body weight, through her fingers, into the client's joints and muscles. These women have an exquisite sense of the precise point where pleasure and pain meet, and when the massage is done you float up and out and feel reborn for quite some time.

Mostly, we have lived from wonderful meal to wonderful meal. Poe and Simon know all the best Hua Hin outdoor joints for $3 dinners of green curry, noodle soup, spicy green papaya salad and squid red curry. Despite Western influences nibbling at the edges more and more, Thai food remains the most satisfying cuisine on earth and one of the most healthful.

We returned to Bangkok on Sunday---on the relatively pricey Dusit Hotel bus, and not on what the local ex-pats call "the danger bus"---and have been (a) doing some practical stuff and (b) enjoying the Chinese New Year celebrations. Many Thais are ethnic Chinese, so the lunar new year is a big deal here. This morning, we happened upon a holiday extravaganza at the Silom Central Mall. Hundreds of firecrackers were set off to scare away evil spirits (the shaky Berkshire Mall might want to try this), and then an enormous dragon entered the mall to bless the businesses within. The thing was a good sixty feet long, red and yellow, with a big angry puss, tongue poking out, and was carried aloft by dancing boys in costumes. A drummer and two sets of cymbles made for an infernal clanging and banging, and the whole thing was quite a sight undulating up the escalator in the mall atrium and then poking its head into ShangriLa Kitchen, near the food court, and the Gucci sun glasses store.
There's nothing the Thais love more than a holiday---there are dozens each year---and this is one of the big ones.

Meanwhile, we fly tomorrow to Laos, where we will meet our friends Jack Prebis and Jane Campbell Beaven for some exploring of the northern mountains. Plus, we'll celebrate Joe's fiftieth birthday in Luang Prabang on Wednesday, no doubt with more firecrackers and dragons. The Laos have been alerted. They like a holiday, too.

Resurfacing

We've been around the world 48 times, it seems, and survived shipwrecks in Laos, the junta in Mayanmar, and the food at Cambodian bus stations. But nothing laid us anywhere near as low as this freakin' head cold has. Felled by a mere rhinovirus! How humbling. And fitting that we should be so humbled in a Buddhist land, where people know plenty about humility.

We have basically spent the last week in our Bangkok hotel room, dozy and semi-feverish. We've dragged ourselves out for air on occasion, and for food. The room service food at the Pinnacle isn't as good as it used to be. Apparently the hotel is now being marketed in Germany---German is now the first language on the room service menu---and the non-Thai items we've tried seem to have been prepared from a manual called "Food Germans Might Eat." But the street food in the neighborhood is cheap and good. We've brought back grilled chicken, spicy salads and rice noodle soup in a plastic sack. The Thais are more adept than we are at eating soup out of a bag, but we're learning.

Our distractions from our woes have been (a) other people's woes (the BBC has run the Gaza horrors in an endless loop) and (b) some good books. Joe is reading Paul Theroux's latest Asia-by-train saga and enjoying it, though he tires of Theroux peering down at everyone and everything through his lorgnette. I'm reading Paul Handley's The King Never Smiles, a biography of Thailand's King Bhumibole that is banned here. (I left the dust jacket at home.) I also read David Ignatius's excellent thriller Body of Lies. Except for a few implausible touches---including an escape scene out of Gene Kelly in The Pirate---it's as good as a spy novel can get, with as acute an understanding of the complexities of the Midddle East as you'll find anywhere. Reading this, however, has discouraged me from writing my Djibouti book. I just don't know enough about Arab culture. So, what to do?

We are now feeling about 80 percent human and are looking forward to finally getting out of town. Tomorrow Poe is driving us to Hua Hin for a five day visit with him and his partner Simon. Then it's back to Bangkok on the 25th and on to Laos on the 27th. In Luang Prabang we'll hook up with Jack Prebis and Jane Campbell Beaven (they're in Cambodia now), and Joe will turn 50! We plan on dunking him in the Mekong and serving him cake made out of Mekong seaweed and fried water-buffalo
gums.

Tomorrow midnight we'll sit by the TV in Hua Hin for the Obama inauguration. It will be a struggle to stay awake---noon in DC is midnight here---but we will find a way.

blogless in Babgkok

Blogless in Bangkok

There have been no blogs so far because Joe and I have ebola. Well, not really ebola. Just stupendous head colds that feel like a merciful death is all too near. We have barely left the hotel in the last three days. I lie about gagging and moaning piteously, and Joe goes out from time to time to fetch tangerine juice from a guy with a cart around the corner. This tangerine juice is a fluid of such citrusy tenderness and delicacy that you experience it as much like music as food. Maybe Rodgers and Hart's "Isn't it Romantic?" or "You are Too Beautiful." Oh, am I laying it on too thick too early in the trip? But what else have I got to do? In one twenty-four-hour period when I rarely got out of bed, I ran the entire score of Sweeney Todd through my head several times. But then I thought, Dick, this way lies madness!
Joe got the cold after I did---from me, it would seem---and while he feels crummy he is actually somewhat functional. He has been over to Peace House Travel to lay plans for our March Burma trip. He has obtained a visa for a side trip for him (but not me) to Varanasi, India. He was helpful when our old Peace Corps friend Jack Prebis arrived at the hotel late Tuesday night having left one bag in a taxi and his credit cards at home.
Our SE Asia trip this year is three and a half months long, so four or five days laid up is no skin off our backs. But we were sorry not to have spent more time with Jane Campbell Beaven, another old Peace Corps friend who is traveling with Jack in Cambodia---they left this morning---and who arrived in Bangkok last week. We did manage to have two happy days with her and our friend Poe Suwatchie seeing some of the Bangkok sights you never tire of revisiting: the Royal Palace with its fantastical gold spires; the emerald Buddha; the palace of King Chulalongkorn, an airy, rambling Victorian mansion made of teak that we could actually imagine living in. It is good to be the king. Jane stayed at the Oriental Hotel, that old posh institution which in 1925 Somerset Maugham was told to vacate. He seemed to be dying of malaria, and the manager told him his death would make the place look bad. Anyway, we got a look inside the Oriental and would have dined there had we not fallen ill. The Oriental, by the way, is running at a 40 percent occupancy rate. This time of year it should be 90 to 100. It's both the world economy and the political turmoil here. More on this sad, unnerving situation later.
Our plan is to continue to outlive our colds and head down to Hua Hin, where Poe and his partner Simon live, on Saturday. Several days at the beach should be just what the soothsayer ordered.

test

We are still in Becket on January 7. We leave tomorrow and arrive in Bangkok on the morning of January 10 (via Hartford, JFK, Frankfort and Singapore---oy vey). This is just a test.