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.