July 19—Sheila’s Wonderful Dad Visits and We Enjoy ‘Family Meals'

Dear Family and Friends,

Thursday, July 19, we were thrilled to find that Sheila was feeling MUCH better by morning. It was Martha’s turn to take a hit and was down for the morning with another migraine until after noon; Dani did laundry and otherwise occupied herself until Martha was functioning better. However, in the process of recovering, Martha had a bad dream—something about multiple family members of Sheila arriving, taking over the apartment, and messing with her book on the computer. The result? One crazed post-migraine Martha, running about the apartment to try to make it as presentable as possible, just in case. When Shivaram, Sheila’s sweetheart of a daddy, arrived just before 2 PM, the placed looked pretty decent (thanks to Dani’s help, too, of course).

Our day then officially started with a ‘family lunch’ together at the Vietnamese restaurant across the street where we devoured veggie-only soup with nutmeg chucks and bok choi galore. Still thirsty for the Bangkok experience, we four walked up to Thanon Chan to get fruit drinks—mixed berries for Poppa Shivaram, banana strawberry for Sheila, melon for Martha, and banana-strawberry-kiwi for Dani. So refreshing and delicious, a fruit shake can chill anybody on a hot day in the tropics.

We took our time walking home, ogling the stalls. Martha and Dani started seriously thinking about their departure the next day to head North towards Chiang Mai, Thailand, and stopped to get snacks for the hours-long train ride in the morning. Back at the apartment, we enjoyed talking about our travels for work and pleasure, family (including Martha’s tales of her grandfather’s adventures, of course), writing, school, and more.

Towards mid-afternoon, Chris popped in with the kids. We agreed to a 6:30 PM departure for a ‘family dinner’ together at a restaurant called Sara Jane’s, about two kilometers away up Narathiwas. With Sara in the stroller, Ty working his little legs almost the entire way to the restaurant, and the rest of us on foot, we headed around the corner and up the main road to meet up with Chom, who would be meeting us at the restaurant after a meeting. Martha took the stroller for a while during the walk, and found it to be quite an experience to manage the obstacle course of Bangkok’s crowded sidewalks with a baby tuk-tuk (as Dani called the three-wheeled stroller)!! The Thais whom we passed on the street looked at the stroller with confusion, and we realized that this was the only one we had seen thus far in our adventures around Bangkok.

The street of Narathiwas (or Narathiwat, depending on what map you're viewing) has held interest and excitement each time we travel its hard-worn path. On our later night walks, we have found work crews planting fresh bushes between the street and the sidewalk. During monsoon downpours, parts of the sidewalk have become flooded, even though the curb is a foot above street level. From these many floods and the use of the sidewalk area by the city's motorbikes, the tiles of the have broken or shifted; certainly the bushes will help with drainage as well as pollution from the four lanes of traffic headed North on our side of the roadway. One of Bangkok's many formerly-popular transport canals runs along the center, with another four lane street of a different name moving traffic South. Bangkok was once called the 'Venice of the East' when the canals acted as the main means of running commerce through the city. With the advent of motor vehicles and paved roads, the canals now sit predominantly unused, and some of the smaller canals' stagnant water emits unpleasant scents.

Chom had been waiting at the restaurant for a little while, and kindly took it upon herself to order a slew of traditional (predominantly vegetarian) Thai dishes, which we all eight of us enjoyed ‘family style’ with sticky rice—tom yum soup, green curry, spicy papaya salad, spicy mixed fruit salad with cashews, a seafood salad, fried morning glory, minced pork salad, and so much more! It was so special to have someone so familiar with Thai food (Chom is a Bangkok native) collect some of her favorite dishes to help us truly experience the cuisine. Not to mention, with the ‘family style’ approach, we were able to sample many more dishes than we as two people would ever have been able to over the course of these weeks! Between the great company and the wonderful food, it was truly a memorable experience. Immense thanks for Shivaram and Sheila for treating us all to such a special time together. It will be difficult to leave tomorrow while Shivaram is still around, but the North calls!

Back at the apartment, we were up late, continuing our discussions of politics, the status of America in the world, and deeper subjects of life and love. We were up later getting the final pieces of our travels together. Tomorrow morning will come quickly!

Much love, especially to our own daddies, whom we miss very much! It was certainly nice to get some 'dad-time,' though!

Martha and Dani