July 8 and 9—Accomplishing Lofty Goals With Our New Roommie and Another Down Day in Bangkok

Dear Family and Friends,

Day 55, Sunday, July 8, we awoke around 10:15 AM with grand plans to explore the city some more with Sheila. Dani did some more laundry and we spent time with our across-the-hall neighbors (poppa Chris, four-year-old Ty, and two—almost three—year-old Sara … momma Chom was working) before we headed out.

We stayed up late the night before expressing specific intentions for our first full day together. (Somehow the goals were predominantly food-related. We like this young woman.) Sheila wanted to find a Chinese-style steamed bun with beans inside (she’s vegetarian), drink a Thai tea, and have something with mango in it. Martha wanted to see the city from the river and enjoy a cold beer. Dani expressed no definite intentions, content to help the other two achieve their lofty goals.

We walked up Thanon Chan (Chan Road) to find the lady with the steamed buns from the day before, but she was not there! We turned right instead of retracing our steps towards the riverside from the day before and accomplished two of our day’s goals pretty quickly. First, three fruit drinks cut the afternoon heat and included a mango-mix for Sheila and Dani and a kiwi-citrus concoction for Martha. We bridged the language (and taste-test gap) to determine that red dots on top of steamed buns may very well mean that they contain beans inside (we will test this theory again another day), making for one happy Sheila with two out of three goals down.

A little ways past these two stops, we found a busy open-air restaurant, where one of the cooks spoke very good English. We were able to get Sheila a big bowl of veggie-only yellow-noodle local cuisine. Martha had hers with yellow noodles covered in fish balls and tofu. Dani had her medium white noodles with pork. The lady cook seemed especially pleased that we all asked for the food ‘very spicy,’ and she gladly added some extra peanut, spice, and green peppers to the top of the bowl … cut ever so slightly with a small spoonful of sugar. Delicious!! And, Sheila ordered a Thai tea to complete her third and final day’s mission! Well fed, we took ‘the long way home,’ heading down a street not yet explored and making a long circle back around towards home.

We enjoyed a particularly pleasant stop inside a gorgeous Wat, where Sheila showed her moxie by slipping her shoes off and asking one of the monks if we might enter and take some photos. Martha did, as she was wearing sandals easily removed; Dani wandered the grounds a while longer before taking off her tennis shoes and joining us inside among the golden statues and devoted laypeople. Candles, incense, and plaques of wax were being sold outside the temple, and the image of the main statue of Buddha was flooded with incense smoke from its view outside the temple doorway. Children shared in their parents’ heritage, and took great interest in Sheila, following her around. A gentleman came by and told them, “Wai,” which is the term for putting your hands together in prayer formation as a sign of hello and of respect. Though foreigners are not obligated to wai to the lesser-statused children, we ‘waied’ in return, sharing giggles, before heading out into the streets again. We found our way through a series of small streets, where a group of men were playing the national passtime of tak-raw (a volleyball-like sport played with acrobatics and a ball hit with the feet), past a bilingual international school, and eventually through a neighborhood where babies slept in the midday heat and women manned the food carts every 10 steps or so.

Back at home, Dani and Martha took a swim; Sheila explored the idea of siesta on the couch with her book. Chris and the kids were already in the pool. Chris and his wife, Chom, work diligently to improve the power situation in Thailand by empowering the villagers in remote areas of the country with the knowledge to understand their options—and fight for sustainable and well-considered supplies that will benefit their communities—but they also work for grants to help deliver much-needed supplies to medical care providers in the tumultuous country of Myanmar (Burma) and work as consultants to anyone who needs more information on power options. They have lived in Bangkok for seven years now and have more work than ever. Sheila works with them across the hall, but we have yet to learn the nitty-gritty details of her work.

Dried off, now five of us—Sheila, Dani, Martha, Chris (in the photo below to the right), and little Sara (that's her cute little self to the left!) in a stroller—headed West towards a grove of coconut trees across the river. Chris was a wonderful local tour guide, walking us past the neighborhood Chinese Temple that we may not have otherwise figured how to get into. The walk to the riverside was along a klong (an outlet of the mighty river often used for transport, but more-so in the past than today), with narrow walkways just wide enough for Sara’s stroller. We passed a guarded gate to come to a rather rickety-looking bridge down to the waterside, where the ferry picked us and five other people up to be delivered across the river for 10 baht each. Martha was happy to complete the first of her day’s tasks: seeing the city from the river!

This area of the river was tremendous, with tankers from Greece and other far-away lands occupying the river space. We maneuvered between two tankers, dropped off one local at an in-between stop before arriving at Wat Bang Khra Chao, our landing point. Approximately two seconds after Martha said, “We’ve had really great weather today,” it started raining again. But it was Dani who brought down the torrential downpour later by closing her umbrella and actually putting it in her pack! The monsoon has a sense of humor, definitely.

We passed by a funeral celebration in progress, with music and many locals enjoying a meal together. Not knowing the details of the event, Chris approached and asked what was going on, and we were all quickly invited to join them for a meal. Not wanting to intrude, it was tough to turn them down, but as Dani pointed out, if it had been some grievous offense to the departed’s afterlife, they would have pushed harder for us to join them.

Into the trees, we followed a narrow pathway, jumping to the side as motorbikes or faster locals wanted to pass. Dense foliage, mostly close to the ground, lined the concrete road, but coconut trees towered above in front of the dark clouds. Young green coconuts hung from the branches waiting for a thirsty local to pluck them down for their vitamin-rich milk. The homes along this area outside the mainland of Bangkok were made of raw materials on stilts with metal rooftops. Bicycles lined the path, hanging clothes lined the rails of the homes’ front porches, and the marshlands threatened to overtake all means of travel between small village areas separated by the greenery.

Before we turned around to head back, we came to the dock where the one woman had jumped off upon our approach on the ferry. Four locals, including one small girl, sat, watching the world along the river pass by them. Chris chitchatted with them in Thai, and the little girl said that she was afraid of Martha, who had passed the group to get snapshots of the lights on the water and the boats in the bay. And then the downpour began, making us thankful for our umbrellas and content to walk the same path back to the main area of town to find some dinner. Our feet and pants were soaked, but we were all happy to be on this adventure together.

Chris is on a naturalistic/holistic-medicine all-fruit diet at the moment, and asked the locals if they served coconut. They said that they did not sell coconuts there. However, about twenty minutes later, a fresh coconut appeared and was placed before him—they had gone out and taken one from the trees just for him. Amazing Thailand. Daughter Sara was first sitting upon Chris’ lap to eat her bowl of fried rice, but after a bouncing knee incident that threw some rice into her face, she was soon seated on the bench on her own. She managed a few spoonfuls of a different bowl with white rice before she spotted the young boy on the steps, and slowly approached him, dancing her way closer and closer. When we turned around next, she had disappeared up the steps with her new friend, but Chris was unconcerned as Thailand is a very family-friendly atmosphere and children really are cared for by the entire village.

Eventually, the youngsters reappeared, and the playtime was full on. The young boy was quite an alarmist actor, as Sara poked at him and he squealed, grabbing the obviously-uninjured appendage or eyebrow in horror at having been so maimed. It was thrilling to watch as young Sara danced around him, poked him, danced some more, all under the watchful eyes of Chris and the boy’s mother, extremely-pregnant with a young sibling who will be lucky to have this guy as an older brother. The food was amazing, and the storm had died down considerably by the time we exited the open-faced shop to walk back to the ferry crossing.

The funeral seemed to be breaking up as many cars passed us on our path back to the dock. Once by the river, Sheila realized that she had left her umbrella back at the dining establishment, so she and Martha took a quick walk back, grabbed the anti-drenching tool, and made it back to the dock just in time for the boat to arrive to bring us back to the wayside, past large barges and by the Bangkok skyline in the distance. Martha learned some more about Sheila's policy-writing work with Chris and Chom and that she didn't mind the rain so much because her family lived in Seattle! It's a joy getting to know this woman better today.

We walked quickly back towards home, passing hopping local eateries and stray dogs content with the garbage of the streets. Chris, Sara, and Martha headed back, passing an elephant being fed at the local eatery and making it home before Dani and Sheila, who broke off to see if the Central grocer was still open for some more supplies only to find it closed for the night. Martha cracked open one of the beers from the fridge to complete her second mission of the day, and the three roommates called the day a complete success! All of our goals had been well met!

Monday, July 9, we woke up around 10 AM and Martha headed down to the gym to do some running on the treadmill for the first time in two months, enjoying almost three miles before hitting the pool to cool down and stretch her muscles afterwards. Dani worked on the computer all morning, organizing her photos and doing some research into missing blog pieces from Spain.

When Martha returned, we headed out to lunch with Sheila at Central shopping plaza, where Sheila and Martha had pad thai and Dani burned her face off with some spicy ginger cabbagy meaty stuff on rice. (I know, poor description, but it’s tough to describe these things without knowing anything of Thai, people!) Martha tried to Supergirl Save the Day with a mixed fruit frosty beverage from another stand. Sheila had to return to work, and we two headed into the supermarket to purchase oodles of different kinds of fruit for an all-fruit dinner of our own, but also picked up some muesli for the mornings, and soda and soda water.

Back at home, we ate some of the spiky rambutan fruit while discussing our plans for the time after July 27 when we plan to venture out of Bangkok. While Dani read up on our options, Martha did laundry in the continuing battle to catch up on our travel clothing from Madrid into Bangkok! (Ewwww …) Dani made a breakfast rice for the next day with some of the fruit and Martha’s scandalous contraband of cinnamon.

The sun was still brightly shining by the time we were ready to enjoy the outdoors together, so we headed to the sauna for a nice steam (Bangkok is obviously not hot enough for us) and a swim in the pool to cool off afterwards. We enjoyed our fruit mixture, blogged to catch up on about four days worth of backlog, and ended the night late.

Much love,

Martha and Dani