A Kaleidoscope called Bangkok – Day Two, Part One

I forgot to include from my tale of Day One that we finished our exploration of all things sensual with a delightful foot massage. Thai’s are renowned for their message abilities and there is nothing so divine after a long hot day of walking as an hour plus long foot massage. The Thai foot massage starts at your feet, journey’s up your legs. The masseuse then rubs your head and temples, face and shoulders. You then switch to the ottoman and they rub your shoulders and back, finishing with a nice healthy slap fest on your shoulders. It is fabulous.

Sleep came fast after our previous day’s long stroll through some unique areas of Bangkok and I awoke ready for a new adventure. Today’s agenda included water taxi to the amulet market followed by the Grand Palace on to Wat Pho, afternoon at the pool. Cocktails then off to Khao San Market.

The amulet market was the first stop of our day and Catherine figured the easiest way to get there was by water taxi. The water taxi ride was an easy; boat pulls up to the dock, dude jumps out ties it off, boat slams on and off tires, people jump off, people jump on, hold on and go to next dock. Safety features: a little rope tied from pole to pole. I now understand why when a ferry sinks in this area that 100’s die. They don’t do a head count, the money collector walks the boat and collects money from each person after the boat is in progress. How the money collector knows who paid and who hasn’t with that many people – amazing. The ferry that runs across the river instead of along the river is 3 baht per person and that you do pay prior to boarding.

The market lies a few blocks north of the Grand Palace and was just a block or so from the dock. The walk there was quite entertaining, each of the docks have a bit of a market feel to them. Food sellers and trinkets abound. Once we worked our way through that we were on the street proper which again was stall after stall selling mainly flowers, amulets and gold leaf which is all used at the Wats. This day was a graduation day for the Thammasat University which is noted for its law and political science departments, many of the graduates were in the area having photos taken and receiving congratulatory flower arrangements. The Thammasat University is also known for student demonstrations against the government particularly noted for the violent demonstrations in the 1970’s. Thailand has a king and queen and they are very revered by their people but the actual politics of Thailand has never been stable. I believe they are on their third prime minister in less than 2 years.

Also, not noted on Day One was that as it was August 12th it was the Queen’s birthday. Many of the stores were closed, especially the Thai operated stores, the only silver stores we found open were operated by the Eastern Indians. They were neither friendly nor interested in negotiations. There were pictures of Her Majesty all around town set up like shrines with flowers and candles with various tokens of appreciation. Do NOT talk negatively about the Thai royalty. This is a huge slight to their culture.

Finally we arrived at the market with 100’s of vendors selling every little religious trinket you can imaging. Well, no protestant and very little catholic images but every god and goddess known to the south Asian cultures. My purpose for this trip was to find some Buddha pieces and ended up walking out with several small amulets of Ganish, Buddha, and a guy I call the Monk. He was a ruler of Thailand and devoted himself to Buddhism. I will have to do some more research on the story. His dedication was beyond all and he has been elevated to as a Holy Man. There were several temples that had statues of him that were four stories high. He looks like a little old man, bald and skinny, wearing the traditional Buddhist orange garb sitting in the Thai meditation position. I also picked up a metal sculpture of a warrior riding an elephant because every home needs one of those.

After leaving the market we wormed our way back through all the stalls eyeballing all the goods and trying not to be ran over by the tuk-tuks. Tuk-Tuks are prevalent in this area; they are half motorcycle half buggy forms of transportation. The drivers all park in small clusters and yell out, “Tuk Tuk, ma’am?” This is a dog eat dog business, he who makes the most noise and the friendliest gets the most business. As we only had a couple blocks and the views were so entertaining Catherine and I decided to walk to the Grand Palace.

Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaeo is one of Thailand’s most holy temples and the former residence of the royal family for centuries. Construction began in 1782 and is a constant work in progress to maintain all its glamour. The big draw is The Emerald Buddha; this is a statue that was discovered in 1434 in at a temple in Northern Thailand. Story is that the temple was struck by lightning and the flaking plaster exposed this jade face. The king of Chaing Mai sent an army on elephant to collect the statue but when the statue was placed on the elephant it refused to return to Chaing Mai, the entourage rerouted to Laos where the statue remained until Rama I invaded and returned the statue to Thailand in 1778. It was housed at Wat Arun, across the river until 1785 when it was moved to its current location.

What was my take on this most holy of images? One it is so high on its altar that you cannot get a good look-see. Two, there is so much gold gilding that you cannot keep your eyes clear due to all the glowing gold. I also discovered that to enter the Bot (temple proper) one must take off your shoes.

As Catherine had already prepared me for this inevitability it was no big concern, however, many of my fellow tourist were quite peeved with this custom and concerned that their footwear would not remain where they left them. No problems noted. The other issue that many of the tourists encountered was proper dress when visiting a holy place. The Thai’s are very respectful of their holy places and one must not wear shorts, sleeveless shirts or flip flops (slippers) this applies to both men and women. Wearing a scarf around your shoulders is not adequate coverage. I had on a tank top but brought a button up shirt to cover my offending shoulders and arms. Those that did not dress appropriately were redirected at the entrance to a store which sold skirts and shirts for the noncompliant visitors.

Grand Palace also held an extremely large model of Ankor Wat, which I had visited in October 08. Several smaller temples are around the grounds with these amazing ornamentations, my particular favorite was the warrior monkeys. We found out through eaves dropping on a tour that the warriors were not all monkeys; only the monkeys had bare feet, as monkeys feet will not fit into shoes. There are four monkeys representing the four elements.

The other cool thing was the monks. This was one of those two side meetings, on one side I am delighted with these devote men who give up their connections to all that is materialistic. On the other hand I don’t want to disturb their process of enlightenment by being the rude tourist and getting in their way. I am not saying that I was above taking their photos; I just tried to be respectful of their space. I did get very irritated with some Italian tourist that stepped in front of a group of boy monks in training to ask directions to the Emerald Buddha. The child tried to step around him, they are instructed not to speak to “others”, and he gave the man a quick look and shrug. The man went to touch him which is very taboo and stepped back in front of the boy. I watched this interaction and was compelled to intervene. I walked over to the Italian and told him were to find the Buddha and that the “little monks” will not talk. I find it disheartening that when people go to a foreign land, especially when it is a religious community that they do not research a little of what is taboo and what is not.

Catherine and I decided enough with the Palace time to head to Wat Pho. This is the home of The Reclining Buddha. There are several throughout Thailand but this was the first one that I get to see in person. To get from the Grand Palace to Wat Pho one can walk as it is just around the block. However, it was hot, ungodly hot and humid so Catherine and I decided to take advantage of one friendly tuk-tuk driver. He took advantage of us by charging a ridiculous rate ($1.40) but what he didn’t realize is we would have paid twice that much to avoid walking.

The heat and humidity is another one of the sensory overload aspects of Thailand. Thailand fulfills the full sensory range. Smell: food, river water, incense, sweat. Sight: gold, shiny, mosaics, shiny sweaty people. Sound: boat horns, whistles, street hawkers, music, masses of humanity groaning from sweating. Touch: gold leaf, massage, sticky sweat. Taste: food, smog, salty sweat. You notice that sweating came up in all five of my sensory perceptions. I don’t believe that I have ever sweated that much in my life including Basic Training in August in San Antonio, Texas. It was that freaking hot.

Hissy Fit Potential

I am sitting on the train heading into Shanghai for a couple days of meetings and appointment. My thoughts:
The train from Nanjing to Shanghai passes through a number of smaller communities many of which are farmlands. At present through the scenic fields there is a large project under way. The new train lines, a super high speed train due to be completed in 2010. At this time it takes the high speed train about 2 hours to go from Nanjing to Shanghai with no stops, with several stops it takes about 2.5 hours. Today we are on a train that has four or five stops and between those stops our cruising speed is around 190 to 204 kmh. The new train will take just one hour to make the same trip at an average of 400 kmh.
We are riding in our car, #14, which is first class accommodations or as the Chinese refer to it as soft seat accommodations. In China the first class seating is typically Car #1, #7, #14 and #15. Car #7 is nice because you don’t have to haul all your stuff to the end of the train when boarding or exiting. If you are in the other cars be prepared to hike a bit. Also you have to take into consideration when you are packing as you will go up and down several sets of stairs. I have not found on station in all of China that had functioning elevators or single level stations. Occasionally you will get a station that has escalators for the folks going up but there is only a 50/50 chance of those escalators actually working.
Once you get on your train you have to find your assigned seat (lessons are needed to translate the tickets properly) and get settled in. In the first class also called soft seating is very spacious and clean, bathrooms are questionable depending on time of day. The seats being softer than the rest of the train, I don’t know. Today Bill and I had seats 1 and 2 which gave the additional luxury of a small table with seats 7 and 8 FACING us. I have a problem with this… It would have been ideal if the people sitting in seat 7 and 8 were traveling with us or at least “westerners” as they would know the whole personal space rules. But NO! Thank goodness I have spent enough time on the trains that I knew how to spin that bad boy to face the other direction and as we were the first passengers to arrive in our car, it was done before the passengers assigned those seats were given a chance to complain.
Why did I have to alter the state of the seating…oh my god. I really wish I had a stupid amount of money so I can fly all of you over here to experience the cultural differences between us and the Chinese. In the Chinese culture it is completely appropriate to do number of things without regards to how these things affect your fellow earthlings.
1) Spitting: not little spitting, I am talking hawking up the biggest amount of phlegm you can and projectile it in any direction that you think is most appropriate.
2) Pissing: Children peeing and the occasional adult male, in public on the sidewalks as you are walking passed them. I have seen people walk right through midstream. WTF.
3) Poop: as in taking a dump. See the pissing comments. This seems to be limited to the small children. They wear crotch-less pants from the birth till the time that they are potty trained. At any moment you may have a parent squatting with a little one holding their legs wide open so that they can poop on, well, the sidewalk, sometimes a newspaper, sometimes directly into a trashcan.
4) Smacking and spitting of food: Chinese slurp, suck, smack and overall are the noisiest eaters I have ever encountered. They see nothing wrong with slurping in a bowl full of noodles and flinging the juice where ever it may land. Then add the fact that many of their dishes are not deboned…you get a mouthful of bones, no problem, spit them out back onto your plate.
5) Farting and burping: nothing, they have no reaction. Oh, sometimes you get the little smile from one of them as if to say “oops, did I do that?” Mainly, it is a free for all, let it rip.

So you can see where I was just a little, ok – completely not in the freaking mood, for staring at two Chinese persons for 2.5 hours while I tried to act like I was not noticing any of the above mentioned possibilities.

School Fashion Show June 2009

Derek participated in a fundraiser at his school. They put on a fashion show using clothes that was donated by local families and business. The money went to an orphanage that the kids are sponsoring in Cambodia.

Nanjing, PRC

I took this photo July 17th, 2009 from Catherine's apartment. It is several images sewn together.

Cha-Cha-Changes

I knew when we decided to move out of country we were entering into a lifestyle that I have done before, the transient community.
Bill and I have been married for 16 years and in that time we have had one address in Kansas, three address’s in Michigan (four if you count temp housing at the Love’s Farm), two addresses in Louisiana (same school district), one in Kentucky and currently two in China. If you just count moves that required a change of school districts, we are currently at our SEVENTH location. Why do I count moves by the school districts? I was raised as a Military Brat; my childhood consisted of moving every two to three years. I remember where I lived by what grade I was in and in my 40 years on this planet I have had thirty three different mailing addresses. This is a venue that I know well. The newest buzz words for this lifestyle are Global Nomads or Third Culture Families. We are the souls that live in a community but do not belong, we do have our own base (American, Canadian, Korean, German, etc.) culture, but we are going to hang out in yours for a period of time and then move on.
Why am I dwelling on this today?
There have been several changes in our little community in the past couple of months. We have had a number of families return to their home countries. The Decker’s to Colorado, the Little’s to the DC area, Henke’s to Germany, Arenburg’s to Colorado, Salisbury’s to Michigan, Petra to a different city in China, Ben to Canada (though he is now in southern China) and there are several others that I cannot think of as I type. Those are the families that have left as of today. Due to leave is the Grove’s and the DeBoer’s both will be returning to the US in August, Sonja will probably be leaving this fall to be followed soon after by Romayne’s family. Besides these families leaving Nanjing the majority of them lived in Yulan, our compound, not only were they friends but literally neighbors. I will never underestimate the joy of going for a walk after dinner and meeting up with a friend you can communicate with, if you squint real hard and don’t smell to ozone you can pretend that you are in your home country. (It is a little game we play called…I am not in China.)
Here is the thing: I don’t want to go home but I am jealous of them being back to a familiar ground, going back to where life has something of an “easy” button. At the same token, several of them are jealous of those of us that are staying here where we are treated as either princess or circus freaks, where you can buy a meal for your family for $5 and not be fast food. There are pro’s and con’s to either situation.
Yes, we do like it here. We do like the opportunities that being here gives us both professionally and personally. I am not eager to return to the US or elsewhere because I am happy here. I enjoy my time of being treated like a princess and I am grateful for the chance to travel to these exotic locations. Honestly, if we were in the states there is no way I would have gone to Cambodia or to Thailand or the meet the Shaolin Monks or do any of the other amazing things that we have done this year. For that alone, I love being in China.
The hardest part of these changes is that these women have become my “easy” button. If I cannot figure out how to do something or get somewhere or just need the shoulder to cry on….these women have been my strength.
Susan Decker has been my ‘mother of teenagers’ role model. She has taught me how to handle the school and how to be an effective parent in a country that you feel completely out of control. She was the one that I would call when I need a cheerleader or just need someone to make me leave my house. She introduced me to most everyone else and helped make living here doable on the day to day stuff. I cannot tell you how vital she was to my loving China. Susan was the glass is half full, play nice, if you cannot say something nice don’t say anything at all….my positive role model. This is definitely needed because there is a significant amount of negativity in this lifestyle.
Tammy is my favorite blankie friend. You know when you just need someone to get you, your jokes, your sarcasm or your need to squeeze someone neck till their eyeballs popped out of their head. Tammy was my girl. Tammy is the health nut; yes it is possible for a donut loving couch potato to best buds with a person that thinks running and sweating is FUN. Tammy has been a positive influence on the size of my ass; it has shrunk during our friendship. Tammy was the one that I got stuck in the elevator with, you may recall that story. We spent a lot of our time shopping and wandering around Nanjing, if it had not been for her willingness to jump on the bus and see where we ended up , I would never learned this city as well as I do. Tammy is also the ring leader for our big group parties. New Years was legendary. Tammy was the one that I can crack a joke with an very American references and she would just fall over laughing, nobody else would because they just don’t get me like Tammy does…that is such a necessary thing, for someone to get you! You have no idea how frustrating it is to explain jokes to the Brits or Germans, or the French are the worst, they just don’t get you, period.
Erika is another amazing woman leaving soon. I haven’t spent nearly enough time with her but the time I have has been a riot. She is the class clown of the group. She is one of those people that you just cannot help to be happy when you are around her. She just lightens up a room. Sarcasm though this woman has it mastered.
I could go on and on with each woman and what they have given to me and what I hope to keep from our time spent together. Maybe I will save that for another day… requiem to my friends.

I leave you with the words of Mr. David Bowie:

Strange fascination, fascinating me

Ah changes are taking the pace I’m going through

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes (turn and face the strain)Ch-ch-changes
Oh, look out you rock n rollers

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes (turn and face the strain) Ch-ch-changes

Pretty soon now you’re gonna get a little older

Time may change me, But I can’t trace time

I said that time may change me, But I can’t trace time

Tammy, Moi, Susan, Erika and Katherine

at on Susan's last night in Nanjing

Tammy, Erika and I surprised Susan at the Airport. We just couldn't stand to see her go...(disclaimer: women in the photo don't look as bad as they may appear, it was buttcrack early in the morning. I promise!)

Hash Sunday

Today was the July Hash.

Hash is a group of international walkers and runners who get together once a month to go on a trek around our community. A couple of organizers go out in advance and set the trailer with markers in our case we use flour to make different markings along the route.
All who wish to participate assemble at a prearranged location and set out following the markers. There are various symbols pointing us in the correct direction with the occasional marker that we have to choose which way, if you make the wrong choice you will run out of markers and then you have to retrace your steps and find the correction direction.
At the end of the trail we gather at a restaurant for lunch and down downs. Down downs are penalty drinks (beer) for any infractions you may have committed during the trek. Now, the hash leaders or the “spiritual advisor” will call out all those that committed offenses and they have to drink to in sequence to this song or rally call. We also welcome all the “virgin” hashers, they have to stand in the front of the group and tell who they are and who made them come….pun completely intended. Basically, you have a group of people that are a little raunchy, a lot of fun and enjoy exercise. They say that a true hasher is an alcoholic with a running problem, they may be right.
This hash was out to an island on the Yangtze River. We met at the Olympic Stadium subway station at 830 this morning and set off to the ferry dock, about 1.5k. Once over the river onto the island we were off and running, or in my case, power walking. The trail (5k) took us through the village and into the grape fields. This island is used as a farm for grape vines. It was a mixture of farmland and homes with a number of substantial newly constructed homes that resembled Mediterranean villas. The weird part is that they were all vacant and only 80% completed. It was as if the builders just decided that it wasn’t a great idea, packed up their tools and left. The grapevines were in better shape than most of the islanders living conditions. I still don’t know why the grapes were in bags hanging on the vines. Derek’s best guess was to prevent bugs from getting to grapes, very plausible. I only saw two snakes on this hike and thankfully they were both dead. (I so don’t like snakes.)
I cannot tell you have fun it is to go into these area’s that don’t see a lot of foreigners -particularly in their little neighborhoods. It is a little odd but you get used to the people coming to a complete halt to watch the “strangers” go pass their home or business. They follow us around and try to figure out why we all are calling out when we pass a pile of flour, “On.” I am sure that when we go wandering off the sidewalks and walkways and march off into the fields or woods yelling, “On, on!” What a freak show we must be.
Lunch today was in a Really Chinese Chinese restaurant. I know you think that is redundant but you have three different Chinese Restaurants. One, an Expat Friendly Chinese operated restaurant that features Chinese food but feels a little western. It may even have a couple familiar dishes for a western to choose from. Second is the Chinese Chinese places, they feature more traditional Chinese fair in a modern setting. Third is the Really Chinese Chinese places, these are traditional dishes that are served with the heads still attached, feet too. The seasoning is salt (MSG) and Chinese vinegar. These special places also have questionable hygiene and food prep areas. For those of us that live here, we eventually get used to the conditions and can always find one or two dishes that we can tolerate. My preference today was the boiled crawfish. (You can take the girl out of Louisiana but you cannot take Louisiana out of the girl.)
After lunch, several of us headed out to find the ferry dock for the return trip home. I had to stop for a pee break; I just couldn’t use the facilities at the restaurant. I ended up stopping in the two at a Chinese Chinese place to use their facilities which was not going to win any awards for cleanliness either. In our area if you need to use the potty or take a break you just walk into any establishment and do so – no questions asked, I however still am programmed so I bought a coke and had a few minutes of conversation with the staff. Back across the river, not anywhere I will be swimming, another 2k before we were able to find a taxi to take us home.
It was a great way to spend a Sunday morning and I was most appreciative of my son going out on the scooter and bring home BIGMAC’s!

Hashers sing with me...I heard it through the grapevines.

Food Prep Area. Notice the yellow flowers under the table, those were battered and fried. Yummy. They are flowers from a squash plant of some sort.

Special entertainment for the locals. For a small fee you can ride on the pedal boats.

This is where they were cleaning the dishes.

Chris, professional hasher, hauling the kiddies.