Monthly Archives: May 2005

Thanks for the books, Kate!

Finished my Jane Austen novel and started Branded, a book which exposes brand name culture in teen America and shows why many corporations direct their marketing toward adolescents and what it’s doing to society. Perfect book for Thailand too! I’m afraid that all the Starbucks stores around here can only mean one thing: Gap and Old Navy are on their way! (I seriously know of three Starbucks in walking distance from my house.) Very sad. There is a very popular Thai coffee shop here called Black Canyon Coffee, which recently received a huge award (probably from the U.S.) for “successful national branding”. Oh great. Now they’re actually rewarding developing countries for branding their own kids’ brains out too.

Got up early to take a walk this morning and realized for the first time how close I am to Chulalongkorn University and its running track. I’ll have to go there in the mornings from now on.

Learning lots of Thai. Here are some words:

Noeng – not actually sure how to spell it (with the oe pronounced like the oo in “book”) means “one”.

Tong bai – also not sure how to spell it – is (pronounced TONG bye), means “straight ahead”. This is good to know for directing the taxi driver!

Miss Universe will be decided in just a couple hours! My guess is that Miss Canada, who is absolutely beautiful, is going to win!

From the inside of a telephone booth, I surreptitiously photographed a woman slicing what was quite possibly the world’s largest cucumber. (I hid because I didn’t want to alarm her, being that she was holding a knife and didn’t look like the forgiving type.) The cucumber was roughly the size of a football. Maybe it is some other vegetable that I am unaware of (and correct me if I’m wrong about this vegetable), but it sure looked like a cucumber. (Photo coming soon!)

What is also interesting to me is the pervasive presence of 7-11 convenience stores in Bangkok. In the downtown area, they appear at every corner and like their U.S. cousins, are open 24 hours. I wonder if all of the convenience food stores and fast food restaurants will affect the Thais’ health in the near future? They all seem to love Dunkin’ Donuts, Baskin Robbins, Dairy Queen, McDonalds, Pizza Hut and KFC, not to mention all the chips and candy from 7-11. Did you know that stores and restaurants here ALWAYS give you a colorful drinking straw with every beverage you buy, even cans of beer?

Yesterday was a very good day. First, I was scheduled to meet Hyunjoo, Yoko, Lifang, Masahiro and Tee for a walk at Lumphini Park at 7:00 AM. Only Tee and I showed up, but this probably had something to do with the big party we all attended Saturday night, because only Tee and I drank orange juice and chocolate milk all night. While on our walk, I saw a lady nonchalantly pedaling her bike through the park with a steaming hot bowl of noodles in one hand. Didn’t see her eating them, though.

Speaking of noodles, Lumphini Park has an outdoor food vendor and picnic area where joggers, yogis and tai-chi practitioners can get a delicious, cheap breakfast after their workouts. Tee and I had bowls of noodles for just 30 baht (US$ .75) and I had a really tasty “green jelly” drink, which was sweet (and green) and full of little squashy bits of something.

At 10:00 AM, we met Hyunjoo at the Nana sky train station to walk to “Crepes & Co” for a delightful 5-course brunch in true French style. The restaurant is an expat secret, nestled in a lush verdant little section one low-key soi, its cool porch shaded by tall palms, fruit trees and overhanging tropical plants and enclosed within tall garden walls. Inside, it was decorated in dark wood and rattan, with crisp navy tablecloths and billowing canvas on the ceiling. The wait staff wore white and black striped shirts with little red scarves, similar to the get-ups of Parisian mimes, except that they’re Thai. We had coffee, café au lait, tomato and orange juice; croissants, toast, and baguettes with several kinds of butter and preserves; bananas and cornflakes; French toast; two types of omelettes; more toast; and finally, banana and chocolate pancake; and maple and cream pancake. To finish, we received another round of hot beverages.

I wanted to go to sleep after such an amazing meal, but it was only 12:30 in the afternoon, so I instead went to the movies. I saw Cherm, a Thai movie in English subtitles, which was excellent. I was very impressed at how very artistic it was, and how somehow even the raw and disturbing scenes were beautiful in their own way. It was a very sad but redeeming love story about a shy, old-fashioned taxi driver with a mysterious past who meets a commercial sex worker and how they change each other’s lives. The movie also gave me a lot of insight into Bangkok’s gritty urban culture.

The evening brought a real monsoon-style thunderstorm, perfect for lying in bed all evening reading my Jane Austen novel.

Today I learned to say Kapao Pak Sai Gai (pronounced Kah-POW PAHK SIGH GUY) and means Stir-Fried Vegetables with Chicken.

As you may know, the famous Miss Universe pageant is in Bangkok this year. The newspapers lately have included editorials ranting about scantily-clad contestants posing for photos in front of Buddhist temples and shrines. I haven’t seen them around town, but I’ve heard that they’re everywhere, partying it up in their bikinis. Miss Thailand has already won the traditional dress portion of the competition, while Miss Philippines leads the way in the popularity contest. I’ll try to keep you up to date”¦

Last night I had dinner at Inter, a favorite restaurant of mine near my house. I like it because it is cheap like street vendor food (US$ .75-1.50), but it is very clean and air-conditioned too. Inter serves basic one-dish Thai meals, like pad thai, beef with rice, Thai noodle soups and green papaya salads (a.k.a. Som Tam), and they’re delicious!

I am very partial to iced Thai coffee and iced Thai lemon tea, but you have to be careful not to drink too many too often, because they are loaded with sweetened condensed milk (read: calories!)

Just when you’re feeling a little low, those happy Thais will go and do something to pick you right back up again. At dinner, I was exchanging smiles with a nice older couple a few tables away from me. Just before I left, they handed the waitress a pile of mangosteens on a plate and made her take it over to me. I couldn’t really communicate with them other than with smiles and bows, but I said thank you in Thai on my way out, and we had a lot of laughs. I love mangosteens! They are fun to peel, and their little fleshy white sections (similar to the shape of a peeled tangerine, but much smaller and of a different consistency) are really sweet and tangy.

Something I love about the Thais is their sense of humor. They can truly be goofy and really enjoy laughing. One taxi driver who stands outside my guest house every day to wait for customers used to ask me, “Taxi?” every time I passed by, and every time I’d tell him no thank you. Now we have a running joke that goes a little differently every time. Sometimes he says, “Taxi? No thank you!!! Exercise today please!!!!” and then doubles over guffawing at his own joke until he’s red in the face. Sometimes he’ll say, “Taxi? No thank you. Tuk-tuk? No thank you. Bicycle? No thank you. Helicopter?!?!?!!” and then we both bust our guts laughing.

By the way: “Soi”, pronounced SOY, is a Thai word that sort of means little street, alley, or mini neighborhood community, all in one. I love the soi I live on, because everyone recognizes me now and says hi or waves to me. The same things happen every day in the same way, which is comforting somehow: at 5:00 AM, the fish soup lady starts cooking for the day, at 6:45 AM my guest house owner lets her tiny twin fluffy white dogs into the street with their tinkling collars of bells, and they run around grinning maniacally with tongues hanging out to one side. At 7:00 AM I have breakfast and watch the Thai kids walk to the bus stop in their school uniforms. At 9:00 AM the Thai massage lady puts her sign out on the street. Around 5:00 PM the pancake lady starts frying batter. At 6:30 PM the fruit man starts slicing papaya and flicking watermelon seeds onto the pavement with his knife. And at 9:15 PM the barefoot man from the ice block truck unloads massive square chunks of ice onto banana leaves inside the ice vendor’s garage. There it sits in hot dark of the Bangkok night, steam rising up from it under the light of the streetlamps. It’s fun to pretend that Soi Kamesan 1 is my own little neighborhood.

Did you know that other than playing the national anthem in movie theaters before the main feature starts, Thais also play the anthem twice per day in any public location that has an intercom? This includes public parks and shopping malls! Lately I’ve been in the outdoor mall shopping areas around my house or at beautiful Lumphini Park when the anthem comes on over the loudspeaker at 6:00 PM. I stop in my tracks to listen, as the Thais do. But other unknowing Western tourists will keep on walking, and they’ll look around puzzled about why everyone else isn’t moving. I silently smirk at them. It’s as though the world freezes for just one eerie minute.

Very unfortunately, I accidentally deleted all of the pictures from my digital camera. I’m pretty bummed out about it, because the photos included the Buddha festival, a dog sleeping while wearing a man’s dress shirt, the monk bus, and many more.

Among the funny things I’ve seen recently include a street vendor selling pink hotdogs (Thais sure do like things that are pink!) and a monk who secured his robes with big black metal binder clips.

Tomorrow is Saturday, and I’m going to the Chatuchak Weekend Market again with some UNESCO friends who haven’t been yet (Ahmed from Canada and Marie from the Philippines). Later tomorrow night, I’m invited to a party.

Have a great weekend!

Sunday was the religious holiday called Visakha Puja, which celebrates Buddha’s birth, enlightenment and death. Kate and I started our day by taking the speedy canal boat from my house to Banglampoo, where the famous backpacker area called Khao San Road is. We had iced coffee at a restaurant called “Lucky Beer” (Thai iced coffee – pronounced “Kah Fay YEN” in Thai – is delicious!!) and visited a beautiful temple called Wat Chana Songkhram, where hundreds of people lined up to buy lotus flowers, candles and incense to offer to the Buddha inside. At temples and shrines, you can also typically buy small cages of little birds. The purpose of this is to set the birds free to earn good karma or “merit” for yourself.

The Khao San Road area has such great shopping! You can buy beautiful and inexpensive Thai silk scarves, jewelry, shirts, bags, and much, much more. They also have very cheap CDs. One stand was playing some beautiful music, so I asked them what it was: Jack Johnson, a new Australian artist. They’ll let you play any of the CDs to sample before you buy!

Kate and I decided to get the whole Thai massage experience, so we made an appointment at the nearby Sikhara Spa in the Buddy Lodge. It is a gorgeous spa — cool and dimly lit with candles, everything made of teakwood, with orchids and frangipani all around. You get to peruse a menu of spa treatments while drinking strong, sweet Thai tea out of beautiful cups. Our spa appointment wasn’t until 3:30, so we decided to head over the National Gallery, which is usually a weekend art market. Of course, when we arrived, we discovered that it was closed because of the holiday. But we then spotted a lot of commotion and fanfare across the street in a large park area called Sanam Luang…

We followed the crowds and ended up at the HUGE and chaotic annual Buddha Festival. (Photos are coming soon!) Incredible parade floats of gold and red, large and flashy (temporary) fountains and colorful animal statues made of foam and paper maché were on display. Thousands of people took part in a prayer procession around a large central Buddha shrine, holding lotus blossoms, incense and candles, as well as umbrellas to block out the heat from the sun. Hundreds of tents housed rows and rows of cross-legged monks listening to lectures and speeches. Some wore white robes and others yellow or orange. Buddha books, posters and shrine materials were for sale on tables everywhere. We also spotted several free food buffets where lots of happy Thai people stood eating fried rice, soup and tapioca desserts. Kate and I had a fun “mystery ice cream experience” with a street vendor who had many colors of offer, but no discernible flavors — except for the pink one which was vaguely like bubblegum…

We then proceeded to get lost and wandered around like zombies among the crowds of the saffron-robed and other Buddha-happy Thais. Did you know that some monks smoke cigarettes?! We saw it with our own eyes!

We ended up on a cool shady street with many amulet vendors selling tiny stone and metal figurines from blankets on the ground. Their customers, I suppose, are people who want to protect themselves from bad spirits, though I’m not certain yet what that’s all about. One older customer squatted there next to each blanket intently examining the amulets one by one with a jeweler’s eyepiece. Looking for what, I wonder? We also saw a “monk bus” passing by – chock full of monks and painted in a colorful kaleidoscope of tie-dye patterns. (Thai-dye, get it?! Hah!) Religious music something like a cross between Indian music and a circus blared from its windows.

We were totally lost, it seemed, and we felt like sad, wilted flowers in the heat. But magically we happened upon a cafe that served us iced coffee, pineapple shakes and spring rolls with mustard!

Later, our spa experience was terrific, and we had a lot of laughs related to little intercultural misunderstandings, which I wouldn’t know how to even begin to write up in a blog. My 3-hour spa package included a floral foot bath, tamarind and yogurt body scrub, hydrotherapy milk soak and one hour of Swedish oil massage. Kate had a mud wrap which made her look like a freakish mummy, and at one point when she got overheated and claustrophobic in it, she made a hilarious but unfruitful attempt at busting out of her cellophane and blankets.

Our Indian-Thai dinner was amazing at the hippie restaurant “Whole Earth”. We had fun looking for it, off the street with a name something like the secret password to PeeWee’s playhouse (“Mekka Lekka Hi, Mekka Hi Nee Ho”). Afterward, we saw “Hostage” with Bruce Willis, an edge-of-your-seat action film with some funny, cheesy scenes.

Kate and I met Hyunjoo at 8 AM yesterday to go directly to the famous Chutachak (“JJ”) weekend market, which might be the biggest in the world — I heard that somewhere. Having mentally prepared ourselves for a morning of crowded commercial chaos, were were very suprised to find a quiet, uncrowded and beautiful open-air market, its different sections exquisitely organized by item type and clearly labeled in both Thai and English. Anything you want to buy Chutachak has, in large quantity and for a negotiable price! My favorite things were the rows and rows of colorful, handmade Chinese lanterns and string light sets. We tried some fried balls of something sweet that were really good. No idea what was in them… Soy bean maybe?

Afterward, a taxi drove us to the big river so we could take the water taxi to the Grand Palace. There is a GREAT pad thai restaurant by the pier at the Grand Palace. Unfortunately, the Temple of the Emerald Buddha was closed for ceremonies related to the religious holiday Visakha Puja, the holiest day of the Buddhist calendar which celebrates Buddha’s birth, enlightenment and death. So we decided to save the Grand Palace for another day, but we had fun buying sparkly long-sleeved shirts just outside the palace walls, because its dress code required shoes or sandals. Flipflops, short-sleeved shirts, and tank tops weren’t allowed.

At the Grand Palace, we also learned how to properly take a photograph with a monk: you can stand near him, but not touching him — about one foot away is best. Also, you should position yourself lower than him. You can see an example of this in the pictures I’ve uploaded.

We decided instead to go to the Temple of the Reclining Buddha (at Wat Pho) which was nearby. It was my first Thai temple visit! “Wat” means temple in Thai, by the way. It was the most interesting and beautiful thing I’ve seen so far! Be sure to see the new photos of it I’ve posted! The gardens, doorways and stone statues were incredible, not to mention the incredible 45 meter-long golden Buddha inside the main building, with feet inlaid with mother-of-pearl pictures of the 108 “auspicious signs” of a true Buddha. On one side of the statue are 108 round iron pots on little stands, each pot about the size of a bowling ball, into which you can drop coins for good luck and long life. Visitors to the Reclining Buddha stood in one long line and tossed in the tiny gold-colored .25 baht coins as they walked. It made a beautiful kind of clinking clanking music.

After the Wat, we continued walking to Chinatown. We saw really funny things there too, like a pigeon eating his lunch out of a styrofoam to-go container as though he’d just bought it down the street, and an icecream vendor sampling his own wares, but he was eating big scoops of icecream out of a hotdog bun!! The best part were the gorgeous flowers sold by the street vendors: jasmine, lilies, roses, daisies and orchids of all colors sitting in great big piles…It smelled so good!!! We found a huge, cheesy (read: flashy!) shopping center for Chinese goods and little stands with people cooking and selling snacks. If they’d asked me to give it a name, I would have called it China Snack Heaven. Also, it was such an obscure place that we saw absolutely no foreigners or tourists. We ordered and ate a smorgaspord of strange-looking but delicious foods without having a clue what was in them. (If I had to guess, I’d say some of them were quail eggs, pumpkin bread, fish powder and candied coconut, but how can we be sure?)

For dinner, Hyunjoo took us to a Korean BBQ restaurant in the Asok neighborhood. I have never had a meal involving so many tiny bowls! Your main dish is accompanied by about 10 side dishes, which you can sample and then order more of, as many times as you want to! I had a kind of beef soup that is poured over rice. Some of our side dishes included clams, kim chi, omelettes and anchovy salad. We also went to a Korean grocery store where we sampled an ancient type of Korean cinnamon juice.

We met a Thai pharmacist named Eddie who taught Kate how to say “I’m a vegetarian”: Mung Sow WEE Raht.

I think I’ve figured out the trick to crossing the street! The key to it involves a purposeful first move into the street, looking toward oncoming traffic (while also checking for people going wrong way down the street) and moving steadily, but slowly forward, never back. It’s like staring down a grizzly bear, but it’s Thai traffic. Show no fear.

Today was a fun day. I had lunch with my co-workers Alida (Vietnamese/Thai from Holland), Glen (Japanese from Canada), Hyunjoo (Korean), Pina (Thai), Ochiro (Mongolian) and a guy from Norway whose name is something similar to “Jet Li” in Norwegian, so he just goes by Jet Li. Hah! We took taxis to eat at a Japanese restaurant called Zen on the big street (Thong Lor) near work. The waitresses wore kimonos and we had to remove our shoes, climb into the table pit, and sit on little pillows. Great fun!

During lunch, Ochiro said in a very serious tone that he knew it would rain soon, because he was getting sleepy. Apparently that’s how he can usually tell. Jet Li said Thank goodness for Mongolian wisdom.

Hyunjoo and I planned part of our adventure weekend. My friend Kate, who arrived yesterday from Ho Chi Minh where she works in urban planning, accompanied us. We decided to first hit the famous weekend market (“Chutachak” or “JJ”) and then try to eat Chinese dim-sum at the Shangri-La hotel.

When we got back to UNESCO after lunch, all the workers were standing outside the building because the power was out. So we just stood around for an hour or so until the electricians repaired the power lines.

Jet Li told me that the large fortress-like restaurant called “Coliseum” near our work is a brewery and popular hangout for Thai locals who like to drink heavily, do karaoke and see particularly cheesy Thai rock concerts. You have to be careful when you go to the bathroom there, he said, because when you come out, about 8-10 half-drunk Thais will surround you and try to massage your shoulders, hand you a towel, spray you with cologne, even crack your neck! Then you’ll end up having to pay 75 baht (approx. US$ 2) just to use the toilet.

Ochiro and Jet Li also showed me a tank full of live baby jumping shrimp of a delicate blue hue, swimming in a tank at a market vendor’s stand. Those are held between the fingers and eaten live, one by one, particularly after one has been drinking Thai whiskey. It’s a delicacy I have not tried yet.

So my friend Kate met me at my guest house yesterday evening and is staying at the Wendy House next door. At dinner, I ordered something from a picture menu called Seafood Noodle Soup with “Special Sauce”. Was it my imagination, or did the waiter softly snicker when he wrote it down? When it arrived, to my delight, it was bright pink in color, with white, spongy seaweed-like organic matter in it, along with noodles and fish. It was delicious! I guess I’ll never know what that “special sauce” was. And was the sauce itself pink, or was it a pink type of seafood that made the soup pink? Hmmm…

He’s 33 today, according to The Nation, Bangkok’s English newspaper.

So my new words from the past two days are goodbye: “Lah-GAWN”, with a falling tone.
Spicy: “PRICK”, with a high tone. Hot pepper: “PET”, with a low tone.

It’s been raining so much, all day and night the past two days. Lots of thunder. Bangkok is lush and steamy.

Yesterday I saw a huge centipede (or something like a centipede) crawling next to the lily pond at UNESCO. It was about six inches long and thicker than my finger, like the kind we had in Gabon.

Work is going well. I’ve finished editing the Bhutan, Indonesia, Myanmar and Pakistan country profiles, as well as an Adolescent Reproductive Health (ARH) needs assessment report for the Asia and Pacific Island regions.

Some interesting facts I just learned: when the U.S. rejoined as a member of UNESCO just a few years ago, they insisted on taking up the highest positions, and then they made our ARSH unit bury its Web page further down into the main site because it’s content too “controversial” and doesn’t advocate abstinence-only values. Two months ago, they also made ARH remove the word “abortion” from our site completely, because they claim that it is trying to promote abortion, when in reality it is simply reporting about the practice all over the world. It’s things like this that make me embarrassed to be an American.
Also, did you hear the latest about the ACLU?

(sigh)

On a lighter note, last night I saw Star Wars Episode III, because it was opening night for it here in Bangkok. Awesome! My favorite part was the big jumping lizard.

I’ve started eating my food “Thai style”, with a fork in my left hand and a huge spoon in my right. The food is pushed onto the spoon with the fork, and the hand with the spoon puts the food in the mouth.

I was sick Tuesday through the night, but I felt better by Wednesday. It’s my own fault for being so adventurous with street vendor food and weird-looking fruit”¦

But for some reason I look really FABULOUS in Thailand! My hair is soft and shiny, and my skin is smooth and glows. I think it’s the humidity and the hot peppers that keep the color in my cheeks.

Monday is a Thai religious holiday, so we have a three-day weekend. I am creating an action-packed list of adventure activities for myself and my friend Kate Hummel who is visiting from nearby Vietnam (and who is one of my bridesmaids) to do this weekend, including a visit to the Grand Palace, the famous Temple of the Dawn, Chinatown and the weekend market.
Stay tuned for the reports…

If anyone would like to write to me, my address until June 11th is:

Room 207
Bed and Breakfast Inn
36/42 Soi Kasem San 1
Rama 1 Road
Pathumwan, BANGKOK 10330
THAILAND

It takes about 5-7 days for letters to go between Thailand and the U.S.

Today at work I ate lunch with a very interesting group of young UNESCO workers at the UNESCO “cafeteria” building. It is beautiful and reminds me of a treehouse, because it is slightly raised off the ground level and is pure glass on three sides, with skylights in the ceiling. Tropical flowering trees and plants surround the building, giving it a very “jungle-y” feeling while you eat and look outside. The furniture is Asian minimalist: black leather, matte metal and glass, with clean lines. The food is excellent too! I had curry and rice, with a strange tapioca pudding for dessert that had corn, fresh coconut and yam chunks floating in it.

The group of people I lunched with included two girls and two guys, all about my age. Plau is from Bangladesh but lives and studies in Thailand. Tee has Malaysian citizenship but is Chinese and lives in Thailand. Glen is Japanese ethnically but is Canadian by citizenship and works in Thailand. Alida has Dutch citizenship, but her mother is Thai and her father is Vietnamese. We talked about all the trouble we have when we travel in explaining to people what we “are”. We laughed pretty hard when Alita asked Glen whether he tells people he’s from Canada or North America. Also, she asked where Vancouver is in Canada, and we told her that it’s “on the left”.

It rained a lot yesterday — a true tropical storm with lots of thunder. So my Thai word for yesterday was umbrella, which is “Lohm”. The word for today was rice, which is pronounced “Khow”, in a falling tone.

Today at work I also attended a debriefing (?) presented by two people who recently led education program needs assessment teams to tsunami victim areas in Sri Lanka and Indonesia, called IDP camps. IDP stands for “Internally Displaced Persons”. I got to attend this presentation in the official UNESCO board room. Very fancy. I learned a lot about long-term program needs assessment, non-formal education and coordinating donor agencies for tsunami relief. They also showed beautiful and interesting photographs from their trips to these places.

The highlight of my day was when the IT manager, a Thai man named “Bang”, took me to get a security passcode for the front door. There’s a computer on the wall by the front door where I now enter my code number and put my finger on a sensor pad so it can identify me by my fingerprint, just like in James Bond movies!!!

The Thai gals next door at the Wendy House washed and ironed all of my clothes for me today for about $US 3.

Thais probably lead the world in the transportation department. I can’t even count on my hands all the ways to travel around town! Just yesterday I rode the canal boat to the Banglampoo section of town, a “tuk tuk” (kind of like a golf cart on steroids) to the piers, then down the river on a long river-style boat to Khlong San, and the skytrain back to Siam Square where I live. So far, seeing Bangkok is the most fun from a boat on the wide Chao Phraya River. Some Thai boats are very exotic-looking, with very long “tails” (pointed bows) and prayer flowers (kind of like leis, but made of jasmine and roses) hanging from the bows. All the boats seem to have special sections just for monks to ride in.

My guest house room is tiny, with a slightly noisy air conditioner, double bed, small desk. The bathroom (shower, sink, regular toilet) occupies a room half the size of a small closet! My window overlooks a cute little alley. I wish I could open the window, but the air outside is hot and thick. Housekeeping keeps my room super clean, especially the floor, which is spotless. I do yoga on it each morning before the sun comes up. The family that runs this guest house has two twin white, fluffy dogs that wear goofy grins and collars of tinkling bells. They really make me laugh. I get a complimentary breakfast of toast, fruit and coffee every morning downstairs in the “lobby”. Outside on the porch, tiny fish swim in earthenware pots filled with lily pads.

So last night I watched Kingdom of Heaven in English in a posh, airconditioned theater — much nicer than any theater I’ve been to in the U.S. ! After the previews and funny Thai commercials for washing machines and canned fish, all moviegoers had to stand to “pay homage to His Majesty the King”. It was truly an amazing montage including the king’s baby photos, school pictures, and more recent fancy ones, with on-screen fireworks and a full symphony/choir version of the Thai national anthem.

Today was my first day at work!!! I was a little intimidated by the palace-like UNESCO building with huge walls and guard house. The soldiers working at the gate salute me each time I walk by and one of them told me he was “Happy, happy, happy, happy!!!!!” to see me. I have my own desk and a very nice computer in an air-conditioned office on the second floor. The people working at UNESCO are from ALL OVER the world. My co-worker Francisco, a 60-year-old Philipino man who has the Star Wars theme song on his cel phone, showed me around and introduced me to everyone on every floor! I am currently editing the adolescent reproductive health country profiles for Bhutan, Myanmar, Indonesia and Pakistan.

Francisco took me out to lunch and that’s when I made him tell me his whole life story, which is the MOST AMAZING one I’ve ever heard. It includes four years of Catholic priesthood, escaping death by firing squad by fleeing into the mountains of the Phillipines to disguise himself as a farming monk, learning Hebrew in Israel, working for eight years in Nigeria as U.N. Communications Special Envoy, and MUCH more. He related all this to me and more while we ate “Miso Tofu Sea-Shell Soup” and a pork salad called “Miss Saigon” for lunch at the soho-style Greyhound Cafe while Billie Holiday played on the stereo. This place is one crazy experience after another!

Correction to yesterday’s post: Khao San Road is NOT where the most commercial sex workers are; rather, it’s Patpong, which is Bangkok’s red light district.

Bangkok is hot, humid and full of interesting sounds (traffic, Mynah birds, Thai chatter) and smells (lemongrass, garlic, roasting chicken). I love the fresh-squeezed orange juice carts and watching people talking on their cel phones from the back of motorcycles taxis. Flowers, koi ponds and beautiful trees are everywhere. Orchids seem to grow right out from cracks in the sidewalk.
I’m trying to practice using a new Thai word or phrase every day. Yesterday was Thank You: “Kawp Koon KAAAAH”, and today I added Hello: “Sah Waht Dee KAAAAH” (KAAAH is always at the end of whatever you say, if you’re a woman. If you’re a man, everything ends with “Krahp”.) Hello is always accompanied by a little bow with the hands pressed together, fingertips near your nose.
Today I took a 20 minute walk from my guest house to the biggest park in Bangkok, called Lumphini Park. It is probably the best park in the whole world. It feels like a 20-ring circus, with hundreds of Thai people out taking group classes in yoga, tai chi, fan dancing, aerobics, etc. in the shade of flowering trees. Also, can you believe that Thais speed walk and jog? There are two big lakes in the park where you can rent canoes or paddle boats in the shape of swans. They even have a senior citizens center with special old people aerobics (to the tune of Thai classical music) on the grass. Everywhere are people picnicing and selling sliced fruit. It took me about 45 minutes to walk around the whole park.
I took the skytrain back to my guest house to take a shower (boy is it hot here!). About one block from the guest house is the canal speed boat pier. I took a long, fast canal boat that cut right through town much faster than a taxi could. It had a collapsable roof on springs so that we could slink right under the bridges. We passed rows and rows of houses made of rusty tin on stilts over the canal, and I watched the people hanging their laundry in the sun and feeding their caged birds.
The boat took me to the Banglampoo area of town, which is where all the tourists (and sex workers) are. Here is the famous Khao San Road where the beginning of the book The Beach takes place. I had some Pad Thai noodles and an iced coffee while watching the Thai cheerleading competition on TV and listening to teen boys singing “You are my sunshine” on the karaoke machine. More adventures to come…