Trip to Thailand, January 2013
Back up in the room Robert showered and we all packed up. We’d decided that Robert would spend the rest of the day and one more night in Bangkok and then fly back to Boston the next morning at 5:55 (53 hours after we’d arrived), landing somewhere around 2pm on New Year’s Eve. Though Marcus and Samantha are generally good travelers, and we’d had two fabulous long haul flights on the way over, it seemed cruel to put them back on planes again so soon, so we decided I would stay with them for half of the trip that we’d planned, flying back to meet Robert after a week (instead of two). Robert wanted Marcus to have a good trip and make some happy memories, and it didn’t seem necessary to put him through a funeral at this age, so when George and Pat came to pick us up at 10:00 for our road trip to Koh Lanta, a relatively unspoiled beach island in the south, we first tried to get Robert squared away for the day, and drove to a nearby hotel that George knew and got him checked in for the day so he’d at least have a room somewhere.
We piled into the Honda and took Robert there, dropping off him and his bags and saying our goodbyes. Marcus was excited about the beach, so he was distractible, and we set off at 11:15 from Robert’s hotel. As it turned out, Robert had an interesting day walking around Bangkok by himself and finally taking the Sky train back to his hotel.
“Other than wandering through alleys to find myself stuck at a seemingly impassible canal and then saved by a girl in a rickety rowboat,” Robert reported, “my favorite point of the day was being so pleased at getting one BBQ pork skewer for 6 baht instead of the posted two for fifteen, then going to his wife for the two for fifteen sausage sticks and not only getting excellent sauce advice, but also getting the one for 5 baht. Oh wait—I just saw an elaborately dressed squirrel vendor. I'll leave it to your imagination how to parse that sentence.”
Robert's ferry and ferry-person, and the canal she helped him cross.
Shrimp market, gem market.
Thai orange juice, Bangkok street, Bangkok river.
Robert left by cab for the airport very early the next morning, appreciative of the hotel George had chosen for him: “It took me a while to figure out this hotel’s architectural motivation until I noticed the large wide ramps connecting every floor. Then the combination of industrial concrete and flimsy thin walls made sense. But the harsh concrete is positively homey compared to the iron cold service. The room was 900 baht, but I'm pretty convinced the woman at the front desk bumped it up a couple hundred just for me. She refused to give me a map, or really any information whatsoever about places to go or how to get there. Something is dripping in here... Hopefully the air conditioner. Oh, and the light switch by the door doesn't turn on the light. When I told the helpful bellman in the hall, he shrugged. When begged for his help, he came in, flipped the switch, indicated he thought I was an idiot and started to walk out when I pointed that the light was still not on. Then he walked into the dark room and flipped another switch on the far side of the bed and now really let me know what he thought of me, presumably because I should be able to see white on white randomly located switches in near total darkness. Other amenities include 26 channels of television with six Arabic, five Chinese, and one English channel (showing mui Thai fighting); what appears to be a Korean style rock bed; three tiny bars of soap; a toilet that sorta flushes if you hold the handle for 30 seconds (maybe I should get the helpful bellman to help with that as well); and lobby-only wifi so front-desk-lady can glare at you all the longer. Oh, and they have lizards entertaining in the halls.”
Though Robert’s grandmother Helena died that same day, on December 30th, he was still able to provide moral support for his father in the week that he was home and we were still away.
Meanwhile, George thought that, given our 11:00 departure, we’d hit the ferry terminal in Krabi around 7:00 at night to make it onto Lanta easily, since the ferry stops running at 10:00 at night. But there was terrible traffic leaving Bangkok, since it was so close to New Year’s Eve, and a stretch of drive that should have taken four hours took us seven. Apparently everyone leaves Bangkok during the holidays, and driving down the day before New Year’s Eve was definitely, in hindsight, cutting things a little close. By mid-afternoon, when the traffic finally started letting up, the skies opened and it poured a huge, heavy, driving tropical rain on us, slowing us down further because visibility got so bad. Pat kept saying how surprising it was that it would rain that hard at this time of year, but there it was.
We made a few stops along the way, and Marcus and Samantha had fun playing with toys and eating snacks in the car, so it wasn’t an onerous drive at all. We stretched our legs, got gas, bought more snacks (Thai 7-11s are pretty fabulous), and used the bathrooms; well, Marcus did—I managed to avoid the squat toilets our entire stay in Thailand, and those were pretty much all that there was at roadside rest stops.
Our first stop, for lunch still close to Bangkok, was at a rest area which I rated a 10/10 for atmosphere. There was a covered food area but no actual side walls, and many mangy but friendly dogs strolling up and down the aisles or sleeping under the tables. There were the tin mugs with colored straws and the little pink napkins that I’d read about ahead of time in my favorite preparatory book, Very Thai http://www.amazon.com/Very-Thai-Philip-Cornwel-Smith/dp/9749863674. The book, while gorgeous in a coffee-table-book way, was also really informative about the culture and a great help. Actually, everywhere else we’d eaten before this must have been too high-class for these napkins, but I was thrilled to see them here (apparently pink was the easiest color to dye the recycled fibers, according to that book, and pink napkins had become ubiquitous at roadside stalls). Pat ordered a bunch of food for us—rice, a green curry, a noodle dish with glass noodles, three fried mackerel (this province being particularly known for mackerel, she said, and of course I’ve never met a mackerel I didn’t like), a savory egg custard with vegetables (sort of like the Japanese chawan mushi), two big bottles of water, ice (always charged for separately), and all that, even with the splurging coconut lime ice cream cup I bought Marcus (which, at 20 baht, made last night’s Newbury-Street-style ice cream really pricy at 85 baht), for just 300 baht total.
Saying goodbye to Robert in the car, heading off; getting out of the car at our first rest stop.
Ordering food and choosing a table.
Setting the table, and eating.
Part of lunch.
Playtime and bathroom after lunch!
The mackerel was deliciously moist and flaky. Samantha fed herself rice with bits of fish, and glass noodles, with serious intensity. When I offered her some of the egg custard by spoon, she really started going to town. Marcus, hot and tired, didn’t eat that much—possibly, too, a morning spent eating a combination of my healthful snacks (veggie booty and tangerine segments) and George’s favorite assortment of Thai junk food (things that looked like 5”-long bugles, snack cakes with marshmallow fillings, sour gummy straws, Pretz) helped on that front. At any rate, it was a great lunch and even better stop.
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Created: 1/15/13. Last Modified: 1/15/13.