being in Bangkok is like being 'maytagged' - a term used in river rafting - the sense that one is trapped for an unseemly amount of time inside a washing machine, an appliance from which one will eventually emerge, defunct but well scrubbed....after ten minutes or so of being outside on the strees of Bangkok every part of you is wet - from the humid air - from the drizzle and or rain and from your own sweat - feet constantly doused by puddles...
yesterday - our first real day in the city made me realize that we don't have real cities in America - not the kind of city that encapsulates every single kind of life form and truism of that life form into every inch of space available...this is a city of wandering cats, people selling absolutely anything and everything, raging tuk-tuks and taxis and motorcycles, fish heads next to amulets next to vials of all sorts of powders to heal absolutely anything wrong with you and all of it wet and yet all of it quite ready to smile and try to help you - if of course you buy their friends' water or curry or go in their tuk-tuk....
here's my favorite story from yesterday: we're trying to get back to our hotel, the Old Bangkok Inn (fabulous, amazing, best ever)and we know we're in the area but just can't find it - the Inn had given us a little card with their info in Thai on it to give to taxi drivers - so when the inevitable tuk-tuk driver approached us on the street I showed him the card hoping he would point out the way - next thing I know he has waved down a man who is about to cross the street to help read the card - this man then waves down a woman walking by (maybe because she might know the area better...?) and thus all three of them are standing around us talking much thai and gesturing wildly to each other - each pointing in different directions - the woman then whips out her cell phone to call the Inn, talks for quite some time - still gesturing and then hands the phone to Amber who has a 1 minute conversation that goes like this: the Inn: You're very close, Amber: I know. We'll find it. We thank our new friends and head off with no more information or idea where we are going. After walking down a side street for awhile the cell phone woman happens upon us - again - stops us and makes us walk back the way we had come - needless to say we finally found the Inn - and we were... very close...!
