In one episode of Sex in the City, Carrie Bradshaw is in a bar and spots a woman wearing a scrunchie securing her hair in a perky ponytail. Carrie says to her friend, “That woman doesn't live in New York. No New Yorker would wear that.” After Carrie starts a brief conversation, the truth is revealed- the hair offender is a tourist from the Midwest. A couple of nights in Bangkok and I’m a small country mouse in the big city, embodying Aesop's fable and the differences between urban and rural living.
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| This is a representative photo from greatbalancingact.wordpress. com. |
On Saturday night last weekend, in the midst of a weekend trip to celebrate Rachael’s 23rd birthday in Bangkok, the 6 of us moved on from dinner and karaoke to a gay disco packed with swaying 20-something Asian men. When the drag show commenced and the MC, wearing a sequined green apple headband, booty shorts and fishnet tights, invited me on stage for my improvised part in her performance, I was acutely self-conscious of my flowered cotton tunic, graying hair and hot pink croc maryjanes. After a few interminable minutes, my cheering friends in the audience were duly identified by the transgender hostess and were hauled to the stage to join me in an impromptu dance-off. I was told that I danced like a penguin.
I asked for Friday afternoons off from teaching so I could have better bus schedules for travel around Thailand. Shortly after my students finished their mandated “learn to spell English by copying words off the board” exercise (which incidentally took the most deliberate child TWO HOURS), I was changed out of my uniform and headed to the bus station.
One of the great things about traveling in Thailand is that you never know exactly what kind of experience you will have on the bus. This trip featured a pink uniformed ladyboy attendant who announced stops and distributed small plastic cups of sodas and straws amidst a loud DVD about a battle between a dreadlocked alien and a Sigourney/Alien knockoff alien. Six hours later, I was deposited at Mo Chit bus terminal in Bangkok in the middle of rush hour. Unfortunately, the location of the peaceful Chatuchak Park impeded a smooth public transport transition in the development of the Bangkok Sky Train, so everyone takes car or motorcycle taxis between the two transport hubs. The motorcycle guys besiege the imcoming buses, so I negotiated a ride and climbed on. The driver had to stop and use my fifty baht for gas, then peeled out, took me on a couple of shortcuts across sidewalks, nearly sideswiped a taxi and barely squeezed through two cars. I had arrived in the city.
When Rachael invited me to join her in the birthday celebration and connect with some other English teachers from our placement agency, I piled up some Bangkok ideas and started doing research about what and where. I headed directly to one of Bangkok’s shopping high rises to get the iphone’s backlight fixed. You have to take a few minutes to walk around, observe the scene and trust your intuition on what small kiosk to approach. I hit the jackpot with a friendly, English speaking female technician who fixed the it and discounted the final price to a reasonable 850 baht/ $25. I then checked into the boutique hostel to wait for the other arrivals who came in very late.
I had a couple of hours to myself the next morning and was delighted to find that the Bangkok Arts and Culture Center was free of charge and scored at Green Thai Products with a silver fabric passport cover.
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| Razor fish swim with their bodies perpendicular to the sea floor! |
Margaret arrived a couple hours later; we decided to explore the Siam World aquarium, where I got another deep discount with my work permit and passively chided someone who thoughtlessly rapped on the glass-walled home of a white python.
While Margaret and I were out watching sharks swim overhead and Suzy was resting her travel-weary tummy in the hostel, Rachael had a fantastic time at the bb gun paintball park with her gay male friends. We met up with everyone later at a Lebanese restaurant and continued Rachael’s party vision to an evening of karaoke. This activity in Thailand is very popular, particularly when performed at ear-splitting volume at local bars. At my neighbor’s housewarming party last month, his friends brought over a computer, music stand, speaker and mic just for something to do after a few beers. We found a club, were presented with a directory of songs and a menu of options, ordered a bottle of tequila at the birthday girl’s request and filled out the little slips for songs. When the karaoke MC’s played “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” by mistake, it was all the more entertaining accompanied by our eager but pathetic singing juxtaposed against late 70’s footage of various people skiing down hills and riding up lifts.
After a few Thai songs in a row (we were outnumbered in the club), it was time to move on. The sky train was closed just before midnight and thus we carried on to the now intoxicated Birthday girl’s next idea. When we first entered the disco’s packed throngs of Asian gay male humanity, I went back to 1978. I’d had a gay friend in High School and on select nights a group of us would drive 30 miles across the Hudson river to party in the only club in the area. The men were huffing poppers and writhing to Donna Summer singing “and it took so long to bake it, and I’ll never have that recipe again.” My friends were dressed in the flowy Quiana skirts and clingy tops that looked great on the dance floor. I felt like a dork in my less than sexy outfit- both then and now.
When the music felt too loud and the crowds were oppressive, I hid out in the corner for a while for look out on the scene. I watched with interest as statuesque transgender performers emerged from the lower level to the stage across the room. I marveled at the sequins, makeup and gender re-assigned voluptuousness as the performers made their way through the crowds to finish their numbers just in front of me. I found the bright red glitter lipstick enchanting. And thus my unintended performance ensued... Who could resist an invitation to be wholly, unabashedly oneself under the glare of a spotlight? I was simultaneously laughing and being laughed at, but who really cared?
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| The Jade Buddha of Universal Peace. |
On the way through Central World's expansive entrance, I ran into the world tour of the Buddha of Universal Peace (honed from a huge gem-quality jade specimen discovered in the Canadian arctic), and inside discovered the department store that stocks Burt’s Bees products. Across a river canal I found my way to Platinum Fashion Mall, a collage of small shops in a crowded grid of “neighborhoods”, numbered “streets” and booth numbers. The information desk was able to print out a list of shops that stocked XL sizes and from there I went on an urban orienteering experience for a couple of hours. I scored an outfit, stopped for a Baskin-Robbins ice cream afterwards and called it a trip.
On the kilometers of elevated walkways that traverse the connections between retail establishments in Siam, I made my way back to the Northern Bus Terminal. A young woman was buskering with her violin. A boy with a severely burned scalp pulled out his flute as he prepared to play for money. A man with the weighty disfigurement of ounces of droopy forehead, cheeks and nose flesh that obscured his entire face simply extended a plastic cup to ask for offerings. There was a police man directing pedestrian traffic, complete with white baton and safety vest. I caught a second-class bus that stopped in Kamphaeng Phet on it’s way to Sukothai. I was home by 8:30 pm.
The Bangkok Arts and Culture Center’s exhibitions include one entitled, “Good to Walk.” This featured designers who created spaces in the curving hallways of the building that encouraged walking. One installation featured large, four foot wide and 5 feet tall black and grey sequined bells hanging from the ceiling. The artist encourages one to step under and into the bells and thus I was rewarded with a brilliant colors and designs of sequins that bedazzled and surprised me. This is the rich sensory experience that comes from venturing into a new zone, drinkiing in the imput from all sources.
As a country mouse, whose most recent observation has been a recent proliferation of large bodied black butterflies fluttering about, life in the city is enriching, stimulating and expensive. I’ll also admit that Bangkok is a lot more fun after I got the lay of the land and understood how to get around. I’m reassured that I can purchase my favorite lipstick and find some non-whitening skin care products without conducting international commerce. Bangkok, as the major urban hub for much of northern Southeast Asia, is a nice place to know exists but I am escatic that I don't live there.
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