Weekend Images

I never tire of the changing scenes in the street life of Bangkok. Each day I always see something that I've never witnessed before. One of the pleasures of living abroad is the opportunity to add to one's knowledge of diverse cultures. Thailand is one of the growing Asian countries, its culture influenced by its past and traditions, as well as subtly accommodating perspectives from other regions each with a unique cultural footprint. The result is a country with strong cultural beliefs and practices, overlaid by a blend of people and traditions from around the world. Following are a few photos of a typical Saturday as we run errands.

Shoppers at Victory Point night market

Fortune teller at Chinese Temple, Minburi

Street sweeping crew, Sammakorn Village

Fish monger, Chatuchak 2 market, Minburi

A Day in the Life

Every so often, I realize just how unusual my life must seem to others. I have become so conditioned to living in Thailand that it just glides by me each moment of every day, and I don't stop to think about how unconventional it is. Surreal, really.

So, I decided, in a cloud of Thai beer buzz, to chronicle one day. Here goes...

The alarm wakes me at 4:50 AM, and I stumble downstairs to prepare breakfast--first for the rather insistent Maine-born cat, Guido, and the rescued Thai street dog Baba Ganoush as Kat takes Baba on her ritual morning walk. Next comes the chilled fruit and "Healthy Breakfast" shake procured the night before at the shop two streets away. We dress in our "workout clothes" and wait for mr. Chanachai to pick us up as usual. He is prompt, pulling up to the
gate at 5:45. Traffic is light at this time of day and we speed down Ramkhamhaeng Road and onto the 3 km (2 mile) speed bump laden "Soi" 184 that takes us to school where we enjoy a quiet half hour of exercise in the weight room or pool before moving on to our classrooms.

I feed the various animals in my Biology room and await the Friday "Assembly bell" at 7:10. We laugh at a primary school skit and listen to the rarely seen director and stand at attention as the national anthem is played.

The day is standard global school, except that I am interacting with primarily Asian students who need occasional admonishment to speak English. I say hello to former students who have returned from university to visit; one brings me oyster shells from the Gulf of Thailand to add to my specimen collection. I join Kat at the French restaurant on campus then complete my day with clueless IB students, who if tradition holds, will step up and record the highest Biology averages in Thailand as seniors. It is an amazing transformation.

Once outside the school environs, the surreal begins. I share a taxi with an American and two British colleagues, then head to my weekly three hour Thai and oil massage just a minute from the house. Kat is off to her favorite spa in another part of town. As I rise groggily from the massage table, I become aware that the daily rain deluge is in full throttle. Sipping ginger tea, I plan my escape, but in reality, I just have to pedal away through the downpour. The masseuses laugh as I take my. sandals from a shoe tree inside: they will be soaked in a minute.

Pedaling axle deep through the flooded streets, I decide to stop at a local Thai "saloon" for dinner (and to escape the deluge). As I down a fish burger and potato wedges, chased by two large Leo beers, I strike up a conversation with a young Thai man (Yod) who informs me that his father also likes classic rock that is pounding from the speakers. I notice that inside, the large screen TV is showing, of all things, a Thai "western" that appears to be taking place in Arizona, but with a completely Thai cast. CCR, Harry Chapin, Fleetwood Mac and Aretha blast out into the flooded streets, interrupted briefly by a commercial for Lowe's. The program is, of course, being streamed from somewhere in the States.

The rain subsides as it tends to do a couple of hours after beginning, so I pay my bill and pedal off in the flood, splashed by occasional passing cars. I pass the "banana man," who despite the hour and meteorological conditions, continues to sell his fruit at 9 PM. After all, it is Friday, and people come home late.

Lights from various shops and restaurants illuminate my way home. I make it just before the next drops of rain begin to fall, and park my bicycle under the roof overhang. Toads and frogs send out a deafening chorus and guard dogs remind me not to venture too close to our neighbor's castle.

It is time for bed, the fan swinging lazily in a cooling arc. Tomorrow we head to the weekend market after an American breakfast at our favorite Thai-run cafe.

They're Baaaack!

It's time to engage the annual invaders. After mysteriously disappearing last spring, the ants are back. They always take me by surprise, appearing suddenly to swarm over one small kibble that has escaped the pet food bowl or struggling to take a crumb of bread up the wall and into some dark inaccessible recess of the roof where they no doubt confer with the squirrels who disrupt our sleep, joyously romping across the bedroom ceiling in the wee hours of the night. Once the ants gain access to a space that holds even the slightest possibility of scoring a hit on people or domestic animal food, they send back ever more scouts until they find a morsel that obsessive cleaning nonetheless has missed.

Experience and education has taught me that a chemical defense is unwise. Not only do the toxins stay on the surfaces awaiting absorption by a mere touch of our skin, but drift easily on the heavy tropical air until being pulled into our lungs. Even a heavy dousing of the house interior only delays their return: following their own chemical trail, the thousands that escape the human made sprays simply sacrifice a few hundred scouts until a new reconnaissance path around the insecticide can be blazed and the hordes return. Those that survive a brush with the aerosol bombs send on their genetic resistance to the next generation anyway. It is well documented that we are growing super pests and simply making the chemical companies rich in the bargain.

So, faced with an 11,000 species adversary who has had about a 100 million year evolutionary head start on us cocky Homo sapiens, I use the only weapon I have left: the power of thought processes that leads to complex problem-solving. Surely, I reason, my superior brain can come up with a solution and defeat the automatons marching through my kitchen. I use all sorts of techniques such as soapy water or citrus rinds to disrupt their trails, hoping it is enough to discourage them. I especially enjoy watching them suddenly break ranks and scramble around aimlessly when the pheromone trail is washed away (I know that it is only a temporary victory, but it's entertaining and interesting, at least from a Biology teacher point of view).

The pet dishes now sit in water-filled trays to stop their advance, and it works until the dog, in her voracious energy, pushes the bowl to the side of the tray, kindly offering easy access to the persistent arthropods; setting the kitchen table legs in coffee-filled margarine tubs also halts their advance (OK, so it won't be in a Martha Stewart spread--the containers don't even match). Despite all my tricks, however, nothing can stop them from running across the shower stall to the sink and back into a hole in the wall. Even sticking cloves into their holes only diverts them to another opening. I eventually concede, and let them have limited access to our space. They don't bite, they eat very little, and if I happen to put a small bit of cat food out of sight, they are content to bite off microscopic bits for 24 hours, so I can at least declare a temporary victory. It would work fabulously if only I'd remember to replace the nugget with another, but of course I never do, and exactly 24 hours and twenty minutes later, about six hundred finely honed ant scouts descend on the kitchen and fan out in all directions. Their greatest victory, I grudgingly admit I admire, is the penetration of the tightly capped honey jar that sat in a bowl surrounded by a moat of seemingly impassable water: scores of them gave their lives to build a bridge to the jar for others to eventually drown, blissfully I imagine, in the sweet nectar. By mistake, I had constructed a rather effective ant trap.

For the next few months we will battle it out, and they will let me think that I am winning once in a while. At some point, they will simply leave and stay away for months, just long enough for me to let my guard down. Wait till next year! I think. Yeah, right.