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There are two stores here in Bangkok that are on my "must check out" list. One is Makro, which I'm told is the same type of formula as Costco, and the other is Index. Index is rumoured to be quite similar to Ikea, and it's where Chris has encouraged me to go today. He must not be worried that I'm going to come home with piles of decorative baskets, artwork, and vases - hee hee!
Chris and I have been watching season one of Heros on (pirated, naturally) DVD, so perhaps it's entirely normal that Hiro's triumphant "I did it!" cry after teleporting to NYC was echoing in my head this morning.
I had an adventure in Sukhumvit, which is a busy commercial area of Bangkok. The traffic is nearly always horrible, and I realized that the fastest route between my two errands meant walking. I've never explored central Bangkok by myself before - I do find the traffic, the noise, and the crowds kind of disorientating - but I only had to cover four blocks. I managed to navigate my way back to Sukhumvit Road from Bumrungrad Hospital, where my car was parked, and then set off, walking on the narrow sidewalks when I could, jumping into the street when there was a vendor's cart in the way, and avoiding the motorcycles that quickly zoom past. I had to cross two smaller sois and Sukhumvit itself, and I realized that it's better to try to cross in places where other pedestrians are waiting to cross as well - kind of a safety-in-numbers thing. Cars will pay more attention to a crowd of people than a lone individual, I think. I kept my sense of direction, and arrived at my destination without getting lost once (though I thought I was at least twice). I went about my business, and then followed the same route back to where my car was waiting. I was so thrilled at having pulled this adventure off that I called Chris while I was walking to tell him of my own triumph :)
Curious Heros-related digression: Our discs must have been copied from a TV-recording of the program, not from the official DVD release. What gave this away was the presence of a Global TV logo (complete with the little maple leaf telling me that the is rated 14+ in Canada) or an NBC logo on the corner of the screen!
I want to believe in Ogopogo, the Loch Ness monster, and that aliens have visited earth. Perhaps it just follows, then, that I believe that the mystical forces behind the Bermuda Triangle have made our new apartment the new focus of their attention. Things have started to go missing around here, quite inexplicably. First I noticed that one of my favourite sandals was missing. I remember unpacking both of them when our shipment arrived, but there has been only one of them at the bottom of my closet for at least the last couple of months. Next, Chris's package of Aeroplan upgrade cerificates and Air Canada lounge passes vanished and it's doing an excellent job of evading detection. Third, one of Madeline's favourite outfits - her "crabby" shirt and the pair of beach pants she always wore with the shirt - has gone AWOL. I've looked every plausible place for them, and the best explanation I can come up with is that birds took them off of the clothesline. Or the Bermuda Triangle thing, of course.
If new blog posts stop appearing in the near future, well, maybe I will have vanished too ...
It's been awhile since I posted, hasn't it? This past Tuesday was a holiday here in Thailand - I can't for the life of me remember it's official name, but it commemorates the abolishment of slavery - and Chris and Madeline were off of work and school Friday through Tuesday. We took the break as an opportunity to visit our third Thailand resort destination, Koh Samui.
We flew on Bangkok Air, which was just lovely. Nice departure lounges, small snacks, a meal service (and Madeline got a cool set of Hiroshima-themed colorforms on-board to play with). I hope that Westjet grows up to be more like Bangkok Airlines in a few years; I already have noticed a few similarities.
I can't really decide how much I liked about Koh Samui as it rained nearly constantly while we were there, and that's probably not fair evaluation conditions. What I do know is that we still had a really good time. We stayed at the Tongsai Bay resort in a decent-sized cottage, and when it was pouring outside, Madeline watched DVDs, Chris read the newspaper, and I knitted. We didn't really mind at all. It was still relaxing to be out of Bangkok. We'd pick up our umbrellas and wander down to the beach-side bar for a pizza snack, or try to teach Madeline how to play eight-ball in the games room off of the lobby. We kept busy, and I nearly went through two balls of Shine Worsted for Madeline's Monica. It certainly wasn't a waste of a long weekend ...
It seems that it is actually too cold in Bangkok to do something. I never thought I would be saying that it's too cold here, in any context, ever. But swimming in the unheated outdoor pool has been a decidedly chilly endeavor lately, and I'm not too keen to dive in again until the hot season comes ...
I think that my husband secretly wants a blog of his own. Since we've moved to Bangkok, he's full of ideas for great posts, and seems to be baffled about why I haven't written about X or Y or Z. Maybe I ought to set him up as a ghostwriter - this blog would see more activity that way :)
Anyway, the latest goodie that Chris has discovered is Living in Canada vs. Thailand, in which some gentleman, formerly of Canada, evaluates his former life against his current life in Chang Mai on criteria such as climate and transporation options. It's quite fascinating to read, actually, though I don't personally agree with most of it. Which is reasonable - I'm here with my husband and a small child, while the site's author is a retiree. I doubt he cares if there is a good yarn store in Bangkok or about the cost of a year of preschool at an international school.
And for the record, I like having four seasons, and don't mind having to purchase appropriate clothing for all of them. But not every one likes shopping, I guess :)
(Canadian) Thanksgiving came out of nowhere this year, if you ask me. I wasn't expecting it. It's October, but it doesn't seem like October because Bangkok is still lush, green, humid, blooming, hot, etc.
The only turkeys I saw at the three grocery stores I checked out where frozen butterballs, which made me suspect that they might have been regrets from Christmas 2006. Or American Thanksgiving 2006. So, we decided to have roast beef for dinner instead. No stuffing, but pan-roasted harvest vegetables. I found a package of brussel sprouts imported from Australia.
Chris had been hankering for a pie all week long, and I hadn't come across a pre-made one anywhere, even at the fancy Central Food Hall at Central Chidlom. I did have a frozen pie crust in the freezer, though, and a half-dozen apples, so our Thanksgiving dessert was this apple crumble pie. It was very tasty served warm with vanilla ice cream, but I discovered that the apples didn't bake as quickly as the crust did, so they were crunchier than intended. Maybe I ought to make my own pie dough? I still have a bitter taste in my mouth from the pie-making class I took years ago - one of my table-mates at the Cookbook Company took every single Granny Smith apple on our table to use in her pie, leaving Galas for three of us remaining. Grr! But I digress ...
Dinner was lovely. I didn't mind cleaning up after our big meal. Kind of sad, though, that one of my Emile Henry 8"x8" baking dishes tumbled out of our drying rack and shattered on the tile floor ...
I'm not keeping score, but I think that today the three of us experienced a fairly typical Ex-Pat Saturday in Central Bangkok™. We headed out this morning to the Pratunam market, in a vain attempt to find Madeline a Halloween costume. Who knew that she'd need a Halloween costume in Bangkok? Certainly not I, or else I would have ordered something from the US last month or brought a pattern from home for something. Anyway, we didn't manage to locate any purveyors of Halloween costumes at Pratunam, though I if even wanted a little skimpy and sequined number for Madeline's debut in the child pageant circuit, I know where to go. Blech.
From there, we headed to a tailoring shop where Chris got measured up for a pair of made-to-measure shirts to wear at the office. This was interesting for two reasons: firstly, the shop was quite happy to advertise that the American president is a happy customer, even displaying a photo of GW wearing a shirt from their shop at a press conference. Secondly, we were given a parting gift of several pads of notepaper and a dozen drinking glasses, all bearing the shop's logo. Bizarre, no?
By the time we finished our lunch out at the Roadhouse and browsed around Jim Thompson, we were all exhausted. I find central Bangkok to be kind of mentally exhausting - so many people, so many vehicles, and so little room to move about. Our usual Saturdays, out in the suburbs, are more laid-back. We walk to the grocery store. Maybe we'll wander to the Mexican restaurant. We'll pass an hour in the pool. The traffic is sparse and is restricted to 30 km/hr. Sometimes it's kind of boring, but I think that Chris and I appreciate that boring isn't necessarily a bad thing.
It's been a week of ups and downs here. The cool thing is that the weather has indeed been cooler lately, which agrees with me much more than the torrential heatwave that I've had to put up with in July, August, and September. There's a lovely breeze today ...
I had a graham cracker sighting yesterday - I saw a box of Honey Maids being carried out in the shopping bag of another customer. It must have been the last box, because I checked every single aisle in the crowded grocery store for them, but I do have reason to hope that they'll be stocked once again. I wonder how many days it took to sell out? It couldn't have been more than three days since I was there last!
I bought a headset so that I can get set up on Skype. We've been using phone cards to call home and to Chris's sister in the US, and they've been great, but usually the only last us 2.6 phone calls before running out of time. On the bright side, my headset cost less than the phone card. Hopefully that doesn't mean that the headset is a super-cheap piece of garbage.
I managed to order refill pages for my Kolo album from Barnes & Noble. I'm having the order sent to my sister, who's visiting us in December.
I think that I saw an honest-to-goodness yarn store at the CentralWorld shopping center, too. Now, all I need is a project to inspire me to pick up my knitting needles again. I've been distracted with thoughts of making a digital photo book. I think that MyPublisher and Tabblo are the front-runners. Our thirteen months of Newfoundland will probably be my first subject. I'm really surprised how much I miss that place ...
This past Saturday, the three of us took advantage of the cooler early morning temperatures and headed out to the Chatuchak Weekend Market. We were on the hunt for a specific type of pottery that Chris really wanted to check out. I enjoyed this visit to the market quite a bit more than our first, which was during our house-hunting trip to BKK in May. The market was far less crowded and less unbearably hot first thing in the morning!
We wandered around for about an hour and a half, but never managed to find the pottery section that we were hoping to. I was again amazed at how everything and anything was for sale there, though - beads, wicker goods, fake Crocs, flatware, pets, garden decorations ... Some of the statues were so large that I'm not sure that they'd fit back through the narrow paths between the vendor stalls for transport!
We were heading towards the exit when we walked into the art section, and came upon a stall filled with original paintings of whimsical cats, giraffes, dogs, and elephants. I was happy to part with some baht to bring home this painting of a row of colourful and chubby elephants for Madeline's room.
The tricky thing with purchasing artwork for our apartment is that the majority of our walls are concrete. Impervious to our usual methods of hanging up framed photographs and art. The hardware store that we frequent has nothing in terms of picture hanging hardware, so I am wondering if Thais make do with a simple nail in the wall for their decorating needs? One of these days I will pop into a frame store and see if they have some options. For the time being, I've been securing our art and framed photos to the walls with 3M Command Hooks. I have some regular hooks, some of the hangers for wire-backed frames, and some of the velcro-like picture hanging strips. Those ones are the coolest, IMHO ... so strong!
