Morning Street
It was 5am, I was on the roof, and making note that the moon is directly overhead again. Of course, I'm that close to the equator that celestial paths remain certain, the moon will take pretty much the same route every night. I woke feeling sticky, my skin is freaking out as it adjusts (and that's not all, is it folks?). I'm realizing how much of a shift this is - compared to my wild Portland days and nights, I've thrust myself into diametric opposite land, where I go to bed wicked early and wake to watch the sun, instead of watching the sun as I rush home to get to bed.
Today I'm promised myself I will take my camera everywhere and take photos of everything (thwarted by the night adventure in a neighborhood known for pick-pockets). I dive into work for hours, breaking only for the occasional chapter out of the third Hunger Games book. Internet finally arrives and it takes over an hour (of course) to get it set up. As soon as it's on and running well, I have a strong urge to just read more and ignore the mountain of internet based stuff I've had to put off. But I don't.
Spirit House
Time flies, and night approaches. I've asked Aaron to take me out on the city, I want to dive into some intense culture and he's promised to take me down some crazy streets. We go to his old neighborhood, a couple of stops towards the river on the BTS, deeper into intense city. The streets are tight, buildings taller, and everything is jammed with vendors selling knockoffs. They use complex sign language to signal to other vendors what price they just bargained for with the foreigner who's hoping for a better deal down the street but will never find a lower price now. I can scarcely walk through the people crammed between the tables and we duck down a larger street where Aaron points out a VW bus who's roof lifts off and a bar folds out for the night crowd. Sure enough, the pink bus is brightly lit a few hours later when we pass it on our way back, serving customers on stools at it's unfolded bar.
Cabbie Nap
We stop at Charlie's, a favorite street pub for falong on Soi 11. Drinking cold Lao beer beside a "bar" that unfolds at night to reveal a bizarre collection of stuff piled around a running toy train, we chat and I check out how all of the floors of the buildings around us have heavy iron grates to the roof-top. They're accessible by an escape ladder that seems useless when you're ironed in. Electrical lines hang in unordered clusters, sections of it tied together with bits of plastic and string. I'm reminded of that one movie where the main star was in a place like this, tiny, chaotic, a step away from vendors selling knives and a bar where having that knife could really come in handy.
We move from Thailand to small Arabia by passing through a tiny alley - passing a glassed in massage parlor no bigger than my bathroom, a foreigner reaches back to tickle the pretty woman rubbing down his legs. She giggles and adds more oil to his body. There are bars and money exchangers, leather shoes, watches, glittering bags, all in these tiny shops glassed in and blasting AC. The alley is so small I could touch both walls at some points if I reached out my hands. We emerge onto a street with all Arabic lettering, the people here are vastly different in genetic backgrounds and united by, well, I'm not sure. Men in the long white robes pass foregin girls with long blonde hair and miniskirts. Women in head-to-toe black hustle children through the night streets beside their husbands. The contents of the shops now include shisha, bits of aromatic wood, ornately decorated tea sets in moroccan patterns outlined with gold.
Aaron finally online
Aaron grabs my hand and pulls me out of the way of a careening tuk-tuk, up onto a sidewalk filled with vendors selling swarma and billowing spiced meat smells and heat into an already hot night. I stop in a small mall and walk up to a boutique that reminds of Claire's back in the US. A wheeled tray has tiny glass bottles on it with brightly colored stickers on top. I can read "green", "hazel", and "grey" on the tops and when I turn them over, it's colored contacts. After hunting through ones that look like lace or stars, I find a vibrant green set I like and part with 150 baht (roy hah sip?) or about $6. We finally enter into an Arabian restaurant that is enormous and spacious. The walls are lined with screens showing Al Gezira, BBC, and a Thai game show where one of the more flamboyant contestants loses a sandal and the scene is replayed three times - sandal flying, female host ducking like a shoe-dodging pro, the rest of the cast (which bizarrely enough strongly resembles Milli Vanilli) dissolves into both horror and laughter.
Hookahs are parked at the ends of all of the tables, the largely male Arabic patrons each with their own puffing away, the air thick with the soot of tiny chunks of glowing wood bits carefully laid over the tobacco every few minutes. A man with a brazier paces the restaurant, managing the hookahs, and getting burned when a careless client overturned the top of his hookah while complaining on how it wasn't drawing sufficiently, as evidenced by his charade like hand gestures. I notice that the plastic-covered tablecloth at our table is marred by large burn marks as well where my double apple hookah sits. It's extra sweet, the smoke, and we peruse the book-like menu the proper Arabic-ordered way. To me, it's from back to front. Aaron lets me chose and I ask him to order for us. Two huge rounds of fluffy bread arrive to be dipped in babaganosh, hummus topped with thin bits of shwarma (I KNOW!), tabouli swimming in lemon juice, and several skewers-worth of kabobs. I sip off the top 1/2 inch of drinkable coffee on my turkish coffee before it gives way to solid, spiced grounds. We feast and talk and smoke for hours. We're amazed when we finally check the time and realize we're a half hour from the last BTS train back. 11:45pm we arrive on the platform and catch the train home.