Thursday, December 6th
Lost. Seriously turned totally around and walked a mile or so in the wrong direction. I'm looking up at buildings, trying to figure out what the sign says across the street, and I've been holding the map for what feels like hours. There are blisters in between my largest toes and I missing skin where the sandals run across my feet. I need to pee, I'm hungry, and that errand I set out to do 2 hours ago is still waiting for me, over 2 miles away.
I put in my headphones and listen to the Thai alphabet as I trudge back towards the BTS. I pass a young falong hippie spooning an iced drink in her mouth as her baby sleeps wrapped to her chest. I spot a happy-faced two year old peaking out from the wrap on her back. Another falong is lost in the same place and he moves around quickly to pass me at every turn, mapless and clueless and sweating under a 3-day backpack. I finally get back to the start of this leg of my errand and suddenly all of the landmarks that Aaron told me about are staring me in the face.
Shoppers stop to pray
Huge malls of high-end goods tower over the metropolis with 6 story billboards of crazy-eyed models sporting Prada bags as though defiantly fending off any fashion faux pax with a clutch. There are winter-wonder land scenes set up with fake trees, snowmen, and the music playing is the American national anthem as though it were a Christmas carol. Shoppers stop before shrines built on the promenade and bow with fist-fulls of incense and roses to gold Buddha statues.
This mall has everything!
Rounding a corner, I'm in the flow of foot traffic moving to Platinum mall, the world biggest wholesale… well, thats all I made out of the sign. It's a biggest something alright. I step in to a mall filled with women and miniaturized shops with their own 4ft-10ft space of their styles. Every store features some kind of fashion and you can buy it in bulk. It's all in Thai sizes though and I'm only able to grab a couple of shirts that are generously cut enough to fit. The layout reminds me of Chotuchuk and Chinatown, tight, crammed, and this one has multiple stories. Next door is another monolith of commerce and the goal of this journey, Pantip market. It's electronics only. 6 stories of electronics. Phones, games, cameras, IT gear, routers, cables, computers, and all of the accessories. I whip out my iPad and the page on Thai Google I saved to try to communicate what I'm there for - a VPN router (thanks for the tip, Mom!).
Pantip - Electronic Cluster F***
I stop at the first place I see with at least 100 d-link routers stacked on the floor and show a sales girl. She directs me to another person who tells me fourth floor. I just learned the word for left (right isn't as easy as "sigh" which is what left sounds like to me) and he shakes his head and points to the right. I start going up escalators. Showing the iPad at three different shops, I'm shown the same VPN router by Cisco, that looks like an internal router and costs 6000 baht. Everyone has the same price. I decide to just buy separate $21 accounts for all of my devices and get 3 months of VPN service for a heck of a lot less. I leave with a very nice camera bag - a green Crumpler http://www.crumpler.com/us/Camera-Bags/Camera-Bags/4-Million-Dollar-Home.html?LanguageCode=EN&SKU=MDH001-G03P40 - and repack my gear sitting on the front steps of the Pantip. It's a long walk back with my mangled feet, but a taxi in the eight lanes of non-moving traffic is inefficient. In fact, as I walk back, a city bus in the middle of the traffic that has been standing still for a long time opens it's doors to let passengers try to get home on foot.
Badly named shop
When I get back, it's dark. Aaron has been stuck in that traffic, using taxi, bus, and BTS for the last eight hours to get to a tutoring gig that was 2 hours long only. I eat the Indian dinner, layout my purchases, and pick out an outfit for the evening of clubbing we're headed to next.
Leaving the apartment at 11:30pm, we catch one of the last BTS trains deeper into the city and head into the party zone. Aaron orders a shawarma and I wait for him in a nearby 7-11, flipping though a Thai Cosmopolitan under the blast of the air con unit. My makeup is half melted, my perfume washed away with my sweat, the back of my hair soaked again. I look up and he's gone. I've given him everything to carry tonight to avoid keeping track of a bag and now I have no money, ID, or phone. I step out on the street next to the shawarma seller and wait for him to come looking for me. My mind is racing on how the hell I could get to the apartment from here, two stops down the now-closed BTS station, when he pops around the corner. We grab a beer at a nearby street bar and sit on the stools, discussing our separation anxiety until we're relaxed and ready to head on to the club.
The first place we go to is called Bed and Breakfast. It's all-white, in a geometric angled tube jutting out 20 feet over the street. The interior is again all-white and has beds lining the two stories where couples recline and sip exorbitantly priced cocktails. The scene is kind of dead, so we head to another club around the corner that is tiers of different bars, complete with tree-house rooms. Aaron has lots of friends here and we end up sitting at a table with the owners of the place. I'm chatting up Bruno, a frenchman who just had his fourth child with his second wife seven days ago. We drink to his newborn boy's health, discuss his french restaurant, and he starts playing Angry Birds Star Wars Edition. We leave and head downstairs after an hour or so and I discover a deep house DJ in one of the rooms, playing a Claude Von Stroke track in his mix. I'm the only one dancing and Sunju plays great tracks. A couple of girls out on the town try dancing as well, they're circling each other and trying to appear sexy and bi-sexual but no one but me is paying attention.
Finally we step out and head to yet another club. It's 2am and the last two clubs are closing. The new place is open until 7am and filled. I find myself standing behind the DJ booth in the VIP area, chatting with the DJs and sipping beers that are four times the cost as they are at 7-11. The current DJ is a falong cutie, but his music sounds like Justin Martin's k-hole and he's excitedly fist-pumping whenever the repetitive track slightly changes. Sunju runs in from the last club and takes over. I plant myself on the dance floor in the mix of ages and nationalities downing entire bottles of vodka and top shelf champagne and I dance it out. A photographer keeps taking pictures of the crowd and seems to take a shine to me, so there are tons of pics of me dancing, in groups of new friends, and chatting up a old-school DJ so wasted neither one of us bothers to remember the conversation.
Aaron tells me for the millionth time that he wishes he was me and I'm in total agreence. Being me right now is pretty damn good. I go to the ladies bathroom after a suit and tie wearing Brit hands me 100 baht to tip the attendant. I've been complaining that I don't have any lipstick and apparently the string of terrible one-line jokes I've told him have either charmed him or the Brit just wants me to leave him in peace. The attendant smiles at me as she tries to apply red lipstick to my mouth and it's on my teeth and uneven. We laugh at my reflection, I fix my mouth, and she starts in on eyeliner. 10 minutes later I emerge with a dramatically enhanced face, still laughing, and get in another few minutes of dancing before we head out to go home in a taxi. The sun is coming up when I collapse into bed.