Monday, March 29

We are in Bangkok for real. I am so happy and so exhausted.

Well, but lets not get ahead of ourselves.

I woke up in the Maple Hotel for the last time and did the Things I Do During Quarantine. I looked out at the pre-sunrise view, meditated, showered, and ate breakfast (which they did provide on the final day—I got French Toast).

I published my blog, drank my third tea, sent some emails, and then I started to get ready to leave. I put on sunscreen for the first time since I arrived, put on makeup, and finished packing. I felt excited and a little more nervous than I expected. We were actually leaving.

Once everything was packed and I was ready to leave, I said goodbye to all the things in room 2-1214 that I had formed relationships with.

Goodbye balcony, goodbye street dogs, myna birds, and pigeons. Goodbye little garden, goodbye parking lot, goodbye 7-11, goodbye food cart. Goodbye freeways, construction sites, and smoggy skyline.

Goodbye Lounging Bed. Goodbye Sleeping Bed. Goodbye bedside lamp, room phone, writing desk. Goodbye mini fridge, tea kettle, plastic cup. Goodbye towels. Goodbye room.

And then...we left the hotel. At the front desk, they gave us paperwork certifying our stay in an Alternative State Quarantine hotel and our negative Covid tests, and then they called us a cab.

Before we left, I had said to Roman that our arrival at our Airbnb wouldn't be like arrivals in other foreign cities. We weren't jetlagged. We weren't arriving after 29 hours of travel. We had already adjusted somewhat to the heat. We were just taking a cab across town. It should be easy.

And man, was I wrong! Turns out 15 days in quarantine did not really prepare us for Bangkok proper. I am not complaining. Today was in no way bad. But it also wasn't easy.

The taxi ride of just over four miles took about 80 minutes in very slow traffic. Then the driver had trouble finding the exact location of our Airbnb, and then he didn't have change for the 1000 baht Roman had gotten from an ATM. I was walking down the street to find some place that could make change, when the taxi driver figured out where he was supposed to go. He reloaded all the suitcases he had just unloaded, had Roman get back into the cab, picked me up on the way back from the 7-11 (change in hand), and drove us down the block to where our Airbnb actually was located.

That might all sound confusing, but really it's not worth clarifying. The main thing is that it was something like 95F outside, which in Bangkok humidity “feels like 111F,” according to my phone.

We'd left the hotel less than an hour and half earlier, and were already wilting. I was relieved they let us check into our Airbnb early.

After scanning our fingerprints, which we'll use to get into the lobby, we went up to our room on the sixth floor.

Neither of us were blown away by it, which probably had more to do with being hot and cranky than anything else. It is small and neat, new and efficient. It would probably suit one person better than two. And it's kind of a cheap set-up. I had bought us soda waters at the 7-11 but we didn't have a bottle opener, and every drawer Roman attempted to use to get enough leverage to open the soda bottles threatened to crumble its laminate siding at the slightest pressure.

I mean, maybe our ambivalence about the place had more to do with not being able to get those bottles open than anything else? Eventually, Roman remembered he had a Leatherman in his suitcase, and we managed with that.

I actually like the place pretty well. I like that there are separate rooms for the living room and bedroom. I like the little bathroom and shower, with its good water pressure. I like the kitchen just fine and I like the bedroom closet. It has a furnished-by-Ikea vibe and it's smaller than I expected, but the AC is powerful and the place will do for a week. Also, there's a pool!

Once we settled in, we went out in search of lunch, and quickly came upon an alley full of street food carts, adjoined to a large covered dining area full of folks on their lunch breaks. There were many carts to choose from, and I had no idea what to eat. None of the signs were in English. Many carts had pictures but...I realized I don't really know that many Thai dishes. Roman saw a soup that he liked the look of, and decided to get it. And, without consulting the menu of every single place and making the best decision I possible could, I decided to get the same thing (I'm pretty proud of myself—sometimes my choosiness and quest for perfection can make things harder than they need to be).

We got soups with noodles (I got egg noodles, Roman got rice noodles), different types of fish balls, blood cake, some kind of green vegetable, and some other mystery vegetable, cut into strips. The broth came in a separate bag, which we poured over the soup ingredients. And we got a bag full of fried wonton crackers.

It was delicious! And I got a diet soda—well, really a Coke Zero, since the nearby 7-11 didn't have Diet Coke.

We went out on a mission to get SIM cards and a sun hat (for me), and also to totally exhaust ourselves, but we didn't know about that part yet.

We went to a small shopping mall nearby, where we got SIM cards and Thai phone numbers, and looked for a cute bottle opener with no luck. We walked down Si Lom toward the Metro and marveled at the food carts—there were delicious-looking things everywhere! Fruit vendors selling cut pineapple, melon, guava, and pomelo. Compact grills covered in skewered chicken, hot dogs, or slowly-roasting bananas. Trays of crispy fried pork, gyoza, or fried shrimp dumplings. Mysterious squares and balls of possibly sweet treats, some colored pandan-green. Noodles and soups and salads, oh my!

We took the Metro to another mall (it's nice to know this part of Bangkok well enough that we didn't have to consult a map or Google. It makes the transition feel a little less daunting). By the time we got there, we were already worn out, which took us both by surprise.

I'm still a little surprised, actually. But it's very hot, and hotter in a mask, and it was a lot of stimulation and exercise after 15 days stuck in hotel rooms.

We picked up some cold drinks at the mall—Thai iced tea for me, Thai iced coffee for Roman—and stopped to sit and drink them, and regain a little of our lost stamina. Then we wandered around the mall—we failed in our mission to find me a sunhat, but we did get some swimming gear for Roman, and some ginger tea, a (not-cute) bottle opener, and our favorite black hair dye at a nearby grocery store. We also got Metro cards, and picked up some soda water and jackfruit on the way back to our room.

We had been out for about four hours and we were spent. The thought of making any real decisions seemed totally overwhelming. How was I going to look for a job when I couldn't even figure out where to put my suitcase? I tried to remind myself that this is in many ways our first day.

We showered, drank soda waters, and had what turned out to be the best jackfruit of my life. Sweet and floral and fragrant and so, so good!

Then we went out and got some dinner at a nearby café. We both had tom yum noodle soup with egg noodles—Roman got his with pork and fish balls and I got mine with shrimp wontons.

We wandered Si Lom at dusk, past pretty buildings...

City streets edged with lush greenery...

And a picturesque Burger King.

Si Lom felt quieter than I'm used to—I think of the neighborhood as full of workers by day, full of partiers by night. It had been crowded in the day, but in the evening it was pretty cleared out. The alleys full of go-go bars that, the last time we visited, we couldn't walk down without getting accosted dozens of times were shuttered and dark. We saw few foreigners on the streets. We couldn't even locate the alley with the busy night market we'd visited last time (yeah, I'm still looking for that sunhat). I don't know if Covid is keeping people from partying or if it's the lack of tourists keeping bars closed, but the streets felt totally different. I kinda like the calm and I don't care about bars, but it makes me wonder about what's happening to the livliehoods of Thais who work in industries dependent on tourists.

I got some contact lens solution and toothpaste at Boots, and some pineapple from a street cart vendor, and then we headed back to our place for the night. I tried to get some thoughts down, though I felt so dumb and tired I could barely think of the words to use to write this.

Later, we went down to the pool to swim in the moonlight. It was lovely—the water was warm, the buildings glittered in the darkness, and large bats flew across the night sky.