Living in Bangkok

So we have a cockroach problem. They aren’t the big, nightlife-loving, cigarette-smoking cockroaches you see scuttling across the streets of Bangkok at night—they’re much smaller and less, uh, squishy to kill. But they are in our kitchen—on the floors, behind the fridge, and (worse) in the silverware drawer—and we occasionally see them in the living room or in the main bathroom. At first, there were only a few and we mostly ignored them. Then, when we started seeing more, we bought roach traps, but that didn’t do anything—they just seemed to congregate around the traps and, if anything, they increased in number. Then we looked for some kind of bug bomb/fogger, but all we could find at any of the supermarkets was a roach spray. We cleared out all the foodstuffs and equipment from the kitchen, and sprayed all over, but still there seemed to be no decrease in the number of roaches. Ugh. We looked online for a roach fogger, and there weren’t many options on Lazada. We saw one product ...

Over the weekend, Bangkok continued to slowly open up a little. On Saturday morning, I made us a breakfast of morning glory sauteed in duck fat, a fried duck egg, buttered olive toast from Maison Jean Phillippe, watermelon, and persimmon. After playing around on my new laptop (yay!), we headed to Sathorn, our old stomping grounds. We walked to Suan Phlu, a little neighborhood full of fruit and vegetable stands, small shops, and street food. We had pad Thai for lunch (we tried to order it with crispy pork but it came with tofu). Is this...what we ordered? We also picked up some jackfruit from a guy selling that and durian (both of which are out of season and hard to find). And we went to Mercado, a fancy grocer mostly selling French breads and imported French pantry items. We got a loaf of bread, two kinds of cheese, and duck liver mouse, and ogled the eclairs, heirloom tomatoes, and foie gras. And then we made our way back home, walking through Suan Phlu pa...

OK, brace yourselves...the malls are open ! Thailand's Covid case numbers have been decreasing for the last two weeks or so, so on September 1, the government allowed for an easing of restrictions in some “dark red” areas, including Bangkok. This means the malls and parks can reopen, restaurants can reopen with limited seating capacity, hair salons can reopen for haircuts only (no color), and massage parlors can reopen (for foot massages only). The 9am-4am curfew remains in effect, and gyms and bars and schools are still closed. But we were able to go to the mall to get a new laptop for me and to look at cameras for Roman, and I got a hair cut at our nearby salon (wearing two masks, as required). We also ate our first meal in a public, indoor location! We went to the food court at Terminal 21, where I ordered three vegetable dishes from the vegetarian cart, and Roman got stir-fried noodles with squid and shrimp. We also had fruit smoothies while we waited for the mall ...