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Bring Him Home
Yesterday we made a trip to Bangkok.
I don't like Bangkok. Yes there are aspects of it I could like; the ready availability of some Western foods, the more cosmopolitan population, more use of English in shops and restaurants, movies. None of this compensates for the traffic.
It took one hour to reach Bangkok and then a further one hour to go the few kilometres to Central World where I had a business meeting. We met at Starbucks on the 3rd floor and after the shock of paying 210 baht (!) for a coffee and an iced chocolate for Ploy ('I can eat noodles for a week for 210 baht') Ploy ventured off to do some shopping whilst I endured 2 hours of the person who I was meeting talking about his new book and his ventures when the point of the meeting was to talk about my proposal. The meeting was closed by him announcing he was already late for another meeting and him tasking me with more work which left me wondering what exactly it was he was bringing to this possible venture. (Note to self: don't talk to any more ex-pats).
Next we drove on to a cable TV company to collect a demo item from them. On the way we were stopped by the police for some concocted traffic violation, (100 baht, not even a glimpse of Ploy's license or insurance being necessary), and after the collection and a quick discussion Ploy drove me to the Emporium for a late lunch. At the lobby level of the Emporium shopping centre is a nice restaurant, (I think an off shoot of the Mandarin Oriental hotel), which does a mixture of Western and Thai food. The lunch special was tuna loin salad, followed by pork fillet and then cherry tart with lemongrass icecream. A nice basket of various breads, four glasses of Columbard, and some pretty waitresses and all that Bangkok has to offer was resplendent before me, (for the princely sum of 2500 baht). Ploy had chosen to dine elsewhere but had visited the supermarket there to buy some 'real' bread for me and then, it already being 4p.m. we started on the homeward journey.
That took 3 hours, 1.5 hours of which was getting out of Bangkok. The highlight of this was my first glimpse of the Londoner and Robin Hood 'English Style' pubs and of the mythical Soi Cowboy. In all the time I have been coming to Thailand I have never been to or even seen Nana Plaza or Soi Cowboy. We only passed by Soi Cowboy (slowly) on the opposite side of road but it looked a nondescript street of no particular note from where we were parked, certainly not the Entertainment Area it purported to be. In fact it looked a street to avoid, rather like those beggar strewn streets at the back of Waterloo station in London. From recollection the beggars were more attractive than the few girls we saw. As were the plentiful office girls that were walking the pavement to my immediate left.
We got home to an overly-excited Pinky at 7.30p.m., (who starves herself in our absence, of both food and water), stayed to play with her a little and watch her make up her dietary needs, and then retired to bed, exhausted. A 12 hour day for a 1.5 hour lunch and 2 hour meeting.
It is a holiday here today and next week is SongKran where we often stay at home although things are quite discrete here normally. But it is good to be home again. My time in the UK was split between the rural and the urban and it is clear now that I much prefer the former. Saraburi offers a nice compromise but Bangkok is just too much for me and even the incentive of a nice lunch does not compensate. Singapore offers a more organised chaos if I need that fix and we don't have to drive anywhere. I shall be there again at the beginning of next month.