I’ve traded in the warm blue water and cool breezes of Koh Samui for the muggy chaos of Bangkok.  But the amazing Thai food is still cheap and–obviously–everywhere, so I’m happy on that front. 

My backyard has gone from the Gulf of Thailand to now look like this…

Before I get to talking about Bangkok, one last bit about Big Monkey.

You can’t go to Koh Samui without at least having one blowout, so the other night, I did just that while out with this guy and a couple of his friends. 

 

How do we know each?  He is friends with one of my friend’s friend’s sister.  Despite the roundabout connection, we hit it off pretty quickly  

He’s got the right idea.  He was laid off from his job in the States back in Novermber and rather than search fruitlessly for another finance job, he’s headed around the world, including a two month stint in Kh Samui studying Thai boxing and another long stint in Africa doing some volunteer work.  His only plan for returning is to be sure he’s back for next November’s BC-Notre Dame game in South Bend.

The locals here call him Ling Yai, or Big Monkey.

Big Monkey showed me Koh Sumui.

Big Monkey left me with Big Hangover.

—

A quick aside:  is it still a foot fetish if it’s your own feet we’re talking about?  Because if so, then after a couple $5, hour long beach side foot massages from the elderly ladies with bullet fingers, I’ve got one bad.  If you could get a $5 one back in New York, I’d be skipping Starbucks every morning and getting my feet worked over instead. 

—

As my plane banked in toward Bangkok, I couldn’t help but think of my parents’ first meeting.  This was exactly the  scene–two strangers sitting next to one another on the way to Bangkok.  I’d pay a lot to hear that conversation. 

What I do know from my mom’s letters is that the night ended in a late night swim in the hotel pool with a couple other guests (since it was a letter to her parents there’s no mention of whether they were all skinny dipping, but in my experience, if I’m swimming at 4 AM, there’s only about a 3% chance my bathing suit is still on), .

These thoughts running through my head, I turned my attention to the woman seated next to me.  She’d been extremely friendly as we boarded and we’d had a nice conversation about her hometown of London and where she should go for bagels when she goes to New York (without question, H&H Bagels…and not just because of the initials).  We were getting along like gangbusters.

Hmmm…maybe I should follow the old man’s lead and ask her for for a late night skinny dip in Bangkok.  She had all sorts of plusses….she was British, friendly, extremely interesting, and not only that, she could score me an AARP discount.  Yeah, that’s right, she was about 75.  Not that I’m an ageist or something; I mean I’d have been more than happy to ask her for a skinny dip; it’s just that her husband was seated on the other side of her, and I don’t think he’d have been keen on the younger American guy working in on his old lady (well, in his case, young lady).

So it looks like no late night swimming for me this evening, but I am going to the Muay Thai fights either tonight or tomorrow.  First though, I decided to do some sightseeing around Bangkok. 

 

I’ve been pretty half-ass about the sight seeing thusfar, but–and this is terrible to admit–I can’t really get all that into it.  I mentioned this before, but I thought I’d give it another shot, so I went to the Imperical Palace and a museum and around some temples, but I really felt like I was going through the motions.  To be honest I had a lot better time talking to the girl from the travel office across the street who helped me expedite my visa application to Vietman. 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for looking at sites, it’s just that after about 10 or 15 seconds of looking, I’m good.  And it’s nothing Thailand-related, believe me.  I felt no different when I went to visit Mt. Rushmore.  It was awesome to see, but again, after 30 seconds or so, you’re standing there going, yep that’s quite a rock.  Then about 45 seconds in, you’re thinking, what in God’s name am I supposed to do with the rest of the day?  If you let me climb on it or something, I’d be good for the day, but just looking?  My attention span isn’t going to hold up.  I remember at Rushmore, you could almost see the panic on the faces of parents who had brought their kids there  on vacation as they realized they had overestimated the attention-grabbing potential and now they had to come up with something for the kids to do.  Which is why places like that are loaded with tacky little museums and tons of stores selling schlocky gifts because it gives people somewhere to kill time.

Don’t think I’m not an inquisitive traveller.  I mean, I absolutely love walking the streets and seeing all the quirky little aspects of a new place.  But just like I got a bigger kick out of the absurd (in a good way) Corn Palace in South Dakoka than at neighboring Mt. Rushmore, I also get more of a kick seeing something like all the goofy English translations on store signs walking around, than I do staring at a purportedly famous building.

Does this make me a philistine?  Probably.  But at least I never have to wait in two hour lines with a bunch of sweaty fellow tourists to see something that I’ll most likely be pretending to these same people (and to me) that I’m actually enjoying myself.