Bangkok

I woke up disoriented to the heat of afternoon and the singing of strange bird song. And then I remembered I was in Bangkok! I checked the time. It was 3:00 in the afternoon! This is how jetlag works, but I feel refreshed from the much needed sleep.

For "breakfast" I walked down to the patio for coffee and ate a plate of pad Thai. It is good to be back and especially for the wonderful food here. The best in the world. Already I seem to be attracting new friends and immediately was cajoled into a conversaton with a traveling Canadian. He was an older fellow escapaing the winter cold. His first trip to Thailand and taking it slow through Bangkok's sensory overload.

On the sidewalk are tropical potted plants, piles of flip flops lying discarded by the door, and wind chimes catching the faintest breezes along the avenues. Just outside the guesthouse tuk tuk's and mopeds cruise slowly down this side street. There is a man metalworking on a pile of old car parts, oblivious of passerby. And along the boulevard are myriad small food stalls and impromptu tables set up selling everything from sweets to soup, garlands of flowers to lottery tickets.

It smells like frangipani, sweet and fragrant mixed with the aroma of Thai cooking and the faint odor of exhuast. Memory and nostalgia, sensory and taste mingling all in one. These are a few of the many things I love about the tropics, and Thailand in particular. Including things like this spirit house I snapped a photo of outside my guesthouse. In Thailand beside every regular house is also a spirit house. A house built to accomodate the spirits displaced by the new house for people. The bigger the house, the bigger the spirit house, honoered each morning with some burned incence, a glass of water, and a dab of rice.

A dash of the wonderful mysticism and color of Thailand.