The Heart Of The Day

Doug, my son, flew into Bangkok yesterday from Oregon to fly out again two days later to spend his annual several months with his wife, Luk, on the island of Koh Samui. We had a bit of a scare just before he arrived because a scheduled utility maintenance on undersea trunk wires went bad and Koh Samui and Koh Phagnan were both out of electricity for several days. It went back on in the morning just before he flew in to Koh Samui so Luk, my daughter-in-law, was ecstatic…saying that Doug bring the electricity with him!

Tourists were leaving the islands left and right and Thailand has reportedly lost 1.2 billion baht in income. Poor Thailand. I was in Thailand for the 2004 tsunami where Doug and Luk nearly lost their lives in their bungalow on the Krabi beach, 2006 for the last coup, 2009-10 for the Red Shirt Rally and in 2012 for the Yellow Shirt Rally. If it isn’t one thing it’s another.

I’ve written about the tsunami on this blog where Doug and Luk nearly lost their lives in their bungalow on a Krabi Beach on December 4, 2004. I was in Bangkok at the time and nearly had a heart attack when I came back to my hotel and switched on the TV to get the daily news. Half hour later I was able to get through to them, however. What sweet voices! Doug immediately hired a pickup to take them to the other side of the Thai peninsula to live. Luk said there were ghosts on Krabi and she wouldn’t eat the fish because they had eaten the people. So that is why they live on Samui instead of on Krabi…a place we all dearly loved.

On Dec 22nd I’ll take a bus to Pattaya about an hour west and spend Christmas week with my husband…or Oregon Bob…as his golf club buddies refer to him because there are 3 Bobs in the group. He wants to cook a turkey for me and his golfing friends. He says he needs someone to peel potatoes! hahahahaha!

I set out for the bus station at the Bangkok Ekamai skytrain exit at 9am to spend Christmas Day with Bob at his home in Pattaya.  The trip should have taken about an hour and a half, however the bus I was put on proceeded down Sukhumvit at about 40mph stopping every hundred yards to pick up passengers.  So I bailed and picked up a taxi for the rest of the trip.  Oh, sorry, Bob says, I didn’t tell you which window to buy your tickets…!

So anyway, Bob met my taxi at a Tesco Lotus market in Pattaya and drove me to his home for crockpot beef stew and gift exchange…although his gift quite outmeasured mine!

The next evening he “treated” me to a night out on the “walking street”  which partly gives Pattaya it’s reputation and which turned out to be quite a zoo with Thai bar girls dressed in short red skirts for Christmas and farangs (foreigners) looking for each other among various and sundry other colorful figures.  Two up-country Isaan grandmothers escorted two small children down the street. What in the world are they doing here, I asked Bob.  Oh, they are probably just as curious as you, he said. Whoever said I was curious, I thought.  It’s a daily scene in Bangkok on Patong.  The most interesting thing I saw was crowds of  broadly smiling Thais looking up at a second story window…with a young blond woman…probably Russian since there are a lot of them in Pattaya.. gyrating quite sensuously around a pole to thumping music.  Much better than any of the Thai girls, I thought, and quite entertaining for the  Thais that were watching this unusual scene in Thailand.

It was really hot so the next day I was glad to get on the right air-conditioned bus for the return trip to Bangkok.  And that was Christmas 2009.