Walkabout
Yesterday morning I walked to the Post Office around the corner and down the street and then slowly swung a wide path through the city…dawdling in used book stores, Jonesing for all the quality crafts and household items in shop windows and reading pithy doggeral on t-shirts. By 4 in the afternoon I was hot and wet with sweat as I passed an old woman in a big floppy straw hat watering off the sidewalk. She didn’t see me until after she had managed to hose my sandaled feet and my ankles…sorry, sorry she begged. Oh no, no, I laughed. “Good big,” I said as I gave her the thumbs up. Then she laughed big, tickled at my enjoyment. Sanook!
This morning, tired of my guesthouse rice soup with pork for breakfast, I walked to a nearby hotel that offered an inexpensive buffet breakfast (with heart-shaped fried eggs) and spent the morning comparing travel notes and our respective country’s politics with a young Aussie couple at the table next to mine. I recounted that a couple years ago when returning to Bangkok after a month in India I would never have guessed that it would feel like heaven in the taxi traveling into the city from the airport. They both threw their heads back with a belly-laugh…saying that is exactly how they felt a week ago when they flew in after five weeks in India! Then we all had a good laugh remembering the way Bush limply muttered that he “had never been in India before,” when what he really meant was that he had never been anywhere before!
Tags: Chiang Mai, Conversations, Food, Funny Experiences, Thailand
Zoe