Bangkok chill-out

The whole point of being in Bangkok is “Sanook.” The word loosely translates to “fun” or “pleasing.” Do you like sleep? Let me make your sleeping more Sanook. Do you like beer? Sanook. Everything moves very slowly here and in a strange non-linear way. This impression is perhaps aided by the fact that I arrived at midnight and then just stayed up all night and the next day – having fun, looking around.

My good friend, and virtuoso pianist, Bob King, picked me up at the airport with a young violinist named God who was on break from a gig. Almost immediately I started to have an intense and alarming nose bleed – due to 24 hours in airplane air. I was wearing a white jacket and remarkably did not get it ruined. Bob said that in the land of the unexpected, I was already fitting in just fine. My first few hours of Thailand were obscured by a larg mass of toilet tissue in my face.

A few hours later we were sitting at a roadside bar on the outskirts of the touristic part of the city. The cops had just changed the laws that bars had to close at 1am but they could still operate on the street. It’s all working off a pleasant but greased-palm, look-the-other-way, kind of authority. It works for me. Cold Beer. Sanook.

Back to Bob’s small room a little bit further out of tourist area. Only real Thai people here. We just hung out and caught up and chilled until the sun came up and then went out into the day. The goal was to go on to the busy corner and people watch (girl watch – let’s be honest) while the population went to their day jobs. The girls are very fashionable with high heel shoes and painted toe-nails, sitting side saddle behind drivers on motorcycle cabs – holding their hair down casually while they scoot in and out of traffic. As much as there is commercial (wink, wink) based, obviously unrestricted and loose “sanook” vibe, there is an equal conservative, law-abiding, proper, elegant, calm element that is as beautiful and on display in the mornings.

Bob suggested we take a bus and get an even better view down by the big bank. The bus was fun, open, no doors. But we missed our stop by about 40 blocks (I don’t know either) and wound up just turning around and coming back to Bob’s neighborhood.

Next stop – Bob bought me a massage! This was the most thorough, most intense, most awesome massage I’ve ever had. Thai massage is no joke. I’m still humming from it. Many places here are of the “happy ending” variety where the talent is untrained in the real art. This place however was strictly no-joke at all. It was run by very talented and well trained and experienced couple. Oddly, he was blind and she was strongly non-beautiful to look at. Regardless, she worked on my while the blind man worked on Bob and for TWO HOURS we were like putty. Ask me for a repertoire of all the crazy contortions that my body was in for this massage. It hurt really really good. Wow. Two hours of a great massage cost each of us $7.50 (250 Baht). Again, this was not the touristic innuendo kind of joint that will charge over 2000 Baht.

One more thing of note – We went downtown and I went into at least four different tailors to wind up purchasing two custom tailored linen suits and a wonderful price. My fitting is tomorrow. I actually dreamed of the suit last night – the suit in the dream was entirely hound’s tooth the same color as on our cd. The shirt too, and the tie! It was like a hound’s tooth camouflage outfit.