0
comments
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
I've been in Bangkok for twelve days now: a rather dreamy, lazy twelve days, but I don't believe I've really wasted a moment. I'm still job-hunting and procrastinating the apartment search, but Matthew did the math and we're not really losing any money staying at a guesthouse rather than renting an apartment day by day, so it seems prudent to wait until we know which neighborhood we'll be working in -- I hear dreadful things about the traffic.
Bangkok is just how I left it seven months ago: gorgeous. This is the tail end of the rainy season, so we get an hour or two of thundershowers each day, often in the afternoon. The streets of the little neighborhood around our guesthouse are lush with potted palms and plumeria and other tropical plants I can't name. The sun shines and the sky is the same lovely blue I got re-accustomed and re-attached to in California. And there are big, dramatic tropical rainclouds drifting in all the time and reflecting the setting sun in more-than-Oriental splendor (thank you, Rudyard).
There's a chance I'll be whisked away on an eight-day Buddhist meditation retreat this week: a rather unexpected opportunity. But if not, you'll be hearing something soon on any number of interesting subjects: gubernatorial elections, vegetarian food, "true love," urban Thai flora and fauna... so wait and see.
And in the meantime, I'm just awfully glad to be here.
