“Take the shuttle train to town and then transfer to a taxi, it’s elevated, you’ll see some of the city and save a lot” recommended the local Thai man next to me on the plane. He told me stories of his hometown, why he would never visit the US; too far, homeland security (now how does he know of this?), visas and other hassles, so he went to Bali to show some culture and spirit to his nephew and niece. “There is much similar in the Buddhism and the Hinduism of Bali”, he said.
The train ride was smooth, clean and fast; at least as good as the Paris Metro, and apart from Hong Kong I think it’s one of the best. We descend from the elevated platform to street level, where taxis galore stop by, I show them the address of where we need to go, they look at it, contemplate a moment, then return me the paper and say no, shifting into first and drive away. At first I thought they are not sure where the place is they seemed to be thinking when looking at the address. It was written both in English and Thai, so should be easy to understand, but when a couple said “traffic, many traffic, king birthday today”, I remembered that December 5th is the kings birthday and we were going in the direction where the chaos was happening. A tuk-tuk stopped by us; it’s a three-wheeled open sides taxi. I figured if he’ll take us we’d go. We lounge into the low seats spread our legs forward on this super fast open rickshaw. The driver is young and cool, speaks better English than most of the taxi drivers we met. He tries to make some small talk, and makes sure we know to go to the party near the hotel. The woman behind the reception desk is wearing a dark navy suite with a white-collar shirt, wearing huge pink fluffy slippers with a Mickey Mouse face sculpted over the toes.
We dropped our stuff and headed out to join the celebration of the Kings Birthday. A few steps away I begin to see some food stalls and remember why I like Thailand. Big noodle soups, soups with an array veggies and meats, families sitting on plastic stools gathered around a round table with a big bowl of greens in the center. Some stalls were of the ‘make your own soup’ type, with a hot pot in the center, and the guests putting in it their choice of meat and vegetable. A seven eleven follows on the left, the first floor of a 5-6-story building, as the street opens up to a huge intersection. Grand I shall say. The whole area is lit up, never seen anything like this, all white lights pouring all over the boulevards. The huge intersection we stood at had enormous posters of the king. Billboards let’s say. We stood to take it in, took some photos that could not portray the magnitude of the scenery and the power of the quantity. And then came the silence. The grand boulevard was empty, every one was gathered on the sides, the king is coming, no photos please. We keep walking a bit towards a mini park to the side of the boulevard with tons of food stalls and lots of light displays. A light sculptures of hearts, increasing in size coming one out of the other, a big white boat with blue light colored waves, a small band playing in front of a huge light circle encompassing a photo of the king playing a mouth instrument (was it the sax?). A woman is arranging quail eggs on a large round cast iron plate with templates scooped out perfectly for the eggs. I watch her work with great attention. She is so precise, probably has put eggs in the little bowl shaped spaces a million times or more. I order my plate, maybe 8 little eggs scooped in it, pepper and some yummy spicy sauce. By the time I lift my head to check the boulevard, everyone is back on the street, the king has passed already. Well, this is the honest truth, I prefer the small workingman, and if there is food involved, I forget all royalty.
The rest of the walk through the millions of people (probably not much of an exaggeration) consisted of mostly checking out more food stalls and some people watching. The Thai have lots of style, fun style. They were mostly casual, of the NY, London, urban style hip, but not all big brands, colorful, accessories, and fun shoes, though most were surely walked in to the point of wearing out. Many were wearing pink, which I assumed had to do with the King’s Birthday.
I tried a soup that had rice noodles and lots of wild mushrooms, some sort of seaweed, and supposedly chicken, though I was happy I saw almost only mushrooms, black, oyster and some other unknown. I ordered Lauren the Pad Thai, rice noodles with veggies and peanuts.
Every intersection had a huge concrete structure with the top part a large circle containing a photo of the king from different periods of his life, framed with a ton of little shining lights. We reached the memorial intersection, and the fireworks that were only audio before, turned on their visual and filled the sky with beautiful colors, and fire rain of lights. The variety and quantity were at least as amazing as 4th of July in NY, and that is to say I was impressed. It went on for a long time. Everyone taking photos, from phone cameras, to smart phones, little digital cameras and an impressive amount of bigger SLR cameras, including tripods big flashes and all it takes to look like a professional. Except for the baseball cap.
We crossed the big circle walking through cars and scooters, busses and streams of people; there was an orderly chaos. It was an amazing feeling, more cars, bikes, tuk tuks and people together than I have ever seen, and yet it all flowed, slowly but calmly, there was patience and acceptance that this is it. The food stalls were infused with lots of kitschy stalls or just people selling stuff on the ground on a piece of cloth; wallets, belts, clothes, Zippo lighters, hair bands with two heart horns lit up in pink, other night party light items, candles, underwear, and the sugar candy, a girl waking by with super short pants, skewers of chicken beef and pork, fathers taking photos of their children in front of the altar for the king placed in front of the Mercedes dealership, skewers of squid, Thai sweets made on the spot, sweet corm mixed with condensed milk, teenage boys with hard worked hairstyles, and skateboarders’ shoes, a young couple passing by, her with an elegant dress, not flashy and some heals, him with a cool jeans and funky sneakers, a printed T, and a designer watch of an unknown brand, flip flops everywhere, some sandals, some cool sneakers, fruit cases of water melon, cantaloupe, green mango, and pineapple and again fireworks. As we make our way back, there is a whole second set of fire display lighting up the sky. Where does the darkness go when the light arrives?
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