Walking in Bangkok

So last week Joe had to take the car in for inspection at the embassy.  When he drove it home after working it was 5pm.  We live about 3 miles from where he works.  The traffic (rot-dtit in Thai) was terrible – it took him almost two hours to drive 3 miles home!  He hasn’t driven the car since then and I am still too afraid to drive it here! 

No driving means LOTS of walking for me, which results in calloused feet.  I went to the spa and had them work on my calloused feet.  Today was my second visit in about a week or two.  Every time I have visited them to work on my feet they have had two-hand towels worth of dry skin in the end.  The Thai ladies cannot believe it!  My feet hurt all the time so I now go once or twice a week for a one-hour foot massage.  I just ordered a pedometer online as I am curious how much walking I do in a day here.  On Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday I have Thai language class.  I always walk to it and then walk to Joe’s office to meet him for lunch.  If we are lucky we will see Bubba while walking to lunch.  There is a pond near Joe’s work and Bubba lives in the pond.  Bubby is a fish that is truly the size of a loveseat.  No lie – we originally thought it was just a legend – but we have seen Bubba with our own eyes – he is enormous!  After lunch I usually try to go walking until dinner – so I get a good 5 hours of walking in each day.  Otherwise, if I go home, I will sleep all afternoon because Thai language is mentally exhausting.  So we’ll see what the pedometer tells me in the end.  Speaking of walking, last Friday I went on a walking tour of Bangkok with the American Women’s Club (AWC) of Bangkok.  They sponsor monthly walking trips somewhere within the city.  They pick a specific neighborhood and we tour it.  I must say this was a lot of fun even though it was a long day and we were all quite nasty afterwards due to sweating and rain.  We all met up at Starbucks and then the drivers took us to the port to meet a water taxi.  We took a water taxi across the Chao Phraya River to some park.  It was absolutely amazing and hard to believe we were still in Bangkok.  It was very green there with lots of interesting trees and flowers in bloom.  It was somewhat marshy like in some areas and they had all these concrete walkways around the park and area just around the park.  These concrete walkways actually go through people’s homes – a number of them had little convenience stands set up along the way for people to buy water or snacks.  The homes were like little shacks and the people there live very simple lives.  Our guide was this guy Frank who migrated here in the 1960s with his family and has been here ever since.  He was a very funny guy who reminded me of Joe’s Uncle Fabio for some reason!  Anyhow he is starting up his own business doing walking tours of Bangkok.  He will take groups large and small and passed out his business card to all of us.  On this trip though it started raining the minute we left Starbucks.  The seats on the water taxi were soaked so we all were pretty wet by the time we got to the other side of the river.  The rain stopped and then it was just muggy, hot and humid.  We walked for about 5 hours total and had a lunch break at Au Bon Pain.  After lunch we went to Kakao Chocolate Factory for a little take home dessert.  I then walked about 20 minutes back to the BTS to go home.  I was sore all weekend from this walk. 

I rarely see Thai’s sweating here and one of Joe’s coworkers told us that Thai’s have calculated at what rate they should walk to avoid sweating – I am guessing that is why they all walk VERY slow and are NEVER in a hurry to get anywhere.  Meanwhile all the Farangs (Westerners) are dripping with sweat.  I did learn something that does help with the sweating – duh deodorant!  However, apparently it is not just for underarms!  Basically you can use it on any part of your body that sweats a lot and it works.  Well it doesn’t mean you won’t sweat – you just won’t sweat as much!  But it does make a huge difference.  When I learned this I did try it out right away and when I realized it actually does work I laughed and told Joe I was going to bathe in deodorant daily because my entire body sweats!  Because of the sweating, I have cut back on how much makeup I wear.  I do not wear eyeliner or eye shadow anymore at all.  I usually just put on foundation and maybe a little blush and waterproof mascara and that’s it. 

If I am out walking for any length of time here my hands and feet swell up real bad due to the heat and humidity plus the Thai food has a LOT of salt in it.  I can no longer wear my diamond ring and may end up ditching the wedding band too.  There is a local jeweler who offers great discounts to embassy personnel and she told me that your ring size goes up an entire size here in Bangkok because of the swelling.  I think my wedding band is a size 9 (yes I have fat fingers) but here she measured me as a 9 ¾ - YIKES! 

When walking you need to keep your eyes on the ground for various reasons.  You never know when there is a cat-sized rat lurking.  Joe and I saw an entire herd of them one night.  Another excellent reason though is that the sewage line runs under the sidewalks.  You need to be careful of holes so that you don’t step in the sewage but also of loose cement blocks in the sidewalks.  If you step on a loose block you sometimes get sewage water shot all the way up your shorts/skirts etc.  I have yet to have this experience and hope I never do! 

I am always amazed at the shoes that the Thai’s wear here.  Usually they are in little itty-bitty pointy heels and I do not understand how they walk in this city in them without tripping and breaking every bone in their body.  If they aren’t wearing heels then they are wearing flip flops – I have actually seen people wear flip flops with a nice business suit – not just for their commute to work – no they actually are at work wearing flip flops with a nice business suit. 

So a few weeks ago Joe and I met up one morning with our friend Jackie to go to brunch at Crepes & Co.  We had these young Thai girls/students dressed in uniforms approach us and ask us if they could take our pictures and they wanted to be in the picture with us.  Then they had a questionnaire in English that they wanted us to complete.  I assume it was for some school project so we were happy to assist them.  I think they thought we were tourists though but their English was not great so I did not try to explain that to them!  Anyhow they just asked where we were from, how long we were visiting Thailand, if we like it here etc.  They were very simple and basic questions.  They were very excited though and took LOTS of pictures. 

Tuesday I plan on studying all day as I have a huge test on all of Chapter 1 for Thai Language on Wednesday – and we covered a LOT in that chapter.  The rest of the week is wide open and likely I will do some shopping, exploring, reading and pool time!