Initial Impressions of Bangkok

Well, I've been here in Bangkok for a little over four weeks now, and in order to focus on something other than missing Doris (she's finally due to arrive in 3-1/2 weeks!), I've made a few observations:

• Thais seem to be incredibly patient and peaceful. I haven't seen one hostile motorist in traffic---quite a feat, given how jammed the roads are with cars---or one angry person, period!

• A quality that perhaps goes hand-in-hand with their patience is their relaxed, unhurried attitude in general. They meander through the very crowded store aisles with no apparent objective in mind. This generally doesn't pose a problem for me, except when they completely stop and calmly look around immediately after getting off an escalator. I've experienced this numerous times already. You certainly have to be ready to dodge the clusters of people who simply stop at the bottom or top of escalators, so you don't plow into them and start some awful domino effect.

• This relaxed approach to life is reflected in the Thai language as well. Having had only five 90-minute lessons, I'm obviously no expert, but my tutor has confirmed something I read a couple of weeks ago: there is no punctuation in written Thai. There is no such thing as a sentence, for example. Written text just keeps right on going and going, with no indication of when you're supposed to come up for breath. In conversation, a speaker indicates the end of a thought by saying "ka," if you're a woman, or "khrab," if you're a man. I suppose it's like saying "over" in a radio transmission, to indicate it's time for the other person to jump into the conversation!

• Bangkok has a well-deserved reputation for being polluted, but it's not as bad as I thought it was going to be. It helps to be ferried around most of the time in an air-conditioned car, of course, but even when I've taken a walk along one of the main streets, I don't see rotting garbage out in the street or anything of the sort. Instead, there are food vendors practically everywhere. At every hour of the day, someone is cooking chickens, frying vegetables, cutting fruit, etc.

• ...which brings me to the large, brown rat I encountered today on the sidewalk of perhaps the best-known street in Bangkok---Sukhumvit Road---which is lined with five-star hotels, fancy restaurants, first-class shopping malls and the like. He was rather large and slow-moving. At first glance, I thought I must be seeing things. Could this be someone's large gerbil that escaped from his cage? Then I saw his very long tail. He moved slightly away from me as I approached him on the sidewalk but for the most part stood his ground. I walked a little faster as I passed him. No one else seemed to pay him any mind, so I decided not to yell something like, "Look out! A rat!" In any event, this took the shine right off my hunt for a restaurant in which to have lunch.