Part One: Leaving on a Jet Plane

My send off from Mae Sot in no way hinted the arduous saga my journey home was to become. I packed my bag full of presents for my brother's wedding, and slung it onto my back and walked down the street to the hot-pot restaurant. All my friends came to see me off despite the rain. We sat around laughing and drinking wine and gin (real treats for us in Mae Sot) and eating large quantities of ice cream from the buffet bar. A friend gave me a ride on a motorcycle to the bus and then I was settled in comfortably under my blanket, speeding through the wet night on my way to Bangkok.

As comfortably as one may be settled in, it is almost impossible to get a good night's sleep on an overnight bus. I arrived in the Northern Bus Terminal just after five in the morning on Saturday feeling excited and ready for adventure. I hauled my bags off the bus and trucked them over to the Departures terminal where there is a place to check in your bags overnight for a small fee. The airport not being far from the bus terminal, my plan was to pick them up there the next day on the way to the airport.

I spent five minutes rooting around in my handbag before I realized that I didn't have my wallet.

I tore through all my bags looking for it, but it was gone.

Where was my wallet? Had someone lifted it from my purse on my way to the Departures terminal or had I left it on the bus?

I desperately tried miming my situation to the woman checking bags. My Thai is enough for me to get a good meal and a hotel room, but certainly can't deal with, "I've left my wallet on the bus, I'll be right back and can pay you in a minute." The woman just gave me a look of disgust and moved my bags out of her way. "But you can't do this!" I thought. "You have to help me! You have to be nice!"

There wasn't much to be done. I couldn't go tearing around the large bus complex on a wallet finding mission with my monster of a bag. I moved it as close to the other bags as I could and set off.

The bus, of course, had already gone. At information they kept asking me, "Where do you want to go?" The security guards kept asking, "Where is your ticket?"

My ticket, of course, was in my wallet. My wallet was (I hoped) on the bus. The bus belonged to a bus company and I didn't know which one, nor could I consult my ticket to find out. All I knew was that it started with a "C" and was a fairly long Thai name that I couldn't hope to pronounce, let alone remember.

Someone said one name and it sounded right so I went with it. I had to come back in at seven when their office opened. I went back and slept with my bags, enduring more dirty looks from the baggage ladies. At seven I went to the offices. No one was there. Another Thai woman in purple came over to "help" me. She kept asking me questions in Thai, which I tried to field in Mime and she kept cutting me off to yell at me.
I started to cry.

Just a little and not because of my wallet so much as because I hadn't slept enough and I was stressed out and this lady was screaming something incomprehensible in my face. Finally a lady behind a ticket window beckoned me over and got on a phone. Actually, at one point she had two phones going, plus her cell phone, plus she was issuing tickets to customers. Quite frankly I had never seen anyone in Thailand quite so busy. She was a superhero of efficiency. Finally, she handed me a piece of paper and told me to give it to a cab driver.

There I was at the Northern Bus Terminal with not even enough baht to my name to use the washroom, and no plastic and this stranger writes something in Thai and tells me to get into a cab. If she's wrong, or misunderstood or if someone has already found and emptied my wallet, I can't even pay the driver, but what else can I do? I hail the cab and jump in.

The cab takes me to the company's bus depot where a smiling man greets me and waves me enthusiastically over to the bus. There, under my seat, is my wallet, untouched and full of cash.

The great thing about misfortunes, I think, thankful that my stupidity has not been badly punished this time around, is that misfortune illuminates the glory of the every day. Suddenly, I feel blessed and my whole day sparkles with my extraordinary luck. I'm still tired and emotionally drained, but I am full of well being and can't stop smiling.

I return to the terminal and check in my bags. I hop on a city bus over to the weekend market and sit in the first booth I can find to order an iced coffee. From my stool, the whole day looks beautiful. I watch the booths open, people set up, a slow trickle of shoppers come in.

The Chatuchak Weekend Market is one of the inexhaustible wonders of Bangkok. Everything is for sale there from pure bred puppies to kitchen ware. If you went every weekend, I still doubt that you would exhaust the place. Designer clothing, decorations, magic amulets, antiques, furniture, pottery, incense, jewelry, food, beer, snakes, slippers… you name it, it's probably there. By far the greatest challenge, however, will be finding it amidst the warren of stalls and booths and small shops and crowded lanes full of shoppers.

I spent my morning there and my afternoon catching up on my sleep in a small hotel room in the city. In the evening I wandered through another night market, had dinner on the street and then went to sample some of the nightlife. I ended up dancing the night away in a tightly packed club with fabulous music.

Bangkok clubs close at two. About fifteen minutes before close, something curious started to happen. My fingers felt fat and funny, my head started to itch. By the time I got outside, I had to take my ring off because I was afraid it would cut the circulation off in my hand. Welts were forming on my arms and neck.
I had hives.

For those of you without allergies, I wouldn't wish this on any of you. Hives are probably one of the lesser allergic reactions (I'd definitely pick it over anaphylactic shock any day) but that doesn't make them any less miserable. Your whole body breaks out into large swollen welts, like oversized mosquito bites. Everything swells. I couldn't make a fist with my hands they were so fat. The temptation to scratch is enormous and even when I succeed in resisting, my body twitches involuntarily with the itch. In addition, a queasiness takes over, the faint feeling that you will vomit. In short, it feels as if your body has been taken over by a swarm of infected itchy bees.

This is not the first time I've had hives in Bangkok. I'd love to know what causes it. At that moment, all I cared about, however, was finding my drugs and kicking them back. A happy side effect of allergy drugs is that they induce sleepiness, so very soon after returning to my hotel, I had left my itchy body behind and fallen into my dreams. I didn't hear the usual night noises, the cats and the dogs and the rain on the roof and the noisy neighbors. All I heard in the morning was my alarm waking me up to send me on my way to the airport where I would head off for Canada and my brother's wedding.