Getting back to the Sot

The bus station in Bangkok looked like an airport during a blizzard. People were sitting on every available piece of floor. The busses for the next four hours were booked up. Rather than spend all day waiting for a bus, then on one, only to arrive at the nearest town 2 hours away from Mae Sot and get stranded there because there are no connections at night, I opted for a ticket on the luxurious night bus and found myself in the north of Bangkok with 11 hours to kill before my bus.

After checking my bag, I took a taxi to Chatuchak Market. Although not nearly as big as the warren of stalls I experienced in West Africa, it is still one of the biggest and most exciting markets I have experienced. Usually the taxi drops me at Gate 1, the main entrance, but this time, I was left at the other end of the market, and entered into it in the Pet Section.

At first, I encounter only fish. There are fish of all colors and sizes, mostly floating in plastic bags. For only 350bhat, you too, can take home a hand-sized ray. Ahead of me, I hear a strange singing and soon pass a stall full of buckets and tanks crawling with meal worms and crickets.

Further in the market, the fish give way to reptiles. The snakes and lizards seem at home in the stifling heat of the market. There is a miniature crocodile (or was it an alligator) and various sizes and colors of snakes. Next come the birds. First a collection of fighting cocks in their bamboo cages on the ground with their proud necks and beautifully colored feathers. I passed a stall with a cockatoo perched out near the passing people and another with a cage full of baby parrots. Everything that is not a fish or reptile looks as if it struggling just to breathe and the parrots are laying in a heap, panting, looking gray and deathly.

I stand for several minutes in front of a cage with an animal inside I can't identify. It is small and sleek with dark, beautiful fur. It looks a little like a ferret in that it is long and elegant but it's body is wide and fat with small feet and a long tail. The head is rodent-like but with floppy ears. It is hanging over a water bowl, sipping water and panting in between sips.

The market is endlessly fascinating. I lose myself amidst the rows of cheap clothes, of house decorations and paper products. You could spend all day there, but my feet are quickly getting tired and the day is hot, so I cram onto a skytrain and jet into the city.

I have been in Thailand now for exactly one year, so I feel no guilt in saying that I spent part of my afternoon in the Pizza Hut, gorging myself on a meat lovers pizza. I then took myself to see a movie. I didn't have much of a choice of titles, so I ended up watching something called "Proof" in which Gwynneth Paltrow stars as a depressed mathematician. Can't say it was terribly thrilling but just the idea of spending an afternoon eating pizza and watching a movie was fairly novel for me. I even spent the rest of the time I had to kill sipping a soda and reading a fashion magazine (did you know that most Marie Claire readers use 3-5 products in their skin care regime at least twice a day? I think I use one, if you could soap as constituting a regime.)

The bus pulled out of Bangkok at 10:30pm and I fell asleep immediately, pulling the blanket up over the intruding chill of the airconditioner. I slept through most of the ride, yet somehow managed to arrive home at 6am Monday morning feeling exhausted. It was dark and the sun hadn't yet come up, so I grabbed another hour of sleep in my bed before having to get up and go to work. At least, however, I was home. And even when home is an empty wooden house on stilts in a strange little border town without much popular appeal, coming home still feels good.