My Shangri-La

BANGKOK

Oh I’m a lucky girl. Forgive me a posting of excess. If it can be wrangled, 18th floor, river view with a king size bed at the Shangri-La prescribed for all arriving from Calcutta. Obscene about face of poverty to insane decadence but the extremes are sometimes good, and especially good in this order.

My room 1826, soon to be R's too (he arrives at 12:10 - I’ll leave soon to meet), is not just really, really nice - it's sort of from another planet, and that planet does not have 2 star hotel in Calcutta within its solar system.

Working backwards from the blissful now. Post hotel-wrapping/river facing gym, post finding out I can take a tennis lesson on Monday eve, post discovering the loofah in my bathtub AND my glass walled shower with Grohe everything (nozzles and sprayers and levers, and a temp control), post discovering this handy cable hookup which means I’m on my own laptop for the first time in 2 weeks, post gratis fruit plate helpfully identifying banana among other Thai fruits, post ironing all my clothes on a full size ironing board, then washing the clothes that followed my suitcase on foot from Darjeeling, post using three ear buds (their word) on each ear, post dirtying the washcloth a small portion of Calcutta (do you have to clean a washcloth you’ve dirtied?), and booking a morning wax at the CHI Spa, and plugging in everything everywhere to recharge (more than one outlet!), and reading the Shangri-La brochure...

A quick word about my bathroom - from which I've just now emerged in a magnificent terry robe. Almost too much that room. Clinically clean (was), white, blinding bright lights and meanly pore magnifying mirrors that show what part of India came on with me. BIG towels everywhere, and hooks, amenities include those you need - like a proper toothbrush and good size, name brand proper toothpaste (not one of those tiny metal tubes with the pin hole opening), the afore-mentioned ear buds, and those you don't like the infernal bathing cap. The shower - you can take steps in this shower, go in a direction and then change direction and not bump into yourself and knock all of the tubes and jars to the floor. If the whole world (but I'll start with Calcutta) could have an hour each in my shower - couples too - and a fluffy towel right after, things could look up - we'd even the playing field with some very clean people.

It’s now occurring to me that folks who emerge each day from similar amenities and niceties and conveniences truly do have a head start. Grooming is god...

So, as always when I come this direction (India>Bangkok), I've come around to the flip side. Thailand’s the alternate universe where trash stays in bins, overpasses look structurally sound, buildings are completed, the rate on the taxi meter doesn't need to be recalculated via a cipher and the drivers themselves rarely speak English.

But that's not to say a word against mother India, country of my soul. I love that place, and feel like I've been through full immersion - though the gentleman at passport control gave a disparaging head wiggle (you don't want those) when he saw I'd been there for "just 10 days madam?" I realized as my Indian Airlines flight 733 rose above the Calcutta haze, and contemplated my last "veg or non-veg" choice, and watched the Indian business men all around enjoying their 10AM whiskeys, that India does exist in its own spatial and temporal plane.

Thailand is foreign, Vietnam is foreign too and Cambodia and Burma, but India is so full on foreign - so much to the side of the other, that it takes a little bit of a leap and some faith to let it take you in. But so it does and it’s a bear hug of physical and emotional contact that’s exhausting (and very dirty) but unforgettable and lifelong. I want to go back very soon, even to Calcutta would be fine.

Thailand – just quickly – is as I left it. Same tidy airport and long lines at passport control, same good prices on the last minute duty free by the baggage carousels, same chilly cabs going too fast on the expressway, same faceless buildings that escort you to the Chao Phraya and drop you at Silom Road and same policemen in their super tight brown uniforms – had forgotten those.

More, and the promised pictures, very soon – adventures in luxury to be continued.


C