What that little bastard Laozi (the Chinese philosopher responsible for that glib little piece of blindingly-obviousness) didn't tell you was that it ACTUALLY starts with about 5 weeks of tedious and mind-numbingly essential "things to do". Proving a well known point that philosophy is all well and good, but it has no bearing on real life.
The flight was uneventful - got bumped to Premium (which was nice), Alex caught flies whilst snoring away for 6 hours and Julia watched film after film, thankful that her noise cancelling headphones saved her from the Symphony de Saroian next door.
When we landed we found out in the immigration queue that the couple who had been sat next to us were off to the islands for 12 days, on standby tickets and generally rushing around before going back to work. Having left all that behind us, looking ahead to the next 8 months of life suddenly hit home. We're truly out of the rat race now! Cue our first moment of Schadenfreude; or smug satisfaction to the English who, unlike the Germans, don't quite get enough of a kick out of other people's woes to create a whole word about it.
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On Smiles and Happiness:
Thailand has been up and down on blogs and guides and everyone knows that South East Asia is the land of smiles and people trying to help. When we grew up (showing my age) we were told of Swiss polishing schools where the rich and famous went to get, well, polished. I now wish we had SE Asian happiness schools, where we learned how to be cloyingly happy and sickeningly smiley.
These people refuse to stop smiling. Even the bloke in the 7-11 opposite the hotel who I bumped into and knocked into the shelf of Fanta and Coke (accidentally.....I was half asleep) turned round with a grunt, stood up and smiled and chuckled!!! Now in England he'd have looked a right moody little man in his fifties ready to kick-off, but he's Thai, so he smiled and everything was fine again with me apologising like a real tourist and blushing from ear to ear.
Cynics would ascribe this interlude and his smiles to the fact he turned round and saw someone about 2 feet taller and a foot wider than him .....but I think today I will behave like Clark Griswold and simply believe in the goodness of everyone.
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We kept it real last night once we had arrived at the hotel. The transfer across had been through the Thai treacle of Bangkok's rush hour, so once we'd achieved check-in (so painless) and de-compressed, we kind of deflated. Between Julia's tiredness with not having slept much in 28 hours and a loooong way to go on the holiday (including 4 days in Bangkok) there was no need to rush into things. Room service, a couple of episodes of a favourite series on TV and then beddy-byes for us in our cloud-like bed.
Sunrise on the first day was enjoyable at 5.30am.....until I realised it was 5.30am and swore at the indisciminacy of jet lag. Ho hum. Stepped onto the balcony and was hit by a wall of humidity that said "Welcome to South East Asia Saroian - Sweat your way through this!" Today will be a day of feet finding and unwinding - tomorrow the real adventure starts.
PS - Dear Pedants,
Yes I know, technically the word "indiscriminacy" doesn't exist - but it should and it does now.
Yours,
Not Interested of Bangkok
On Smiles and Happiness: make me smile :-)
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