Arrival to Bangkok's Convenient Resort

I'm a touch closer to today today than I was this morning.  I've arrived in Bangkok and am currently resting in the Convenient Resort near the airport, awaiting my brother's arrival.  It seems a thunderstorm has come first, a tropical sound I don't often hear in my part of Japan.  This is certainly a new place, less organized, a little more haphazard and open-windowed than my familiar Asian home.  And I feel the trust game again;  a new unfamiliar script, new unfamiliar phonemes, new ways of greeting that I drop as they are thrown to me, hands in a prayer position of welcome while I move into the matter of business.  The people I've encountered are well-worn from tourists like me, a well-packed path that many have trodden before.  Like me, the people before me have not greeted fully, perhaps because of wearied trust, because of tired, because of lack of familiarity, because they are "on the way" to something else.

Being in this new place has reminded me again of the diversity in this world, and yet how close it all is.  Arriving in Bangkok, I saw flights departing for places even further west into Asia:  in India, Nepal.  What's there?  These people are different and the same.  I want to see their countries, the origins of their differently colored passports.  I want to collect them all.   And here I am, in a place far cheaper, far more sparse, than dear Japan.  It is a place where people are far more friendly, but seem less trustworthy.  An immediate smile in exchange for sincerity of action.  Maybe I'm just a little nervous about my brother's late night arrival to this Convenient Resort.  Thailand, be good to him.  I want to believe that the water is safe to drink and that people are all well meaning.  At some point, all water is clean, but who is in control of where it goes from there?  Good to be looking out.

This hotel may be case in point.  Slightly different versions of a purported reality.  We were well aware of this possibility, but were seeking convenience to accommodate David's very late flight arrival.  The first picture is from the web images.  The others are my own.  I appreciate that despite the stark economy of the shower toilet bathroom, there are still happy blowfish stickers on the wall.  And that I have a view from a small balcony (shall we say, "veranda?" I think we shall) which is always starting the year anew.

   

And now the rain has come.  I've turned off the air and opened the door to hear the sheets pour down, one of many pleasures in life.  This sound.  This smell.  This overgrown green in a new world that is the same one in which I've lived my whole life.