Tuesday 15 January 2008

Odd couple (sunday)

So it’s been quite from me as life has been busy. Spike has kept me playing pool, drinking and eating but I bailed out back to Hong Kong this weekend to see SILTO and my son O. Have not seen them for a couple of weeks so good to catch up, wash and polish the car while O pulls all the levers so that when you put the key in everything flashes. Good to have some Chinese food also.

So it’s back to Bangkok tonight and on to Vietnam Ho Chi Min and Denang tomorrow. Busy week but life is beginning to settle down, I have a more permanent place to stay with its own spa and just a few apartments all serviced. It’s just the other side of Soi Cowboy which should be central enough for the BTS and supermarkets.

I’m sitting on the plane at the moment contemplating the future, an oldish couple, him a colonial civil servant her a fairly old tai tai have been arguing all the way over. Apparently they have lost a bag, unfortunately it was not one of them. He continually says "stop shouting" and she keeps on winding him up. So as we are about to take off he is on the mobile to somebody god alone knows who trying to track down the bag.

He gives up, she starts speaking on the phone. Now I don’t know whether planes can crash because of mobile phones, and im not in the habit of trying to find out, so I grassed them up to the cabin crew. Maybe when you get old you worry about bags more than death, maybe if you are a Hong Kong civil servant you are so used to putting the general public in danger you become oblivious to it, I really don’t know. I just hope they get off the plane and don’t murder each other until Im through customs. Is life and marriage this bad when you are old. God I hope not.

So what Bangkok like. Would it be remiss of me not to mention the girls. I guess it would, but im not going to. Instead Im going to talk about lettuce. Yes I have decided that the measure of a countries standing on a western benchmark is weather they sell Frisse and Rocket in the supermarket. The answer for Hong Kong is no, unless you go to city super, for Bangkok the answer is YES. And it’s cheap about a quarter of the price of Hong Kong, grown locally and organic. Put that with a million and one varieties of cottage cheese, Olives to die for and real pasta and the supermarkets in Bangkok start to provide a real rationale for why Welcome and Park N Shop are examples of why monopolies are bad.

So on the Lettuce league Bangkok rules, and on other fronts its not too bad. People told me that wine was expensive, however at 250 dollars HK for a bottle in a restaurant I’m not complaining.

SILTO comes Thursday so shopping for the new apartment, and fun together. I miss that .

I also miss my son who was a bit sad when I went today but who comes down for a week CNY I’m looking forward to that.

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