Dinner, a Show, and Racquet Sports

Backtrack to yesterday: I’m starting to get the sense that the grad students like to goof off fairly regularly. Case in point: every Tuesday and Thursday they all leave at 4 to go play badminton. They’ve been asking me to come with them for a while, but yesterday was the first time I’ve actually been able to go. We piled in cars and drove to the local badminton complex, a series of poorly lit courts inside an even darker warehouse style building. It didn’t take long to figure out that this was not going to be the badminton experience I’ve been used to based on my past history with the sport in HWRHS gym class (motto: “Anything’s better than the weight room”).

Let’s take a moment to reinforce some stereotypes. I’m just going to come right out and say it: Asians are ridiculous at badminton. REALLY ridiculous. The 10 or so of us took turns playing round robin style, but with the stifling heat in the building and my lack of any substantial physical activity beyond vocal percussion in recent memory, everyone else went around a lot more than I did. I feel like I managed to hold my own fairly well, though I’m also fairly confident that at least some of the players were taking it easy on me.

Immediately after, I booked it back to my room for the fastest total wardrobe change I’ve been involved in since changing into a full white tux in about 30 seconds during my 9th grade performance of “Honk!”, and then ran back out to the car that had been waiting for me. We all went to the mall to grab some dinner at this Japanese place. One thing I really like about many Bangkok establishments is that the menus are filled with pictures of the dish, so even if you have no idea what it’s called, you at least have a sense of what you’re getting. Still, somehow, the actual contents of my meal managed to elude me, and I wound up with substantially more raw fish eggs than I had planned on (I.E: More than none).

After dinner, the grad students we were with asked if we wanted to see a movie. When we replied in the affirmative, they said, “good, we’ve already bought the tickets”. Observations about Thai cinema:

1.) WAY more previews (over half an hour total. I know, because I timed it).
2.) Before the movie can (finally) start, the whole theater rises for the national anthem and a tribute to the King. I’ve decided that Thailand, like Australia and South Africa, has a great national anthem.
3.) I still want to be Indiana Jones when I grow up
4.) Harrison Ford looks exactly like Lauren’s dad.

Tonight, I’ve been taking it easy, since we’ve got a busy weekend ahead. As far as I know, we’ll be going to the Grand Palance, Thailand’s largest temple, and the world’s largest outdoor market (Jatujak), among other places. We wandered around trying to find a place to eat dinner, and wound up back at the BKK Grill, a restaurant we’ve been frequenting, mostly because they have English menus (in contrast to most places nearby, which don’t have any menus).

Wandering around tonight I noticed that Bangkok has a lot of smells, many of which combine to remind me of, oddly enough, Boy Scout camp. Between the charcoal grills, body odor, mustiness of dirt roads in humid places, and a slight touch of feces, it brings back lots of memories. Add all that to a nice healthy dose of loosely regulated auto emissions, and you’ve got Eau de Bangkok.