“Aww Them’s”

When people ask me how "Bangkok Baybeh!" went, I think its a stupid question. Its fairly obvious it was wonderful. I went with the bubble that kept me stable through BMM temper tantrums, losing friends, losing love, making friends, finding love, project submissions, too much alcohol, too few slims, Chennai heat, Aurangabad drama, Kashmir cold – the bubble that kept me stable through everything. So yes, a week of the bubble in Bangkok was wonderful.

We shopped. Literally, till we dropped and couldn’t walk anymore. We needed the restorative hands of professional masseuses to bring our legs and arms back to life again. We watched educational movies – movies that told us that birds (seagulls especially) would take over the world someday. We fought with smiling Thai women who knew little English and who told us they "khan-nhot" reduce prices, find sizes, tell us the time etc. We walked to a train station, only to discover that in our quest to find a particular station, we’d walked past 3. We cuddled a growling tiger cub who could only be silenced by food. We laughed at the concept of Chicken Tikka and Fried Rice for breakfast and plied ourselves with eggs/fruit/oatmeal (SS) and chocolate croissants/miso soup/blueberry yogurt (Me) instead. We counted the number of foreign men dating Thai women (35 in one and a half hour).

There are two moments of "Bangkok Baybeh!" that will stick for a lifetime. The first morning in Bangkok. When I made us very large Apple Green Vodka’s in the bowl-like…structures SS had bought to drink out of. We toasted to a lot of things and when we were sufficiently wobbly at 11am, SS produced the "Aww Them’s" – my much overdue twenty 20th birthday presents. A picture frame of beautiful words which make me laugh, smile, and sometimes even make me weepy. And 19 "Aww Them’s" that when dangling from my neck inspire all the bubbling up yayness and love that I have for the wonderful bubble who I’ve only ever gotten cranky at when I’m hungry. The 19 "Aww Them’s" consist of peace, pants, a daisy, lips, a smile, and so many other things that are perfect and sometimes downright mental, but so completely SS & BB, it cant help but make me smile. Then was the last night in Bangkok. When we took our massaged selves to an outdoor bar and sat drinking beer and smoking slims for hours. We talked about everything. Loving men, hating men, having kids, not having kids, being successful, being rich, being failures, being poor, having nose jobs, having boob jobs, getting tattoos, having lives, living in the country, living in a city, writing, painting, opening restaurants, opening bookstores, being brides, being bridesmaids, being together.

So, when people ask me about Bangkok, and I say it was wonderful, Im actually lying. It was much more than that.  It was more than the shopping, and the breakfasts, and the beer and the massages. It was Us, and that is something that cant be defined, only understood.

To Abhishek for you and obnoxious Gujju’s. To Khan-nhot. To the coolness of credit cards. To supermarkets and Platinum Mall. To Tiger beer in the sexy bar. To wearing shorts. To trains that are clean. To elephants that can paint. To accounts in little notebooks. To a lot of shoes. To excess baggage. To waiting at airports. To fruit bowls that are actually martini glasses. To SS & BB ever-after.