Today, we board the aggressively air-conditioned SkyTrain (Bangkok’s BTS monorail system) and take a short, quick ride to our old stomping grounds: the neighborhood around the Shangri-La Hotel.
Seated on the hotel’s riverside patio, we order lunch. Joe, Clyde’s dad (who likes familiar food), gets fish and chips. Clyde (who likes local food) orders a Thai sampler platter. And, possessed by a longing for comfort food, I order spicy noodels with vegetables, crushed peanuts, and, yes, some savory stir-fried chicken.
Long after our meal is complete, we sit there, soaking up the ambience of our favorite hotel on the planet. The breeze coming off the Chao Praya is so warm and moist, I cannot tell where my skin ends and the air begins.
Clusters of luxury residence towers, sealed with Coke bottle-colored glass, punctuate the opposite bank. Bright red longboats skim the surface of the river, droning like dragonflies. Teakwood shuttles with steep, angular roofs bob in the water like temples set adrift in a flood.
Sunlight glints on water. The city churns around us. In the sky above, fat clouds inflate like cotton balloons.
Right here, right now: I am perfectly content.
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