Bite the Krungthep (01/10/15)

I’ve always wanted to go to Thailand.

When I was a kid, my favorite book was Miss Happiness and Miss Flower, which was about some English kids and two Japanese dolls. I asked for a Japanese doll of my own for Christmas when I was nine, and instead got Cherry Blossom, a Thai princess doll. I loved her. Still do.

And then there was Golden Cat, a story about a Siamese living with a family in Bangkok; I loved that too. There were bits about riding a boat to school, and celebrating Children’s Day, and some simple Thai phrases, and I found it all enchanting.

Fast forward a few years, and I was befriended by a Thai exchange student in high school. Our first day in art class, Leena and I fell into conversation and she asked me, “Do you want to hear a song about my city?” I said Of course, and she sang a sweet, jaunty but complicated-sounding song for me. When I said, “That was lovely, but which part was the name of your city?” She looked puzzled and said, “The whole thing.”

Yes, The Holy Name of Bangkok is an entire song and, incidentally, the longest word there is. I just HAD to learn it. She was a darling about it.

When I was nineteen, I spent a couple of months with a sore throat and fever. When the fever soared one night to 105, one of my friends took me to the hospital and I understood—as well as I could through the delirium—that my brain was cooking. What I chose to repeat to myself, over and over, on the way to the hospital, was…the Holy Name of Bangkok. It was the one thing I wanted desperately to keep.

I haven’t been to Thailand yet. I haven’t ridden in the boats, or gone to the temples, or seen the gold Buddha and I’ve never celebrated Children’s Day or launched candles on a raft made of banana leaves or experienced any of the other jumble of images and sensations I’ve got tangled in my mind that means, Thailand. If you have, I’d love to hear about it. Not the part where you couldn’t drink the water, or that the canals stank, or that you got hustled by a souvenir vendor. But the part about how it touched your soul. You know it did.

And hey, Maipenrai. Not to worry. I’ll go someday.