กรุงเทพฯ, Krung Thep (City of Angels), Bangkok, 1 night in
Our flight delayed in Berlin, we received a voucher. The pizza guy had vouchers piling in and was becoming exasperated from their holders by expectation that €10 would cover anything more than a slice of margherita. Drink? No, are you kidding!
- transfer in İstanbul, a giant was being filmed cleaning the top of a fridge, and a wishing tree
- the food once more was excellent, and I spied the chef in his chef's hat, a fact called truth
Airport was pavilions and steel tubes like the Beaubourg but less colourful.
- city of empty billboards (and full ones), our aged and revered taxi driver took us in a circle of frustration before finding true path
- above, a cat with Siamese in its genes and the French windows of our beautiful room, house built in the 1920s, the . . .
Queen was also everywhere. She had died a year earlier, the royal urn had lain in state. Sirikit, mother of the present king, died aged 93. Queen Suthida continues in her role of Queen Consort, the fourth wife of King Vajiralongkorn, พระบาทสมเด็จพระวชิรเกล้าเจ้าอยู่หัว, Rama X, she had been a flight attendant, then long-time consort of the King, general and commander of the King's bodyguard, his previous 3 marriages ending in divorce. Here they are:
- after the phone snaps, some proper sights, from our accommodation to Khao San Road and the excruciating sounds of Country Road in Thai phonetics but a happiness over all like snow or smog
Finding Jojo's we ate in Khao San, to visit once, said our hostess, was acceptable. There was very little to find charming about it, much more to about the old town.
A wedding was in progress at the local temple:
- perhaps in his book on Japan, Empire of Signs, 1970, Roland Barthes remarks on series of things, on centrelessness or a void-centred system of beliefs leading to the prominence of series, then it could be the great under-rated American philosopher Alphonso Lingis writing about Angkor Wat, where it is an erotics rather than an ontology of series he is interested in; monotheistic religions really are like monogamous relationships: why not have thousands of Gods and imagine them to have, believe them having, thousands of lovers, at once, not the singled out special ones like Teresa D'Avila or more modern ecstatics like Emily Dickinson, and in series.
Midway between this transit suggested by a helpful temple attendant between temples:
- yes, series again, see erotics of, above.
- we have already stepped inside a plane, to Chiang Mai, เชียงใหม่
