Fascinators

 I have a grab-basket of unrelated, yet fascinating, sentences from these days in Bangkok. Please excuse the unrelated nature of this, but it'll be like wandering through the astonishingly diverse markets here.

• Bangkok is so smoggy that even this intense tropical sun does not feel burny on my skin. Looking at skylines is like looking through gauze.
• I am becoming quite adept at clapping, and even single-handedly grab-killing, mosquitoes. Some of them might be named Molly, here, which is short for May-lalala, so I am being extra vigilant! (Shari: thank you for your bug stuff!)
• At a few different restaurants now, I've heard background music of: American Christmas carols.
• There are house geckos: little plastic toys that squeak and dart around the walls.
• Bangkok is crawling with French tourists, identifiable by their cigarettes and men carrying shoulder purses. 
• We stopped at the Indian Restaurant-Tailor shop-Cocktail Bar-Visa Specialists (it amazes me the lack of delineation in businesses here) to check on the state of our Cambodia visa processing. Mr. Nepal, who we'd organized coordinating our visas through and who had been smoking a duct-taped hooka the first time we talked with him, was deeply asleep in his desk-chair, his arms behind his head. Bollywood advertisements played on the TV and eventually he woke up.
• Fish sticks in Thailand are fishes grilled over coals with sticks stabbed through them. I ate a catfish-relative yesterday, complete with little whiskers. It was flaky as a croissant and mmmmm-fully delicious and came with a wee plastic bag of spicy sauce, which left my lips vibrating.
• Passing by so many beauty parlors advertising eyebrow and eyelid tattooing. (no thanks)
• At the protest sites--among the camping tents and people in Thai national colors--you can buy lacy underwear, use a bathroom in a truck with metallic purple lug-nuts, and eat grilled bananas.
• Streets are snake-like and, while they are mostly in English, signs often are lacking at street corners. Our map is insufficient and we've spent no small amount of time poking blindly around for orientation. This is a world where "take the next left" is meaningless. "Is this Ratchawithi (Ratatouille) Street?" "Nope, I think we're on "Ratchaphrarop (Ratcha-Prop-Prop)" "Or maybe it's Somdetchaophraya (Some ditch and fry ya) road...ARG" comprises much of our conversations. 
• Everything I've consumed here, from the plastic baggies of papaya for 45 cents to the plates of noodles with greens and seafood, has been astonishingly delicious. "This is the best papaya I've ever had," I remark every time. I eat mounds of noodles like I've a focused starving child. I eat unrecognizable things on sticks and am astonished by their divinity.