Thailand: Wat is a temple

Thailand was the first stop for my solidarity work with the United Auto Workers. I basically spent the week meeting with different unions and letting them know about what auto workers in the American South put up with, with the goal of asking the Thais to stand with us when the time came to organize.



It's kinda fun having a translator because you get to think through what you say two or three sentences at a time.

The hainan chicken plate in Sala Daeng was such a satisfying and cheap lunch on the same street that I worked on, it's surprising that it was just well-marinated chicken served on a bed of rice that had cooked in the chicken juices. All of it was livened up by the sweet soy sauce with ginger and some chili heat. The bowl of chicken broth is just icing. This and the convent pork rice plate kept me very happy since you get so much bang for your baht.

Thailand was a frenzied blur since I popped up early in the morning for work in the industrial provinces before racing straight for temples right when I got off.

Wat Phra Kaew was amazing with its reclining Buddha. The sound of people dropping coins into the many little metal buckets on the side just makes it so calming to walk around. Wat Pho was another story since it was just so so crowded. I was also coming straight from work, so I basically was drenched and stomping around in moist dress shoes. Hawt.

Wat Ratchanatdaram (below) was one of my favorite temples in Bangkok. Nowhere near as flashy as Wat Pho or Wat Phra Kaew to be sure, but it was meditative and completely empty except for some surly monks having tea outside. The place is arranged like a circular maze that spirals to the tippy top where you overlook the bustle of Bangkok and there is a teensy shrine. Humans had a predilection for tall places where you can see prey and danger, and this tall place was a good one.

And this was where I picked up a grumpy pet cat. It was Valentine's Day and everywhere in Bangkok, people had tacky plastic roses and little hearts for sale, along with a ton of cheesy stuffed animals. Dinga stood out though since among the sea of smiles, there was this one dubious face, kinda lumpy, kinda sad. So of course I walked up and asked how much he was. The stall lady quoted me a price in Thai, and when I clearly didn't speak a word, she probably tripled it in English (funny how translation works), but it worked out to US$2, so Dinga went straight into my bag. Even the hotel maids liked him so much that they kept tucking him into bed for the rest of the week and putting little flower garlands on his head. 

In Indonesia, he was prodded and poked at to see if he was filled with drugs while I stood by nervously thinking, "Please don't let there be any cocaine inside the cat." This all happened under a big glowing sign: "DRUGS ARE PUNISHABLE BY DEATH" with a skull and crossbones. 

He's been through a lot, and his nose is no longer brown since the fabric came off. But Dinga is now a proud resident of the United States. Lots of memories of him selling smoothies and living in a SRO in the Richmond, and all of it is like Dinga, kinda lumpy, kinda sad.