A day at Paragon

Siam Paragon

My days start at 7. I drink a few glasses of water, take a shower, ideally cold, but in Thailand the best you get is lukewarm. Then I do a stretching, yoga/meditation routine that takes about 40 minutes. Given that I’ll spend much of the day reading, writing or looking at screens, it’s the minimum to make sure I stay limber. 

Other than that, my days are blissfully unplanned. 

And yet I’m occupied. There is always something valuable to do or learn, to the extent that I haven’t, for example, found the three hours to watch the new John Wick movie since it was released. 

To escape the Thai summer, which gets up to 38 degrees celsius with high humidity, I head to one of the giant shopping centres that dot Bangkok.  The food court is located on the basement level, as is the norm. 

The place is packed. That’s Asia. Swarms of people everywhere. I like it. 

If I want peace and quiet I’ll stay home, when I go out I want to see people. Not like Melbourne. Finding more than 10 people in one place can sometimes be like walking around in the desert with two metal rods trying to divine water. 

I sit down in a “green” themed restaurant, health food apparently. As I order a chicken pesto pasta, a retired couple sits on the next table. Scandinavian of some description. 

The wife is doing all the talking. I try hard to hear any response from the husband. Amid the surrounding thrum I can hardly hear a thing from him other than the occasional affirmative grunt. She talks and talks. He says nothing, arms crossed. 

He must be thinking, “god will you just stop talking for a moment. Just one moment!” And she must be thinking, “god can you be interested for just one second. Just say something!” 

The whole thing is hilarious. And how long has this caper been going on for. Is it just today? Their whole trip? Or a 40 year marriage? 

How do two people so totally mismatched end up together? And how do I avoid being in that position? Though these two are travelling together in Thailand, it seems they stopped travelling together through the journey of life long ago. 

There are different levels of adjustment in Thailand. Many foreigners, even those who have been here for years, struggle. Often we are trying to be polite, like saying thank you in Thai, “Kapkun Krap”. Except that we say it so loudly that it’s jarring. 

We Westerners are quite a forceful and energetic bunch. We seem to attack everything, like a lion going for the jugular. To use a vernacular term, we have “no chill”. The dial is turned all the way to hyper, and we don’t even realise it. I catch myself in this mode sometimes. Later on I’m sitting at Starbucks, I go over to get a napkin and midway to the counter I realise I’m marching there like my life depended on it. 

A woman walks in with her two children, they are speaking in Spanish, at least in front of mum. Once she heads to the counter to order, the brother and sister start joking around in English. The sister, the older of the two and coming into her youthful beauty, takes a couple of selfies. Parenting must be tough these days.  

They are soon joined by another couple of Spanish speaking mums and their kids. The Starbucks fiesta is getting started. Only problem is there’s not enough seating for all ten of them. No matter, they proceed to add a couple of tables and chairs. 

One of the girls, no more than 15 with a big puff of blonde curly hair, goes over to a very solid two seater table (the kind that would give me pause) and picks it up like it's nothing. Then walks over and plonks it next to their other tables with a thud. I cringe a little at the commotion. 

I’m surprised by her strength, but looking at her she’s quite big, even compared to most adults here. 

I realise that I’ve just seen something that would never be done in Thailand by a local. So it’s not just the physical difference. We have a different way of interacting with our environment in the West. Less is more in Asia. If you can say thank you softly, while getting your meaning across, you’ve done it the right way. Their way. Not that one approach is better, they’re just different. 

Perhaps my default will always be set to lion mode, but I’m trying my best to adjust.