After
18 hours in a flying sardine can, arriving by taxi
on Sukhumvit Road felt like a shot of adrenaline.
It was my first trip to Thailand, in the early 90's,
and Sukhumvit Road was more frontier-like then.
Nocturnal street vendors, gold-toothed con men,
and heavily made-up women with the "we can
work something out" look milled about under
naked light bulbs and joss stick vapors, creating
an incandescent buzz of adventure, lust and greed.
The
Bangkok night, warm, moist, sweet and musty, beckoned
like the velvety lips of a siren, or perhaps an
underfed Venus fly-trap. America, receding in my
consciousness became a dream, or more accurately
a nightmare that I was fleeing from, and Bangkok
became my reality, a reversal in consciousness.
Looking back, America seemed like a sterile hospital
ward, directed by abusive orderlies and Bangkok
was like a reprieve from prison.
Back
in the 90's, there was no skytrain yet. The pavement
on Sukhumvit was broken and had deep holes. There
were more street vendors back then, everywhere,
selling noodle soup and barbecued shrimp all up
and down the road. Now, there are just T-shirt and
souvenir dealers and the food vendors have been
relegated to side streets.
The old Thermae Coffee shop was still operating
then and when Nana Plaza and Patpong closed, those
who wanted to party until dusk would head to the
Thermae coffee shop. Back then it was a basement
dive always manned by a dour-looking policeman.
Inside would be the various relics from the Waterworld
and cheapskate johns mingled with a few wayward
souls there just for the atmosphere.
I
used to stay at the Mermaid's Rest Guest guesthouse
on Soi 8. It was a bungalow colony type place such
as those you would find on a southern island, but
it was in the middle of the city. The only decent
restaurant on the street back them was the Maharaja
Indian restaurant. The walls of Maharaja were made
out of ornately carved wood and painted boldly in
alternating red and green. My friend and I used
to save the meal there for our last day in town.
For some reason, the colors all seemed brighter
in Thailand and the food all tasted better.
There
used to be a Lebanese restaurant on the bottom of
Nana Plaza. Nowadays, an Arab restaurant just wouldn't
seem to fit there anymore. I first went to the Nana
Plaza Lebanese restaurant with my Egyptian friend
Pierre and he started talking to the manager in
Arabic. He then translated for me. He had told the
manager that he wanted the restaurant to bring us
a few salad plates but he wasn't very specific about
what kinds of salads and left it up to the manager's
discretion, a gesture of middle eastern gentility
to let the manager suggest what was appropriate.
The second thing he asked for was middle eastern
escorts.
I
had never known that there were Arab ladies of the
evening. Pierre commented that every continent has
at least one country or area that is reserved for
sinners, even the middle eastern world. The tourist
destination for sinners in greater Arabia was Morocco.
A little while later, platters and platters of food
came and sitting a few feet away from us at a separate
table were some queen-sized exotic and non-Thai
looking girls looking at us inquisitively. The food
was awesome but somehow it seemed like Greek food
mixed with Arab food. There were little pasties
and mixtures wrapped in grape leaves, falafel, humus,
the works and the food kept on coming.
We
continued eating and Pierre, although nodding to
the tastiness of the food, said that the Lebanese
manager had tricked us by bringing us too much food.
Pierre explained that the Lebanese are known as
the best businessmen in the Middle East and the
manager had taken advantage of Pierre's old school
Egyptian politeness by sending us more food then
we could possibly eat.
The exotic girls girls began to feel bored and annoyed
and eventually left after seeing that we weren't
interested. Later on, Pierre and I would discover
other great Arab restaurants in Soi Arab in between
Sukhumvit Soi 3 and Soi 5, where there were dozens
of restaurants all specializing in different regional
middle eastern cuisine.
