Giant Roaches

The giant cockroach stared at Sasha. It's antennae waving in blinking wonder at the sudden intrusion. The bare floresent bulb sputtered overhead.
"I just don't want to see thousands of them." she moaned. "I don't want to see a sea of them parting every time I turn on the light."

I lay under the mosquito net in our tiny room. The grimy fan supplying our only comfort in the sweltering Bangkok evening. We had changed Hotels a few days ago. Even at twenty dollars a night the bill at Siam II had begun to mount. This place. This old teak guesthouse with a handful of rooms was only six dollars a night.

By comparison Siam II was a palace. It had nicely sized rooms with a King sized bed. It had color TV with STAR playing movies 24 hours a day. It had a private bath with hot water. It had a tiny swimming pool, an attractive staff and an army of housekeepers. This place had none of that. The humble, pimply family that ran it spoke only fleeting english.

Still, at these prices one's right to complain is considerably dimminished. And the extra bhat goes a long way in Bangkok.

I had two silk jackets custom made for me. Crazy pimp-style Harlem jackets that I designed. We had our teeth cleaned and polished and filled at Betty Dental Clinic at MBK. MBK is a gigantic Mall, like six American malls stacked on top of each other and crushed together. We took the public bus to Kanchanaburi and walked with tigers. We payed the 1000 bht extra to have our photos take with a giant feline's head cozied in our laps. We had luxurious spa treatments at a first class hotel, where they scrubbed every inch of dead skin off our bodies with wild honey and raw milk and sea salt. I took private Thai language classes with a tiny brown drill sargent who stretched and hour and a half into two. And we ate whatever we wanted to.

I glanced over at the giant cockroach and lazily made a swipe at it with yesterdays International Herald Tribune. It scuttled beneath the faded yellow plasterboard that had be used to cut up this darling old edifice. "Yes." I thought. "It was worth it."