Liz's birthday

It would be ungentlemanly to reveal my good wife’s age but suffice to say she is not looking it! As luck would have it, Liz’s birthday has fallen on a public holiday, though strangely this didn’t apply to A & N’s school. So we had the day together without the kids: a rare pleasure.

With just two months before we leave Thailand, we’re trying to tick off the things we’ve not yet done. So this morning Liz showed me round Chinatown which is a chaotic labyrinth of wholesale shops and stalls stretching a mile or so along the river. I have been a couple of times before but it was a disorientating experience. You have to know where to go and what you want. Liz is a real pro now and whisked me from a shop selling gold leaf to another one specialising in every type of bead you could possibly think of. And where to get the best wrapping paper. And a tailor selling good Japanese cloth, up an escalator which clearly hadn’t worked for decades. And finally to a shop in what was probably Bangkok’s first ever shopping mall to buy some ‘schlack’ (a kind of lacquer for silver). You rarely see foreigners here. There are no MacDonalds, Starbucks, Gap, anything resembling a western shop. It has the feel and patina of another era, tatty, but with character.

In the afternoon, we went to Khao San Road, the backpackers hangout, (in)famous for its cheapo hostels, bars and stalls selling CDs, DVDs and trinket tat. I’ve been a couple of times in four years but Liz, never. Actually, we quite enjoyed it. One end has loads of silver shops so Liz was able to stock up on supplies and we had a beer while watching dreadlocked and tatooed twenty-year-olds from every corner of the globe. We ended up in a Thai restaurant on the river with only one other group of diners. OK, it was a Monday night, but it’s obvious that the Red Shirts turmoil is taking its toll.