The last day of the trip, tomorrow morning we leave the hotel at 6am for the long journey home.
Today we had one last visit to a Bangkok market….the biggest market in Thailand. It also involved one last descent into the goblin ruled underbelly of the city. Even busier than the day before you immediately lost yourself in the mass movement of people. You became part of the giant shoal, murmurating yourself through the train tunnels below the city.
On the way there we marvelled at the layers of people, deep below us was the underground, just below us the underpass, our level the cars and pedestrians, above us another pedestrian walkway and above that the sky train. All levels bursting with bodies. All bodies continually moving except for those encased in cars frozen in traffic.
The market was huge, ungraspably so. We skirted the edge finding our feet before squeezing into the thronging maze where we immediately lost ourselves. You have to dive in here and try to forget about remembering your location to avoid getting dizzy with disorientation. It felt like closing your eyes and being spun around then trying to find your way out of an eternal labyrinth.
Like you are in an AI generated computer game that doesn’t end. Endless stalls selling anything you want and everything you don’t want. Hours passed and we barely scratched the surface. We hydrated with delicious fresh iced coconut smoothies. We had filled our knapsacks with what we needed and slid back down the escalators into goblin town.
It was really amazing to see how bodies moved on the crammed train and escalators, in perfect harmony sensing where each other were headed, what they needed and working together even though they did not communicate. Everything flowed whereas back home people seem so unaware of what is going on around them.
Being so close to people enabled you to get a close look at what they were doing and this was the same as at home. Looking at their phones and immersed in watching random nonsense on social media but doing this in a way where they can still dance along enmasse or sometimes even ride a motorbike through heavy city traffic and not crashing.
Time for one last massage and it was the best yet for me. I opted for foot and Em and Joy had Thai. My lady went in hard and managed to walk that tightrope between serious pain and pleasure. Sometimes straying too far into the pain lane leading me to wince, this, I learnt had to be avoided because far from easing up when I emitted a wince she took this as a sign to up the pressure. Several times I struggled so hard not to wince I ended up laughing (at the ridiculousness of the situation) she also interpreted this as a que to go harder.
In the evening we all went out for a family dinner We grabbed a table early in an attempt to avoid the mayhem of Saturday night in Bangkok. We had a lovely meal and a good chat. Now that we had finally met and got to know each other I took the opportunity to formerly ask Ems Dad for his approval of our marriage (as dictated by tradition). He gave me the green light and we raised a glass. As the volume of the music crept up we hugged and bid each other farewell as this chapter of our adventure drew to a close. Tomorrow we were flying home.
