Record Lows; Missing Millionaires…

I have to confess: the title of this post has more to do with things I didn’t anticipate experiencing. Week two in Bangkok was full of all kinds of random surprises. Read onward to hear about a few of those very things.

 

Record Lows

Winter in Thailand has some similarities to winter in the more temperate regions of the world: it gets colder; the sun sets earlier in the evenings (though the amount of sunlight that differs between summer & winter is about an hour in Thailand instead of about 8 here in Alberta); foliage turns brown & begins to fall off the trees. Yes, as odd as it may seem to the uninitiated, tropical Southeast Asia has an “autumn” season where trees slough their lush greenery in exchange for a more sparse, naked fashion, all while the humans adorn opposite clothing trends. The coldest mornings in December tend to hover around the low- to mid-teens Celsius, which is slightly humorous to an Arctic Canadian when he sees the Thai people bundle up in thin, parka-like coats, complete with toques & sometimes even gloves. I’m certain that, during my time spent weathering the Thai winters, the locals were astounded at my brazen defiance of the “frigid” conditions when they’d see me walk around unfazed in a t-shirt and slacks.

Besides the obvious lack of a negative sign on the thermometer, there are other differences to Thailand’s winters—one of the biggest being that the chilly season usually lasts no longer that 10 weeks. During February, the mercury slowly begins to rise in a cumulative-like fashion. The trend continues until one forgets that there was ever a time for jackets and, instead, one scurries off to the closest air-conditioned room available, to stave off the imminent flood of perspiration as long as possible. By the end of March, this thermal battle has long been lost, yet the weather affords no respite from the heat until the rainy season begins in June.

That’s what’s supposed to happen. This year, it didn’t.

During my second week in Thailand, Bangkok experienced its lowest March temperatures in the city’s recorded history. That’s right: 18°C in March. 30% colder than the month’s “average low”. Students & teachers alike were bundling up & donning their January fashions again. Some of the staff celebrated the chilly air, while others shocked even themselves by expressing how cold the weather was... while wearing sweaters and toques to combat the cold. I myself hadn’t expected the weather to drop into the teens, but thankfully, I had worn a Canadian climate-appropriate wardrobe during my flight the week before. Who would have expected a need for these clothes during my trip? Only once had I worn that shirt during a previous March while living in Thailand.... and I learned the lesson of its excessive (usually) thermal capacity.

The weather for the remainder of my time in Bangkok was erratic. More chilly days peppered the calendar, interspersed with the usual hot & humid fare, however, another meteorological mystery manifested: monsoon rains! The rains that one only really witnesses during the rainy season, when standing outside without an umbrella is much like jumping full-clothed into the shower or walking through a celestial waterfall. Streets again were flooded, looking more like canals than roadways. Stepping stones were deployed on busy pedestrian thoroughfares to keep the wanderer’s feet dry (it’s never nice having to change your shoes after making a quick walk over to 7-11. And traffic creeped to a veritable standstill. On my last full day in Thailand, I had intended to meet up with a friend downtown, but it had started to rain & the taxi I had hired barely made it to the Big C Supercentre (1.1 km down the road) in 48 minutes. In Thailand, when it rains, it pours; and it’s only supposed to pour well after Songkran.

 

Missing Millionaires

I had accomplished this mandatory task last year, and whenever there’s a Swensen’s ice cream parlour available to me, I will do my best to ensure that the task gets completed again... and again. What task might this be? To indulge in the revelry of consuming what could possibly be the world’s best commercially-available, high quality & optimal cost-to-benefit ratio ice cream dessert: the Chocolate Millionaire.

Imagine in your mind’s stomach with me, if you would: three scoops of your choice of ice cream lobbed into a Romanoff glass whose interior has been coated with a swirl of chocolate fudge sauce. The scoops of your choice are then sumptuously drizzled with fudge, which holds the ice cream in a sweet embrace with banana chunks and several chocolate-dipped ice-cream morsels. The entire ensemble is delicately topped with the gentle kiss of whipped cream & a wafer wedge, whose light, frail textures are excitingly taunted by the shot glass of dark, hot fudge that they serve on the side. Essentially, it’s a pint of dairy-heaven & cocoa-bliss combined into a single, incomparable experience. All for the low, low price of $4

You can imagine my despair when I discovered that they discontinued the treat.

We (the G12 class & I) had decided to hit up Swensen’s as an after-school activity on the last Monday of school. My entire motivation for going was to check this task off on my list of “must dos”—of course, that’s not to say that I didn’t want to hang out with the students: we could have gone anywhere to do that! However, even with the extinction of the Millionaire, we all had a good time hanging out & scooping frozen dairy heaven into our mouths.

Cow cream delicately digesting in our finely filled stomachs, the group dispersed, each student wandering off in random directions—some homeward, others, in packs, to hang out together at another location. Those of us who remained continued our conversation over fried food & fizzy beverages... and French fries smothered with cheese sauce down at the local McDonald’s, along the western edge of the Big C Supercentre shopping complex. During the latter half of our after-school adventure, Babe & Tee—two GES alumni from years previous—joined us as we talked about life, developments & those other conversational points that people bandy about when catching up with each other.

It was getting dark outside, which it usually does around 6 pm. The oncoming twilight signalled the remaining students that it was time to head home; and, much like the dwindling rays of sun, each of them bade their farewells and slowly faded out of sight for the evening.

 

Stay tuned next time for the story of cowboys, ninjas & bamboo camouflage. And you thought that ninjas only existed in Japan!