Rooted Wanderings

We certainly didn’t have a typical experience in Thailand: no beaches, elephants, parties, seafood, or shopping. What did we do for an entire month, you might wonder?   Well, for our first 5 nights we stayed with Don, a medical school friend of Julia’s dad, and his partner Paul in their central Bangkok condo. From the 12th floor we looked out upon the enormous city and its skyscrapers. Bangkok is truly huge, with a population of 15,000,000 and rising. Knowing our dislike of cities, we had planned to spend as little time as possible in Bangkok but ended up spending more than half our time there under some unfortunate circumstances.   But that came later. For our first few days, Don and Paul were great in helping us get oriented to the city. On our first full day, they took us to one of their favorite markets, which was full of all sorts of exotic sea- and river-dwelling creatures. Paul seemed to know all the names and how to cook them. Now we have a little more u