A sense of community
Forget about our little sidestep in Vientiane, we’d enjoyed, in order, a modest cabin in a lovely rural retreat outside Chiang Rai, a self-contained house above a beautifully tended garden in Chiang Mai, and an even bigger two story place between two excellent restaurants, just fifty steps or so from the Mekong in Luang Prabang.
As usual, our place in Bangkok was one our driver had never heard of — God bless Google Maps — but really, you just drive down a narrow alley between Itsaraphap and Arun Amarin roads, turn right into a courtyard with a busy restaurant overlooking Khlong Mon, and you can’t miss it.
An engaging young woman met us there and helped haul our bags up narrow tiled stairs, through a sliding aluminium door and into a room that on Airbnb had been photographed with a wide angle lens to make it look bigger. She gave us the keys to the aluminium door, smiled, thanked us, and said to call if we needed anything.
I reckon someone had said, “You know — if we put that place upstairs on Airbnb it could be worth a few Baht?”
It wasn’t, strictly speaking, “tiny”. Besides the bed there was room, at a pinch, for our bags, a little desk — which I used — and on the floor, two narrow squabs with built in recliners, which I also used — once. Our little bathroom was open to the weather. Past the bed there was a sliding glass door onto a little balcony with a glass table and two chairs. It enjoyed the morning shade, and looked out over the courtyard, which we shared with two or three small trees, a handy self-serve laundry, a few cars, several bikes, a shrine and the busy restaurant. Turn right and in the distance we could see the tops of green trees along the khlong, but mainly the restaurant’s rusty roof and the kitchen’s busy ventilator.
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We really liked the place. It had a sense of community — feeding into our theme that what we wanted was to Be Here, not to Do Things.
The restaurant was definitely open for the tourist trade, and a few of us dropped in, but most of the lunch and dinner crowd were noisy locals, there for the food and a few drinks. The menu was in both English and Thai, with helpful photos — mostly fish with a little pork and chicken for light relief, and a nod to the vegetarians.
I approached the menu with caution, so never found out, despite the photo, what fried tubfim with garlic and pepper was; but you couldn’t go wrong with the stir fries, spicy salads and fried rice. And a beer. And coffee.
We’d sit next to the khlong with an arm over the railing and watch boats come and go, and the livestock in the water. A woman came along in a little boat with a cook top, and sold food to a local table just along from us.
We got to know the friendly wait staff. One day Heather sprained an ankle, and having struggled back home and up the stairs she didn’t fancy coming down them again. I went down to order, and one of them brought our food up to us.
The restaurant didn’t open for breakfast, so we’d head up to the rush hour traffic on Arun Amarin and a friendly little place opposite Wat Arun to eat delicious seafood soup with a few local people and a bunch of cops from the nearby police station.
As we wandered back home, we’d stop in to the two quiet ladies at Annabell Café, and retire to their easy chairs for a piece of cake and a coffee.
You could get used to this.
We did venture further out, although our day at Icon Siam felt like enough of the new end of town.
A trip up the khlongs was more like it — temples, beautiful gardens, structures ranging from apparently abandoned to rather grand — and on our way back a stop at a market under an overpass for delicious Pad Thai. We had a cheerful guide and a sedate boat, not one of the fast touristy ones that make a huge noise, and wakes that mess with the other boats, the banks and the peace and quiet.
Over the week we got to try different routes between our alley and the main road, and to admire how the Thais beautify the most apparently modest of circumstances.
It put our little room in a new context.
One day we stopped at Priscilla Ice Cream. It was after school and the place was full of chattering students.
We got a hug from the restaurant staff when we left for Georgetown.