After entering Bangkok Suvarnabhumi Airport at the luggage claim, the first thing I notice is how loud it is. The place is huge and smells like AC and something being fried. I walk through arrivals with Big Rock on my left and Slightly Smaller Rock on my right (still deciding on the Boulder-thing. Maybe I should flip a coin?), and my carry-on in front of me like a small shield on wheels. I am taking everything in with the focused attention of someone who has just arrived somewhere completely new and is trying to look like he hasn't – so, basically, I am trying not to look like the total tourist that I am.
The arrivals hall is full of signs. Hotel names, company logos, names in Thai, English, and Chinese, etc., are held up by drivers, relatives, and friends. All people with expressions of those who have been waiting for a while, so, like, totally pretending to be patient, while actually being annoyed. Yup, that pretty much sums it up. I scan them, then I find it, and stop.
The sign says LU XIAO WEI in characters that can only be described as enthusiastic death curses (or scribbles? I'm not completely sure what to call them). They are large and confident and not entirely proportional to each other. I'm pretty sure most toddlers can manage something somewhat more legible. Below the characters, taking up approximately half the available space on the cardboard, is a sunflower (or what I assume is supposed to be one?). I look at it for a moment. Then I look at it for another moment. The sunflower looks like something of a mix between a blob and a misshapen daisy. It looks like a daisy that has had a difficult week, if I'm being kind, which I am. It can only be described as the artistic, decidedly abstract concept of a sunflower, as interpreted by someone who had only heard about sunflowers second-hand and was also running late at the time.
Pimchanok (AKA my awesome cousin, although I am seriously doubting said awesomeness at the moment) is holding it completely straight-faced.
I am so relieved to see her, I could cry – and not for the sunflower's tragic fate, although that is probably worth shedding a tear for.
But I don't cry. I walk over; I look at the sign. Then, I look at her. She looks back at me with the expression of someone who has done nothing that warrants comment – or severe judgement, which, if I'm being honest, is what I am doing.
"The sunflower," I say.
"Is welcoming and cheerful," she says.
"It looks like a daisy that lost a fight with a Siberian tiger and a grizzly bear and was sat on by an elephant."
"Beauty," she says, "is in the eye of the beholder."
"Then the beholder," I say, "must be blind."
She takes my carry-on from me without acknowledging this, which is either a deflection or a victory, and turns toward the exit. Big Rock and Slightly Smaller Rock fall into step behind us. I am still holding the sign because she handed it to me at some point during the exchange, and I took it without thinking, and now I am carrying it through Bangkok Suvarnabhumi Airport like a person who has won some sort of trophy. I really don't know what I've done to deserve this kind of acknowledgement.
I eventually fold it and put it in my bag.
Outside, the heat hits me immediately and totally, from the crown of my head to the tips of my toes. It lands on every surface of my tender, exposed skin at once, a scalding hello from a city that does not moderate itself for new arrivals. I stop for exactly one second on the pavement outside the terminal to take it all in. Bangkok smells like heat and orchids and exhaust and something sweet from a cart somewhere nearby. Then Pim says the car is this way, and we move (because if I had to stay out here any longer, I would become a fried Wei-Wei).
She talks the entire drive. Did I mention that she basically never shuts up? Pim really doesn't know what silence means – I don't even know if she knows what it means to breathe in between two independent clauses.
I learn several things in the first twenty minutes. I will provide you with a concise list.
1. That my apartment building has a very good noodle place on the ground floor and a less good one around the corner, but the one around the corner is open later.
2. That the traffic is always like this – don't be alarmed – you'll get used to it.
3. That her friend Dechawat lives nearby and is very nice; I will apparently like him.
4. That she has already stocked my refrigerator with essentials, which in her definition includes three types of chili sauce. I really hope there is something I can eat that doesn't burn my taste buds into a different dimension.
5. That Bangkok in this season is hot but not the worst hot, the worst hot comes later. This is also the point that worries me the most. Wei-Wei is not an oven chicken; Wei-Wei is a fridge chicken – you can ask grandma for proof.
6. That she has a system for the BTS that she will teach me. To which I said: Big Rock and Slightly Smaller Rock will be driving me around. And Pim pretended that she didn't hear anything.
7. And that the noodle place closes at nine, which is a tragedy she has not made peace with.
While Pim is spouting off another round of semi-useful information, I watch Bangkok through the window.
It is enormous. I knew it would be enormous; I had seen photographs, but photographs do not prepare you for the specific scale of a city when you are inside of it, and the buildings are on all sides. The streets are full, the signs are in a language your eye doesn't automatically understand, and everything is moving at a fast pace with no plans to slow down for you specifically. It is beautiful in an overwhelming way, all color and motion and the visual noise of a place that is entirely and confidently itself.
As we travel, I notice a golden temple roof catching the light between buildings; a vendor's cart with his flowers arranged neatly by color and type in buckets; and a child on a motorbike behind her father, her helmet slightly too large as she watches the traffic with complete seriousness.
My hands want my sketchbook, but I leave it in my bag.
My apartment is on the seventh floor of a clean, plain building that smells like fresh paint and cleaning products. Pim gives me the tour. It takes approximately a full 2 minutes and 39 seconds. There is a main room, a kitchen that is more of a suggestion, a bathroom, and a bedroom with a window that faces east. The furniture is beige and functional, with the personality of something that has chosen to offend no one (just like my distant Uncle Lee), which means it has no personality at all. The walls are white. There are no plants or art.
Pim hugs me at the door, tells me to eat the noodles tonight (she did, in fact, stock my fridge with more than just chili sauce), and then she is gone, and the apartment is quiet.
I stand in the middle of the living room with my bags around me, still unpacked, and look at the white walls. Then I walk over to the window. Bangkok is outside it, enormous and alive, and entirely indifferent to the fact that I have just arrived. I don't know what any of it means yet, but the walls are blank and just waiting to be filled with little pieces of me and my new life.
I grab the sketchbook from my bag and set it on the windowsill. Now the first thing is unpacked. Then I stand there for a while longer and let Bangkok be loud outside the glass, and I think: alright. Here we are, then.
Here we are, me and my two boulders.