Weekend Away - March 16-18

Weekend in Away:

This is a little bit of a teaser. I was at a mall this weekend & spent some time hanging out in the food court (you’ll find out why later). Here is a sampling of the culinary offerings at this mall & see if you can guess where I was: Burger King, McDonalds, KFC, Starbucks (OK, those could be anywhere), Dairy Queen, Auntie Anne’s Pretzels, Subway, Haagen Dazs, Dunkin’ Donuts, Pizza Hut, and are you ready for this Swenson’s Ice Cream (I haven’t seen one of these since I lived in California back in 1970s). Hint, we are still in Asia. OK, there were tons of other restaurants from all over the world, but I just couldn’t believe seeing Dairy Queen & Swenson’s.

March 16 – John invited me to go along with him to Bangkok for the weekend. He was going to meet a customer who they are trying to convince to start printing in Thailand. This customer actually owns Titlest (the golfing people). John told me to be sure not to mention our dinner the week before with Bridgestone (the other golf people). It’s about a 2.5 hour flight, no problems. Thailand is really a great place. They are so proud of their culture and they make a huge effort to show this by decorating everything with Thai art. We flew into the new airport, which is very controversial. It is huge and lovely, but at less than a year in use, there are huge problems with cracking runway & roads and I guess tons of other things. If you know anything about the politics of Thailand you know there was a coup last fall & the prime minister was ousted by the military. I guess a lot of this had to do with the airport. It seems that the government gave the contracts & LOTS of government money to their friends to have the airport built. As it turns out those people did not do very good jobs at the airport and much of the money was squandered. So now the place is falling apart and the people are mad that the government leaders got away with this. So nobody was really upset to see the other government go, but they do want their democracy back. The military government “says” they are just temporary & will have elections soon, but it keeps getting put off. It seems that business goes along as usual though. The people love their king (the longest living ruler in the world – over 60 years) & he says to be patient so they are.

OK, back to the airport. It is filled with sculpture & art that depicts Thailand. Some of it is huge. It definitely makes you know that you are in Thailand, no doubt about that. We met up with our Cadmus Thailand guy, Meenawat. He is in his late 20’s & spent several years as a young boy living in the states. He is terrific & is a good friend. He drove us to the hotel. Again I noted the pride that is shown in the culture. All along the highway to the airport there are statues what I’m sure are Thai deities. I really should learn more about the religions on these places, but that will come.

The hotel was also amazing. John has stayed here before & told me about it, but I was still amazed. Of course the service was incredible, that is the Thai way. They even have a young man standing at the elevator to push the button for you & he remembers what floor you are on & pushes the inside button as well, then bows to you with hands together at the chest & says “kup kum ka”, which sort of means thank you, but a lot more.

The room was way larger than our apartment in HK. It actually had a living room, kitchen, bed room & bathroom larger than our HK bedroom. We also had a balcony overlooking the courtyard. I could have just stayed here all day, but Meenawat had plans for us. We headed to the office which is in a high rise in the middle of downtown. I don’t think I could ever learn to drive in Bangkok. There don’t seem to be any lane markings & most roads have more lanes going one way than the other. At least they drive on the right side of the street. The office is tiny, but a very impressive building. The guys were talking business of course & there was an issue with the printer not having the information that John & Meenawat needed to give to the customer at the meeting the next day, which would involve customer, printer & Cadmus. They needed to get an answer from the printer & make sure that printer & Cadmus were “on the same page” so to speak when they met with the customer. This has the potential to be a huge account if this first job is handled well. There were some major issues that were threatening to ruin the entire deal.

As it turns out I knew the woman at the printer that they were dealing with. When John & I were in Thailand last April she had taken us out for a few meals & taken me shopping at the night market. I said to the guys, “Hey, let me talk to Joy. I’ll invite her to have dinner with us tonight. I’ll tell her that I enjoyed getting to know her last year and am anxious to see her again.” They never thought she’d go for it, but I used my charm & of course she immediately agreed. Meenawat was amazed. I knew John had brought me along for a reason. I really do like Joy and sincerely wanted to see her again, so it wasn’t really a put on.

We all met at The Seafood Market for dinner. This place was great. You can either buy your fish to go or pick it out (it is all alive) & tell them how you want it cooked. The place is enormous and being a Friday night was hopping. We picked out a bunch of different things. For being so young, Meenawat is very cultured and knows his foods & wines. He always impresses me with his worldly knowledge of these things. Joy & her uncle, Kitti San (he owns the printing company), were a bit late, but that gave John & Meen time to strategize. It really was good to see Joy & we had a great meal. I can’t even remember what all we had or how it was cooked. I know there was lots of garlic and it was all delicious. At the end of the meal they talked their business & all seemed to be smoothed out and agreeable. It was important that they show a united front with the customer so they didn’t appear clumsy and disorganized. We all decided the dinner was a success.

Meen was going to take me to the floating market the next morning. He explained that it was “pure Thai”. It was the old way of doing things & there is really only one left. It is far away & only runs in the morning. To get there in time we would need to leave the hotel at 5am. I was game for this, but felt badly that Meen was going to take his Saturday to show me around, especially that early. The guy works like crazy & John will get calls from him late at night, on weekends, and early mornings. He is totally dedicated, so we hated to make him get up at 4am on his “supposed” day off. I told him I could see the floating market another time, so he seemed relieved and proceeded to take us to a bar at the top of one of the tallest buildings in Bangkok. He said this was the place where they had a special dinner last fall that cost $25,000 per person (and that is US money, not Thai). We didn’t eat anything! The drinks were alright, but as you can imagine expensive. It was fun to have a chance to just hang out with Meen & only talk a little business.

March 17, Saturday - Had a great night sleep & relaxing morning enjoying the hotel. It is very quiet & secluded feeling despite being in the middle of Bangkok. Meen picked us up as the guys had a 2pm meeting with printer & customer. I was not invited (thank goodness) and Meen, bless his heart didn’t want me to be bored, so after a quick lunch at Burger King (what country am I in??), he dropped me off at the largest mall in Thailand (be still my heart, anyone who knows me knows how much I absolutely LOVE malls – NOT). Even living in HK has not changed me that much. Meen did say that if I got bored shopping there is an aquarium in the basement. Now things were looking up a bit.

The area where I was dropped off was the food court, good thing I’d just eaten (although there were lots more interesting choices here than Burger King). You know from above all the US food places there were. As this is the largest mall in Thailand, the US choices were actually only a very small percentage of the offerings, but all of them were packed. It was about 12:30 & they were coming to pick me up at 5:30. I was to meet them at Starbuck’s which fortunately is where they dropped me off as there are 2 other Starbucks in this place. There was a large grocery store on this floor, so I decided to check it out. I just think it is interesting to see what there is in the food stores. It must sound like I’m obsessed with food, but not really. I just think you learn a lot about a culture looking at the everyday things like grocery stores. I have feeling this was not an everyday sort of grocery store. It was really upscale, they were even doing chocolate sculpting, which since I’ve returned to HK I guess is something the do around Easter, because all of the nicer grocery stores here also have this now. I did find some PEZ that I almost bought for Brooks, he collects them, but I’m need to see if he has these already. They were not Thai characters, but Disney, naturally.

Having exhausted myself with food looking, I had to see what this aquarium was. It got lost a few times as this mall I guess has 3 or 4 different buildings & I ended up in the basement of the wrong building. If you think malls in the US are crowded, you’ve not seen them in Asia. It is just amazing to me the number of people crammed into this place, all shopping & eating (it wasn’t cheap). I guess that is a Saturday in the big city. I did meet a nice young Scandinavian couple who were also lost & looking for the aquarium, so they tagged along with me until we found it.

The theme for this place was The Little Mermaid, so definitely geared towards the kids. The aquarium was fairly impressive for being in the basement of a mall. It was 2 floors & had several huge tanks. In fact you could pay extra & get a glass bottom boat ride in one of the tanks it was that large. I chose not to & was glad as the view I think was better from the side & the line was terribly long. They had a few shows, Mermaids swimming around was one of course. You couldn’t even get close to any of the shows there were so many people. I didn’t mind, it didn’t look that good. I did find it interesting to see some different fish than I think I’ve seen before. I think my favorite was the one that had fins that looked like feet & it sort of walked along the bottom. I also liked the water rats. They looked a lot like beavers, but with rat-like tails. They had big buck teeth like beavers. I’m sure they are in the otter family. It spent about 2 hours down there & enjoyed it, but my feet started to hurt.

I headed back up into the mall. This mall was 8 floors & each floor seemed to be a different type of store. One floor was all furniture stores. One was all jewelry stores. There was clothing; purses & accessories, etc….. There was even a health club on one floor along with the sporting equipment. On the top floor was the fanciest movie theater I’d ever seen. It was an entire floor & in what I guess you would call the lobby there were contests going on (a la MTV) & a Japanese dance performance & huge sofas scattered all over the place with people just relaxing. They had a cafe . I had thought about going to a movie, but decided against it. I had brought a book along so I found a nice spot & finished my book. Wandered around some more & when it got close to meeting time I found my way back to the food court. I did a lot of people watching, which is very entertaining in Asia. I love the differences in fashion.

The guys called to say they were within 10 minutes. I went outside to wait. After standing outside for about 5 minutes the guard (the do a security check when you enter) told me to go back inside. I said I was waiting for a friend, but he insisted that I MUST go back inside to wait. I noticed that they were clearing everyone from out front & stopped letting people leave the mall. There were strange things happening with the traffic pattern going by also, it suddenly changed then stopped. All of a sudden a bunch of police motorcycles went by with sirens going & lights flashing & a Mercedes went by with tinted windows. After that everything went back to normal & I was allowed to go outside again. When the guys got there I told Meen about this & he said it had to be someone from the Royal Family going through, that is what they do for them, it happens all of the time.

I guess the meeting had gone well with the printer & customer that afternoon. Now we were going to meet the 3 representatives from the customer for dinner. One of the guys (Ken S) lives in Bangkok and I guess was in the mood for good ol’ American steak. So he chose the restaurant; The New York Steak House. Not what my first choice to eat in Thailand would have been, but then nobody asked me. The other two people were Ken L and Joanne (both over from the US). The three of them were already at the bar waiting for us. The men had martinis and Joanne wine. We all made nice & introductions were made, I was actually the only one needing introducing. The atmosphere was initially on the formal side. We were seated & the waitress came to take our drink orders. She came to me first. I’m not shy about what I like to drink & don’t feel a need to impress people. So I ordered a beer. It was so funny, as soon as I ordered that beer, the Kens & Joanne all let out a big sigh of relief. They laughed & admitted that they didn’t like really like wine or martinis but thought it wouldn’t look good if they were drinking beer. They all followed suit and ordered beers. I guess that was the icebreaker we all needed, because the rest of the dinner was great. Good conversation. Turns out Ken L’s son attends prep school & it is one that plays Kimball Union, so we had some good prep school conversation. Joanne turns out to be a huge NASCAR fan & her husband is a Tony Stewart fan. So she was extremely impressed when I told her I was good friends with a guy who shared house with Tony. And that I’d met him a few times & used to get my kids’ ice skates sharpened in Tony’s garage. She was thrilled. She’s a Junior fan. If you’ve ever lived in Charlotte you can always talk NASCAR even if you don’t like it. You can’t really get away from it down there. They are even going to take a family vacation to Daytona for a race. I don’t get the attraction, but I played it up for the company.

She & I got along great. We talked about our kids and all sorts of other things. It turned out to be a great dinner. I managed to find something besides steak to order & it was very good. I’m not vegetarian, but beef really makes me feel sick, so I avoid it. At the end of the meal we even ended up taking group photos. Again I think it was not bad for Cadmus that I attended. If you know me at all, you know I can keep a conversation going, as long as it isn’t all about printing & this was not. I have since exchanged emails with Joanne and she again said how happy she was that I ordered the beer because she really is a beer drinker & didn’t like the wine at all. I guess it just pays to be who you are & not try to be something different. It has always worked for me.

March 18 – We kind of lazed around again on Sunday morning. It was nice sitting out on the balcony reading the paper & enjoying the breeze. I miss my deck at home. Looks like when our lease runs out in our flat in HK, that we will likely be moving to something less expensive & different part of town. Hopefully we can find something with a balcony or some outdoor space. I do miss that.

It had become obvious that John needed to stay in Bangkok a few extra days to make sure this job got completed properly and the customer left happy. So Meen picked us up and we went out to lunch to his favorite restaurant, Coffee Bean. We let Meen order & he did a wonderful job as usual. I’m not sure what we had, I think Pad Thai, some curry dish, some fried balls of something delicious. It was great. He said that what the restaurant is really known for is it’s homemade desserts. So we all went downstairs & picked out luscious looking treats that tasted even better than they looked. They escorted me to the ticket counter as Meen was going to help John change his ticket. All was well & the flight home was uneventful.