Living The Thai Life

An uneventful and surprisingly-quick, four-hour flight deposited us in the comfortable confines of Bangkok’s shiny new international airport. Our arrival in Bangkok marked our return to the site of our honeymoon four and and a half years earlier. The Bangkok we observed this go round struck us as much more modern and upscale than its predecessor, although that may have been dictated by the specific circumstances of our visit.

Vik’s Stanford friend Ben and his wife Ann had kindly arranged for us to crash at their spacious and impeccable flat on the grounds of the stunning Sukkothai Hotel in central Bangkok. In an especially-thoughtful gesture, Ben had even arranged for a uniformed hotel driver to greet us at the airport upon our 5:30 am arrival.

The highlight of our stay in Bangkok was, without a doubt, getting to spend an evening with the ultra-hip Ann and Ben, a smart and stylish couple whose tender interactions with one another made us remember the best aspects of the first year of marriage. We were also duly impressed by the specifics of Ben’s marriage proposal to Ann, which took place after a grueling, nonstop, 41-hour, 100-kilometer (60-mile) hike (this is in sharp contrast to Vik’s proposal to Kaberi, which took place after not quite 41 hours in a Washington D.C. hotel).

Ann and Ben also introduced us to a chic Bangkok that we would have never discovered on our own. First, we had dinner at Le Vendome, a trendy, new French restaurant in Bangkok’s Sukhumvit district. Afterward, we capped off the evening with dessert at Vertigo, an open-air, rooftop bar 57 stories high atop the Banyan Tree Hotel that affords patrons spectacular, unobstructed 360-degree views of Bangkok’s seemingly-endless night-time sprawl.

Having seen the historical highlights of Bangkok during our last trip here in 2002, we were able to enjoy the more cosmopolitan side of the city during this visit. On our first night in town, we shed our travel gear and dressed up for a fancy dinner at the Sukkothai’s renowned Thai restaurant, Celadon (where Kaberi finally was able to wear her perfect little black Theory dress bought specifically for the trip). On another night, we took an evening stroll around Bangkok's Night Market to browse the kiosks and practice our negotiating skills. The following day, Kaberi somehow managed to drag Vik along for a proper English afternoon tea at the Mandarin Oriental’s Authors Lounge. Vik grumbled a bit about losing his masculinity somewhere along the way, but was temporarily mollified by the finger sandwiches and scones with clotted cream.

Vik then secured “Husband of the Year” honors (as if he hadn’t sewn that up already) by patiently accompanying Kaberi to a number of boutiques on Sukhumvit Road. Her stops ranged from an upscale stationery store featuring unique hand-made notebooks to the city’s premiere silk boutique where she custom-ordered a handbag (in chocolate brown and champagne, a color combination resignedly selected by Vik). Even lunch at the stylish Kuppa (a Dean & Deluca meets Pottery Barn), turned out to be more of a ladies-who-lunch spot, judging by the nearly-uniform demographics at nearby tables.

As our time in Bangkok neared an end, we dabbled in some retail arbitrage by ordering custom-made suits and cashmere coats from a chatty Indian-Thai tailor calling himself Johnny. As if ordering heavy winter coats in 100-degree temperatures wasn’t ludicrous enough, Vik had us adopt a negotiating tactic of posing as Indian citizens visiting Bangkok on holiday. The last embarrassment left to endure was realizing at our second fitting that we had ordered identical blue shirts and matching black suits. When we return to the States, we're going to look like the Osmonds channelling Men In Black.