When I first met Doctor Sathit I felt he was a little lacking in the bedside manner department. “You have a grave disease” he informed me gravely. Thanks for breaking the news gently doc, I thought, and enquired as to how grave it actually was. Should I start planning my funeral now or wait until after the weekend?
Turns out that what he was telling me was that I had Graves disease which is not life threatening, but not curable and extremely unpleasant. As well as putting your thyroid into overdrive, the muscles behind the eyes inflame and swell, providing an unusual popeye effect and spectacular double vision. The American approach to managing this seems to involve cutting out some of your thyroid or attacking it with radiation therapy, with potentially nasty side effects. Dr. Sathit was having none of that, and over the next four years he fed me little white pills and gradually brought my thyroid under control.
Over that time, the eyes decided to go their own separate ways in my skull, such that it was difficult to know which of the two images being fed into my brain was correct. This was particularly challenging when driving at speed, at night, in the rain in the narrow streets of Bangkok. I developed a strategy that officially involved aiming between the two images in my head; but more often than not involved just closing my eyes when I got to really tricky bits. Some alcohol in the system seemed to help reduce the overall feeling of impending disaster; and indeed very few people were knocked off their motorbikes.
Once the disease had burned out, I took a trip to Moorfields Eye Hospital in the UK where a very nice lady disconnected all the muscles attached to my right eye and sewed them back on again in a different place. When I woke up, both my eyes were pointing in the same direction again. This was a great operation to describe in detail at parties later, usually when little melon balls were served as a starter; although I was recently upstaged by a gentleman whose penis exploded during the act of lovemaking. But he had to hold that story until the banana fritters came for dessert.
Although the eyes are sorted, the thyroid still needs a regular check to make sure that it is not contemplating misbehaving again. So every six months I make a trip to Bangkok to see Dr. Sathit who checks my blood and generally pokes around to make sure all is in order. He charges a wallet-emptying 600 baht for his time, worth every baht for all he has done for me, and the smile he gives when he tells me everything is OK.
This visit I decided to stay overnight and checked into The Davis Hotel in Suhkumvit Soi 24. At the time it was being built there was speculation that The Davis could end up being a pretty seedy place; but it is actually a very smart boutique hotel with spacious rooms, a good enough breakfast and room rates which are very competitive for Bangkok.
The concern over the seediness arose because of the owner, Chuvit Kamolvisit, one of the more colourful characters in Thailand. Chuvit made his money with a chain of massage parlours where you would certainly get more than a massage (a cup of tea perhaps?). In 2003 there was a dawn raid by assorted thugs on an area of land that he owned which was occupied by stall holders and small shops. In a couple of hours, the whole area was razed to the ground in order to make way for a new development. Something of an outcry from those occupying the land who thought they had valid leases but were left with a pile of broken bricks. Arrested by the police, Chuvit spent a month in prison which rather pissed him off. Upon his release he provided lists of policemen that he had been bribing over the years, and even a list of prison officers he had bribed during his month in prison! Some of the police were named as having received free massages (and cups of tea). The fact that Chuvit had been bribing people did not seem to be of concern, but some token policemen were locked up for a while.
Deciding to enter politics, he failed to get elected as Bangkok governor. But he wangled his way into parliament and made headlines on the first day by smashing a jacuzzi tub outside the parliament building, and then lying in a casket. Apparently this was to show he was no longer operating in the sex industry and was going to be a good boy. He was thrown out of parliament shortly after. Chuvit enjoys the limelight and stirs things up in a most entertaining manner; we need more like him.
As I was travelling alone, the trip to Bangkok took about half an hour less than it normally does, due mainly to the lifting of the wife-imposed speed limit. There were occasional hindrances, like this not at all dangerously stacked van in the outside lane.
I would like to point out that “not at all dangerous” was also how I would describe my taking of this photograph, I had the other hand on the wheel at all times and only looked through the viewfinder briefly. Just as well it had not been a mobile phone, the police would have been right onto me.
Arriving in good time in Bangkok, I decided to go shopping, but could not decide between a Lamborghini or a Spyker, so I had a cappuccino instead and pondered how they get the cars onto the second floor of a shopping mall.
Then on to Central World which is a fairly new mall and absolutely massive. It used to be smaller and called the World Trade Centre and the day after 9/11 (or 11/9 if you are from Europe) a friend of mine was on a bus in Bangkok and heard two women talking. They were on the way to the World Trade Centre because they heard it had been bombed and they wanted to take a look…
The WTC (Bangkok edition) was not the easiest place to navigate. There were curving corridors and no obvious design that would help the average shopper find their way around. It has now been absorbed into Central World which has retained the same design approach; meaning that once you are in, it can be very hard to find your way out again. Probably intentional.
I finally escaped and discovered that the secret to global warming is apparently sex.
I took a look around the back of the pillar, just in case the scientific basis was more fully expounded; but there was no further information. Never mind, it sounds plausible and I fully support the concept. A shame that the guy with the exploding penis can’t help resolve this crisis.
Comments 🔗
2008-05-23| Billy says“pondered how they get the cars onto the second floor of a shopping mall”
My, God, can’t you see the escalators?