get thee to bangkok

Move anywhere new and I promise there will be hate, at least at the start. The feeling eventually passes but in the beginning it’s a gut reaction that’s hard to avoid. We have lived in four countries over the past six years and I have hated: the paper-thin walls of apartments in Washington, DC, the emptiness of Milan in August, and the soju-kimchi haze of late night subway rides in Seoul. I am currently busy hating the sidewalks in Chengdu – or more specifically, the use of Chengdu's sidewalks as toilets.

But we don’t live in Bangkok so I didn’t have to hate anything there. We wanted to lounge around in a place that wasn’t China and this city fit the bill. People sometimes use the word “international” to describe a city, meaning that it has everything you're looking for from the modern world, but I’m starting to think that what we really mean is that it has all of the things a westerner expects. International or not, this westerner couldn’t have been happier.

The meals we had were a confluence of freshness, complexity, and bright flavors, and the hotel breakfast was so sprawling and overwhelming that we were tempted to stay there to eat away the day rather than go outside. But the best part is that you can eat the food without worrying that someone used shoe leather to thicken your yogurt or dredged cooking oil from the sewers and added it to your noodles. And yes, those things actually happen in China.

Our hotel had a chocolate boutique that sold painted chocolates with decadent fillings, boxes of rainbow-colored macaroons, and cake by the slice. Outside there was a palm tree ringed pool with British retirees drinking watermelon juice, Italian families nibbling on French fries, and this American couple reading magazines (Shi-wen) and studying Chinese (me) in the shade.

Being free to enjoy what we were eating was a welcome detour from the underlying anxiety that accompanies every meal in China. So we ate and ate and ate. We downed volcanic oysters and prawn curries and durian sticky rice. Jack fruit and pomelo salad and wildflowers dredged through green curry. Bangkok made it easy.

And even with all the eating Shi-wen was still able to fit into the tux he’d been fitted for on our first day there. This was due in large part to the hotel’s gym, which overlooked the pool and had working machines. I was stunned – probably because the last hotel gym I'd visited was a small room nudged behind the swimming pool, where a 1980’s era treadmill, a few hand weights, and a stationary bike that was listing to one side were all collecting dust in the dark. What can I say... live somewhere long enough and you adjust your expectations.

In other news, we went shopping in Bangkok and they had shoes in my size.

Coming back to Chengdu was a little like falling out of bed and hitting the floor with your face. Getting off the plane was the cue to start the fight. The fight to get your bag, the fight to get a cab, the fight to find the food you think is safe enough to eat. But once you live here long enough you forget about the extra energy you have to expend and it’s just the way that life is lived. This is good and necessary, but step away from it for any length of time and coming back is a thud.

I stay flexible. I weave around the spitting and the squatting and the children with no pants. I never upbraid the drivers who come alarmingly close to running me down on the sidewalks. I follow the food scandals and adjust accordingly.

In this way I live the life that China gives me. I am thrilled to have an opportunity to know this place and to live its life, and I genuinely like it here. But I still love a grocery store selling food you don't hear about on the nightly news and I never thought I’d be so giddy about kids wearing full coverage pants.

They have these things in Bangkok. They also have the feeling that you may not be so alone after all – that there might be other people out there who have the same expectations as you do about what city life might entail.

It’s just that they live three hours away. In Bangkok.