On shopping

Went shopping for the final components of my school uniform—polo shirts. And I told myself I'd be going to one of the local shops, not the department store.

Wow.

The polo shop/sport clothing shop is next to the ladies clothing shops, but upstairs above a bookshop. They sell sports uniforms, cleats, pool cues, ping pong and other racquets, guitars and drums with associated ephemera, packed into one wing of the horseshoe-shaped store in crazy stacks in glass cases. The other branch of the horseshoe holds even more glass cases—just enough room between them for me to squeeze—each stacked full with plastic wrapped shirts/shorts/pants, and stacked on top to above my eye level. In a couple of places, towers had collapsed and filled the walkway to knee-deep.

Rather than search, I asked, as best I could, for a white polo for myself: pointed at me, held up a white shirt, shrugged my shoulders. Nothing but blank stares. Point at the size, at me, and I ended up with an XL supertechy Adidas cooling shirt for about ten bucks. Might've been ripped off, but really, how bad is that? Except for the XL thing—I might be a farang, but not of that caliber.

(A typical songtaw driving down the street)

I should be getting over it, but the density of life still amazes me—town does sprawl, but such is to be expected of a place more than a thousand years old. But within the development, everything goes vertical: live above the shop, add a new roof for more living room, stack the new product on the old. I think the only bit of horizontal spread I've seen was in the market—the fish ladies spread plastic bins of fish around them. Everything else has been vertical without apparent order or logic: the clothing shop next to the brake and grease shop next to the printer's and behind the fruit cart.

(The street outside my school)

Every shop has a sign, of course, a garish color with text of a wildly contrasting color, and entirely faded by humidity, oxidation, and general pollution. Everything on the street—buildings, cars, signs, dogs, people—has a general wear; at home, it would remind me of gray April snow, but here it's a matter of too much unregulated diesel, direct tropical sunlight, crushing humidity. Anything manufactured crumples and withers, and somehow people and soi dogs fall into this category. Everything else in the organic world thrives: trees, flowers, grasses, punishingly dense forests, fantastically rich streambeds, pervasive swarms of bitty little ants, and I don't even want to think about microbes.

(A wat in the S part of town; riding in a songtaw)