Dance your tea

Dance Your Tea
Finding a place to pee is dreadfully hard in Bangkok. I tried all the normal places, McDonalds with it's Ronald McDonald with palms together in the traditional Thai greeting in front, offered no restroom, nor did Burger King or the subway station. It was becoming serious and there were no convenient alleys I could duck down and take a quick secretive leak. It always happens when I drink tea. I should have known better than to drink the tea, but there was a reason. In the end, I went into the new Crowne Plaza Bangkok Hotel across from the Lumpini Park in downtown Bangkok. The guard at entrance stopped me right off. I thought my western looks allowed me entrance to anyplace but I guess my slightly disheveled backpacker look disqualified me. "Hotel," I insisted and he finally relented and let me pass. The doormen reluctantly opened the front door. The concierge came rushing up asking what he could do for me, but it sounded more like, "What do YOU want? " Putting on as haughty an air as I was capable of I offer, " Mummy and Daddy are flying in next week and they have asked me to find a suitable lodging for them." That worked. He took out his sheet and went over the room rates, a bargain really at 200 dollars a night which was my budget for about the next 10 days. He directed me to the registrar on the 23 floor where I got a chance to see how the other half (half, who are we kidding, half of half of one percent maybe) lived. After perfunctory nodding and exclamations of, "yes, this will do fine" all the while my bladder fairly bursting, I got to my point and asked in an offhand manner, "Is there a lavatory nearby that I may use?"
    "But of course sir," and they directed me to a secret unmarked hall where an elegant urinal awaited my swollen organ, ahhhhh.  Why do they hide them like that? I made a hasty exit, told them I would contact them later for a reservation, and continued onto Lumpini park where I saw amazing monitor lizards crawl out of the placid lake and eat insects, not the nearby babies that I had feared. But I digress. The tea. The tea. I know better than to drink the tea, it always makes my bladder feel full.
      On Sunday though, I went to Chatuchak Park in Northern Bangkok. It's a very large market. A lot of foreigners go there because the prices are good. I even met some young women from Singapore who were in Bangkok just for shopping, because prices were 2 to 3 times cheaper than in their country. I found I it interesting for about ten minutes, because I hate shopping ( unless it's for vintage t-shirts). There were some interesting things there; some food I had never seen, a few artists, and the food that would fall under the category unhealthy but tempting because you've never seen anything exactly like it before. Like the famous and profound saying which you see on a million t-shirts in Bangkok, "same same but different."  Then  I saw the Java tea shop. Like a million other sugary drinks and things, but this one had to be aerated  thoroughly by pouring it from one glass to another. I'd seen Indians in their tea shops pouring it from very high to very low without ever spilling a drop,  which was amazing, but this guy did it much better. He poured from one cup to another while whirling around very fast. The tea in mid-air seemed to make a wild "S" shape in the air as it passed us. It was as if he was painting the air with his burnt orange colored paintbrush, round and round he went, creating a shiva dance, whirling on and on, drawing a crowd, cameras snapping, juice splashing this way and that but always magically somehow into the cup. Then slowing down and down until he is standing in front of the cheering crowd. I ask the guy in front of me who already bought one, "How's the tea?"
      "Great," he says.
       I get in line behind a throng of others. I was curious and also i wanted to cast my vote for this guy, to support him in the only way i knew how, by buying his product. TThe dancing tea man pours his art into the strainer and his assistant makes the individual portions. He is breathing heavily and smiling. Somehow I can't help getting philosophical about this performance. Maybe it's the key to a happy life. Maybe we should all make the boring and routine part of our lives into art. Maybe we should all dance our tea. As if in answer, I look up and the tea dancer is talking to the guy in the stall next to his who is selling ice creams on a stick. I read his body language as he says to him, "hey why don't you juggle them?"  the man gives him a look that says that would be impossible and just smiles and shakes his head. That's what we all do. We never consider the other way, the artful way.
    In Thailand you are constantly being approached by people trying to sell you anything, usually you don't want it, so after awhile, you develop a nasty attitude and feel mean. Out of the blue a woman told me her secret, "When I say no, I look them in the eye and give them a big smile. It works great, they don't feel so bad, and I don't feel so mean." I guess she was dancing her tea.

Dance your tea,
make your boredom into art,
dance your tea,
but be careful when you drink it,
or you'll maybe have to sneak it
Then, you can
Dance your pee