Venice of the East

Healing Mudras, who lives in Bangkok, sent us this synchro and it’s a good one, a confirmation of some decisions she has made recently.
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Bangkok is a city of canals. Most of them are not for navigation anymore. One of them is and there is a very nice, swift and low cost transportation with it. It crosses Bangkok from East to West . So rather than taking 2 hours or more to cross the city one can enjoy a 30 minutes ride on a taxi boat. This Klong is just few minutes walk from our House and we use it a lot.

The nice thing about it is that there is a sidewalk on the side of the Klong (canal) and pedestrians can walk along the water way. It really makes connections very nice. It’s used by commuters mainly and not upscale  people obviously. Some foreigners who know how to get around Bangkok also use it.

People and ‘local favelas’ also abound by the side of the klong as life there is mainly for the urban poor who make a living on the street. At various hours of the day a few beggars and homeless also find a niche for a good sleep under the bridges.

On the other side of the world, Venice, Italy is also a city built on water with canals. Obviously it is also more poetic and elegant than the one in Bangkok, but somehow a closeness and similarity can be drawn.

So this morning we left our house walking to reach the subway station, which is located not far from the Klong. We followed the sidewalk which is quite narrow, especially since my daughter likes to jump and touch whatever she can, especially the hanging plants.

We passed by the boat station and proceeded to our destination on the Klong sidewalk. While my daughter was blocking the passage for a lady coming out of a housing on the klong side, I told her my daughter in Italian to let the lady pass. Surprisingly, the woman said something to my daughter that baffled me. Not by what she said, but how she said it. She spoke in Italian.

So I called out to the lady in Italian and she answered.

I smiled and we engaged in conversation while walking to the bridge and the subway. She had returned from two years in Italy and was going back tomorrow to bring her daughter to study there! When I asked her in which city she lived and was returning to, she said: “Venice!”

That’s where my own mothers lives. I told her that and while she struggled a bit to continue the conversation in Italian, she was adamant on making an effort to showcase the Italian vocabulary she has mastered. I asked her where she was headed right now. She was en route to the embassy to pick us passports and visas.

“My husband is waiting for us in Venice. I am not sure when we will come back. I am happy for my daughter, but sad because she has to leave her friends here.”

In the meantime, we had reached the MRT ( Mass Rail Transportation – the name of the subway in Bangkok) and while she was headed for the track to the west, we were going to the one to the north. I waved at her and wished her good luck.

I found this event very peculiar for many reasons. Thai people rarely engage conversation with foreigners just like that. Then there’s the obvious geographical connection with Venice. Also, I am just terminating two years of living in Bangkok and she was going back to her new destination after two years of living there. She had just returned to pick her daughter.Then there’s the language. This woman was really making an effort to speak to me in Italian and I was tempted to speak to her in English.

What peculiar is the fact that I never have met anybody from those houses along the Klong and even wondered if people really lived there.

We went to the market happy! That was really a nice soft one!
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Healing Mudras, who speaks six languages and is well traveled, now lives in Laos. We hope she has many synchros there!