The View From My Hotel Room

Well, let's see. There are about six lanes of traffic going in all directions along an askew collection of concrete conduits; there's an apartment building on which countless satellite dishes reel before a hot sun; there are balconies coloured by drying laundry and occupied by air-conditioners; there are a rusted and ramshackle collection of tin huts that seem to have fallen against each other by the edge of a railway, as if having toppled from a passing train; there is the new skeleton of a building, draped in a green canvas sarong; and, yes, there is Bumrungrad Hospital.

The tragedy, of course, is that I don't have much else to write about at present. I was discharged from the hospital on Tuesday, which was good timing as the poor bloke in the bed next to me had just developed some rather nasty secondary infection. I can't tell you how excited I was to return to my hotel room. Until I realised the hospital bed was actually more comfortable than the one here, which also didn't go up and down at the push of a button.

Back in my own clothes, which seem a little looser than I remember.

The exact nature of my disease seems a little unclear. Essentially, something nasty flattened me but they didn't quite catch what it was. As a result, I have to take every antibiotic under the sun for the next fortnight. That large Singha waiting in my fridge may be waiting awhile. Sigh.

Yesterday was pretty tough going, probably not helped by coming off all the additional meds they had been pumping me full of for the last four days. My sole achievement yesterday was managing to stay conscious throughout the latest Farrelly Brothers film. (Which is a perhaps not unimpressive feat.)

Today has been better and I've managed to be upright for the last four hours or so, so hopefully tomorrow I'll finally make it into the newspaper. Only a week late!

I did take a brief wander outside last night, after dark, to find some bland, vegetarian food (two qualifications that severely limit my Thai intake) and found myself passing the numerous dodgy DVD stalls. Considering something to stave off cabin-fever, I was quickly directed away by the stallholder. His phone had just rung, the ringtone that of a siren. 'Police come,' he said. 'Big trouble.' As I wandered on, I traced the word as it passed along the stalls. Some packed up quickly, shoving their goods into plastic bags, others simply walked off and left their empty DVD cases to fend for themselves. By the time I walked back, nobody was buying anything and half the stalls were bare.

The upshot of which, of course, was I had no disc-like entertainment of dubious legality (and I'm certainly not referring to titles such as "The Dog Game", of which I am content to never learn more about) to while away the woozy hours.