Bangkok, Oriental setting, And the city don’t know what the city is getting…
SO goes the song. Well today Bangkok and its denizens got what can only be described as a masterclass in parenting as the adult Shines pulled out all the stops to win the Parents of the Year contest (perhaps fuelled by a lingering guilt at breaking the warbling-whistle yesterday in Penang)…
But regardless of motive, you can mark July 5 in your diary as the day when the worldwide standard of parenting shifted a little, likely never to be the same again.
It was a multi-pronged Shine tilt at the parenting title, one featuring ludicrous indulgence, some childish taunting and shameless truth-bending and manipulation.
The whole sorry saga began in, wait for it, the Apple store. We’d sought one out in Bangkok to solve what was becoming something of an increasingly pressing problem.
I know, I know, I can hear the disapproving murmurs from all points of the globe. What kind of an idiot would buy an eight-year-old an iPad, right? Well don’t worry, you are way off.
We didn’t buy it for Jasper. Or even for Ben (WHO would buy an iPad for a seven-year-old, after all?) No, displaying the sort of behaviour usually the preserve of the uber-rich, the fairly-poor, or the extremely stupid, we purchased the 21st century’s must-have item for our TWO-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER Kitty…
I’ll just pause to let you take that in.
Really? For me? What took you so long??
Even Jasper and Ben shook their heads sagely at the lunacy (that, though, was the extent of their mildly amused protests given that they had already received iPads pre-trip as a means to make tortuously long train journeys more palatable — they *have* got books on them as well as games, you know!!!). And that was the root of the problem in essence.
From day one when we clambered onto the first train at Woodlands, every time one or other of the boys has asked to use their iPad to watch some TV, read a book or play a game, Kitty has lunged maniacally at the headphones, demanded Peppa Pig at the top of her voice and generally instigated an all-in wrestling contest regardless of the time of day or night.
So I am afraid we’ll just take this one on the chin. Sixteen hours on a train with three under 9s is tricky enough — we can tell you that from experience now — but 6 days and nights without stopping from Beijing to Moscow will be our own Eastern Front, and if an iPad eases the pain, in any small way, we are all in…
The incident of the iPad was just the start, though…
While I can share the ignominy of the iPad purchase with Mrs S, the second parenting coup de grace was all my own work…
Sitting with Jasper and Ben while Zoe was away with Kitty, I spotted an athletic looking resident of our hotel eating in the restaurant, his muscles bursting out of a T-Shirt emblazoned with the slogan “Stay Awesome“. It struck me, because that was just the phrase which appeared on Jasper’s leaving card from school.
“Why don’t you go up to that guy and say ‘STAY AWESOME DUDE,’ and high-five him, Jasper,” I mused.
Ben joined in… “Yeah, go on Jasper… what will you give him if he does it? An X-Box…????”
It took me all of a nano-second to consider this transaction.
“Yep, you can have an X-Box, but you have to go up to him and say it in a really American accent… ‘STAY AWESOME DOOOOOOOD’ and go for a massive high-five,” says I.
Between us, Ben and I cranked up the tension, the taunting was elite-level, Jasper was gee-ing himself up (I could even lip read him practising the phrase — he was ACTUALLY VISUALISING DOING IT… and when he turned to sight his target, the guy was gone. 
Awesome Dude *had* been just over Kitty’s shoulder. Before he left.
When we saw Awesome Dude in the lift lobby shortly afterwards the spell had been broken, and I had retracted the X-Box offer in the light Mrs S’s disbelieving reproach.
We hadn’t even seen any of the sight of Bangkok yet, and already the day was going SO well… what could possibly go wrong?
We headed out onto the SkyTrain and leaped off at the Chao Phraya river to zip up to the Royal Grand Palace and Wat Arun. Against my better judgement we snubbed the public ferry to instead take a longtail boat at the kids’ request. This thing really was something else — a decrepit vessel powered by what looked like an enormous Rolls Royce jet engine.
Typhoid-spreading Death Vessel
Now try as I might, I could not get the picture out of my head of a woman I’d seen on Locked Up Abroad or some similar piece of Discovery Channel scaremongery reliving her tale of getting a splash of Bangkok river water on her lips and ending up vomiting poo for a month before having her entire innards removed in a Thai hospital. So it was with no little trepidation that I boarded our ride which almost immediately began spraying river water all around my tightly pursed lips (and those of Jasper and Ben with whom I had helpfully shared that tale).
Still, we survived, and had an absolutely fantastic time touring the sights. Wat Arun was as imposing as it was striking, yet both Jasper and I managed to clamber up the thigh-judderingly steep steps of the central Khmer-style tower – he more gracefully than I.
The effort of the clamber up and down the tower left blood sugars dangerously low so we treated the children to the Coca-Cola Co’s finest (Coke, Fanta, you name it… — parenting win number 3) but it wasn’t until we got to the Grand Palace that the nadir of my fatherly skills was plumbed.
It’s the Real Thing
Running a little short of Baht, I asked the woman at the palace booth whether I had to pay full price for the children. “How old this one,” she said, pointing at Jasper.
“Eight,” I told her truthfully… but she eyed me suspiciously as she regarded my strapping eldest.
“How tall he?”
“How tall are you, Jasp?” I asked…
“Erm, I think one-forty.”
“One forty. He thinks,” I relayed.
“You may have to pay for him if he’s too tall,” she said, waving me off with just two adult tickets for the five of us.
Now, you’ll understand with Baht in short supply, no ATMs for miles and a tuk-tuk home to pay for, this was not a risk I was prepared to take.
“Don’t walk so tall on the way in, Jasper,” I muttered as we approached the turnstile.
I can’t even begin to explain how confused he looked.
“Look, if they think you are too tall, or too old, then we’ll have to pay for an adult ticket and the booth is a long way back,” I told him, sparing the details of my temporary pecuniary disadvantage.
“Can’t you just walk a bit gimpy… stoop a bit?”
Finally, Mrs S piped up “And hold Ben’s hand or something…”
That was the kind of stroke of genius I have become accustomed to my wife throwing out there and saving the day. And true enough, Jasper stooped, held Ben’s hand and we were waved in… that nice Caucasian family with a sweaty father and slightly confused, gimpy stooped eldest son… I might just get him that X-Box after all…
The rest of the day sped by in a sensory whirl: the sounds of traffic, chatter and laughter, the smells of street food and of things you probably wouldn’t want anywhere near your mouth. Our brief whistlestop tour of Bangkok had been great fun. Exciting, memorable and a source of some wonderful memories and laughs. A vibrant, liveable city, and one which I am sorry we did not visit more during our time in Asia.
Mrs S had always been the driving force behind this madcap 13,000km trip home, and as I considered the day’s events, I found myself wholeheartedly reflecting what a fantastic trip of a lifetime this is, and what a truly life-changing/affirming step it could prove to be. What could possibly go wrong, as a wise man once said. Just then the Chang water I had put in the freezer exploded…
Schoolboy error… nothing more to say
Two notes to self for Vietnam: keep enough local currency in my pocket at all times; and don’t put glass bottles in the freezer…
Wonderful memories of Bangkok:
Everyone wants a bit of mummy…
Simply stunning
Pleased we’re leaving?
WOODLANDS TO WATERLOO 