guantanamera

This weekend was Husband's birthday. Only one more year till the big 3-0. And that means only 2 more years till I hit it! Yikes.

We went into Bangkok with another couple for some Mexican food. Now, say what you will about globalization, but any trend that allows me to have a burrito in in Bangkok is worth something. I'm grateful.

The restaurant was called Senor Pico's, and it's in the ritzy expat area of Bangkok. An expat is what I am, I suppose, but I'm not the kind of expat that Senor Pico's is catering to. It's in a fancy hotel with serviced apartments, and the food is almost as good as in Tucson, and they had a Cuban band playing a weird mix of mariachi tunes, Frank Sinatra songs in Spanish, and one verse of "Happy Birthday" every five minutes. And for what we spent on that meal, we could have eaten at our local takeout places 20 times. 20.

My parents were expats for a while. They lived in a 4-bedroom, marble-floored apartment in Singapore. They had beautiful furniture, a membership at the American Club, and a car. The company flew me and Brother out for visits.

My former student joined the Peace Corps after graduating from the university where I did my graduate work. She went to Nicaragua, where she lived in a village and taught the locals more efficient farming techniques. She bathed from a bucket, ate lots of bananas, and spoke Spanish.

What I'm doing here is somewhere in between.

I have high speed Internet at home and in my office, and that alone makes my life so much easier than it would have been, had I been doing this even 10 years ago! I can pay bills online, stay in touch with people, learn about world events that don't involve business or cricket, and, of course, maintain this sparkling literary gem of a blog.

I get around Bangkok on public transportation that didn't exist 10 years ago--the BTS Skytrain and the MRT subway, not to mention the metered taxis. Before these innovations, it was all tuk-tuks, sawng thaews (pickup trucks that you hire like taxis and sit on benches in the bed) and samlors (bicycle rickshaws, still used in smaller towns).

But a lot of things are just different here--for instance, I make a really good salary for Thailand. Husband and I are doing quite well, and our pricey burritos this weekend aren't going to cause us any real financial angst (imagine the price tag on a dinner in the U.S. that costs the equivalent of 20 takeout meals for two!). But my student, who wants to go to the U.S. for a few months and work at McDonald's while he visits his uncle (can you do that?), will make more money at that job than I do at mine.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this. Maybe nowhere. It does make me wonder about the factors that affect something like the cost of living for a certain area, or an average salary.