TTT2019: Day 22--Mission Accomplished in Bangkok

I'm starting the 4th week of my Tribulations and Transcendence of Travel 2019, and both have dotted those first 21 days.  One clear success story is the tenth generation of the ten safari vests produced by Larry's Fashion.

You mean my primary reason for coming all the way here was to make safari vests?  Yup.

Consider that most of my challenges are monumental ones for Planet Earth and Humanity.  I toiled at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to solve the laser fusion problem.  I spent time at the NASA Ames Research Center to Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence.  Failed both times.

In 1979 I wrote the original bill in the Senate on hydrogen.  At the same time Congressman Chuck Grassley also introduced a similar piece of legislation.  He is now 85 and a senator.  I wonder who on his staff actually came up with this idea?  I'll need to look him/her up and congratulate him/her for being first.  While hydrogen, I think, remains a long way off, the next generation of passenger aircraft, I believe, will be hydrogen-powered.  To the left is the National Aerospace Plane, which was funded by this  legislation.  Finally, in 1979 I drafted the original bill for ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) R&D, which remains elusive, but necessary, towards the Blue Revolution.

Thus, I should be pardoned for lowering my standard of potential accomplishments by limiting the scope of the dreams in Bangkok to safari shirts.  From the M Club, I can see the roof of Larry's.  See the yellow cab further up the road?  His shop is to the right.  It is a two-minute walk from my hotel.  Negotiations with a Bangkok tailor, almost all with India roots, is a losing proposition.  They are professionals.

What made it worse this time is that I did it again to myself.  I had forgotten that the Songkran holidays start on Friday, April 12, something that was just added a couple of months ago by the Cabinet.  Songkran is the Thai New Year, and equivalent to that in China, where everyone goes home to their roots.  What makes it all the more embarrassing is that I was here, in this same hotel, exactly two years ago.  Read my 13April2017 blog.  Also, one of my sunset photos from the M Club at that stay was phantasmagorical.

All that meant that he only had two days to do everything, including first fitting.  Plus, foreigners pile into these shops to beat the deadline.  This is because the "factories" that actually cut and sew the shirts pretty much close down for five days.  I might add that what has evolved is a water pistol culture, where everywhere you go on August 13, you are in danger of being drenched.  You also wonder how clean the water is and worry about the water-proof nature of cameras.

So, anyway, on Tuesday, my path to his door (see his orange sign in the mid-background?) went by many massage parlors:

In any case, we finally settled on four shirts where the fabrics he had were satisfactory.  He said that he could make a few more if I went to some clothing store and brought back additional material within a few hours.  This was on Tuesday.  He sent me to a shop about a ten-minute walk away, and these next six turned out to be the better and cheaper ones.  But you can't really tell until you've won them a few times.  Cost?  Too gauche to mention.

On Wednesday I got a call for my first fitting.  The zipper pockets could have been wider, but time was of the essence, so I gave him the green light to proceed. 

On Thursday the call came, and I went to pick up my ten shirts:

There are four zipper pockets on the outside, plus two deeper inside pockets.  Thank you, Larry, for getting this all done in time.  Now, when can I return for an eleventh-generation safari vest?

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