Jazz in Bangkok

I was walking along the road near Phra Athit Pier when I heard jazz. I looked through the window of a bar and saw a young boy, sitting at a piano, surrounded by a group of musicians much older than him, playing jazz. As I walked in I noticed that everyone in the bar was Thai and they were all grooving to the music. I turned to  the woman near me and said how amazing I thought this young boy was. It turned out he was her son. He'd been exposed to jazz ever since she was pregnant with him and he started to play piano when he was five. By the time he was nine he was playing jazz. Now he was twelve. His fingers flew over the keys, improvising lavishly, but always in tune with the mood and tempo of the others in the band. They played jazz standards, blues, bossanova, and a great funk number.

By the time I left, found something to eat in the market and made my way home, Mama had locked the front gates. I let myself in and walked past her sleeping form under her mosquito net in the middle of the room, on my way to the stairs.

Today I caught the river bus down river, intending to visit China town. But I ended up in Wat Pho, another gloriously over the top temple, where I saw the biggest reclining Buddha (in Thailand? inthe world? surely there must be another even bigger somewhere in India?) I was glad to sit down in a little restaurant that used to be a Thai apothecary, complete with teak ceiling and glass fronted teak drug cupboards and tiled floor. Now the cupboards house carved soaps, tea pots, gold plated hands on pedestals and a gold plated horse.