One Night In Bangkok

Tonight is the second-to-last night that I will spend in Bangkok, at least on this trip. I think we can safely say at least for this year, since I am using up all of my allotted time off from work. It is certainly worth it.

There is much that I wish to say and write about my time here, and what I have seen and learned, but tonight I am not ready to say or write it. Tonight I will share only a few words.

This evening, as we were leaving a restaurant after a lovely dinner, we saw - outside the door - a large tray holding at least 30 crabs, claws bundled tightly to prevent them from moving. They were stacked together like bricks, beautiful variations of red and orange. My brother stretched a finger out and stroked the shell of one of the crabs, between the beady eyes. The crab retracted its eyes, the only part of it that had not been bound. It retreated, in fear, the only way that it could.

We left them, mere feet from the scene of their inevitable executions. I looked inside the restaurant windows, at the tables filled with customers laughing and eating. The tables were filled with the remnants of former bodies. Prawn shells, crab leg casings, lobster cartilage. The colors were still beautiful - red, coral, orange.

I wondered, then, what the crabs saw at the last moment, how long their eyes remained attached. Did they see the diners at their tables, or where they carred through a back door? Did they see waitstaff? Pots? I've read about the way that crabs are prepared for cooking, and I know that traditionally they are kept alive as their parts are harvested. The eyes, I understand, are the first thing that is cut off.

The crabs sit now, I'm sure, fewer in number. Their eyes, still attached, can stare only at the Bangkok street in front of them, or at the people that stop, like us, to examine them, or at the hand that finally reaches for them.