Blue Velvet, Cholera, and Wisps of Genocide

 It was still standing, back in 2015, waiting for the Rat Pack to fill its torn white naugahyde banquettes, kick the potted plants off the stage, and croon into a microphone.

 In 1968 you could get an ultra-modern room there for 16.00 US. It had a swimming pool and a tourist shopping arcade. At 13.26 meters, the pool was the largest in Bangkok then. In 2006 it was photographed, still elegant, as was the hotel when I first walked in, although it needed a lot of TLC at that point as it approached its half-century mark.

 Lady Liberty still lifted her lamp by the golden door (okay it wasn’t golden but oh well). The lobby was big enough to double as a ballroom with gigantic portholes in the wall that separated the restrooms from the reception area. The staircase was early industrial chic, imposing and metal among the profusion of wood that trims its surroundings.

 The coffee shop/dining room was cavernous and the tables and chairs were solid hardwood, weighty in classic 1960s style. Banquettes large enough to easily hold a dozen people swept in horseshoe shapes against the wall. It was the sort of room that made me want to order a martini and a pack of Lucky Strikes. Rumor had it that the Khmer Rouge filled it during the 80s when they came to do business in Bangkok. It seemed as though that was probably true as I sat there with a good friend, drinking Heineken that had a faint aftertaste of Scotch. We both could taste it, a ghostly flavor but very distinct.

 The waiter shooed us off before 10 pm in a kindly fashion and I approached the reception clerk, asking how much it would be to stay here. A room was over 20 USD a night and hovered around 540 US for a month. I said that was too much and she asked me if I would like to look at one of the rooms.

 My friend and I crowded into the world's tiniest elevator with a staff member who might have been called a bellboy back in more elegant times. The elevator could just barely contain the three of us but managed to take us to the fifth floor.

 The room we were shown was huge--quite possibly the size of the condo I was staying in during my temporary return to Bangkol. There was a deep bathtub and a lot of wooden drawers and doors on one wall. They looked fragile and I gasped when my friend tried to open one, without success but also without breaking it. A big window looked out toward the lights of Pradiphat Road and a bottle of Mekong waited with two glasses beside the double bed.

 It was a room with history and I wanted to stay there when I next returned to Bangkok. It was in one of my favorite parts of the city, Saphan Kwai , a place where a shop still sold both the International New York Times as well as  the Bangkok Post, where Abu Ibrahim still flourished under the hospitable ownership of a man from Bombay, where good food and fresh flowers were always for sale on the street. Next year, I thought, but I couldn’t wait that long.

 I don't know why I have to set up little dares for myself, but I always have. "Dare you to walk on the underpinninngs of that bridge." "Dare you to have that extra shot of Scotch." "Dare you to live in Thailand." For a girl/woman/old broad who is bookish and unathletic to the extreme, this weird penchant for self-challenges seems completely out of character, even to me.

 The Liberty Garden Hotel became one of those little dares. When I’d been there to have a drink with my friend Don, we both were intrigued by its aura of decay and past elegance. Its neighborhood is vibrant and has remained unchanged over the past twenty years, which is unusual in present-day, rapidly transforming Bangkok. That's why I decided I needed a night at the Liberty.

 When Don and I had looked at one of the rooms, at night after two beers it seemed romantically decrepit. Don pointed out the wifi password painted on the wall of the hallway---Ninja1234. It was all very noir and charming so I went back a couple of days later to reserve and prepay for a room.

 I should have asked to look at it in daylight. Certainly the outer courtyard and the hotel lobby both looked vastly different when not softened by nightfall and a little tinge of disquiet began to color thoughts of this excursion. But I had dared myself, with a small caveat--"If there are bedbugs, you can always get a taxi back to your condo by the river."

 So a few days later there i was, back in the Liberty's miniscule elevator with the bellboy. The gaping hole in the wood veneer of its wall seemed less atmospheric and more creepy than it had when I had been in the elevator with both the bellboy and Don the week before. I entered a room and immediately was hit with the odor of musty bedding.

The window was large, overlooking the swimming pool and when I walked over to take a look, I wished it didn’t. The pool was missing many tiles and had a diseased and blackened appearance in those spots where it wasn't blue. It was completely vacant and that didn’t surprise me at all. It looked as though it might be a dandy place to pick up a spot of cholera.

 After the bellboy left, I peeled back the bottom sheet to examine the mattress. It was so mottled with spots that it was impossible to see if any of them had been left by bedbugs. The pillows looked ancient, but the bed linens were clean. I went to the windows; both were old casement models that opened outward and both were open. I could close only one of them.

 "The window won't close. I want another room," I told the desk clerk. She looked at me blankly. "The window won't close. There will be mosquitoes."

 "We have no mosquitoes," she said and I tried not to sneer. "My room is right above the swimming pool. Of course there will be mosquitoes."

 She shrugged and beckoned for the bellboy. Together we went back up to the sixth floor where he tugged the window shut. He left in an eloquent silence and I sat on one of the heavy wooden chairs, looking at where I would spend the night. The floor was clean, when I went into the bathroom, it was clean. I'd stayed in places before that were as old as this room. But only in this room did I feel that it was very hard for me to breathe.

 I picked up the bag I'd filled with everything I needed for a night’s stay and walked into the hall. I left the key at the reception desk, saying, "I'm going out." Then I walked back to the skytrain and began my return  back to the sanitized world of the condo development at Chapter One, Modern Dutch.

 Some dares aren't meant to be taken and there was something in that room, in that hotel, that wasn't good for me. I decided to chalk it up to the stale odor that greeted me when I walked in and the knowledge that the glow of the swimming pool at night would be much more Blue Velvet than I care to look at, not to the miasma of evil left behind by Pol Pot, Ta Mok, and their buddies. ~Janet Brown