The Bangkok Balcony

The Bangkok Balcony is a great place to get Thai food. It’s not terribly expensive, but it’s not cheap either. Their curry is fantastic. I thoroughly recommend it. We went there for dinner Friday evening, after work. It’s a nice way to end the week. I got some Massaman curry, nice and hot. My wife got Thai-fried rice with tofu. We each had a beer with dinner, just a beer each. The Bangkok Balcony is a great place to eat, but a shitty place to drink. They don’t have a wide beer selection. Their hard liquor is overpriced. I don’t know about their wine. I don’t drink wine. Beyond that, it’s a fucking restaurant. You don’t go to a restaurant to drink. You go there to eat. We ate big meals, each with a single beer. No buzz whatsoever. We paid. We walked to the door, out the door, and started down the steps. It’s a balcony, after all. It’s on the second floor of a building. In front of us, headed down the stairs, were two women obviously having trouble. They were kind of short and looked like they were in their 40s, with permed hair. Dressed like your mom, and carrying shopping bags. The first one was doing relatively okay, but the second one was doing very badly. I was initially inclined to go help her, but I saw how jerky, disconnected, and uncoordinated her movements were, and I thought that perhaps she had cerebral palsy. Not wanting to insult or humiliate her, I patiently walked down the stairs behind her, as her movements took up the entire width of the stairwell. The descent down one flight of stairs took easily three minutes. No big deal. I was glad to see that she made it down without any problems. The first woman turned around, and was very red-faced and sweaty. She smiled and slurred out a “Sorry” as she fumbled with her car keys. The second woman, was also turned around, was even redder, sweatier, and could not even get out an intelligible sentence. She just burst into laughter. At that point I realized that palsy was not to blame for her state. We went off in our own direction, feeling morally superior. Then it occurred to me that somebody should stop them from trying to drive. So I turned around to see them staggering up the street, and concluded that my intervention would not be necessary to prevent them from gaining entry to their vehicle.