xx Siam

Ports of call! World then, strange fascinating lands beckoneth, bid us rebel and their exotic splendors.

Come with us as we head for port of call. Come with us across the Pacific, across the China Sea, where Asia points the narrow finger of the melee peninsula toward the fabled Isles of the Indies.

There we find our port of call, Siam. From Singapore, our steamer plows north would up to straight to Penang, a picturesque port which falls torqued in the cropping sun. There we disembark to take a train of the Federated Melee State's railroad, bound for Bangkok.

Bangkok, the Venice of the Orient, interlaced with numblest canals or clons, a city of amazing contradictions, of broad avenues and luxurious buildings, of miserable huddles and squalid muddy lanes, a crossroad of humanity set at the end of the earth.

are passive Chinese and swarthy maleys, sway Europeans from the legations and tan young Englishmen and Americans down for a holiday from the peak forest to the north and everywhere the yellow robes of the priests, bright symbols of a gentle Buddha long ago. But suppose we rejoin our fellow travelers in the hotel lounge at the end of their first day in Bangkok.

I'm tired. What a day. Where did you go, my dear? Oh, just everywhere. I feel like Alison Wonderland when she said, curious sir and curious sir. We were over on the left bank in the Telat Blue, the better leaf market. Oh, and I was looking at a little good luck charm, and the storekeeper practically made me buy it. He almost gave it to me, because he said I

had a lucky face. That's not all. We were crossing one of the smaller canals while the tide was out, and the bottom was all mud, and there were fish actually walking along on their fins. Come now, should you put our leg a bit? No, on my and the guy told me about another fish that captures insects by sticking at them.