The other Sunday I went to Ikea, mainly to look for cheap but sturdy rugs for the kids’ rooms, front door, and kitchen. You may be wondering, “Why buy Sewedish in Thailand?” Here’s why: there’s a wide selection of beautiful woven, hand-knotted, and silk rugs here. But they are the kind you treasure because they cost a limb, then you grudgingly pass down to your children. Well, only if you don’t insist on lining your casket with them, that is. These babies are too pricey for the babies to play on, with their Legos and iPods and markers and lipgloss. We do have one lovely silk rug in the master bedroom, which I tend to walk around, not on.

It turned out to be a pleasant little adventure. I took the skytrain east for about twenty minutes, then hopped on Ikea’s complimentary shuttle bus from the station to the store, which took another fifteen minutes. The bus deposited the passengers at Mega Bangna, a sprawling mall, with I don’t know how many anchor stores. It took another ten minutes of walking inside the mall, to arrive at the Ikea entrance. This was so new: usually North American Ikea stores stand alone because of their vastness. This Ikea was just as vast, yet just one of several anchor stores, a piddly part of an even vaster mall!

The store’s layout is very similar to the North American stores, so it was familiar, and easy to manoeuvre around. And happily, I got what I went for, and under budget too: five brightly-coloured, strong, washable rugs; plus a bunch of serviettes and zip-lock bags (you can never have too many of those.)

On the shuttle back to the skytrain station, a Russian trio struck up conversation with me. Jehovahs, no less. One of them gave me a pamphlet (of course), and they told me about the various Jehovah’s Witness churches in Bangkok, and the many languages in which the services are offered. Oh, and two of them, who were visiting from the beach town Pattaya, were in Bangkok to buy a Pomeranian puppy. Oh, the varied people you can meet here!

But wait, there’s more! I met one of the Russian women on the street a few days later – what odds! She told me that the other two Russian friends had bought a lovely puppy. (She did not issue any invitation to the other thing, and I’m not complaining.)

So, you can live in Thailand, shop Swedish, chat with Russian Jehovah’s Witnesses from Pattaya, and bump into one on the street, like it was downtown Orangeville. Pretty cool, eh?