11.11.10 - North Shore O'ahu

My week on the Big Island passed by uneventfully. I spent a lovely two nights sleeping in my rental car, which due to my age I was charged a rediculous amount to drive, during which time I hiked the volcanos at Volcanos National Park. There was this one moment where I felt certain that this beautiful complete rainbow that came out as the sun shone for a breif moment as I walked across the cloud-immersed crater floor was there just for my viewing pleasure...it was spectacular, and more so because I looked back up a few seconds later and it was gone. A number of the park's trail's were closed due to the toxic fumes that were spewing out of the volcano, so I wasn't able to do all the hiking that I wanted to, but I did manange to get in 4 miles my first afternoon and 12 miles my second day, so it was quite productive, despite the constant misty rain. After a few days of cold and rain, I headed back to the dry side of the island to spend my time on the beach. I've made a kind of tradition out of sitting on the beach all day, waiting for the sunset. The good beaches are always on the western side of the islands, so every sunset is just gorgeous, melting into the ocean in front of your eyes. While staying on the western coast at a lovely little hostel, I met a fellow New Englander, also from Connecticut, which was so nice because I was able to be my neurotic New England self around him and he didn't take offense. Coming to Hawaii has made me realize that I'm a little more Type A than I thought I was. I thought I was pretty chill until I came here, now I think I'm probably wound more tightly than anyone on these islands. I arrived back in O'ahu on Monday and made my way up to the North Shore. It is renouned for its surfing, and the winter months are when the waves start to get really big. I have always had a healthy respect for the ocean, but I have learned to respect it even more. These waves are huge!! Also, I'm going to blatantly name drop right now, but the boys in my cabin saw Jack Johnson surfing today! One of the guys who comes here every year says he sees him every time he comes, but that he doesn't go to the local grocery store anymore because people notice him. Anyways, that being said, I probably wouldn't recognize Jack Johnson if he crashed into me on a wave, but still it's cool that I'm in the same town, swimming on the same beaches as a famous person that I like! The beaches on this side of the island are beautiful, and not at all crowded compared to Waikiki, but the only down side is that after the sun goes down there is absolutely NOTHING to do here. Unless of course you would classify drinking your weight in shitty beer, getting blazed out of your mind and talking about surfing and farts as "something to do", which I don't. The first couple of days I was here there was a group of really cool girls who were traveling, so in the evenings we would chill together which was really fun, but they have moved on to a new island and I'm still here. I finished the books I was reading, and there is no book store in a bike-ridable distance from here so I'm reading "Tyrannosaur Canyon" right now. It is as bad as its title sounds. As my German friend Silke would say though, this is complaining on a high level. I have met some very nice people, the guys in my cabin are cool, and I love to listen to the constant flow of reggae music that comes in my windows at night. The beaches are gorgeous and there is a bike path that is great for going for runs or bike rides along the coast. The sunset yesterday brought tears to my eyes, and today it was just as amazing, although totally different. All in all, this is still a little slice of paradise, complete with Wifi :) Saturday I'm treking back to Waikiki on the public bus system...wish me luck!

10.20.10 - 10.29.10: O'ahu and Maui

So I started my trip to Hawaii with one more day extra than I had planned: I was unaware that after 36+ hours of travel, I would have crossed the international dateline and arrived in Hawaii on the same day that I had left Bali! Also upon arrival, I discovered that the phone that I had brought with me all around the world with the express purpose of using with my American sim card once I got back to the good old USA, I had forgotten it in Bali. So here I was, a day earlier than my hostel reservation, without a phone. But I was in paradise, so it's ok. It also helped that I knew how to use the payphone and even if I didn't the instructions were in English...ahh good to be back in my home country. I called my hostel and asked if there was availability, and there was so I headed over on the shuttle and made myself at home in Waikiki, and bought a phone. The hostel I was staying at was great, and right away I met some really cool girls from all over the world. My week in O'ahu was long and grueling, consisting of running along the beach road at sunrise, bathing on the white sand watching the surfers, eating as many fresh papaya as possible, hiking up a nearby mountain to see the veiw of Waikiki from above, and having cocktails with new friends in the evenings. From Waikiki I headed to Maui and met up with one of the girls I had met in the first hostel. She had traveled to one of the other islands while I had stayed on in O'ahu, and we agreed to meet up at a hostel in Wailuku. We have had a great time together, but we have also discovered that hostels in Hawaii (and perhaps hostels all over) seem to be a haven for weird people. I hadn't noticed this phenomenon while traveling in Europe, and I haven't really stayed at very many hostels on my trip until I arrived here in Hawaii. In Cairo there was a very strange, silent older man that was at my hostel, who at the end of my stay handed me his buisiness card that read "Philosopher, Adventurer, Lover". Um, thanks, but no thanks. Anyways, so I haven't had much time to reflect on the strangeness of the environments that hostels create until I arrived in Hawaii, and all of a sudden I have been inundated with examples and experiences. I'm assuming part of it has to do with the laid back atmosphere of the islands, but when I arrived at the hostel in Waikiki I was checked in by a tall, blonde young man who seemed to have difficulty counting to six as he marked out my days in the register. I thought perhaps 1:00 pm was just too early for him, but then judging by his bloodshot eyes I thought perhaps he had waked and baked and then gone to work. He was much the same the rest of the week, and I was very surprised to learn from hostel gossip that he was quite the ladies' man, and bedded about a different guest each week. What the attraction is, I could never guess, but whatever. The week only progressed to weirder and weirder guests. Cody (the aforementioned ladies' man) had already had his conquest for the week, and within 5 minutes of meeting her you could tell she was totally f*ing crazy! So why he was surprised that after their one date and rendezvous that she confessed her undying love for him and her desire to marry him, I'm not sure. Upon realizing that she was a nutjob, he stopped talking to her and avoided her alltogether (the first and only prudent move of his that I witnessed in my stay there) and she got upset and moved to a hotel. And if it is not evidence enough of her mental state that I know all of this and I never talked to her for longer than 5 minutes, I don't know what is. After she left, an influx of middle aged travelers rolled in, one of whom smoked like a chimey, listened to her discman, talked to herself and colored all day, and hacked, coughed and snored all night. I had the good fortune of not being in her room, so I was quite grateful for that, but I did get a full report from my friend who happened to not be as lucky as I was. After my 7 allotted days at this hostel, I made my way to Maui to meed up with my friend Silke at a hostel which for their sake will remain nameless. I arrived a day in advance of Silke and set out to discover the town that I was in, only to discover that it took about 15 minutes to walk from one end of it to the other, and that in those 15 minutes I did not witness anything spectacular, or in truth, really very interesting at all. Now perhaps you will think me a bit harsh, but I'm only telling it like I saw it; while Lonely Planet's job is to put the most positive spin on the dumpiest little towns they come across, my job description is nothing of the sort. It was not long before I had met the first crazy person who was staying there. She was an older woman, middle-aged you might say, with a very red face and a very wide bottom, and a mouth that never closed. Literally, the second someone would walk in the room, she would start talking. And talking. And talking. She did not need any encouragement from the listener to continue; in fact, you couldn't get a word in edgewise, and yet on and on and on she would go; she was the energizer bunny of verbosity. Seriously, it was rediculous. And from what I could tell, she had no coherent train of thought, and she had a great many facinations and very possibly delusions related to flowers and the armed forces, around which most of her rhetoric revolved. There were also allusions to frequently written letters to the president about getting the seeds to the right places and not wanting the marines to come after her. I have talked to saner people on my psych rotations in nursing school. As if one of these sort of people weren't enough, there was a male version of her as well! After only 10 minutes of being in the same room as him, I knew that he was married, but only in the eyes of God as for whatever reason I can't remember anymore he wasn't able to legally marry his wife. I knew that he and his wife were stay at home parents, and for income he collected scrap metal. I knew how much he was paying for his phone plan and where he bought it. I knew what a good deal he had found at the Salvation Army before he left for Hawaii. The only thing that remained a mystery to me was what the secret was to making him be quiet. After two nights at this lovely institution, Silke and I decided to get the hell out. We found a room to rent in a beautiful house in La Haina with a courtyard and a pool and it was fabulous. Best of all, there were no crazy people there. We spent the next four day lounging, relaxing, drinking sunset beers and getting up with the sunrise. We snorkeled in the Molokini Crater, and played with the adorable yellow lab puppy that belonged to the lovely lady who owned the house. We watched the Halloween parade down Front St. and ate blackened mahi mahi with papaya salsa that was unforgetable. Basically it was a wonderful week, and one that was made that much more wonderful because I had discovered what a luxury it was to have a bit of privacy amid all the insanity that seems to populate these islands. And true to form, last night when I arrived on the Big Island and had settled in at my hostel with a seemingly normal young lady as my roommate, 11pm rolled around and as I was snuggled into bed and ready for sleep, there came a knock at the door. My normal roommie was already asleep, so I begrudgingly pulled on my pants and went to open the door. There I found myself face to face with my new crazy roommate. She was an older lady, wreaking of smoke (which kind I did not get close enough to find out) with long hair and anklets with jingle bells on them. She jingled around the room in the dark, getting her bed ready, and then promptly fell asleep. Now, you might think this is mild enough, and that I am being overly judgemental in deeming her "crazy" so soon. But to that I will say that there is certain look in the eye and when you see it, you know something is just a bit, well, off. And I saw it in this lady. My deduction was proved correct this morning when at 7am she was up and jingling around the room, having a full on conversation with herself. I rolled over and rubbed my eyes to see who was talking to me, and there she was, nutty as a fruitcake, talking to me about a psychiatrist. I was trying to get my newly woken-up mind around what was happeneing and what she was talking about, but before I could do so, midsentence she walked out of the room, still talking, dropping her lighter as she shut the door behind her. I did not stay at this hostel tonight. I made my way to something a little more centrally located, and am sitting in the common room writing this, and behind me on the couch with a small group of other people is another lady who had monopolized the conversation for the last 20 minutes straight. As I'm sitting here writing and evesdropping, I can't help but wonder if I am one of these crazy people and I don't know it! Haha...if I stay here any longer I might be!

10.13.10 - 10.20.10: Bali

Once again I'm afraid I have been remiss in reporting my adventures here on the other side of the globe. In my defense, internet access in Bali was not the best. But other than that I really have no excuses other than pure sloth. My week in Bali was filled with more gorgeous beaches, volcano vistas, and amazing sunsets. But the highligh by far was the diving. I decided that since I would be in Bali by myself, and I had heard really good things about the diving there, that I would continue my learning experience in diving and take my advanced open water course. So I booked myself at a hotel right next to the beach on a little island off the coast of the Balinese mainland called Nusa Lembognan. I'm feeling a bit guilty for not getting off that little island and seeing more of Bali, but at the same time I saw so many beautiful things under the water that I could not possibly be dissappointed. On the first day after I arrived, my dive instructor was not there yet as she had gotten held up with some troubles obtaining a visa in Singapore, so I decided to go for a snorkel. The first site we went to was on the corner of the island, unsheltered by other land. The wind was high that day so the waves were choppy, and there was a fairly strong current as well, but I jumped off the boat in my snorkel and fins and dutifully followed my divemaster and fellow students, watching them from above as they descended and swam off. I decided to follow them for a bit, as it is a little unnerving to be by yourself floating around in the open ocean, so I swam above them for a while, and suddenly, without any warning, there underneath me maybe 7 meters down was a beautiful manta ray, gliding effortlessly through the water. It was huge! I stopped swimming where I was and just looked down on it as it floated underneath me, swimming off into the darkness of the deeper waters. I couldn't believe my luck...I only had to founder and gag down salt water for about 5 minutes before seeing a manta! After that I struggled and flopped around for a few more minutes before giving up and heading back to the boat. The water was too choppy and the visibility too poor to prolong the agony of constantly choking on sea water. So I opted for tanning on the roof of the boat until the rest of the group got back. I was rewarded for my prude decision, however, with the next site we went to. It was called Crystal Bay, and it was aptly named. The water was clear and still, and as it was a beautiful sunny day the visibility was great. The coral was so beautiful; it streched as far as the eye could see on all sides, bright reds and purples. blues, yellows and greens. I have never seen anything like it. The rest of my week of diving was much the same, although I didn't see any other mantas. I learned how to navigate with a compass underwater (and believe me I am no Magellan), and I also had the opportunity to take pictures underwater, which I will certainly post when I get back. I had a beautiful little room at the hotel, right next to the restaurant and overlooking the beach. Every morning I would wake up to find offerings and incense laid out on my balcony and the sun coming up from the east making the water glow a soft blue. In the evenings I could sit on the balcony with a book and a beer, and watch the sun set over the ocean. In short, I could have spent a month in Bali and not wanted to leave, and in fact next time I am in this part of the world I think I will do just that. I didn't leave Lembognan, so there is so much that I missed, but I really enjoyed my time there. I even got to see the running up to a cock fight...where the contenders show their birds to eachother and see which one gets his feathers all ruffeled up and looks very fierce, and then people place preliminary bets. I was told there that cock-fighting is so popular, that the men will come and wager almost a year's salary on the chance to win. One really does notice the prodigious number of roosters on the island, because they make it nearly impossible to sleep past dawn; they are very noisy animals. I of course had no desire to watch them peck eachother to death, so I did not come back for the real thing. Balinese architecture is also quite a site to behold, but I didn't take any pictures because I felt really weird taking photos of people's houses and their family shrines. I'm sure people probably do it all the time but it seemed a little bit invasive, so I have to be content with my own memory. On my list of things to do when I go back is to hike the volcanoes, visit the temples in the mountains and to see more manta rays! It was a really beautiful week, although it did culminate in a 10 hour layover in Korea, which I could not leave the airport for because I had by accident packed my sweater and was in only a t-shirt and I was freezing. After that I was on to Hawaii! More about that later...

10.4.10 - Leaving Bangkok

I can't believe that I'm coiming to the end of my stay in Thailand! How do two months go by so quickly?? I think it's the amazing company, the great food, and the copious amounts of shopping that has sped time up. In fact, time went by so quickly, that I over-stayed my visa entry allowance by 18 days. When I realized this, I made a trip to immigration, thinking that it would be a quick fix. I would pay the exorbanant fee that was brought on by nothing but my own stupidity and irresponsibility (so I really couldn't be mad about it), buy a proper visa, and extend my stay in Thailand a few weeks. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that I could only obtain a 7 day visa after over-staying as I had, and that in order to obtain a 15 day visa, I needed to leave the country. Immediately. Because they charge 500 baht for each day that you stay over in their country. This is how they trap all the drunken Westerners who come here to blow their pension on cheap beer and cute girls. I am not one of those. I am just impossibly irresponsible for no good reason sometimes. Anyways, so from the immigration office, I had no choice but to get a taxi to the bus station, and hop on the next bus to Cambodia. After a 5.5 hour ride, I arrive at the border, and after a quite expensive hour I make it through customs and back again, catching a taxi back to the bus station just in time to make the last bus back to Bangkok. The ride home didn't take quite as long, but all together what started out as a 2 hour errand turned into a 15 hour day trip to another country. And as I was standing on the other side of the Cambodia border, I reached into my purse for my camera to document the fact that indeed I was there, even if it was only for 10 minutes, and my battery was dead. Of course.
I'm so sad to be leaving Bangkok. I had gotten used to spending a lot of time alone, but now that I've been hanging out with friends all the time, I remembered how wonderful it is to share traveling with someone. I mean, when you're alone, you have no one to laugh with at your blunders, and no one to commit them with either! I've eased my anxiety by booking my stay in Bali and am going to continue with diving and get my advanced open water certification. I've also booked my first five days in Hawaii and I'm starting to get really excited about it :) The faster time moves, the closer I am to returning to the States and to real life...that part is not so easy to get excited about, but I'm working on it.
That's it for now...more later, from Bali!

9.22.10 - Continued (Mis)Adventures in Cooking and Speaking Thai

I have now successfully finished three cooking classes, which is enough to obtain a certification in Thai cooking! Yay...except that I thought I had to take five classes to get certified, and my instructor wasn't prepared with my certificate the day of my third class, so I didn't receive my certificate. I will either just pop by the school to pick it up, or I will take another class. I haven't decided yet. It is funny how the dynamics of each class are entirely different depending on the people who are in it. For example, the first class we were a large group of mixed ages but mostly older people. The second class was mostly young people, and mostly Americans. I knew from the moment we were in the market and they wouldn't stop making jokes about the shapes of the eggplants, and by their near-constant commentary over the instruction of the teacher, that it was going to be a long and embarrassing class. And I was correct. By the end of the class our instructor was so exasperated by the loudness, rudeness and apparent oblivion of the American boys to the latter two offenses (well to be fair one of the obnoxious ones was Canadian, but went to high school in the states), that he picked out the quietest student in the class, a German girl sitting next to me, and asked her, "Where are you from? I like you! You are my favorite, so quiet, always listening when I am teaching" and then ended his little rhetoric with a scathing glare at the American boys. They were young, rich boys from the West coast; if these were their only offenses it would have been fine. But to make matters worse, they were fresh out of college and still under the notion that their status as college basketball players actually acquitted them from having to act like normal human beings in real life. It was made all the more note-worthy by the fact that the boys were totally unfazed by our instructor's exasperation, and would actually make comments like, "Is this guy for real?" and "This guy is a total zoo" when he left the room. While it is true that the instructor is a bit eccentric (he's actually very sarcastic, which is funny only because most Thai people are too polite to make fun of others so blatantly), describing him as "a total zoo" didn't quite seem to fit the description, especially because the reason he was being so sarcastic and biting was because of them! But I guess they didn't realize that, as they hadn't experienced classes without themselves in it. I had, and I wished for more of them.

Fortunately, my third class was more like the first, with a group of mostly older people and a few young ones, and only one other American who was as unobtrusive and enjoyable as the basketball players were the opposite. I also met a lovely old Swiss man, who having worked for 50 years at a school for mentally challenged children, was granted an extra 1 month paid vacation. His wife, who is a translator for the deaf at five different schools, could not find five people to replace her and so was unable to accompany him on his holiday. She also apparently hates to fly, so I don't think she really begrudged his going. He was so full of excitement and wonder about everything, and was going to take a few different classes so he could go home and cook for his wife. In addition to him and the American, there was a group of three young Korean girls who were on holiday together; they were so funny, a South African lady whose husband had to come to Bangkok on business and she accompanied him for a holiday, a French woman whose husband was also there on business, and a very shy Scottish man who took the better part of the day to come out of his shell. The dynamics of this class were so fun, and so different from the one before, that I think the food even tasted better.

And then there is Thai class. I had a good week last week; I felt like I was getting the hang of some things, like I could make myself understood, and we all were all laughing and having a good time discussing how much things cost, and where we are from, and if our parents are nice, etc. Then Thursday came and my teacher was a different lady, and I couldn't understand a word she said. She didn't enunciate things the way the other teacher had; in fact she talked as a normal Thai speaking person talks. And for about the first hour I had to remind myself that I am of average intelligence, that I am not, in fact, very stupid. After I got used to the way that she spoke I was able to grasp things more quickly, but it was quite a frustrating first hour of class. Then, on this past Monday, after a weekend comprised of staying out dancing till 5am, shopping all day Saturday, going out with the girls for more dancing, and then sightseeing all day on Sunday, I was exhausted. And the room was such a nice temperature and we were all talking so quietly that I just could not stay awake!! Which, by the way, is so much more embarrassing when you're sitting at a table with three other people, as opposed to sitting in a lecture hall with 50 other people. It's kind of hard to hide the head-bobbing when you are sitting directly across from your teacher. I was so mortified by this, that I have vowed to spend my evening tonight studying Thai in preparation for my class tomorrow, so I must go get started!!

9.11.10 - Myself as a Thai: speech impediments and cooking genius

It has been a week of discovery this week! I had my first Thai language class this week, and I am struggling! That is to put it kindly. To put it accurately, I sound like a 2 yr old with severe cognitive impairment when I attempt to conversate in Thai. I'm not sure if that is a very politically correct way of saying it, but it really is the truth. The class is small (two other students beside myself) but I missed one day of class as I signed up late, so they already had the advantage over me. And, they are Japanese, so I have a feeling that the vowel sounds and the idea of tonality might not be as foreign to them as it is to me. All of this is just me trying to make myself feel better about my absolute hopelessness regarding the acquisition of Thai, which it doesn't seem to be accomplishing anyways so I'll stop now. But I know how to count in Thai, which has given me more incentive to shop; I must practice my numbers after all, and what better way is there? It funny though, my homework for the weekend was to compose and answer 10 questions in Thai. We aren't learning the Thai alphabet (which I'm really sad about) so it's written with English letters and accent marks to denote the tonal changes. We learned how to describe things, and the nice part about it is that to compose these sentences you don't have to conjugate any verbs. In fact, to say, "is your shirt new?" you say literally "shirt yours new, no?" and if the answer is yes you say "shirt new", if the answer is no you say "shirt not new". There is no "is", there is no verb at all actually. But the word for new is "mai" and the word for no is "mai" and the only difference is your tonal inflections. Here is where all the trouble comes. So, I have to confess, I was hoping that Thai cooking would come a little easier to me than the Thai language. Having now done both my first language class and my first cooking class, I would venture to say that Thai cooking is the exact antithesis of the Thai language. It is uncomplicated, easy, and you can adjust it to your personal tastes as needed. Ah if only everything were so easy and produced such amazing results! I am about to lapse into a food coma, so I want to get this out before I do. I had the most amazing morning! First we went to the market, and bought our materials. We got little lessons on the herbs and vegetables used in Thai cooking, then we walked back to our kitchen and began a marathon of cooking. We made 5 different dishes, all of them (other than the rice which was made for us in a rice cooker) in one single wok over a single flame. The key is the fresh ingredients, and then everything else is so simple you wouldn't believe you get the results you do with that little equipment and time! You can add or take away spice, sweetness, bitterness and salty as you think necessary, as all four of these flavors are always present in Thai food, in what seems to always be the perfect balance. We made tom yum soup, pad thai, chicken salad with sticky rice, green curry with vegetables and chicken and for desert a turnip diced and tossed in tapioca flour, cooked, and served in sweet coconut milk. And maybe my favorite part was that all the coconut milk for the recipes we made by hand from shaved dry coconut! So yummy! Another really great part is that I made a friend!!! She is from the Philippines, and she is in Bangkok for work for a month, so we made plans to do touristy things together on the weekends. All in all it was a very satisfying day. And it's only halfway over!! After Julia gets off work tonight, we are planning to head out for a little bit of Bangkok night life with Anna, so I must go rest up a little bit... I am planning on doing lots of dancing to work off the 5 course meal I cooked and ate today, and if I'm going to spend an evening in high heels, I better not be tired and cranky!

9.6.10 - Bangkok

I can't believe a week has passed by in Bangkok already! Julia is back at work this morning, and it looks like this week she won't even have Sunday off so I will be left to my own devices all week long. Fortunately, I have learned how to pronounce the name of the drop-off point for the motor-bike drivers, so I now can get home after running errands. I start cooking classes on Saturday, and I'm really excited about that. It should include a trip to the market, a lecture on Thai ingredients and methods, and then a few hours of cooking...and best of all, I get to keep all my results! Perhaps I'll save some for Julia, perhaps I'll eat them all myself before I even make it home, I don't know. Only time will tell.
Today I'm going to investigate some options for Thai language classes. As I have mentioned in the past, I've been getting started here at home with looking up some Thai language lessons online. The most useful ones are obviously those with voice recordings of English phrases translated into Thai. Otherwise if things are just written, I don't know how to read their alphabet, and I certainly don't know how to make all the intonations necessary to communicate. But I have discovered that there is something for every Thai-language need. In my search this morning, I came across the website Thaiforlovers.com, which is exactly what you might expect it to be: cheesy, romantic phrases translated into Thai. No voice recordings, only things that you would cut and paste into a makeshift love letter or valentine's day card. But don't worry, this will really help you develop your inter-cultural relationship. Which leads me to point out one of my observations of Bangkok social life: it is a haven for fat, washed up, middle-aged white men. They love Thailand. Why, you might ask? Because while Western women view them as how I have just described them (one might say we see them as they really are), Thai women see them as walking dollar signs. This might be a bit of a harsh assessment, but it is the only reason I can think of that would account for the fact that the vast majority of mixed couples I see here are composed of beautiful, young, manicured Thai woman, and an old, fat, ugly white man. The men are either blissfully ignorant of this perceptual difference, or they just don't care because "dude, she's hot". Call me a cynic, but I just don't think that love is blind enough to account for these, um, inequalities. And while Thai men are quite beautiful, somehow I don't think I'm going to have to know how to write "Ten thousand times farewell-yet stay a while. Sweet, kiss me once: sweet kisses time beguile" in Thai. So I will continue in my search for the acquisition of some sort of proficiency in the Thai language. Don't be confused by my use of the word proficiency when I come back to the states not being able to speak a full sentence in Thai. By proficiency I mean being able to count to 10, say hello, goodbye, how much and thank you without being laughed at or unknowingly saying something inappropriate, which, considering the intricacies and complexities of the language, is a feat in and of itself. I'll let you know how it goes.
Yesterday, I went on my first true Thai shopping trip. As my guide Anna (a friend and co-worker of Julia's) explained to me, shopping in Bangkok is not just a means to an end. It is a way of life, a pastime. And I can totally see why. The mall we went to was packed, an amazing amount of products and people crammed into a tiny amount of space. 6 floors of absolute commercial chaos. It was beautiful; there was everything you could ever want and then some. The sad thing for me is that a lot of the clothing shops were "one size fits all" kind of places. Except unlike the massive, flowy outfits that fit under that category in the States, all these clothes were extra small. Apparently "one size fits all" only if you are a tiny Asian woman. And there are no fitting rooms so you don't even have the joy of getting stuck in a garment that is too tight to make you not want to even contemplate trying another one on. Not only are the clothes really tiny, but the stalls themselves are too! At one point I was looking at belts or headbands or something with Anna, and when some other people wanted to come in, all of us had to turn and face each other and shimmy sideways to maneuver ourselves into and out of the store. It struck me that a good 25% of the U.S. population wouldn't even be able to fit into these stores! I'm not exactly slimness personified, but I managed ok; you can imagine though if I were pregnant or had a bit of a beer belly, it could have been a very uncomfortable situation. After a long, arduous day of shopping, Anna and I went for pedicures and manicures at the salon that she frequents. It was wonderful. Top it off with some pad thai, and I went home an exhausted but very satisfied person, if a little more broke than when I left. Until next time ...