i dunno what's going on with my computer? the internets? photo formatting? something. but blogger is just not interesting in uploading my photos, which is sad, because i got (i think) some fun ones today.
let's see. i think i got as far as all the temple stuff in my last entry. i really liked all the temple stuff, even though my feet did feel like they were about to fall off by the time we had walked our way around all of it.
after lunch yesterday we took a boat ride! yay, fun, we like boat rides. it was kind of funny: to get to the pier, we walked through a little markety place, and then through a maze of back alleys and narrow corridors and at one point through several passageways that were semi-flooded and we had to teeter along planks that had been put down and then all of a sudden bing! you're out on this major pier and people are lining up to get onto the boats and you think, hunh?? how can all that soggy-plank dodgy-back-alley business be the way to this major pier, but there's no other entrance that i could see. very odd. the boat ride down the river was great - i forgot to say in the last entry that at one point max (guide, whose actual name is somsat) gave us some bread to chuck into the water and we got completely mobbed by freaky looking catfish with alien mouths. they are scary looking, and i think i have officially crossed catfish off the list of things i am willing to eat as a result.
i am on a mission, btw, to eat something different at every meal (my mission of having a daily massage fell through today, unfortunately, due to lack of time, but i will make up for it by having a two-massage day later in the trip at some point). so far, food wise, i have had green curry, red curry, masaman curry, pork liver soup, panang squid curry, pad thai, mystery noodle soup with i think fish balls in it but not entirely sure, and sauteed shredded turnip with mystery fish. not a bad meal yet. i have also had several mystery fruits - ooh, contest! anyone who can identify this fruit will get er er er ooh, yes, a picture of a baby tiger! the flesh looks like a white melon but flecked with little black dots about the size of poppyseeds.
what else. um. after the boat ride we had a thai massage (official part of the tour program, not just me being decadent), and some of the girls went off to a tailor to go get measured for custom-made outfits, which is a big deal here. the tailors are all called hilarious high-fashion pseudonyms (the best one i have seen i think is "Mister Armanni Suits"). terra (note correct spelling) is going to get a copy of the green silky backless number that keira knightley wore in atonement, for $200. i'm sort of vaguely tempted except it's not that that cheap, really, and i don't really know what the quality is. also i have enough dresses. yes i do. but i am going to buy some silk when i get to chiang mai at the end. anyway. i did not go dress shopping with the other girlies, but instead went back to the hotel for a breather, and i had the very, very best of intentions of going out and doing cultural activities after a quick rest, but a) i got really sleepy b) it started to rain absolute monsoon-style buckets and c) i made the mistake of flipping on the discovery channel in my hotel room (we were staying in a fairly plutocratic international-businessman-style generic hotel in bangkok, so i had a megatelevision in my room) and this program "bear grilles: man vs wild" was on, and i got totally sucked into it. he is this wacky english dude who goes into extreme wilderness situations and teaches boy scout survival skills like which live snails are OK to eat and how to rappel down a cliff using only dental floss etc etc. it was, um, fascinating. and then i ended up falling asleep, so... three hours later, michelle (sweet/dim aussie girl) & terra (confirmed total neurotic freakazoid) headed out to go to a cabaret show.
so cabaret for me is like burlesque in that i don't _completely_ understand the defining parameters, other than smoky nightclub little round tables saucy genderbending singing and dancing. this was fun, to start out by describing it with a completely inadequate adjective. er. where to begin. basic gist: men and transgender/transvestite male-to-female dancers dressed in wildly elaborate costumes dancing and lip-synching to showtunes. the two main shockers were a) how completely convincing some of the men were as women (i.e. i didn't realize they _weren't_ women until after the show was over and we saw them close-up in the lobby) and b) how absolutely astronomical the costume budget must have been. each of the 40-50 performers changed into a different sequin/feathered/rhinestoned outfit every ?minute or so. it was an interesting case of very high pre-production values (i.e. the choreography and the costuming was really cool) but not so hot on the actual production (dancing reasonable, lip-synching uniformly terrible, although admittedly most of them are lip-synching in a language they don't speak). one aspect of the show that was completely unique to bangkok was that about half of the little vignettes were western in theme (parodies of: roller disco, the supremes, forties gangsters/molls, vegas showgirls, etc.) and the other half were asian from different countries (parodies of traditional thai temple dancing, a japanese geisha act, a korean fan dance, etc.) and if the snickering from the various pockets of japanese, korean, chinese, etc. people in the audience were anything to go by, the cultural references were as perfectly-pitched for the asian as for the western-themed bits and pieces.
anyway.
sorry, this entry is getting really long, and i haven't even gotten to today yet.... after cabaret show ate pad thai from street vendor yum yum then home to bed, now i will post this and then see if i have the stamina for the next one.
Monday, 9 November 2009
Sunday, 8 November 2009
quickie!
just a quickie before we leave for the day - we are checking out of the hotel in bangkok and i am either a superstar of organization or a disorganization, depending on whether you want to give me credit for being ready to go half an hour before the allotted time or misremembering what the time was supposed to _be_ :)
yesterday was a fairly packed day: we took tuktuks to the grand palace/royal temple complex, which is a mile square complex of buildings commissioned by king rama the first (to distinguish him from kings rama second through ninth (the current) in 1782 and it gives versailles a pretty good run for its money. you can't really see _inside_ most of the buildings, but it's all courtyards and patios and colonnades and staircases and balconies and things, and pretty much every inch of everything is covered in either gold leaf or coloured glass or both and it's quite breathtakingly beautiful. my standard for architecture is "would this look better replaced by grass/trees/whatever would have been here five hundred years ago" and
sadly the answer is almost always yes, but i think in this case this would have been allowed (except for a very weird part of it which was apparently patterned on versailles, except with a thai-style roof, to which i give the architectural snobbery thumbs down.
after that we went for ICECREAM - much needed after all the walking around and the heat, which has, as one of the aussies said, a bit of a boit to it, eh - and then on
to wat pho, another temple which is famous for housing the Reclining Buddha which basically means that it is a cathedral sized building the interior of which is totally filled by a bloody great gold buddha lying down, his head where the nave would be and his feet at the other end, and you basically walk around the edges saying, goodness, what a bloody great buddha statue that is. i especially liked that they had done the whorls of his toeprints (i don't think i have ever used the word toeprints before. is it a word? the toe version of fingerprints? toeprints toeprints toeprints. no, still sounds funny) in inlaid mother of pearl. extra fancy.
i think my favourites of the morning where the painted fresco paintings on the walls
of the grand palace illustrating the thai version of the ramayana, which share
a lot aesthetically with the early medieval european illuminated manuscripts. yes, i am consistent in my artistic taste :)
after THAT we went for a boat ride down the chao phraya river, past all the little
houses on the river that are varying degrees of mega-posh all the way down to very humble (and partly submerged in the water), all with luxuriant foliage in flower pots, very cezanne-like. the photos i took sadly sadly are completely crap, because
the water was too choppy to be able to really hold the camera still, but i will post some the next time i have internet access. okay eek have to post this and run, hope all are well,
yesterday was a fairly packed day: we took tuktuks to the grand palace/royal temple complex, which is a mile square complex of buildings commissioned by king rama the first (to distinguish him from kings rama second through ninth (the current) in 1782 and it gives versailles a pretty good run for its money. you can't really see _inside_ most of the buildings, but it's all courtyards and patios and colonnades and staircases and balconies and things, and pretty much every inch of everything is covered in either gold leaf or coloured glass or both and it's quite breathtakingly beautiful. my standard for architecture is "would this look better replaced by grass/trees/whatever would have been here five hundred years ago" and
sadly the answer is almost always yes, but i think in this case this would have been allowed (except for a very weird part of it which was apparently patterned on versailles, except with a thai-style roof, to which i give the architectural snobbery thumbs down.
after that we went for ICECREAM - much needed after all the walking around and the heat, which has, as one of the aussies said, a bit of a boit to it, eh - and then on
to wat pho, another temple which is famous for housing the Reclining Buddha which basically means that it is a cathedral sized building the interior of which is totally filled by a bloody great gold buddha lying down, his head where the nave would be and his feet at the other end, and you basically walk around the edges saying, goodness, what a bloody great buddha statue that is. i especially liked that they had done the whorls of his toeprints (i don't think i have ever used the word toeprints before. is it a word? the toe version of fingerprints? toeprints toeprints toeprints. no, still sounds funny) in inlaid mother of pearl. extra fancy.
i think my favourites of the morning where the painted fresco paintings on the walls
of the grand palace illustrating the thai version of the ramayana, which share
a lot aesthetically with the early medieval european illuminated manuscripts. yes, i am consistent in my artistic taste :)
after THAT we went for a boat ride down the chao phraya river, past all the little
houses on the river that are varying degrees of mega-posh all the way down to very humble (and partly submerged in the water), all with luxuriant foliage in flower pots, very cezanne-like. the photos i took sadly sadly are completely crap, because
the water was too choppy to be able to really hold the camera still, but i will post some the next time i have internet access. okay eek have to post this and run, hope all are well,
Saturday, 7 November 2009
photos (in reverse order that they were taken, sorry)
tub tim breakfast view, first day on the beach
view from ferry leaving the coast
all the things you are not allowed to do in a bangkok taxi
hello kitty in every continent...
orchid garden in taipei airport
Jetlag nearly conquered!
I stayed awake until 10:30 p.m. last night and slept straight through until 5 a.m.! I’m currently ravenously, insanely hungry, however, because my stomach thinks it’s, what, time for whatever meal of the day involves a million calories of food? I don’t know.
I am now in Bangkok, at the blandly posh and international/Western-style Royal Princess Hotel. My last morning on the island was excellent – I walked down to the southwest coast of the island from Tubtim beach and back, and it felt really good to actually exert myself after 24 hours of prolonged immobilization on airplanes followed by 48 hours of complete sloth. Highlights of the hike were:
1. being offered a ride by a tiny little Thai girl on a moped (even though the whole point of the expedition was to get some exercise, I do not have the strength of character to turn down a free moped ride along a bumpy gravel road through the jungle in the sunshine). It was also my first conversation that was completely in Thai:
girl: thai thai thai thai where you thai thai? (gesturing at moped)
me: wai beach
girl: thai thai good (moving up so I could get on)
me: good thank you!
*insert fifteen minute moped ride*
girl: thai thai here wai beach
me: good thank you very much!
girl: you’re welcome
2. Running into a middle aged French couple in the middle of the jungle with all their beach paraphernalia. The guy sang out as I came near, “Bonjour!” and I was just so tickled that he would be so confident in his Frenchness to just say bonjour in the middle of nowhere, southeast Asia. They asked how to get to the nearest beach, which was also hilarious, because it’s like, OK, the island is something like a kilometre wide – it’s REALLY HARD to get too far away from the beach.
3. Finding little rocky place to have a totally private nudie swim in the ocean
After my exciting morning, I got a speedboat back to the mainland and found myself a bus back to Bangkok (no real highlights except for getting off at a rest stop, and I went to the little snack place to buy water and a Catalan couple were yackering away in front of me in line! They really are everywhere. It’s great.)
We finally pulled up at the Bangkok bus station after dark, and I got a tuktuk (instrument of death-by-traffic-fumes) to the hotel, where I was met by Max, the tour guide for the trip (lanky effeminate hipster Thai guy in his late twenties) and then had fifteen minutes to get myself cleaned up before we joined up with the rest of the group to go out for dinner at a little outdoor café place at the insane night market/tourist mecca/bar scene near the Khoi San road.
Brief first impressions of the group:
– Australian couple in their late thirties/early forties, seem nice, she looks/sounds exactly like one of the characters from Neighbours although I can’t remember which one.
– slightly dim but sweet Aussie girl; already worrying about spiders in the jungle.
– plump New Yorker in mid¬twenties; has strong opinions about things like beer and the 49ers, so perhaps not a lot in the way of common interests, but seemed like a cheerful kind of a dude.
- guy in late twenties from Toronto, eh, sat the far end of the table so I didn’t talk to him barely at all. I will need to overcome my instinctive dislike of creative facial hair if we are going to be friends. It will be an opportunity for self-improvement.
- chicky in early thirties, from Minnesota, was extremely jetlagged and having trouble staying awake, so didn’t say a whole lot, but I have premonitions of major personality disorder.
So the initial hit off the others in the group isn’t brilliant, but meh, we’ll see. After dinner we were let loose on the market; I know you’ll all be surprised to hear that I decided to ignore the girls in tight spandex dresses printed with major beer labels beckoning customers in to the bars with signs advertising “Very Strong Thai Cocktail 80 baht!” and I went instead to get myself a massage by a no-nonsense woman in her fifties who must have weighed about eighty pounds and who threw me around like a sack of potatoes, and from there back to the hotel to bed lovely bed.
Today we are going to do sightseeing around Bangkok, which I am a little terrified of, having now experienced Bangkok traffic first hand. This is a VERY BIG CITY and it takes a REALLY LONG TIME to go anywhere via any of the modes of transportation that I have experienced so far…
I am now in Bangkok, at the blandly posh and international/Western-style Royal Princess Hotel. My last morning on the island was excellent – I walked down to the southwest coast of the island from Tubtim beach and back, and it felt really good to actually exert myself after 24 hours of prolonged immobilization on airplanes followed by 48 hours of complete sloth. Highlights of the hike were:
1. being offered a ride by a tiny little Thai girl on a moped (even though the whole point of the expedition was to get some exercise, I do not have the strength of character to turn down a free moped ride along a bumpy gravel road through the jungle in the sunshine). It was also my first conversation that was completely in Thai:
girl: thai thai thai thai where you thai thai? (gesturing at moped)
me: wai beach
girl: thai thai good (moving up so I could get on)
me: good thank you!
*insert fifteen minute moped ride*
girl: thai thai here wai beach
me: good thank you very much!
girl: you’re welcome
2. Running into a middle aged French couple in the middle of the jungle with all their beach paraphernalia. The guy sang out as I came near, “Bonjour!” and I was just so tickled that he would be so confident in his Frenchness to just say bonjour in the middle of nowhere, southeast Asia. They asked how to get to the nearest beach, which was also hilarious, because it’s like, OK, the island is something like a kilometre wide – it’s REALLY HARD to get too far away from the beach.
3. Finding little rocky place to have a totally private nudie swim in the ocean
After my exciting morning, I got a speedboat back to the mainland and found myself a bus back to Bangkok (no real highlights except for getting off at a rest stop, and I went to the little snack place to buy water and a Catalan couple were yackering away in front of me in line! They really are everywhere. It’s great.)
We finally pulled up at the Bangkok bus station after dark, and I got a tuktuk (instrument of death-by-traffic-fumes) to the hotel, where I was met by Max, the tour guide for the trip (lanky effeminate hipster Thai guy in his late twenties) and then had fifteen minutes to get myself cleaned up before we joined up with the rest of the group to go out for dinner at a little outdoor café place at the insane night market/tourist mecca/bar scene near the Khoi San road.
Brief first impressions of the group:
– Australian couple in their late thirties/early forties, seem nice, she looks/sounds exactly like one of the characters from Neighbours although I can’t remember which one.
– slightly dim but sweet Aussie girl; already worrying about spiders in the jungle.
– plump New Yorker in mid¬twenties; has strong opinions about things like beer and the 49ers, so perhaps not a lot in the way of common interests, but seemed like a cheerful kind of a dude.
- guy in late twenties from Toronto, eh, sat the far end of the table so I didn’t talk to him barely at all. I will need to overcome my instinctive dislike of creative facial hair if we are going to be friends. It will be an opportunity for self-improvement.
- chicky in early thirties, from Minnesota, was extremely jetlagged and having trouble staying awake, so didn’t say a whole lot, but I have premonitions of major personality disorder.
So the initial hit off the others in the group isn’t brilliant, but meh, we’ll see. After dinner we were let loose on the market; I know you’ll all be surprised to hear that I decided to ignore the girls in tight spandex dresses printed with major beer labels beckoning customers in to the bars with signs advertising “Very Strong Thai Cocktail 80 baht!” and I went instead to get myself a massage by a no-nonsense woman in her fifties who must have weighed about eighty pounds and who threw me around like a sack of potatoes, and from there back to the hotel to bed lovely bed.
Today we are going to do sightseeing around Bangkok, which I am a little terrified of, having now experienced Bangkok traffic first hand. This is a VERY BIG CITY and it takes a REALLY LONG TIME to go anywhere via any of the modes of transportation that I have experienced so far…
Friday, 6 November 2009
more australians, snorkeling, beach massage
last day on the beach... after a day completely devoted to sloth yesterday, i am going to GO FOR A HIKE, just to prove to myself that i can.
yesterday was quite lovely - a boat came onto the beach to pick me up, and after a couple of stops to pick up more people (a handful of thai tourists, a lovely scottish couple, and a pair of hilarious australians) we went off for a day-long expedition to the outlying islands to snorkel, swim, sunbathe, eat barbecue mystery meat and pineapple on the beach, and fish (this last bit didn't work because "they are making new fish farm," which was OK by me). the water is gorgeous and clear and green and warm and not like anywhere i have ever been before; the snorkeling i have to admit is a little depressing because the coral is about 99% dead as a doornail. we actually saw a guy sawing up chunks of what little live coral remains to hand out pieces to little thai kids who looked as if they were on a school field trip, which was possibly even more depressing. it's hard to get a sense of where the sensibility is in terms of ecological conservation - on the one hand, the beaches are immaculate, and there is almost no rubbish strewn along the roads as you see in a lot of the developing world (there are stretches of santa rosa where there is more) but there are no recycling facilities so far as i can tell, and the whole thing with the coral, so ???
at the end of the day i treated myself to a beach massage, which was hilarious - while the quality of the actual massage is not dissimilar to professional massages i have had in the US, you realize how much of the total experience is dictated by other factors. for instance, the woman who was massaging me kept up a running conversation with the massage lady next to her, and about half way through her kids turned up. she sent the eight year old to go buy groceries, and when the eight year old came back she scolded her for not having bought the right thing, and then told her to get a rag to swat away bugs, which the (now very sulky) eight year old did; meanwhile there were a couple of dogs sniffing around, and the lady's two year old lay down on the towel next to me and waved her legs in the air and sucked her thumb and eventually fell asleep with her back against me, which was lovely. a far cry from the soothing new age music and immaculately clean sheets etc of the standard first world massage. also thai massages have the advantage that they do your gluteal muscles (or what passes for muscles in my case at this point), which is great - in the US i guess it's illegal to rub someone else's bum for money :)
anyway. off for a hike! hope all are well...
yesterday was quite lovely - a boat came onto the beach to pick me up, and after a couple of stops to pick up more people (a handful of thai tourists, a lovely scottish couple, and a pair of hilarious australians) we went off for a day-long expedition to the outlying islands to snorkel, swim, sunbathe, eat barbecue mystery meat and pineapple on the beach, and fish (this last bit didn't work because "they are making new fish farm," which was OK by me). the water is gorgeous and clear and green and warm and not like anywhere i have ever been before; the snorkeling i have to admit is a little depressing because the coral is about 99% dead as a doornail. we actually saw a guy sawing up chunks of what little live coral remains to hand out pieces to little thai kids who looked as if they were on a school field trip, which was possibly even more depressing. it's hard to get a sense of where the sensibility is in terms of ecological conservation - on the one hand, the beaches are immaculate, and there is almost no rubbish strewn along the roads as you see in a lot of the developing world (there are stretches of santa rosa where there is more) but there are no recycling facilities so far as i can tell, and the whole thing with the coral, so ???
at the end of the day i treated myself to a beach massage, which was hilarious - while the quality of the actual massage is not dissimilar to professional massages i have had in the US, you realize how much of the total experience is dictated by other factors. for instance, the woman who was massaging me kept up a running conversation with the massage lady next to her, and about half way through her kids turned up. she sent the eight year old to go buy groceries, and when the eight year old came back she scolded her for not having bought the right thing, and then told her to get a rag to swat away bugs, which the (now very sulky) eight year old did; meanwhile there were a couple of dogs sniffing around, and the lady's two year old lay down on the towel next to me and waved her legs in the air and sucked her thumb and eventually fell asleep with her back against me, which was lovely. a far cry from the soothing new age music and immaculately clean sheets etc of the standard first world massage. also thai massages have the advantage that they do your gluteal muscles (or what passes for muscles in my case at this point), which is great - in the US i guess it's illegal to rub someone else's bum for money :)
anyway. off for a hike! hope all are well...
Thursday, 5 November 2009
thailand!
well, you all are going to have live without photos for the next little bit, unless i can find an actual high speed wireless hot spot. i tried uploading four photos and gave up after fifteen minutes of watching the little hourglass thingy sit there doing nothing. but! i am in thailand! yeehaw! and i passed yesterday's initiative test with flying colours!
after arriving at bangkok airport more or less in one piece (medium smelly and very tired after a million hours in the plane, although i did get to watch harry potter in chinese, which was fun) i sat in the line for passport control forEVUH behind the archetype of the ugly american - a fat sweaty dude who was talking to his friend in a REALLY LOUD VOICE about how 'we kicked the japs' ass in WWII' (i didn't know people under the age of forty even _said_ 'japs' anymore, let alone in a loud voice in a public place, and 'i don't see why guys can't get paid golf vacations, shit, after all, women get paid maternity leave.' at one point he stepped backwards onto my toe and when he turned around to see what he'd stepped on he asked me where i was headed and i completely ignored him. i don't remember the last time i was so overtly rude to someone. it was thrilling.
after collecting all my luggage (hurray! everything arrived! not that it matters - most of it is things like bikini bottoms and extra sunscreen) i took a taxi to the ekkamai bus terminal (sort of a cop-out, not taking public transportation, but i figured i already had enough of an initiative test ahead anyway), got myself a ticket, and within half an hour was speeding through the countryside on an erratically air-conditioned bus (pink viennese confections for curtains and a kungfu movie for entertainment) towards the coastal town of ban phe. the countryside is very lush and green and pretty, and while there is definitely evidence of poverty, it's not horrific and desperate african/indian level poverty. there are lots of road-side businesses that could be anywhere in the developing world (cafes with plastic tables and stacks of coke bottles, carparts, rebar, tires, building materials, dogs, plastic bags, laundry hanging up), but every so often you pass a yard full of dazzling golden buddha statues for sale, which is not anything i'd ever seen before. everyone seems to have one outside their house, but there are also buddha statues at random road intersections, all public buildings, etc., as well as gigantic billboards of pictures of the royal family in full royal family regalia.
on arrival at ban phe i had missed the last official ferry BUT luckily there were a handful of others in the same situation wandering haplessly around the pier, so we joined forces and chartered a boat (for a whopping $3 each) out to koh samet, the island/marine nature preserve that is famous for having the whitest sand beaches in all of thailand (so there). sunset from the boat, then arrival on koh samet, then via back of a jeep to ao tubtim beach resort, where a dish of sinus-clearing green shrimp curry, a shower, and a little beach bungalow with a comfy bed had my name ALL OVER them.
things i am nervous about: heat (it is 9:15 in the morning and 80 degrees already - i think this afternoon may be strictly limited to mad dogs and englishmen, or at least mellow beach mutts and sunburnt australians), state of intestines (two medium-urgent trips to loo so far. but some period of adjustment is to be expected).
things i am pleased about: dearth of mosquitoes on island, high-level yumminess of food, fact that i have places to stay now booked for entire trip, snorkeling expedition planned for this afternoon.
love to all!
after arriving at bangkok airport more or less in one piece (medium smelly and very tired after a million hours in the plane, although i did get to watch harry potter in chinese, which was fun) i sat in the line for passport control forEVUH behind the archetype of the ugly american - a fat sweaty dude who was talking to his friend in a REALLY LOUD VOICE about how 'we kicked the japs' ass in WWII' (i didn't know people under the age of forty even _said_ 'japs' anymore, let alone in a loud voice in a public place, and 'i don't see why guys can't get paid golf vacations, shit, after all, women get paid maternity leave.' at one point he stepped backwards onto my toe and when he turned around to see what he'd stepped on he asked me where i was headed and i completely ignored him. i don't remember the last time i was so overtly rude to someone. it was thrilling.
after collecting all my luggage (hurray! everything arrived! not that it matters - most of it is things like bikini bottoms and extra sunscreen) i took a taxi to the ekkamai bus terminal (sort of a cop-out, not taking public transportation, but i figured i already had enough of an initiative test ahead anyway), got myself a ticket, and within half an hour was speeding through the countryside on an erratically air-conditioned bus (pink viennese confections for curtains and a kungfu movie for entertainment) towards the coastal town of ban phe. the countryside is very lush and green and pretty, and while there is definitely evidence of poverty, it's not horrific and desperate african/indian level poverty. there are lots of road-side businesses that could be anywhere in the developing world (cafes with plastic tables and stacks of coke bottles, carparts, rebar, tires, building materials, dogs, plastic bags, laundry hanging up), but every so often you pass a yard full of dazzling golden buddha statues for sale, which is not anything i'd ever seen before. everyone seems to have one outside their house, but there are also buddha statues at random road intersections, all public buildings, etc., as well as gigantic billboards of pictures of the royal family in full royal family regalia.
on arrival at ban phe i had missed the last official ferry BUT luckily there were a handful of others in the same situation wandering haplessly around the pier, so we joined forces and chartered a boat (for a whopping $3 each) out to koh samet, the island/marine nature preserve that is famous for having the whitest sand beaches in all of thailand (so there). sunset from the boat, then arrival on koh samet, then via back of a jeep to ao tubtim beach resort, where a dish of sinus-clearing green shrimp curry, a shower, and a little beach bungalow with a comfy bed had my name ALL OVER them.
things i am nervous about: heat (it is 9:15 in the morning and 80 degrees already - i think this afternoon may be strictly limited to mad dogs and englishmen, or at least mellow beach mutts and sunburnt australians), state of intestines (two medium-urgent trips to loo so far. but some period of adjustment is to be expected).
things i am pleased about: dearth of mosquitoes on island, high-level yumminess of food, fact that i have places to stay now booked for entire trip, snorkeling expedition planned for this afternoon.
love to all!
Wednesday, 4 November 2009
woohoo! made it to taiwan in one piece!
... for which really Eva Air should get the credit, not me, but still I feel bizarrely proud of myself.
The flight started off with a very unfortunate bang (on the head) - an elderly lady was trying to climb up to put stuff in the overhead bin, lost her balance & fell down and backwards, whacking herself on the head on the metal armrest of the seat across the gangway. She didn't actually lose consciousness, but it was not a good sign that she didn't say anything other than ohhhhhhhhhhhh and then start throwing up, so the paramedics arrived in short order and whisked her off the plane right before takeoff. Not that this is anything to do with me, but it was one of those situations where you realize just how entirely useless doctors are with medical situations out in the field: she fell practically right in front of me, and the sum total of my contribution to the whole thing was to say, oh my god, ma'am are you OK? before she was surrounded by five jillion stewardesses talking high-speed Chinese (I didn't, to be honest, feel I needed to be more aggressive about intervening, because they lay her down without moving her neck and then said chinese chinese chinese chinese chinese 911 chinese chinese chinese chinese paramedics, which is pretty much what needed to happen, but still.) I hope she's OK.
Flight to Taipei long boring long boring long boring eyeballs scratchy nose dry tired stiff, remarkable mainly for truly horrible food - I am usually vegetarian for airline purposes, and sometimes it really pays off, but sometimes, like this time, it, er, doesn't. My dinner was, I am not kidding, five different scoops of gelatinous goo, in varying subtle shades of grey: the entree was yellowy-grey, the rice was off-white (that's how I knew it was rice), the vegetables were just grey, and the pudding was purple grey (I think there might have been beans involved).
But hooray, here I am in Taipei airport. Highlights so far include the orchid garden inside the airport (how cool is that? will post photos later), the kids' play area that looks like someone vomited Hello Kitty all over five hundred square feet of space, the fact that all the dutyfree shop staff (not just food service people, but the people who sell overpriced luggage sets and ipod chargers) are wearing face masks - super sinister, as if there is an alien virus running rampant and only the duty free shop staff are going to survive the coming plague - and an exhibition of industrial design thingies intended to encourage people to save money. My favourite is the troche to help combat the desire to go shopping. it contains lemon verbena. i don't know if it works or not.
I am also very excited about the fact that the computers in the little internet connectivity station have Chinese character keyboards! I am using mon petit netbook maintenant, but I'm going to have to get a closer look at the keyboards of the other computers, because that's just flipping cool. Also, Google came up in Chinese when I first logged on. crazy, man.
The flight started off with a very unfortunate bang (on the head) - an elderly lady was trying to climb up to put stuff in the overhead bin, lost her balance & fell down and backwards, whacking herself on the head on the metal armrest of the seat across the gangway. She didn't actually lose consciousness, but it was not a good sign that she didn't say anything other than ohhhhhhhhhhhh and then start throwing up, so the paramedics arrived in short order and whisked her off the plane right before takeoff. Not that this is anything to do with me, but it was one of those situations where you realize just how entirely useless doctors are with medical situations out in the field: she fell practically right in front of me, and the sum total of my contribution to the whole thing was to say, oh my god, ma'am are you OK? before she was surrounded by five jillion stewardesses talking high-speed Chinese (I didn't, to be honest, feel I needed to be more aggressive about intervening, because they lay her down without moving her neck and then said chinese chinese chinese chinese chinese 911 chinese chinese chinese chinese paramedics, which is pretty much what needed to happen, but still.) I hope she's OK.
Flight to Taipei long boring long boring long boring eyeballs scratchy nose dry tired stiff, remarkable mainly for truly horrible food - I am usually vegetarian for airline purposes, and sometimes it really pays off, but sometimes, like this time, it, er, doesn't. My dinner was, I am not kidding, five different scoops of gelatinous goo, in varying subtle shades of grey: the entree was yellowy-grey, the rice was off-white (that's how I knew it was rice), the vegetables were just grey, and the pudding was purple grey (I think there might have been beans involved).
But hooray, here I am in Taipei airport. Highlights so far include the orchid garden inside the airport (how cool is that? will post photos later), the kids' play area that looks like someone vomited Hello Kitty all over five hundred square feet of space, the fact that all the dutyfree shop staff (not just food service people, but the people who sell overpriced luggage sets and ipod chargers) are wearing face masks - super sinister, as if there is an alien virus running rampant and only the duty free shop staff are going to survive the coming plague - and an exhibition of industrial design thingies intended to encourage people to save money. My favourite is the troche to help combat the desire to go shopping. it contains lemon verbena. i don't know if it works or not.
I am also very excited about the fact that the computers in the little internet connectivity station have Chinese character keyboards! I am using mon petit netbook maintenant, but I'm going to have to get a closer look at the keyboards of the other computers, because that's just flipping cool. Also, Google came up in Chinese when I first logged on. crazy, man.
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