today we were very productive and got our vietnamese visas and got tickets for boat ride to siem reap. we leave here in the morning.
it would be good to spend more time in battambang but at the same time, i think we milked a lot of fun out of this town.
we took a moto (motorcycle scooter) tour (we sat behind the driver who was also our tour guide) around the countryside in battambang. we saw fruit orchards, a suspension bridge, little country houses, kids waving and saying hello (mostly at cassie; they think i'm cambodian), and rode a little bamboo train.
Battambang ... is the shit.
CAMBODIA!!!
the schlep to get here wasn't as terrible as i expected. it was long. mostly because i had to pee for most of the trip.
6:30am leave for Northern Bus Terminal in Bangkok
8:20am depart bus terminal for Aranyaprathet
1:15pm tuk tuk from Aranyaprathet to Poipet border
had some fabulous lunch. fried chicken and papaya salad. cassie had fried rice. after a little bit of confusion over where exactly the immigration office was (didn't help that we were slogging around in a rainy downpour aftermath), we found our way to the Thai immigration office and onward to the Cambodian border.
visas were bought. probably got ripped off 5$ because tourist visas were only $20 and we paid $25. oh well. i didn't have a photo and had to pay a "fine"
immigration was a breeze. with the help of Sol (a tout who cassie said liked me but i think he was just friendly for the tip), we were on a taxi ($35) with some cash exchanged to riel and on our way to battambang.
and here we are in the fanciest hotel i've ever stayed in while on a vacation.
description of cambodia (and road conditions) in next post. . .
Bangkok. Day 5.
Cassie's here!!
I spent the first four days being mopey (because i started crushing on someone before i left japan. terrible idea) and mostly bored of myself. but now cassie's here who'll save me from myself (the obsessing) and notice stuff i don't. like huge billboards and eggs that aren't in the refrigerator in the convenience store.
tomorrow we hit the shiny splendor of the Wat Phra Keo, Grand Palace.
Santos Village III
second day at the same internet cafe. listening to one of my favorite radio stations (ae.com radio. very teen-y but i dig the tunes). and reflecting. i was looking around today as my cousin and i walked around the neighborhood trying to remember faces, places. there was an old man with cane and some missing teeth who i'm pretty sure was my bus driver in the 1st and 2nd grade. i liked to surprise him by crossing the street by myself and coming to the jeep early instead of waiting for him like the other kids did. this way, i got more time to putter about the market and buy my after school snacks.
i hung out with a childhood friend named Lady (short for Melody). i spent a lot of time at her house when i was little but i think they must have gotten it remodeled because i went there and didn't have any memories of it. Lady now lives in Italy and has a little 5 year old boy with another on the way. Lady, as fate would have it, is now my cousin through marriage. Her aunt married my uncle. It was good to chat and kind of catch up. i envy her having her family but at the same time rejoice in my freedom.
i spotted other things around the neighborhood too. my crush from nursery school's house. the house where my mom liked to get her clothes sewed and or hemmed. the gutter where i once dropped a 2piso coin and went home crying.
it's nice to be back back in the neighborhood and have everyone know me but at the same time i feel lost. more on this later. internet time is up and we're going to go visit another childhood friend who lives in a different neighborhood
dooooby dooooo
i miss my habitat peeps! it's hot and yes, boring, hanging out with the fam. i feel like i'm in a kind of brad-situation where i can either hang out with the oldies (who mostly chat about stuff i'm not interested in and nap) or play with the kiddies (who mainly do a lot of running which is fine for about 30 minutes but not a good day-long activity). so i find myself running and playing tag, eating, and napping. tomorrow my cousins are dragging me to the mall where they're probably gonna ride the same rides in the amusement park about 12 times (like last time) and i'll be bored the third run through and i'm not interested enough in shopping anymore to let it fill my time.
bitch, bitch, bitch, i know. i should just enjoy myslef before i start work again on monday. on that note. gonna go home and eat dinner and chat with the oldies.
that's right. painting. it's all we've been doing. habitat finished building 1,000 houses which will be presented to the community at the end of march. the housing project in baseco turns over in april and habitat will build another 1,000 houses but until then, we have to complete the 1,000 houses and get them ready for presentation by painting. there are 800 houses left to paint. i can't say that any of us are excited to be doing this. we understand that it's necessary but what we really want to do is build houses. painting sucks.
but hey, the kids are cute:
and today we got to go to an orphanage and cuddle babies:
YES!!! I finally submitted my Peace Corps application!!! And only four months after I should have turned it in. thank you mike, for constantly encouraging me to finish it and editing my crappy essays. thank you nick, for writing my (I'm sure) impressive reference. couldn't have done it without you guys.
p.s. the Philippines is good. more on that later.
for misaki
i've been hanging out with my students a bunch. i'll be leaving this school soon and am sad to go. mostly i hang out with a special ed girl named misaki. it sounds so bad to say that. she's just a slow learner really. and i truly do think she's special. she can read my mind. and we have fun having the dumbest conversations. she gets a huge kick out of peek-a-boo. we do it in japanese ("inai, inai, ba!"), english and tagalog ("eat. . . bulaga!"). today we played with lego-type blocks after lunch. although honestly i think she's more of an adult than i am. she worries about me when i don't bring lunch and offers me her food. i think she's happy to have found a friend in me.
i'm going to miss this girl a lot. misaki riding piggy-back:
aaaaack
it's here!! goddamnit. i noticed it a couple days ago when i sniffled and my nose made this pathetic honking/scraping noise that comes once a year. and i want to take out my eyeballs. they're too big for my head; i have an image of the whites of my eyes overflowing around my contacts. and i just got over a cold too. my nose isn't going to stop dripping til august. sigh. god i hate allergies. and i hate global warming. i've never gotten allergies this early before.
A quote from Yakuza Japanese."For those in need of a prosthetic finger, the best manufacturers are rumored to be in London, but they charge dearly for their services. Discount shoppers go to Hong Kong."
From Jennifer's report on banana slugs: "due to the extreme length of the penis of the banana slug, it may become tangled into a knot inside the female slug and herself. The female slug then severs the tissue with her mouth to save the male slug."
quickie wrap up
before i lose steam and this blog goes dormant again.
january 6th. ayutthaya. hot. rode my bike around and saw all the sights. ayutthaya is a UNESCO heritage site and i can see why. it's a town surrounded by rivers and canals and was a major city for
trade way back in the way back when.
>>>>>>> aaaargh <<<<<<<<<
screw it. blogger is not word wrapping and sentences are running off the screen. plus, my eyelids are
drooping. i barely slept on the plane last night. it got into kansai at 6 this morning and now i'm at work
doing absolutely nothing. bit early to sneak off into my nap room though.
quickie wrap up to be continued.
january thailand
has passed by in a blur of hot highway air blowing in my face. we haven't stayed in one placed longer than two nights and have been spending a lot of time moving from one place to the next. can't say that i like it much but can't do anything about it because got places to go, things to see and not much time to do it in.
january 1st. we WERE going to hitchhike but it's just too hot and we're too lazy to really make the effort. three buses later we arrive at Prachuap Khiri Khan, famous for the Monkey Temple on a hill. stayed in a VERY luxurious hotel, the likes of which i hadn't seen in over a week. it had hot water and cable and three beds in the room! it was 400baht which mark thought was outrageous but i was very happily paid my 200baht half of it and basked in the glory of cable.
january 2nd. Phetchaburi. famous for cave temples. we went to one but couldn't find the other more spectacular cave temple. a shame. also had a temple on a hill with lots of semi-aggressive monkeys. one tried swiping at my ankle completely unprovoked.
january 3rd. mark and i part ways. he's off to laos and i make my way to Kanchanaburi with a pit stop at Nakhon Pathom where the tallest completed stupa in Thailand is. it's been days since i've been completely on my own and i find that i'm a total idiot. i hop on the wrong train at Nakhon Pathom but with the help of the uniformed train guys, i'm let off at the next station and herded on to the correct train. Kanchanaburi is famous for the Bridge over the River Kwai. lots of sad history. I go to the bridge my first day. make in time to see it at sunset. sit on the river bank and have a moment of reflection thinking about the thousands of men (mostly prisoners of war) who died building the bridge.
january 4th. take a little escape from Kanchaburi's war past and visit Erawan National Park, supposedly the most photographed national park in thailand. Very very beautiful seven-tiered waterfall. see picture at the bottom. I believe that picture is taken at the 3rd tier. 400baht national park admission fee was a bit steep for such a small park. but one of those suck it up and pay purchases. head back into town and visit the JEATH Museum (Japan, England, America, Thailand, Holland the nations involved in building the death railway). it's an open air museum made of thatched hut where the prisoners of war slowly died from brutality, lack of food and medicine.
january 5th. visit the Thai-Burma Railway Museum. very well done. more sad stuff. head to Ayutthaya. four hour very slow bus trip on ordinary buses not a/c buses as i had thought.
>>>>> to be continued. internet time over and i desperately need to pee <<<<<<
an e-mail from Mama Su
Hi Christine. Where do you stay now? tell me please. Bera want to know. andBera talk about you every day Bera think of you to much(me too) we thinkyou enjoye in Sichon and remember big party night and small party inmidnigth. we are think of you to much . Bera think of you to much too enjoyyour thrip in Thailand. Sawaddee. Bera. Su Bow.
thailand. ayutthaya.
is slowly killing me. allergies! in winter! ricockulous. ayutthaya reminds me of kyoto. tripping over temples, sneezing like crazy because of all the greenery. beautiful yet slow torture.
and since i'm in super cheap internet (15baht an hour, sweet!), i'm going to try my best and catch up on all the updating because i know i sure as hell am not going to do it when i get back.
december 29th - january 1st. beach. Sichon Beach, southeastern coast thailand. i finally got the cheap, deserted beach i was dreaming about. no foreigners at all whatsoever. Sichon Beach is a small community where a lot of Thais go for day trips and whatnot. And because it was new year's, there were a lot of them there partying.
december 29th. after getting lost, through no fault of our own, i might add--we (Mark, the dude i met in the jungle) asked the locals "Sichon Beach?" and they pointed us with their vague points down the road. we ended up walking for about two hours i think. well, anyway, it felt like it. everyone gawked (not everyday they see foreigners walking about town looking hot and sweaty and lost with their big backpacks) but no one was helpful. except for one old man who let us hitch a ride on his motorcycle thing with a side car attached.
aside: My theory is that you have to ask at least two thais for directions. they're incapable of saying "go straight, turn left, turn right . . ." they just vaguely point ahead of them, so they point you in the general direction you need to go but if you need to turn somewhere you're fucked. so you have to ask another thai to turn you.
anyhoo, we arrive at the bungalows. there're six small thatched bungalows right on the beach. 200baht a night (kinda steep if you ask me, but it's a thai vacation spot so what can you do) which we split which was good. we just had a chilled evening and went to the restaurant--which we christened The Ladyboy after the androgenous server working there and went to bed.
december 30th. very exciting day! we walked into town and walked back and i did laundry. good stuff.
no, but Mama Su and Bow (the owners of the bungalow) invited us to the village new year's eve party. despite our confusion ("uh . . . isn't TOMORROW new year's eve?") we go and have a blast. it's party, thai style. the whole village is out gorging themselves under a gigantic tent and there's a big stage set up in the middle where people are doing karaoke complete with ENORMOUS speakers blasting thai pop into the next town. unfortunately, we were sitting about 50 feet from the speakers. i cut out early and dragged mark with me before my ears started to bleed.
we met some cool people at the party though. Bera, Nok, guy in a white shirt whose name i can't remember, and a kid who was smoking and drinking who i thought was surely too young to be smoking and drinking (Youngin' , we'll call him).
december 31st. the sun finally came out (the previous couple of days it was overcast and vaguely windy) so spent some time baking my skin. in the evening, we head over to the Ladyboy for some din din and are picked up by Youngin and promptly dropped off at a small hut where some of the guys we met the night before are drinking and karaokeing (namely, bera and nok). they serve us some food and beer (score! love free stuff). the food was pig innards--liver, heart valve, lung and some other stuff i couldn't name--boiled that you dip in this sour spicy stuff. it was amazing. probably the best thing i've had in thailand.
so we're counting down and drinking and making merry. nok is totally ruling karaoke complete with dancing and sunglasses (even though, you know, it's 9 o'clock at night), Youngin' is continually toasting me--which i've come to learn is a way that thai guys show that they're interested. at one point he gestures to me to chug all my beer down and we'd race. all right, fine. this was made very easy by the fact that thais put ice in their beer. goes down quick. i win the beer race and finally work up the nerve to ask Bera how old Youngin' is. He says (after a little thinking) "15." Jesus. like i just drink raced one of my students. he's the same age as my sister!
during all this, Bera is chatting me up. or attempting to. his english was very limited. also, with karaoke speakers behind us, it's hard to hear. it starts innocently enough, where are you from? are you happy? and then it progresses to, is mark your boyfriend? do you sleep in the same bungalow? i would be happier if you didn't. and finally to, stay longer! mark can leave, but you stay! and there were many more gestures i couldn't really begin to understand. like a wedding ring gesture and bringing together his two forefingers toghether gesture. yeesh! had only been sitting next to the guy for a few hours. and i recall that he had introduced me to his "friend" the day before who had looked pretty comfortable with his two kids (he's separated from his wife). i bring her up "Um. Dao?" he looks irritated that i'd remember/mention her and insists that she's just a friend. Riiiight. by this point he's got his arm around me and is laying kisses on me. but not wanting to step into Dao's territory, i don't encourage him TOO much. but i couldn't resist really. he had long eyelashes. i'm a sucker for long eyelashes. we count down to midnight and mark and i make a quick escape back to the bungalow despite Bera's protestations. he followed us back to our place insisting that i ride on the motorcycle. i firmly told him no and we made it back safe to the bungalow.
Sichon had gotten too comfortable with me I felt and i was ready to go on to the next city even though mark wanted to stay because everyone was cool and loved to party. I told him I didn't need the drama; he accused me of creating the drama. (shrug.) maybe i did. maybe drama just follows.
january 1st. we get the fuck out of sichon with bera as entourage. he insisted in seeing us off and looked sad at the bus station.
>>>>>>> whew. jesus. i need to take a break <<<<<<<
i'm too distracted by the need to take a massive dump so no thailand update today. a shame too, i finally found cheap internet. no cheap internets near my "hotel."
gonna go poo.
thailand. take two.
december 24th. left the foreigner-girlie-bar-beach-jungle of Patong Beach, Phuket and headed for Khao Sok National Park. Very nearly running out of money (I had exchanged about 65,000Yen and was down to the last bit of it), I started getting smart about transportation and bungalows. Taking local whenever possible and haggling the bungalows. I made it to the jungle and found some bungalows and haggled them down to 100Baht a night (about $2.50/300Yen). Very sweet.
december 25th. jungle. went on a lake tour which included taking a long tail boat across this ginormous and beautiful lake (serves as a watershed for south thailand) and caving. god i love caves. met a cool guy from Alaska, Mark. we had good rapport throughout trekking about the woods.
december 26th. jungle. rode an elephant and met a very talkative guy from Singapore. his name eludes me. two syllables. Zhi Hou? Anyhoo, he was fun. went on a date with a jungle man who had started crushing on me the 24th and i liked him too. Ja, his name. he was sweet and oddly nervous about time "What time are you going to the bar? What time do you want to meet your friend?" where most Thais in the jungle couldn't even keep track of what day it was. Ja took me to listen to him and his band play. he was the drummer.
as an aside, I think i should add, i was wildly popular in the jungle. I had at least five guys interested in me. I could have had my pick of any one of them to sleep with. It was amazing. Thai people think I'm hot. It's kind of funny.
december 27th. i go to the small tattoo hut to get my tattoo. i had an appointment for the 27th because tattoo dude said that he was going on the jungle tour on the 26th and wouldn't be around. i go to hut only to find that he's preparing to LEAVE for jungle tour. "Uh. Tattoo?" I inquire. he slaps his palm to his forehead. convinces me to come with him and two tourists on the jungle tour (overnight) and that he'd do my tattoo the next day. swear. these jungle men. smoke too many joints.
i let myself get talked into the tour even though i shouldn't have because it cost 2,000Baht that I didn't really have. went jungle touring which was awesome. walked through jungle, scaled rock walls, swam in waterfall pools, looked at freaking AMAZING waterfalls, camped at the top of the waterfall. ate food cooked in bamboo and ate off bamboo plates. slept in hammocks. froze my ass off. even though Ja had helped me pack and knowing that i got cold at night, insisted that i take two blankets. i think i needed about four. and socks probably would have helped.
december 28th. come back from the wilds of the jungle. got tattoo (ankle. thai style using two needles tied to an end of a bamboo). go to a wedding reception with Ja. it was awesome-- girls in lame in a big stage in front, huge (and I mean HUGE tent) with dozens of tables under it filled with people pigging out. there's no way the couple knew all those people. but i guess the more people come, the more popular you look.
later that evening . . .have a fight with Ja in the bar in front of the guys i was playing cards with. he had gotten totally wasted and got into a motorcycle accident. scraped his arm and got himself a limp. i wasn't happy that he hurt himself. and he was drunkenly making a fool of himself trying to get my attention by playing with the fire throwers and nearly setting himself on fire. didn't need the unnecessary drama. decided it was time to leave the jungle.
december 29th. head for beach with Mark, the dude i had the good rapport with from the lake tour.
>>>> tired of typing. more later<<<<<
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