NimsAbroad

New Blog

2006-07-29T18:43:00.000-07:00

Please visit my new blog, www.internationaldumpling.blogspot.com

Found in the depths of my scribblings

2006-05-12T15:28:00.000-07:00

Agalicos: A coffeehouse or rather Salon de The that perfectly
emulates the colonial vision of casual elegance. With entirely white
furniture (much of it wicker), blue and white willow china planters
full of orchids and ferns, high ceilings, windows opening out onto a
lush garden including an "ancient" asian fountain, white wooden bird
cages made to look like oriental domed buildings, a white and grey
marble floor, a misty tabletop terrarium dome with a dark sea-green
glazed base, it looks like something out of a Forester novel. The
glass-topped tables hold yellowed Twinings wrappers and linen napkins
with green line drawings of tea cups. There are copper pots hanging
above the small servinf and display area, where european pastries sit
underneath glass cake covers. A large blue vase holds a green
parasol.

The only other people in here are two women (Japanese?), dressed
trendily and drinking tea and chatting. The staff are relaxed Thais,
dressed all in white of course. To enter, you need to talk to the
guard, who sits outside in a melon colored dress uniform. He rings
the bell for you to be let in. There is no sign. At one point, a
Thai nanny came in from the garden, two small children in tow. The
entire threesome was dressed in shades of pink.

I came to this place in search of an espresso and a place to read my
book. BK magazine listed it as the closest coffeeshop to my house. I
should have known from the opening hours (F-Su 10am-6pm) that this was
no Cafe Paradiso. Instead, it appears to be a home furnishings
gallery cun Salon de The. They display books of Jim Thompson Company
Upholstry textiles and sell their own brand of tea.

Thailand is the only country in Southeast Asia never to have been
colonized, but they certainly do a good job pretending that they have
been. New subdivisions are built in a faux French Colonial style, and
they come up with restaurants like this. What I'm unclear on is how
mindful all this is. Are they envious of the coloniakl architecture
and culture that pervaded Vietnam? Or is this a knowing, semi-ironic
wink at the colonialist vision? This place certainly has more than a
bit of Ralph Lauren or Martha Stewart to it -- would the Thais
consider this an occidentalist decore? Do they feel that they are
capitalizing on our emperialist aesthetic? Or was this place designed
by a retrograde Farang with no sense of irony whatsoever? Whatever
the answer or answers may be, there is a distinct feeling of pastiche.
It's off-putting to be sitting in a place this "picture-perfect"; if
this were in Palm Beach, it would be one thing. Here, it's just a bit
too close to the (un)-truth of the history of they place.

carnet

2005-08-17T12:57:00.000-07:00

Anyone who reads Gridskipper or The New York Times has most likely discovered articles about Carnet, this god awful website that claims to be a classy and luxurious guide through the poshest areas of the world's poshest cities. What infuriates me about the guides is neither the reported $5,000 per day reporting budget (hey, I'd do it if I could) nor the premise of such a guide. Rather, I am offended by the design of the website, which looks like a late 90's fashion illustrator's rendition of Carmen San Diego Dressed as Jackie O. The fictional guide, Eva Hamilton-Clarke, "sophisticated and savvy world traveller" wears knock-off Chanel flats (oops, name-dropping is so gauche) and the peek into her teal leather "carnet" involves goofy animation of a passport and more cutesy cartoons of women hailing cabs. Since when do sophisticated travellers need their travel advice mediated through graphics designed for twelve-year-olds?

And then there's the narration, which includes such gems and inside knowledge as:

"Elizabeth [presumably another fictional character] and I met at the Mercer Hotel for a late-ish breakfast. Their pancakes are divine, perfectly light and not too greasy. Elizabeth and I did a once over of my stores for the morning. They were mostly home decoration and furnishing stores in Soho. She stopped and asked me about the galleries. Much to her surprise, she couldn't believe it when I told her that high rents pushed all the galleries and artists out of the neighborhood and into Chelsea."

Choppy sentences, clichéd descriptions, and come on, I knew that the rents were high in Soho when I was ten, and I grew up in Chico-aahmonds-not-ahlmonds-California.

I just feel that the presentation and content does not match up with the PR of this guide that claims to be too elegant to include the Upper West Side, let alone "(God forbid you'd be there) Brooklyn." In Hong Kong I found a collection of upscale guides to Asian cities. Each pamphlet was letterpress printed on heavy paper in a classic font, and while the brief listings tended to be a bit precious and pretentious, e.g. "of course you wouldn't stay anywhere other than the Sukhothai, dahling," they did manage to root out tailors who specialized in making cheongsams out of vintage silks and colonial-chic tearooms that only open on the weekends (I found that one by myself, thank you very much). A well-done guide to the best a city has to offer, small enough to fit in a handbag and tailored to tourists who enjoy luxury and leisure is a fine thing. But if you're going to be a snob, get the packaging right.

Trains

2005-04-22T14:13:00.000-07:00

The Bangkok train station is an old-school European-style station, with a lofty round-vaulted waiting room complete with a large analog clock on either side of the room. At 6:00pm bells sound, and everyone stands up for the national anthem, many from the plastic or straw woven mats layed out picnic-style on the floor of the hall.

This sitting around eating on any concrete floor available is a favorite Southeast Asian pasttime. In Hong Kong the Phillipino maids hold similar picnics on their Sundays off in the covered walkways that connect the city's high rises. For a city that seems so modern, rituals like this highlight the extremely stratified class structure in a distinctly foreign way.

I suppose the reason these Phillipino women congregate in the areas reserved on the weekdays for commuting bankers is that they have nowhere else to escape the houses in which they work and live. Their families are back in the Phillipines, and Hong Kong parks are so regulated that laying a mat down on the hourly-swept paths probably warrants a silver sign with some icon that means no eating or talking with friends.

Near my apartment on Hollywood Rd. there was a lovely little park, complete with a karp pnd, walled tai chi area with a circular entrance, and plenty of green-tiled Chinese spendor. Its tranquility, however, was due to a barrage of rules: no lying down on benches, no smoking, no playing games, no hawking, no feeding the feral cats, no skateboarding, etc. Each rule comes wih its own cartoon figure carrying out the offensive act, crossed out with a large red circle. The signs were spaced at about six-foot intervals on the wall surrounding the park, impossible to miss.

Not that Hong Kong's parks aren't lovely, in fact they were one of my favorite things about the city. Hong Kng Park, where first started jogging, was situated right in the middle of high rises, with the mountains and pink skyscrapers on one side and the harbor buildings on the other. The Hong Kong Zoological Gardens, just a few blocks up, house flamingos, other exotic birds, and a jaguar. Tai chi is popular here, and young children pose to have their pictures taken in front of the statue of some British king or consort. A very steep walk or tram ride up the hills leads to Victoria Peak, Hong Kong's premier tourist attraction. The two-mile loop aroud the peak offers views of Kowloon and the south side of Hong Kong Island. Sweet flower smells waft across the path, and the flow of visitors is occasionally interrupted by a Mercedes or BMW emerging from one of the luxury residences nestled ostentatiously on the side of the mountain.

My favorite of these houses was a simple modernist villa painted a reddish persimmon. The large square windows looked out over Central Hong Kong and revealed a stark white interior. It was unclear whether the place was inhabited or waiting for a certain 22-year-old expat with champagne tastes to move in and make it home.

But back to Thai trains. The interiors are a stunning retro combination of robin's-egg blue walls, cobalt curtains, brown leather seats, and silver luggage racks. When you first board the train the seats are in upright facing pairs, but by 10 pm a conductor has come by and unlocked the upper compartment, which turns into a sleeping berth, and then unfolds the two lover seats to make the bottom bed. Both are covered with a soft brown mat, clean sheets, a pillow, and a terrycloth blanket.

The lower bed is more desireable, and more expensive, as you can look out the window at the passing scenery and all-night food stalls (Thais love to eat at any time). Being on the bottom also bypasses awkward scrambling up narrow metal ladders to get to sleep.

Thai train attendants, like Thai policemen and other government officials, are unusually attractive. This is undoubtable due to their close-fitting uniforms, either entirely brown or a classic white shirt/blue pants combo. The hats and silver buttons are snappy, but the real key to their sexiness is the snug trousers.

Rolling past a shanty town on the outskirts of Bangkok, I realize the only time I have ever seen slums like this in Thailand is through a train window. You see other things as well tavelling by train: gigantic Buddhas perched on hills, large SUVs speeding off into the suburbs, a bored teenager lounging on top of a wall, one leg dangling toward the track.

The passengers on these trains range from well-heeled young Thai women rolling suitcases behind their stillettos to upcountry families who carry their luggage in red, yellow, and green striped plastic totes to Indian businessmen in identical white undershirts and khaki pants. Some routes, like the train to Chiang Mai or down to the islands, are more prone to the backpacker set, solo ragged travellers or blissful couples. On the way back from Chiang Mai I shared a car entirely filled with an aging French tour group. They were the loudest of all, carrying on over their boxed lunches and bottles of beer.

This train, heading up to the Laos border, is nearly empty, but I managed to meet an Indian computer programmer who wanted to talk about the US and a Canadian kid just out of highschool who is travelling around by himself for a few months. The Canadian and I ended up heading to the border together, where we met an English bloke also travelling alone. We've ended up sticking together and getting triple rooms in guesthouses, which saves us a bit of money and provides some company.

Update

2005-04-21T20:45:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I posted here. Long enough, in fact, for me to: a) spend a few days in Krabi, Thailand, where I rock climbed for the first time ever and sea kayaked to the most gorgeous beach I have ever seen, complete with crystal clear water and vast karst formations and b) spend a month in Hong Kong, where I crashed on my friend Dave's floor until I decided to stay there for a few months, found a room in an apartment with some very cool Hong Kong girls, and promptly realized that I am incapable of commitment to any given location and hopped back on a plane to Bangkok.

Now I'm back in what is starting to feel like home, but I have scheduled my flight to real home for May 12. This is both frighteningly soon and also a ways away, and in the interim I am going to go to Laos, which everyone says is fantastic. I wanted to go to Vietnam too, but time and lack of money are getting in the way. China was called off because the travel companions kept falling through. So basically, I still have a good chunk of Asia I want to visit, and will probably start planning my next trip as soon as I get home.

Hong Kong is like a slice of New York City perched on the mountains of San Francisco or Seattle. The steep and winding streets make as little cartographic sense as those in Boston, and they have cute British names, remnants of the until-just-recently occupation. Having never been to China, I can't say how Chinese it feels, but it certainly felt more Western than anywhere else I've been in Asia. That being said, there are still whole streets dedicated to selling ginseng and birds' nests and strange black wooly stuff. I sampled a bowl of some Chinese herbal remedy at a shop that brews these herbs all day long and keeps them displayed to attract Hong Kongese businesspeople on their way to important moneymaking activities. Almost as common as the herbal medicine shops are stores dedicated to fresh soymilk and tofu, which is kept in water just like Cal's (the tofu I grew up eating in Chico).

Food is big in Hong Kong, and the markets, lit up by iconic red lamps, sell huge fish live or sliced into bloody chunks and all sorts of meat parts dangling on hooks. This meat looks far more appetizing in the restaurants, where I sampled Beijing-style pork pancakes (a precursor to mu-shu?), Sichuan dan-dan noodles, and many, many dumplings. At a restaurant specializing in Xiao long bao, delicate and juicy steamed pork dumplings, I also witnessed the Shanghainese method of noodle-making, which involves stretching and twisting and throwing around an incredibly elastic lump of dough until it somehow magically turns into long, thin noodles perfect for slurping. They say Marco Polo stole the idea for pasta from the Chinese, and this technique looked so similar to classic pizza dough manipulation that I wouldn't be surprised if he lifted some other methods as well.

Handbags, however, rule the city. Without a Luis Vuitton or Gucci logo on your purse, you may as well get back on the donkey-cart you rode in on, because these Hong Kong women know and love their designer accessories. There's an entire chain of stores devoted to reselling mint-condition designer bags, presumably because the truly wealthy women buy and discard these handbags with every season. Window shopping was quite fun, and I not only found plenty of shoes to lust after but also a store that is custom-making a pair of pumps I designed, which will be delivered to the states in a month or so.

One day I went out to Macau with Dave's friends who were visiting, and we wandered around this island city that feels strangely Caribbean, probably owing to the Portuguese colonial architecture and a fair number of palm trees. I ate some delicious eggy custard and was excited by the funkiness of the buildings, which made me want to get back to Southeast Asia.

And now I'm back, and have already consumed a few kilos of fresh mangosteen, rambutan, and watermelon. I hear Laos has good fish and some of the best coffee in Asia, so it should be a delicious finale to my sojourn.

Old and New

2005-04-20T07:41:00.000-07:00

DSCN1167, originally uploaded by nimsabroad.

Man Mo Temple, on Hollywood Rd., just a block away from my apartment.

Hong Kong High-Rises

2005-04-20T07:40:00.000-07:00

DSCN1198, originally uploaded by nimsabroad.

British-Chinese

2005-04-20T07:39:00.000-07:00

DSCN1172, originally uploaded by nimsabroad.

One of the first train stops built by the British in the New Territories (leased about 50 years after Hong Kong Island).

Incense

2005-04-20T07:38:00.000-07:00

DSCN1174, originally uploaded by nimsabroad.

Inside a temple...luckily this one was an open-air courtyard!

Street Scene

2005-04-20T07:21:00.000-07:00

DSCN1140, originally uploaded by nimsabroad.

I loved the boxy red-and-white Hong Kong cabs, particularly next to the picturesque herb shops.

Cantonese Opera

2005-04-20T07:18:00.000-07:00

DSCN1146, originally uploaded by nimsabroad.

I stumbled upon a free performance of Cantonese opera one night. The costumes were stunning, though I could only put up with the nasal singing for so long.

Macau

2005-04-20T07:15:00.001-07:00

DSCN1155, originally uploaded by nimsabroad.

Old Bailey St.

2005-04-20T07:15:00.000-07:00

Old Bailey St., originally uploaded by nimsabroad.

Dave's apartment is just up the hill from this old jail, on appropriately named Chancery Lane.

Queen's Road

2005-04-20T07:11:00.000-07:00

Queen's Road, originally uploaded by nimsabroad.

The main drag in Central Hong Kong

The Boys: Taylor, Austin, David

2005-04-20T07:09:00.000-07:00

The Boys: Taylor, Austin, David, originally uploaded by nimsabroad.

Austin is David's friend from Harvard, and Taylor is Austin's friend from high school. We all hung out last week; this shot is from a night out on the town

Miracle Cow

2005-03-16T13:00:00.000-08:00

On the front page of the Bangkok Post yesterday (pointed out to me by Rafi):

Khmer man claims to own miracle cow

Phnom Penh-A Cambodian man claims his cow is possessed by a magic healing
spirit that emigrated from Thailand, but religious leaders and officials say
it's not true.

Kim Chan, 40, of Kampong Trach in Kampot province, said his cow became
possessed last week and now its dung and urine cure diseases.

He had been visted by a woman on a bicycle who fell down and wept when she
saw the cow, claiming to recognise in its eyes a spirit that had until
recently possessed a cow in Thailand. The animal has become known as Preah
Kou, or Holy Cow.

Officials were quick to dismiss the bovine as an ordinary animal.

"We had a holy cow here a year-and-a-half ago. You don't get two that close
together," said Deputy Governor Khun Somnang. ---DPA

Recollections of a week in silence.

2005-03-08T17:35:00.000-08:00

The setting: A Buddhist retreat center, consisting of several meditation halls and dormitories built out of concrete and large red brick. Sandy footpaths link these buildings, the rectangular and circular ponds, and the hot springs. Coconut palms and other tropical plants provide a bit of shade and a garden atmosphere. Venture down any of the paths and you will find a wall topped with barbed wire. The place is peaceful, almost eerily so, and it's strange to be in a place that could so easily be transformed into a detention center or concentration camp. We're all here voluntarily, of course, but the simplicity and institutional quality of the center sets off my flight instinct. I had imagined a more forested, mystical environment, with gilded shrines and incense, but this sect of Theravada Buddhism is entirely focused on attaining Nibbana through meditation and contemplation, and rejects the gaudy materialism that makes the rest of Thai Buddhism so "exotic" and attractive.

The schedule:

4:00am Wake Up Bells. Thanks to the concrete slabs for beds, getting out of bed at this hour is not as hard as one might originally think.

4:30am Inspirational Buddhist Reading. Read by a different retreat participant each day. These usually consisted of repetitive and tautological statements such as: "The heart is untamed, like a wild tiger. Thus, the heart must be tamed..." and so on.

4:45am Sitting Meditation. Try to arrange 3 allotted cushions and a prayer bench (a small rectangle of wood) and your body into some vaguely comfortable position and watch yourself breath, from nose tip to navel.

5:30am Yoga. The men leave for a separate meditation hall, and the women stay in the main meditation hall to do sun salutations and other poses, led by a blonde Scandinavian retreat participant who likes to talk about chakras.

7:15am Sitting Meditation. Again.

8:00am Breakfast. Women sit on one side of the open-air dining hall, men sit on the other. The chairs are green metal, with a ridge around the edges that makes sitting comfortably in them essential impossible. Food is served in huge vats, and we take our portions in large metal bowls. Every morning, breakfast is a type of rice stew (congee) made of brown rice, some beans, and other random bits of vegetables. There's a large platter of cabbage, fresh morning glory, cucumbers, and bananas. I quickly learn to avoid the stew and stick to a spartan breakfast of a cucumber, a banana, and a cup of tea. The first few days the tea tasted of Tiger Balm, and I could hardly stomach it, but then they started making it with these long fresh leaves, and it was bland and vegetal enough to be inoffensive. Before eating, we wait for everyone to serve himself or herself and then say this food reflection: "With wise reflection I eat this food/Not for play, not for fattening/Not for beauty, not for intoxication/Only to maintain the spiritual way of life. Thus I let go of unpleasant feelings/ and do not stir up new ones. Thus, the circle of life goes on/ Calm, at ease, and in peace."

8:30am-10:00am Chores and free time. As there is nowhere to go and no reading or writing allowed, free time is less exciting than it sounds. We can lay down in our rooms (but not outside), take a "shower" by pouring buckets of water over our heads from the communal water cisterns, do laundry, or wander around the retreat center.

10:00am Dhamma Talk. In which a monk or a nun gives us a teaching on Buddhism. Again, these are usually repetitive, nearly impossible to understand based on the limited English, and excruciating to sit through.

11:00am Sitting Meditation.

11:30 Walking Meditation. Choose a small path on which to walk (between 25-40 paces long). Walk slowly, using a 5-part motion (pressing up the heel of your back foot. lifting your back foot. moving your foot. placing your heel in front. pressing your whole foot down). Pay attention to your walking movements. When you get to the end of your path, turn around in a clockwise direction and go back.

Noon Sitting Meditation.

12:30pm Lunch. Like breakfast, but the food is a little better. There is always brown rice, and two to four vegetarian/vegan Thai dishes. The pumpkin curry was the best, sweet and spicy, but some of the dishes were just kind of wilty and bland. On good days we had fruit: mango, watermelon, or pineapple.

1:00pm-2:00pm Chores and free time.

2:00pm Dhamma Talk.

3:00pm Sitting Meditation

3:30pm Walking Meditation

4:15pm Sitting Meditation

5:00pm Chanting. Led by a bitter, nihilistic British monk, who could be quite hilarious, we chanted Pali verses to the Buddha when not being regaled with the British monk's stories about Buddhism, English soccer matches, Thai children, dead dogs, and any other topic he felt moved to expound upon.

5:45pm Loving Kindness Meditation. Led by a Thai laywoman, who always wore a white blouse with a rounded, scalloped collar and a long black skirt. With the umbrella she carried to keep of the sun, she looked like a 19th Century missionary. Loving Kindness meditation consists of building up feelings of love and kindness towards yourself, your loved ones, people you have wronged, people who have wronged you, and the world in general. Mantras are suggested, and it's much more accessible than the anapanasti concentration meditation we're supposed to be practicing the rest of the time.

6:00pm Tea. Your choice of the grass tea or Ovaltine. Some days there is hot powdered soymilk instead of Ovaltine. This makes people unhappy.

6:30pm-7:30pm Hot Springs and Free Time. The women's hot spring is a section of a canal that is filled with naturally hot water. It is shady and lovely. In the traditional Thai style, we are required to bathe in sarongs, which takes a while to get used to. The water tends to form large bubbles under the fabric, creating impolite farting noises. The sarongs can also float open or fall down, and cling uncomfortably on the walk back to the dormitory.

7:30pm Sitting Meditation.

8:00pm Group Walking Meditation. The women walk in a single file line around the round pond. The men do the same around the rectangular pond. The sky is very dark, so we can see tons of stars.

8:30pm Sitting Meditation.

9:00pm Return to Dorms.

9:30pm Lights out.

The Cast: The retreat participants are almost entirely western foreigners. I would guess an average age of late 20s. At 22, I'm definitely one of the youngest, but I was surprised by how young most of the participants were. I was expecting more aging hippies. Hairstyles range from dreads (about 5 participants) to monastically shaved heads (3-4 girls, several guys). We are all required to wear loose-fitting clothing that covers us from the neck to below the knees, no shoulder showing allowed. Some of these people seemed very normal, others were pale and zombie-like.

The Abbot, Ajan Poh, is a 76-year-old man who wears round glasses and the classic saffron monk's robes. He begins every talk with a slow, raspy, "Good Morning, Every Good Friend." He is wise to the point of being incomprehensible, and responsible for teaching us to meditate.

A Very Small Nun, who looks like a less-wrinkled Yoda in her simple white robes. She laughs and smiles at her jokes throughout her Dhamma talks, which generally focus on Boun (merit).

Koon Rienhard, retreat coordinator. A tall, skinny German man with a friendly demeanor. His talk on how to sit comfortably while meditating was the most practical thing I heard the entire time, though I never did manage to find the perfect position.

The Mother Superior. Actually just the coordinator of the women's dormitory, but this plump American lady had a way of strolling about the dormitory in her long skirts that added a distinctly Sound of Music element to the experience. Though she seemed quite strict, I got my "Climb Every Mountain" moment with her on my final day.

Speedy Gonzales. A sweet Thai lady who runs the retreat. She always wore a T-shirt with a yin-yang symbol on it, and in her one address to the retreat participants, she explained that Koon Reinhard called her Speedy Gonzales because she never slowed down. She has been practicing meditation for 12 years, and still struggles with it.

The British Monk. An incredibly skinny Brit, approximately 50 years old. Arrogant and nihilistic, with a morbid and odd sense of humor. Extremely intelligent, and the only one who explained Buddhism in a complex way. I initially loved him, but by the 5th day became rather infuriated by his negativity.

The Action:

On the first day I overslept and missed morning meditation and Yoga.

On the second day nothing happened.

On the third day I felt very angry, adopted the mantra "My Retreat," meaning that I wasn't going to let the Buddhist rhetoric get in the way of my own goals, started doing headstands in my room, ate lunch slowly and mindfully, and gorged myself on 3 cups of hot chocolate in a bout of self destruction.

On the fourth day I had a "monkey mind" and volunteered for a second chore, scrubbing moss off the steps of the women's hot springs, and renounced sugar.

On the fifth day I meditated straight through 1 sitting, 1 walking, and 1 more sitting meditation.

On the sixth day I got really pissed off by the British Monk and then Rachel, Libby, and I were naughty schoolgirls and went off whispering our escape plan.

On the seventh day Rachel and Libby left in the morning and I worked on completing my time at the retreat gracefully.

On the eighth day I left the retreat center after yoga, and walked up the 3km road to the highway, enjoying the jungle and farmland that welcomed me into the free world.

Conclusions: I am not a Buddhist, and I find the idea of a happiness that comes from having neither overly positive nor overly negative emotions completely unappealing. At this point in my admittedly fortunate life, I am perfectly happy to take the good with the bad, and plan to continue to look for happiness in sensory stimulation, even though I understand that these things are impermanent.

Eating very little makes me feel really good, and improved my yoga practice immensely. I was far more flexible and less sluggish than when I eat my normal diet. I didn't even crave coffee at all.

Keeping silence, sleeping on a very simple bed, and eating basic food was not hard. Listening to religious talks and sitting upright on a concrete floor for 12 hours a day was very hard, and surprisingly painful.

The summer after third grade my parents sent me to girl scout camp, even though I had quit Brownies two years earlier. I ended up in a bunk led by a very Christian mother who was recovering from chemotherapy and very strict and bitter. At this point in my life my valley girl slang was at its height, and I used "oh my god" in, like, every sentence. The counselor's daughter and her friends started yelling at me for swearing, and I was like, "oh my god, what are you talking about?" This went on for far too long before I realized that I was taking the Lord's name in vain. The lake was full of stagnant algae, and I was attacked by a giant bee that attached itself to my upper lip. When my mom came to pick me up on the last day, she was shocked to learn that I hadn't showered the entire week because I was scared of the communal shower. There were elements of that summer camp in this retreat, mainly the discomfort of being surrounded by an organized religion to which I have no emotional ties, but also the sense of being stuck somewhere that just felt wrong. I'm glad I went to the retreat, but I'm also glad I left early. After a full week, I got a taste of discipline, which is mainly what I was looking for, and realized that I'm not in search of spiritual fulfillment.

Retreat

2005-02-28T10:34:00.000-08:00

I've checked myself into a 10-day silent meditation retreat. While the surroundings are beautiful and the food seems great so far, there is this strange discomfort that comes from voluntary participation in an institution. We each have our own little cell within the women's dormitory, which definitely looks a bit like a jail. My fellow women (I've had very little contact with the men, as they are off-limits) seem nice and friendly, and though I won't be talking to them, I feel they will contribute to the positive atmosphere. This is definitely going to be a challenge, but I'm looking forward to the discipline of it. I'm also looking forward to March 11, when I will return to the world of internet and cell phones. Until that time, you won't hear from me!

Muay Thai

2005-02-21T16:00:00.000-08:00

I'm not much of a sporting enthusiast, but when my roommates invited me (and Libby and Rachel) to see some Muay Thai (Thai Boxing) fights on Saturday night, it seemed like one of those cultural experiences that I should embrace while over here.

The matches were held in a gym on the 8th floor of a high-rise near my apartment. We entered in the middle of a match between a British guy and a Thai guy, both slender and muscular. They were very evenly matched, exchanging punches, kicks, grapples, and all sorts of other moves that I have no jargon to explain. While they fought, a repetitive jingly Thai tune played throughout each round, and the men went about trying to bring each other down. With any particularly strong punch or kick, sweat would fly off their bodies and onto the spectators, who, pressed as close to the ring as possible. Unlike American boxing, which I find completely incomprehensible, this was much more exciting and, due to the large movements, easier to follow. When the Farang boxer was announced the winner, the expat crowd went wild.

The next match was between two Thais, and this time we saw the warm up, which was as intriguing as the fighting. They began in kneeling meditation, wearing round headbands with tails sticking out in the back. This headgear looks a bit like a tennis racquet with some fringe on the end and a head going through where the strings would be. Apparently the fighters are given these headbands by their coaches for good luck, and if a woman touches one it loses its fighting charm. Then they got up and started doing various warm-up moves, again to the same strain of music. It was almost dance-like. The boxer in red shorts was making very aggressive postures, in an attempt to intimidate the boxer in black, but once the fight got started it was obvious he was completely out of his element. The boxer in black dropped him to the ground at least twice in every round, sometimes with kicks to the head.

Though I still don't quite understand the rules, I’m looking forward to seeing a professional match with Mark in March.

P.S. There are more entries about Cambodia on the way, they will be backdated and appear before this entry. I'm in Bangkok until the 23rd, when I am heading to Koh Pangnan to meet up with Libby and Rachel, and then we are going to a meditation retreat from March 1-10. I'm also going to Hong Kong on March 20, and I'm planning to stay there for a few months to help a friend from school prepare a magic show. I'm very excited to explore another city. There will be a trip to China thrown in somewhere in April, and in June or July I want to travel through Vietnam and Laos back to Thailand before returning to the States at the beginning of August.

Bayon

2005-02-16T18:03:00.000-08:00

Bayon, originally uploaded by nimsabroad.

climbing Angkor

2005-02-14T17:24:00.000-08:00

climbing Angkor, originally uploaded by nimsabroad.

Libby, Me, Rachel. Climbing to the top of Angkor Wat

Angkor Sunrise

2005-02-14T06:21:00.000-08:00

Angkor Sunrise, originally uploaded by nimsabroad.

Chinese New Year in Battambang

2005-02-12T23:01:00.000-08:00

Chinese New Year in Battambang, originally uploaded by nimsabroad.

toilet

2005-02-12T22:23:00.000-08:00

toilet, originally uploaded by nimsabroad.

The dirty truth of travelling in the developing world.

dirt bike

2005-02-12T22:21:00.000-08:00

dirt bike, originally uploaded by nimsabroad.

Pampering

2005-02-11T16:04:00.000-08:00

Having found the French quarter of Phnom Penh, where high-ceilinged riverside cafe-bars serve fresh salads and cold cucumber-mint soups, Rachel, Libby and I were determined to stay. Chi Cha Guest House, located on a street that seemed to mark the line between the completely touristed riverside area and a slightly more Cambodian area, provided us a vast room with mustard-yellow walls and two immense beds above an amazing Hallal Indian restaurant. For less than we paid in the backpacker area, we were able to get a bit of France, Cambodia, and India all within one block.

The National Museum of Cambodia holds rooms and rooms of Khmer statuary, but I was most impressed by the massive door/windows that ran along the walls of the building. Each one was made of a huge slab of wood, and painted with a muted blue-and-white border and a central stylized Khmer dancing couple, different on each door. It's one of those old-fashioned museums that has yet to discover track lighting and stylized frosted glass placards, but someone with a great sense of design had set a huge green-bronze statue of the head and arms of a reclining Buddha-cum-King Jayavarman VII in front of an aquamarine canvas. As the top of his head had eroded away, the effect was quite striking.

Wandering into a large wat complex, we found a shrine that incorporated a psychedelic spinning light behind the Buddha's head and several Christmas light cones scattered around the traditional tall yellow candles. As we left, a novice monk called us "sexy". Kitsch and smut creep into every religion, it seems.

Chinese New Year began while we were in Phnom Penh. On the way to the bathroom at a western cafe, I discovered a large pig, cured red and with a large knife sticking into the back of its throat, laid out as an offering in front of an altar. Flies buzzed around its curled hooves, and other fruits, flowers, and incense completed the picture.

Aside from the pig offerings, which I saw several times more, people in Phnom Penh seem to celebrate Chinese New Year the same way Thai people celebrate western New Year--they lay a large mat out on the floor and enjoy a huge feast with their families.

Our last night in the city we went to have wine at the Foreign Correspondents' Club, a great old building right on the river. It was lovely to enjoy the luxury of cushy leather chairs and a peaceful view after a few days of psychologically intense sightseeing and before pushing off for Siem Reap to see Angkor Wat.

Once in Siem Reap, however, Chinese New Year foiled my plans again, as we discovered that this town of guesthouses was entirely booked out with groups of Asian tourists. After much unsuccessful wandering, we finally hired a tuk-tuk and just told him to find us a room to stay in. He wasn't doing any better than we were, as the partying owners of guesthouses would invariably wave us on. And thus we ended up at the City Royal Hotel, a place far out of our normal budget, where I sweet-talked us into an apartment-sized suite for a discount price ($75), still about ten times more than we usually pay for a night. Much girly squealing, jumping on beds, and making use of the pool and bathtub ensued.

We woke up early with the intention of getting to Angkor before the crowds, but realized over buffet breakfast that there was no way we would be able to avoid them due to the New Year. Which meant we spent a luxurious morning lounging around in the hotel before heading off to Battambang, a small city that Lonely Planet promised would give us a sense of "real Cambodia".

Phnom Penh

2005-02-10T22:22:00.000-08:00

Phnom Penh, originally uploaded by nimsabroad.

Libby, Me, Rachel. In front of a dilapidated colonial building

Development

2005-02-09T13:56:00.000-08:00

The wooden houses on the outskirts of Phnom Penh have sunburst shaped gables, and as we rode into town I took this as a sign of charmingly dilapidated French colonial architecture to come. Without really thinking logically, I had somehow envisioned Phnom Penh as a kind of mini-Paris, and found myself rather disappointed when our 14-hour journey ended at Lakeside, Phnom Penh's backpacker ghetto. Like a mini Khao San Road, but much dirtier, this little alley comprises guesthouses and traveler bars that open out over a rather large lake.

The next morning Libby returned from her 6am run to inform me that she had found the Parisian part of town, and the three of us set off to get our long-awaited cafe breakfast.

Walking through Phnom Penh, the streets alternate between tiled boulevards and dirt roads. Occasionally, mountains of garbage pour out onto the streets. The city exudes the odd combined atmosphere of a once vibrant place that has been abandoned and a small capital in the process of sporadic development. The strange feeling I had carried with me began to make sense as I learned that during the Khmer Rouge regime, 1975-1979, Phnom Penh was abandoned for 54 months.

The result is the remnants of a planned French colonial city that has been repopulated after an extreme agrarian communist regime. Though the UN came in the '90s to help rebuild the country, from what I can tell it is still a pretty lawless place, with rampant corruption and a minimal welfare system.

Visiting the S-21 genocide museum, a former school that was turned into a prison and torture center, policed almost entirely by young children, I was amazed how political idealism can so easily be converted into complete abuse of power and genocide. Pol Pot and his cohorts were students in Paris when they came up with the idea of returning Cambodia to its rural, communal, pre-colonized state, but by the time they were in power they were murdering people who wore glasses for being bourgeois intellectuals.

While there were many negative aspects of colonial rule and the Cambodian monarchical home-rule that began after World War II, this attempt to force people back into rural life was clearly flawed. As homogenizing and un-sustainable "modernization" and "globalization" is, learning about the Khmer Rouge convinced me that romanticizing the days of subsistence farming is not a constructive way to deal with contemporary problems.

I was also acutely aware, seeing torture instruments, mass graves, and photos of some of the millions of people killed by the Khmer Rouge, that genocides like this are still occurring. There must be ways to oppose or stop this, but then you get into the murky waters of meddling and "preemptive strikes." Also, when my own country has an administration that uses torture, and lacks any such memorial or museum to acknowledge the hundreds of years of slavery, I can't help feeling that the world is a bit helpless.

Last fall I took a class on "The Political Economy of Development", and, though I was relatively interested in the subject at the time, I nonetheless slacked off and did very little of the reading. Now, being in a developing post-colonial, post-communist country, I really wish I had spent more time getting to know development theory that might help me understand what is happening here.

First Impressions

2005-02-07T22:43:00.000-08:00

When we scrape off the dirt that continually builds up on our arms it balls up like the tacky deep brown flesh of the tamarinds we've been shucking compulsively in an attempt to distract ourselves from the sweat and boredom of riding in a 25-year old Korean minibus along a rocky red clay road away from the corrupt hassles of the border.

Every hour or so we get out of the bus to wait for the rumbling metal rafts that function as ferries across the surprisingly frequent and wide rivers in southern Cambodia. At these stops bathrooms are the main source of humor: a corrugated metal shack set out on open boards over the river where schools of fish gather to watch the warm streams of piss; a green sign that announces solemnly, "Toilet: Pay the Money"; a surprisingly clean commode reached by walking past two pigs sleeping in a mud puddle.

At some point in this morning between observing dead roosters slung over the back of a motorbike and introducing my fellow bus companions to the revitalizing waters of young coconuts, I became one of a threesome. Libby, a freckled Londoner who kind of lives in Beijing and walks with indolent confidence, and Rachael, a red-headed Canadian with wicked silver hoop earrings who wavers on the border between her years of hitchhiking to organic farms and those of child psychology and mothering several children and a husband were both, like me, traveling alone and with a vague plan to head to Phnom Penh and then Angkor Wat, spending about ten days in Cambodia. We became friends instantly, and the following days confirmed our similarities and compatibilities. They both possess "that irresistible combination of intelligence and unruliness" that a friend attributed to Jewish women, and we make quite the trio.

When we split off from the rest of the group, who were heading to a beach town, we reveled in having a whole air-conditioned mini-bus to ourselves on a paved road. It quickly became apparent that this empty space was there to be filled by random grandmothers, insurance salesmen, construction workers, and anyone else who flagged it down from the side of the highway. In Cambodia motorbikes far outnumber cars, and the few vehicles that join the weaving throng are crammed with passengers. The back of a small pick-up truck will hold 20 people standing up, checkered scarves tied around their heads to deflect the wind and dust. Sometimes, men will pile on top of a minibus, where luggage is meant to be, or small children will pack into a three-wheeled cart pulled by a bicycle. Markets with piles of baguettes and vegetables flank the road, and as school lets out children in white and blue uniform walk or bicycle their way home over the mounds of grass that divide burnt rice-fields into sliding squares.

outhouse

2005-02-07T22:41:00.000-08:00

outhouse, originally uploaded by nimsabroad.

The first of many pit stops

changing plans

2005-02-06T22:07:00.000-08:00

So I'm not in China...

Due to the anal bureaucracy of the PRC, my travel plans were disturbed the night before I was scheduled to fly to Kunming. The backpack was packed and everything, but then I recieved a call from Monica, the girl I was supposed to go with. Her visa application had been rejected because the blank pages in her passport did not say "visas". I could have headed off by myself, but as I had been becoming increasingly wary about travelling in China over New Years (the country shuts down from what I hear), I decided to hold off on China until the next break in the teacher's schedules. My visa, which went through fine, is valid until May 1st.

Which still left me with the problem of my expiring Thai visa. After going to meet Liz on Koh Samet for 24 hours of beach time, I'm on my way to Cambodia. I'm currently in Trat, some eastern travel hub of a city, and I leave tomorrow at 5am to get to the border and take a ferry to Sihanoukville, a beach in southern Cambodia. I've already had dinner with some of my fellow passengers, who seem fun. After a bit of time on the beach I think I'll head to Phnom Phen and Ankor Wat, but I'm enjoying the unplanned, serendipitous nature of this jaunt. Completely unburdened by luggage, as I somehow thought I would go back to Bangkok before heading to Cambodia and am only carrying my weekend beach supplies, I'm looking forward to seeing where this all takes me....

Pink

2005-02-02T23:03:00.000-08:00

Since returning to Bangkok I have been attacked by a million mosquitos and my legs are now covered in pink splotches of caladryl lotion. Also, I just bought a pair of honest-to-goodness athletic shoes despite the screams of my inner urbanoid fashion advisor. They are grey with pink stripes and lots of sporty details. What has this city done to me?

The Link

2005-01-31T19:42:00.000-08:00

Cooking class began at 10am, when I would walk past houses smothered in orange flowers to The Link, Laeng's simple little restaurant next to Pai High School. My having found this place seems serendipitous, as the incredibly simple set up of a few wooden tables and a chalkboard sign does not call this restaurant out as a fantastic place to eat and learn. In our several conversations I found that Laeng likes it this way; she moved to Pai specifically because she wanted a very relaxed life and a flexible schedule. Between cooking for groups going out trekking, her regular local customers, and her cooking and flower-carving students, she manages to live with minimal stress.

When I got to the restaurant, Laeng gave me a handwritten copy out the day's recipes, which I then copied into the notebook she had decorated with a charcoal sketch of a potted plant. Then we would set to work preparing a dish for lunch. The first day I made Pad See Ew, and though it is a fairly simple dish she showed me tricks for using the wok to ensure that the Chinese broccoli is tender and the noodles and egg don't clump together. That night we made two versions of Tom Yam soup with herbs gathered from her garden, and the amazing stuffed soft bean curd. We also visited Pai's small market and picked out ingredients for the following days' meals, including a very fresh orange fish from a green plastic tub. Back at Laeng's outdoor kitchen, which runs the length of her house under a palm thatch awning, we scaled and cleaned the fish in her large red clay sink.

The following day I spent all morning chopping and mashing to prepare a green curry. Making curry from fresh ingredients calls for incredibly fine mincing and significant time with a mortar and pestle. I think when I make it at home I will take the shortcut of using a food processor, which Laeng says shouldn't cut the flavor too much.

On our breaks, Laeng would serve me fresh lemongrass tea or watermelon shakes, and we would talk about food and herbs and Thai ideas of health.

That night we steamed the fish Hong Kong style, which turns out to be a fancy version of the Dane St. salmon. I loved that it involves a technique called "Yow!": tossing hot oil onto the food to quickly sear in the flavor. We also made Pak Boong Fai Daeng, the Thai version of hollow vegetable, which will certainly become a staple dish.

For my final day I made a whole dinner: crispy betel leaf and seafood salad; yum woonsen; garlic basil chicken with crispy basil garnish; and fresh salad with garlic-basil-sesame dressing. This was my first experience deep-frying, which was splattery and fun. As there was no way I could eat all this myself, I invited three people I had met to help me eat it. We also had some of Laeng's coconut-tapioca pudding, which was icy and wonderful.

Pai at night continued to be wonderful; my second night I went to a bar called Mellow Yellow because I knew they had chocolate cake, and found myself surrounded by all your typical British pub characters, plus some Thai designer types and a computer with a killer play list. I ended up spending time there every night, and becoming friends with a former Pai resident and his friends. We spent many late-nights by a campfire next to the river fueled by our invention of Thaigaritas--tequila shots poured into halved fresh passionfruit.

I couldn't bring myself to leave Pai immediately after finishing my cooking course, and spent my last day there visiting Laeng again to try her wonton soup (excellent) and reading in my hammock. It's easy to see how people never leave Pai, but I had to get back to Bangkok--to sort out my visa to China.

Rather spontaneously, I have decided to join two friends of Rafi on their trip to Yunnan province for Chinese New Year. We're flying into Kunming on February 5, and will then head to Lijiang, a small and ancient city, and to Tiger Leaping Gorge, a beloved hiking spot. When Daryll and Monica head back on the 13th, I will start heading east toward Hong Kong, stopping in a few places along the way. I'm planning on visiting a friend from school in Hong Kong, and we will certainly be having Dim Sum and other fantastic dishes together, as our friendship started around a wok in a dilapidated dorm kitchen. Then I plan to go through northern Vietnam and Laos on my way back to Bangkok. The whole trip should last around 6 weeks and several hundred miles...I can't quite get my head around it!

Stuffed Tofu with Crispy Garlic

2005-01-30T23:48:00.000-08:00

Stuffed Tofu with Crispy Garlic, originally uploaded by nimsabroad.

Cooking Class

2005-01-28T23:22:00.000-08:00

Cooking Class, originally uploaded by nimsabroad.

Pai Bungalow

2005-01-25T23:21:00.000-08:00

Pai Bungalow, originally uploaded by nimsabroad.

Crossroads

2005-01-23T21:01:00.000-08:00

Mae Hong Son, like any small mountain town, has one bar that is the place to be after ten at night. I ended up spending two nights at Crossroads, a strangely British feeling pub in the center of town. On the first night I went there with Molly (Rafi's friend), where we met a former software engineer from Seattle who was helping teach at a school for Shan refugees in town. After a few games of pool we had procured invitations to visit the school the next day, and the Aussies who had ditched me that afternood turned up and apologized more than was neccessary for having taken too long showering, thus missing me. They were quite dissapointed that I couldn't come along on the trek with them, but in the interim I had made plans to go to this school and had accepted a special essay order.

The next day I climbed up to the wat again before meeting to go to the Shan school. In this refugee village they were leading a very simple existence, farming and living in small shacks by a little stream. Someone obviously donated money for the school, which is the only solid building in the village. We helped the kids make those twirly hippie sticks and played with them for a couple of hours. It was fun, and they seemed excited to see the guys who had been working there and vaguely intrigued by me and Molly, though like most kids, were too involved in their own games to pay much attention to boring old people.

Later I wandered down to the night market to get dinner, as the night before I had noticed a woman setting up a stand with Khao Soi, a northern specialty. It's amazing in these touristy towns how often you can just go one block and suddenly find yourself in an exclusively Thai area. In this case I merely rounded the lake from the handicraft section of this incredibly small market and was in a food area with no other westerners.

When I found the table with the telltale yellow noodles, I squatted down on the tiny wooden bench and asked for Khao Soi, and the woman running it handed me a bowl of yellow wheat noodles, in a mild red coconut curry soup with stewwed chicken, herbs, lime juice, pickled vegetables, and crispy noodles, which I slurped down next to the young thai guy sitting next to me. When I stopped to tell them the dish was "a roy" (delicious), they seemed pleased that I was ordering this dish and that I knew a little Thai.

Then I went to check out the dessert tables, where I suddenly found myself a source of hilarity for the nine women and ther incredibly effeminate ringleader who crowded around the tables to talk to me and push their sweets on me. After trying a fruit shaped candy that seemed kind of like banana marzipan, I tried to explain to them that I couldn't buy a whole bag of rot and spun sugar using one of my new vocabulary words, "im laow" (full). For some reason this totally cracked them up, and I stuck around to talk to them with my limited Thai and their little English. The guy seemed to know the most English, and he would translate to the women while affectedly fingering his camoflauge hat. They all seemed to be from Kon Kaen, in the northeast, and were having a great time. I hung out for a while beng laughed at while from the other side of the lake came the sounds of a Thai dude with a guitar covering Eric Clapton hits at the christmas-light decoreated Korean barbeque.

I found myself back in Crossroads, where I was now a veritable regular. There were more solo travelers to meet, including a crazy guy who works up in Alaska for BP and persisted in agressive storytelling about the wildlife on his lake and his hatred of big cities. More pool ensued, and I was offered a ride to Pai with one of the guys who owns the bar.

I was pretty apprehensive about Pai, having been told that it was just overrun with obnoxious hippie backpackers, but I decided to check it out and look for a one day cooking class.

The road to Pai is a seriously windy mountain road, cutting through small patches of farms and stilted huts and past the occasional roadside hill tribe handicrafts stall. It was a beautiful day, and as we drove through the mountains with the windows rolled down the air alternated between mildly hot and pleasantly cool.

I'm actually quite pleased with Pai. The town is completely aimed at tourists, but it has a decidedly artsy/healthy bent, and all the coffee shops and gallerys (of which there are several) are run by hip young Thais who have chosen an incredibly chill lifestyle. Just outside of town there is a venue called "Be Bop," which is probably the best live music venue I've been to in Thailand. It's large and well designed, with comfy leather lounges and paintings of famous musicians. The first band was two Thai guys and two farang guys playing an impressive set of blues/funk/classic rock covers and originals. It was a great change from the 10 Thai and American pop songs played on a loop out here. The second act was some kind of vaguely soft rock/reggae band.

I love my bungalow--I have a small stilted bamboo hut that is just big enough for a bed and a nice white ring of mosquito netting. The walls are woven bamboo and the roof is made of leaves. While it is the most rustic of all the rooms I've stayed in, it also feels the cleanest and most appealing, and is set in a lovely garden. Luckily, I'll be staying there for a while, as I found an incredible cooking teacher. I'm having one-on-one lessons, and when I went to choose the dishes to cook I ended up with three days worth of food. Today we cooked Pad See Ew, Tom Yam seafood soup, and Cantonese soft stuffed tofu in soy sauce. Laeng, the woman teaching me, worked as a chef in a 5-star restaurant in Bangkok, and knows both Thai and Hong Kong style cooking. She grows all her own herbs and makes all of her chili pastes from scratch. When I found out that her specialty is wonton soup I knew I had stumbled upon a perfect culinary mentor!

Crossroads Bar

2005-01-22T23:06:00.000-08:00

Crossroads Bar, originally uploaded by nimsabroad.

Wat Styles

2005-01-21T23:25:00.000-08:00

Wat Styles, originally uploaded by nimsabroad.

At the wat up on the hill, wooden Burmese-style wats sat next to huge white chedis.

Wat on a Hill

2005-01-21T23:24:00.000-08:00

Wat on a Hill, originally uploaded by nimsabroad.

Fish caves and mud baths

2005-01-20T18:36:00.000-08:00

Flying into Mae Hong Song the airstrip seems to cut right through the rows of houses--from afar these look like any american suburban homes, but upclose they're mainly made of unfinished wood and corrugated steel. Still, with yards full of bouganvilla and palm trees, it's a pretty idyllic mountain town.

On the banks of the lake in the middle of town, middle-aged women in brightly colored sweatsuites slowly excercize or dance to traditional music piped from a little black stereo. It's hard to tell what their objective is, as they seem neither graceful nor aerobic, but they diligently follow the two younger women in manipulating bamboo sticks and doing twirly hand movements. Occasionally, the lone dorky jogger will stop to do a few toe-touches before lurching on.

This morning I woke up early and started the steep walk up to a wat on top of one of the hills overlooking the town. I hadn't gone far when I was picked up by a touring Thai mother/daughter duo, who wanted to practice speaking English with me and shared their breakfast of barbecued pork, sticky rice, some garlicy minced semi-cooked pork, and cold roti. All of it was pretty good except the minced meat, which was a bit dodgy even for me.

I can see the spires of the wat's chedi from this internet cafe--it is wrapped in what from here looks like giant white christmas lights. The look is similar to that of Tibidabo, this strange hill in Barcelona that hosted an amusement park and a night club, neither of which we made it to over spring break, but which intrigued me the entire week. In the morning, mist covers the city of Mae Hong Son, so up at the wat it seemed as if we were floating.

Up there, I met a greek-australian kid, Nick, who is traveling around with his cousins. We were supposed to arrange a trek, but they never showed up at the place they were supposed to meet me. Such are the trials of the solo traveler. However, I later ran into a friend of Rafi whom I had met briefly in Bangkok. She happens to be in town for a day or two, and I'm about to meet her for dinner.

This afternoon I took a motortaxi to this natural mud bath/hotspring, where I got a full-body mud mask treatment. The mud was really smooth and the ladies just painted it on me with a huge paintbrush! The spa was in a nice valley in the mountains, with agricultural fields and some lovely flowers. It was really sunny and warm--it almost felt like being in Calistoga.

Then I headed over to the fish cave, which is one of this area's most beloved and inexplicable attractions. Basically, it's a national park with a ton of food stalls at the entrance, and Thai families go there to stroll down a brief path to this little cave-like overhang where huge fish congregate. They feed them fruits and nuts, as these are supposedly spiritual vegetarian fish. Some things are just too random to understand, but it's interesting to see what amuses other people.

Chiang Mai Wat

2005-01-18T22:31:00.000-08:00

Chiang Mai Wat, originally uploaded by nimsabroad.

Chiang Mai redux

2005-01-18T20:00:00.000-08:00

My mood started to lift today, as I awoke semi-refreshed after a night spent huddling under my shawl on a lumpy dormitory bed in an attempt to keep the mosquitos away from me. I've always been very attractive to mosquitos, and here I feel like there is a cloud of them following me at all times. Even the woman who gave me a wonderful oil massage this evening remarked, "oh, lots of mosquito bites!" as she worked on my legs.

The good thing about Chiang Mai is it's a very walkable city. I spent the whole day wandering in and out of wats, which were actually really cool. The prevailing temple architecture style here is Lanna, which to me looks like the classic Thai style I've been expecting. The temples are built out of teak wood, with swooping tile roofs supported by huge beams and ornamented with pointy gold thingys (technical, eh?) at either end. Most of the wats also have scenes from the Buddha's life or the Ramayana painted on the inside walls; these range from kitschy colorful cartoons to elegant gold stencilwork on a bright red background. And of course, there's a shrine at the back of each temple with one to ten large gold buddhas. Off to the side they might stick a statue or picture of some serene and starving monk.

They also sell coffee everywhere in this city, which must be a result of the fact that this city is completely overrun with tourists. The range of storefronts seems to be: travel agent, internet shop, coffee shop, massage parlor, souvenier shop. I assume there's a less touristed area somewhere, but after walking all day, I still haven't found it.

After consulting with my friend Liz, I have determined that Pai will also be full of backpacker guesthouses, so my new plan is to fly to Mae Hong Song tomorrow, a town on the Burmese border that is supposed to be more laid back. I may even take a guided trek from there, or just hang out at the mud baths.

Chiang Mai

2005-01-17T15:20:00.000-08:00

The train ride from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, a much touted city in the Northwest of Thailand, takes 15 hours. Sleeper berths are pretty cool, but there's only so much sleep a girl can get when the train jolts to a stop every hour or so and the guy across the aisle has some sort of respiratory disorder.

I've been in town about three hours now, and I'm feeling a bit dissapointed. Somehow I thought Chiang Mai would look different than all the other Thai towns I've been too, but it just seems to have more guesthouses and tourists than the typical land-locked city. I'm trying to get myself excited about going to see wats, as the only other thing to do here seems to be taking treks from guesthouses to gawk at local hill-tribes, which I am not going to do.

It's also hard traveling alone again after having such an enthusiastic travel partner. I feel a bit lost, and of course it's no fun going to restaurants by myself!

Hopefully I will feel more interested in Chiang Mai tomorrow, otherwise I'll head on to Pai, a smaller town in the mountains that's supposed to have a good music scene.

Had Sadet

2005-01-10T23:06:00.000-08:00

Had Sadet, originally uploaded by nimsabroad.

April and me on Koh Pangnan

Ha, see, sahm, song, neung!

2005-01-08T19:30:00.000-08:00

April arrived in Thailand bearing Christmas cookies and my mom's delicious dried fruit cake; she's now been here over a week and I've been having a fabulous time.

The day after she arrived, we headed up northeast to Khorat (Nakhon Ratchasima), a province in the Isan region. Our plans were to see Khmer ruins and silk weaving, which were easily carried out using the excellent bus service. Isan is probably the least touristed region of Thailand, which made being there really fun. Though few people speak English, everyone we met was incredibly friendly and helpful--as we rode our rented bikes around the small village of Phi Mai, families eating on their doorsteps (a favorite Thai pastime) invariably waved and called out "Happy New Years!" to us.

The Khmer ruins were really incredible. Of all the things to see while traveling, ruined temples and palaces never fail to excite me. We went to Prasat Phi Mai, in the center of a small rural town, and Pranum Rung and Muang Tam, which were about an hour away. All of them had excellent carvings that seemed to mix Hindu and Buddhist imagery, with tons of nagas, the mythical seven-headed serpent the Khmer kingdom was rumored to be descended from.

We went to Pranum Rung on December 31st, and the steps leading up to the ruin were covered with Thai visitors. It was the first time I've encountered so many Thai tourists as opposed to farang. I have a feeling they were there for the New Year, but we didn't get a clear story from anyone.

That night, we found ourselves in Khorat, the capital of the province. It's a fairly large and dull city, with a big night market and a few restaurants, but we happened to walk by De Cafe, the one stylish bar in town, complete with blue lighting and a random poster of Kurt Cobain. When we came back later for the New Years celebration, the place was packed with trendy Thai punks, who quickly pulled us into their dancing and singing along to Thai and American pop and hip hop. They guys in this place had even more incredible outfits than the girls, from spiky mohawks and plaid scarves to navy blazers, shorts, and Converse All-Stars. At some point there even seemed to be a contest between two guys for best hair, though everything was in Thai so it was a bit hard to decipher. I was very pleased, however, to be able to count down to midnight in Thai!

After New Years we went to Ayuttaya to visit my college friend Dave, and then flew down to Koh Samui, where we spent one night on a crowded beach before fleeing to Koh Pangan. This time, it was sunny the whole time, and we stayed on an even more beautiful beach in a fantastic bungalow up on a cliff. It was wonderful and Swiss Family Robinson-esque as ever.

Today we're back in Bangkok, and spent the whole day shopping at Chatachuk market, a vast and unbelievable weekend market that sells everything from trendy clothes by new designers to tarantulas. We managed to spend five hours there before becoming completely exhausted, with frequent breaks for food, including my first durian experience. I think it's a taste that may take me a while to appreciate.

I have two more days with April here before I embark on a new travel adventure...details to come.

silk weaving

2005-01-07T22:42:00.000-08:00

silk weaving, originally uploaded by nimsabroad.

A matmee (Ikat) dyed silk weft.

Karaoke Bus

2005-01-07T22:40:00.000-08:00

Karaoke Bus, originally uploaded by nimsabroad.

April and I took this bus from Khorat to the silk weaving village. It gave us a chance to learn that most of the Thai pop songs we had been hearing the night before were by a horribly cheesy boy-band with the audacity to call themselves "Clash"; the lack of the definite article makes a crucial difference.

Ayuttaya Buddha

2005-01-07T22:34:00.000-08:00

Ayuttaya Buddha, originally uploaded by nimsabroad.

April and I are dwarfed by this buddha!

Happy New Year!

2005-01-01T00:00:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!, originally uploaded by nimsabroad.

Somehow this picture doesn't quite capture just how cool the kid with the glasses was. He was the ringleader, and even seemed to win some kind of impromptu beauty/hipness contest.

Sheltered by a Naga's Hood

2004-12-30T22:33:00.000-08:00

Sheltered by a Naga Hood, originally uploaded by nimsabroad.

"The earthquake is classified as "great" -- the strongest classification given by the NEIC."

2004-12-27T03:30:00.000-08:00

News of the giant tsunami that hit Thailand's southwestern islands reached me around 3pm this afternoon. Bangkok is far from these islands, so we did not feel the quake nor suffer any devastation.

Rafi has been on the phone all day seeking information about the disaster for newspaper articles. The impact was horrible -- 30ft. waves smacked into Phuket, Koh Phi-Phi, and Koh Lanta, some of the most popular tourist destinations in the country. They're estimating over 300 people dead in Thailand, and 10,000 across Asia.

It's just impossible to imagine sunbathing on a beach like I was on just a few weeks ago and unexpectedly being swept out to sea by a monster wave. Even worse are the thousands of people whose homes and livelihood were destroyed almost instantaneously.

Two years ago today, my friend Eli drowned while canoeing on Butte Creek. He was a sweet, intelligent guy with a serious dose of machismo, and his scrambled eggs and trumpet playing were unparalleled.

Both of these events remind me of the terrible power of water and the arbitrary nature of life.

As 2005 approaches, I'm thinking of all of my family and friends. I love and miss you all, and feel so lucky to have you in my life. May the coming year be sweet and joyous.

"It's not fun, it's just very different"

2004-12-22T22:50:00.000-08:00

After one of my last posts, a family friend sent me an e-mail saying that despite my insistence that Bangkok feels surprisingly un-foreign, she was getting a distinct "Lost in Translation" vibe from this journal.

I watched the movie again tonight lying on my couch in my pajamas, which I've been wearing all day, and I have to agree. Maybe it's that I'm now six weeks into my journey, or whatever this is, but I feel far more lost now than when I first arrived.

Yesterday while walking on huge, modern Sukhumvit Road I saw a man carrying a yoke with baskets full of large round honeycombs and a full-size elephant walking down the street.

On Monday, I was at another party at the Jim Thompson House, this one a book launch for a book on modern Thai Culture. They were serving classic street food and had a blind band, which is somehow traditional here. As opposed to the Hi-So crowd at the first affair, from what I could tell this crowd was mostly journalists and writers. I briefly met a few of Rafi's friends, and their friends, one of whom is another former Let's Go editor. Somehow, here, I feel comforted meeting fellow alumni.

Scarlett Johannsen (who, intimidatingly, was only 17 when the movie was filmed), tells Bill Murray that she doesn't know what she wants to do. She tried writing, and she tried photography, but was disappointed by her mediocre efforts. In the background, Anita Ekberg coos over a kitten in "La Dolce Vita".

I can't decide whether or not to look for a job in Bangkok, and I'm already obsessing about what I will do and where I will go whenever I return to the US. It' s enough to make me wish that someone had written out a career path on the back of my diploma.

Obviously, I just need to walk into a hotel bar and forge a brief, intense relationship with an aging comedian.

The Hunt for Coffee, vol. 1

2004-12-22T19:19:00.000-08:00

When I woke up yesterday, workers were banging away fixing the tile in my roommate's bathroom, and I needed to leave the apartment if I was to get any work done. So I found myself at Starbucks, that little yuppie-haven that pops up even over here.

As much as I dislike supporting their corporate empire, and generally find their coffee to be overly dark and over priced, Starbucks promises a table for your laptop under those familiar colored glass lamps anywhere you go. The Starbucks I chose has a particularly nice location with a private garden patio, but no outlets for the laptop, which cut my visit short. It also happens to be next door to an ice cream shop called Tuscanini's, which does serve Earl Grey tea ice cream, but lacks the pretty cups and funky wait staff of its Cambridge doppelganger.

I've had some problems finding acceptable coffee and good places to drink it in Bangkok. Based on some pervasive advertising campaigns, instant coffee, particularly Nescafe, is seen to be the elegant, sophisticated choice here. The strong native cafe thung, brewed in large cheesecloth sacks dunked into tin cans of hot water, is inexpensive street fare. Personally, I find this 10Baht coffee far superior to the 60-100Baht instant variety.

Thai iced coffee (cafe yen) is made with sweetened condensed milk and extra sugar, and is served to go in plastic bags with a straw sticking out. Some of the stands use cafe thung, while others use the vile Nescafe. Luckily, there is a young woman who sells this coffee right on our street, and I have even, after a few mornings of saccharine indulgence, convinced her to make my cafe yen without sugar. She looked at me like I was a bit crazy as I was trying to explain this in broken Thai and hand signals, but now she doesn't even ask me before mixing up a strong batch of iced coffee.

The problem is that her hours are limited and variable. For a while, I thought I was missing her because I was getting out there too late in the morning; when I saw her serving coffee to the guys eating lunch at the food stand next to her, I decided I had been arriving too early. Now, I'm fairly certain that there is no schedule whatsoever, and I must not rely on her to be there for me every morning. I finally bought some coffee at the supermarket to make at home as necessary, but I'm still on the hunt for a good place to sit down with a cup of (real) coffee and a book.

hammock

2004-12-14T21:43:00.000-08:00

hammock, originally uploaded by nimsabroad.

The view from my bungalow on Koh Pangnan

News from the Hammock

2004-12-14T09:30:00.000-08:00

If any of you have been wondering at my lack of e-presence over the past week or so, fear not--I was merely playing Robinson Crusoe on Koh Pagnan. The delightful thing about my on-line editing job is that I can tell them not to give me any work for ten days, and then use those days to do absolutely nothing.

Koh Pagnan is the central island in a triad of islands in the Gulf of Thailand. While the erection of an airport has brought luxury resorts to Koh Samui, and coral reefs bring divers to Koh Tao, Koh Pagnan is the beloved island of backpackers, due to its broad beaches, dirt-cheap prices, and full-moon parties. The week I was there, banners all over the island announced a Black Moon Party, a trance-fueled spin-off of the wild and infamous lunar bashes. I didn't go, but rather spent that night on a different beach sitting around a campfire with friends from Bangkok. It was quiet, and the stars were shining like mad.

I headed down to Koh Pagnan by myself, on a sleeper train. When we arrived in the train station at 4am, there was a three-hour wait for the first ferry, and I found myself sitting on a rural train-station platform with six beautiful couples. I was most entranced by two matching couples--both of the guys were slim, dark-haired, and wearing horn-rimmed glasses and Bolshevik-style caps, and their girlfriends (wives?) had dark hair, cute bangs, and blue eyes. The German version of this couple had more tattoos than the other (I never did figure out where they came from). The problem with couples, particularly those on honeymoon, is that they're generally uninterested in meeting other travelers, as they spend most of their time gazing at each other or holing up in sleeper berths.

After piling into the back of a crowded truck and taking two ferries and then another truck, I finally made it to Haad Kohm, a quite cove on the north side of the island. For $6 a night, I had my own bungalow on the sunset side of the headland, complete with bathroom, porch, hammock, and mosquito netting. As a little girl, I desperately wanted a ring of white mosquito netting to give my bed that romantic safari touch, but until this week I had never actually slept under the stuff. Lest you think my life here is too cushy, I assure you that the box of greenish netting draped over that bungalow bed had more of a Blair-Witch than English-Patient vibe. Not only had someone ingeniously used band-aids to patch a few (but not all) of the holes in the net, but the draping top collected a lovely assortment of dead bugs.

I was more into the netting on the porch--my very own hammock, in which I spent many hours reading and looking out over the ocean. Hammocks really are an amazing innovation, and when the weather turned cloudy after my first two days there, I was perfectly content swaying on my porch and thinking about desert islands, the Swiss Family Robinson, and the culinary potential of coconuts and fresh fish.

This is literally a land where food drops into your hands--as I was swimming, I saw large silver fish leaping in and out of the water. They would be in the air for about three yards. Also, I was warned not to sit under coconut palms, as around 12 people a year die from being hit on the head by falling coconuts.

After several days on this very quiet beach, hanging out every night with the other low-key travelers at the resort, it was a bit of a shock to move to Haad Yao, where I met my roommates and three other Bangkok friends. Haad Yao is larger and busier than Haad Khom, though still beautiful and pretty relaxed. The travelers here completely fit the backpacker stereotype--the girls have dreadlocks, the guys have shaved heads, tattoos and piercings are ubiquitous, and there's an unfortunate preponderance of fisherman pants, which look like diapers on all but the most slender and poised dancer-types. Here, my daydreams changed from castaways to pirate out post. This culminated in Jack's Bar, a tree-house-esque Buddhist-Hippie-Pirate Lair draped in flags and sarongs decorated with images of Bob Marley, Shiva, and Che Guevara (who is trendily worshipped over here). Colorful characters with funny accents sprawled in hammocks or on the Thai cushions, and there were strange animal heads and seashell lamps hanging from the palm-thatch ceiling.

It's always funny when traveling to find yourself in a place so perfectly fitting the image of the country that it feels almost fake. When I first went to Paris with Abigail, I was shocked when she told me that the cafes with wicker chairs and neon cursive signs were not in fact tourist traps, but rather that cafes in Paris really are this perfectly Parisian. Similarly, the confluence of blue water, swaying palm trees, beach bungalows, and partying backpackers on Koh Pagnan was disorientingly familiar from that Leonardo DiCaprio classic, The Beach.

Loy Katong

2004-12-02T21:42:00.000-08:00

Loy Katong, originally uploaded by nimsabroad.

Flower rafts on the canal

Bangkok for the Holidays

2004-12-02T18:35:00.000-08:00

This year, I ate Thanksgiving dinner in a nearly empty bar with a kid I hardly know. Without any plans for the big day, I threw together this outing with Chris, a fellow Harvard '04 grad in Bangkok. My BK magazine told me that Mojos was a friendly blues bar that served excellent ribs, so I gave them a call at 6pm on Thursday to see if they were serving Thanksgiving dinner and if they could squeeze us in. The friendly voice on the other line said he thought with two people we should be fine; when I arrived at 8pm, Chris was the only other person in the cavernous place. We proceeded to eat our vast plates of turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, and the works. At some point a middle-aged black guy with a neon-pink over-the-shoulder electric keyboard and a Sony Vaio laptop showed up to serenade us with blues standards. He was pretty good, actually, though we wondered if the music was being piped out of his computer. A couple of groups of old white guys with Thai girlfriends trickled in, but we were certainly the only ones eating.

Though Thanksgiving is typically one of my favorite holidays, I felt surprisingly at peace with this strange celebration. It just doesn't feel like Thanksgiving here, with temperatures hovering around 90 degrees and the fact that it's not actually a holiday here. I felt much sadder while I was in Boston that I couldn't go home for Thanksgiving, but this being my fifth year away from home, I suppose I've stopped expecting it. Though I still wished I were eating my mom's stuffing or Sigrid's pecan pies!

Christmas, on the other hand, hit Bangkok the day after Thanksgiving, just as it does in the states. Though Thailand is a Buddhist country, they apparently like holidays so much that they have sort of adopted Christmas and New Years. I hear these are the only nights of the year that bars are allowed to stay open all night. For now, however, Christmas is confined to the malls, and the decorators seem to be taking their cue this year from the 1950's aluminum tree craze. Every mall has a huge silver or gold tree-shaped cone of lights, liberally decorated with bright pastel globes. At Emporium, the high-end mall by my house, these globes even change color with stunning garishness. So even though I have learned that you can't escape Christmas, the Easter-like nature of the decorations makes it easier to ignore. I'm just waiting to see what they do with Santa Claus.

The day after Thanksgiving, however, was a real Thai holiday: Loy Katong, the day Thais honor the water. My Thai friend, Aaee (I have no idea how to spell or pronounce his name), took me to a wat (temple). I was expecting something solemn; instead, the atmosphere was like a carnival. There were crowds of people milling about buying brightly colored fruit drinks and glow sticks. Further in were tables where you could buy katong, little floats covered in flowers, with incense, candles, and tissue paper flags sticking up out of the bouquet. I picked out a katong of Thai orchids, chrysanthemums, and a magenta tissue paper flower, and we went down to the canal to send it off with the others. All over the country, waterways must have been covered with these little boats; as Aaee pointed out, putting a bunch of styrofoam into the river is a pretty crappy way to celebrate the water.

After letting off the katong we went into the actual temple to light incense, place lotus blossoms at the base of a buddha statue, and then press little squares of gold leaf onto each of the many different statues within the temple. This wat is very wealthy because it has a huge Buddha statue; the seated figure was at least twice my height. I was glad to be with Aaee, as I would have had no idea what to do otherwise. Also, I was the only farang there, so I there's no way I would have found my way to this particular wat without him. It was nice to finally be in a place where I felt slightly out of place and like I didn't know what was going on -- so far Thailand has felt very un-foreign.

While we were waiting in traffic to get into the wat, Aaee taught me Thai numbers. Motorcycles were zooming by us, and every one held a girl sitting on the back holding a katong out to the side as her helmeted boyfriend wove through the dense traffic.

Random Thai Commercial #1

2004-11-24T11:12:00.000-08:00

Broadcast on the flatscreen TV at a SkyTrain stop:

A young girl, around 13, has horrible bright red spots on her face. She sits on her couch petting her small white lapdog and talking to the camera. Then, the dog jumps up and runs over to the wall, where a cockroach has appeared. The dog pounces on the bug, devouring it, and returns to his owner. The girl welcomes him into her arms, and he greets her by licking her face, leaving cockroach legs on her cheeks.

From what I could make out, this is supposed to sell acne medication.

Hi-So and High Yoga

2004-11-22T21:00:00.000-08:00

Since arriving in Bangkok, I've attended two events covered by the Thai press. The first was an art opening at the Jim Thompson House, an elegant Thai-style mansion filled with 8th-18th century Asian artifacts, built and named after the mysterious silk dealer who disappeared in the forests of Malaysia in 1967. Bill Booth, the president of the Jim Thompson Thai Silk Company, who knows my dad through AVL, invited me to the affair.

To get to the house, I picked my way down a dark, seemingly closed street. The only people around were a few Thais packing up a food cart for the night. At the end of the Soi, however, uniformed guards were ushering Mercedes-Benzes and other luxury cars into a glowing courtyard. Behind the gates, the compound was filled with a beautiful international crowd taking advantage of an open bar and giant wheel of French cheese, aged 100 years. After wandering around looking lost, I found some hostesses who pointed the way to Bill and Eric Booth. They welcomed me and set me up with a glass of wine and a personal tour-guide of the house. The house itself is incredible; Mr. Thompson was quite the collector and decorator. www.jimthompsonhouse.com has pictures and information. However, it's hard to jump right into a shmoozy cocktail party when you don't have any friends or a Hermes bag. The people watching was fun for a while, and I was charmed (and unnerved) by the traditionally dressed greeters who waied as I entered and exited the exhibit. I'm just not used to that type of deference, however culturally determined it may be.

Then this Thursday I went with my roommates and some friends to hear Jose Padilla, a Spanish DJ, spin his "signature Ibiza sound" at the ballroom of the Sukhothai Hotel. My Time Out guide lists the Sukhothai as the most stylish hotel in Bangkok, and from what I saw of it, I wouldn't disagree. As we approached the entrance and waited to get our tickets, a young Thai guy with a faux-hawk and gold aviator glasses pushed by us, two cameramen in tow. He was talking to the camera, pointing out the name of the ballroom, and basically holding court on the red carpet. From all appearances, this was a Thai MTV DJ.

Inside, the ballroom was filled with more fabulous people, though this crowd was younger and wilder than the Jim Thompson set. Hilariously stylish outfits and buckets of Moet & Chandon were the norm. As my friend Liz said, "I feel like I just fell off the turnip truck!" I haven't watched enough Thai TV to recognize celebrities, but I'm sure they were there. We amused ourselves listening to the music and watching the disco lights reflecting in the shallow pool dotted with Khmer Pagodas. For pictures, see www.sukhothai.com.

Needless to say, the lifestyle here is quite different than the one I led in Chico or Cambridge. One minute I'm quaffing cocktails in an outdoor lounge with beds for seats, the next I'm eating morning glory a.k.a. hollow vegetable a.k.a. ong choy a.k.a. pak boong fa dang on a metal table next to a food cart. We have maids that clean our apartment once a week, but I feel like I can't afford the clothes I want. Not to mention fitting into Asian sizes--for the first time in my life I'm too busty to buy shirts. By virtue of the dollar being as high as it is (though Bush is doing his best to counteract that), I have access to places and people that I normally wouldn't. It's fun, but strange, and I suppose I'm undergoing an initiation into the nouveau riche. Bangkok is a prosperous city, and I've seen very little poverty, which cuts down on the guilt a bit.

So, to explain the title of this post: "Hi-So" is the term for High Society here, which I covered above. High Yoga is what I've been doing on the 23rd floor of a high-rise in downtown Bangkok. The studio, Yoga Elements, focuses on Ashtanga Yoga, and the classes are in English. I'm finding it uniquely relaxing to look out over the Bangkok skyline while holding twisting triangle, and plan to keep attending as often as possible.

As a closing note, I'm slowly learning more dishes to order, and sampling whatever anyone puts in front of me. Recent favorites include duck with crispy basil, fried pork intestine with plum sauce, and snow fish cooked with ginger and scallions (think Dane St. salmon). I've yet to set my Thanksgiving plans, but it's hard to get excited about turkey with all these new dishes to try.

2004-11-16T23:26:00.000-08:00

Navigating the narrow sidewalks of Bangkok, Rafi keeps pointing out ladyboys, but I'm too entranced by the street vendors' piles of fruit and barbecues of porkballs to catch the tall and beautiful transvestites strolling past us.

Bangkok is, as I was warned, a hot and heavily polluted city. The first few days here I was overwhelmed by the traffic and the language gap, but after four days on the beach at Koh Samet, I'm thrilled to be back in the city. With a vocabulary of three Thai expressions and a skytrain card, I'm all set to go exploring. Plus, we just hooked up the wireless internet.

The apartment itself is quite the expat hangout. Potted palms and a wall of bamboo flank the low-slung furniture and indoor hammock, we always seem to have a vase of orchids, and the dark parquet floor happily accommodates bare feet. It makes me feel like Hemingway--if it weren't for social norms I'd be sitting around bare-chested with a low ball of whiskey and a shotgun. Apparently parties here draw crowds in the hundreds and the occasional boy band, so I'm bound to meet people merely by living here.

I've already met several of Rafi's friends, as we all went to Koh Samet, an island close to Bangkok, for his birthday this weekend. I've never had such a perfect beach experience. The sand is soft and white, the water was warm and imminently swimmable, and the island is a national park, so instead of high-rise hotels there are only bungalows tucked into the trees above the beaches. Every night we ate fish caught right off the island and grilled at our request. On Sunday, Ja Rai, a Thai plastic surgeon friend of Rafi, ordered us every type of shellfish available. My favorite was mussels steamed with ginger and herbs, though barbecued soft-shell crab certainly has its charms.

At night, we all went dancing at a bar right on the beach. This is where I hit it off with Liz, Rafi's friend who teaches English in Pattya, a beach town that draws crowds of sex tourists. Despite hearing the same five dance-chart hits on a loop, we tore up the dance floor. She's coming to Bangkok on Thursday so we can go to some nightclub with a shark tank and go shopping in one of BKK's many expansive malls. I'm glad to have found a partner in crime.

More news soon; pirated DVDs of The Simpsons and the apartment complex pool are calling.

Apartment Photo

2004-11-11T21:41:00.000-08:00

chicodoggs, originally uploaded by nimsabroad.

Taken in our apartment when I first arrived.

From left: Me, JD (Rafi's friend from Chico), Rafi