January 2011
14 posts
rituals, prostitutes, and circles of concern
Well today was like a microcosm of everything I’ve learned since coming to thailand. I woke up kinda early and went to breakfast. I was the only customer who spoke Thai to the servers. It was so strange that all these customers were in thailand, eating an english breakfast, and speaking to the servers in english. It was like they didn’t evern want to learn the culture. I guess I should...
writing on a broken keyboard
Today was the perfect day for my last full day in thailand. We woke up early and had an overpriced, but delicious, english breakfast at a scottish restaurant. Afterward we rented a motorbike and headed to the cape to visit a temple. It took a long time to get there, but we sang american pie and other classic songs as we rode around the phuket country side. After that, we snuck into a private beach...
new places
So I got out the hospital and the course I have been a part of for the past month is now over. I’m in phuket for apart of my vacation with my friend from the trip, sarah, and a thai friend, ome, who studied at my university last year. We arrived in phuket this morning (1/28) at 6 AM, after taking an overnight bus from bangkok. We sped along the hills in Phuket to go meet someone Ome knew at...
unexpected adventures
Well I’m a little too tired to write a really long post and illustrate the incredible experience I had at Bumrungrad International Hospital yesterday… but I will try. we arrived around 11 and filled out a couple papers at the ground floor registration. The forms asked whether I was “Buddhist, Catholic, Christian, Muslim, Sikh, or Other” which I found as pretty interesting....
updates
We arrived in bangkok at 8 AM yesterday. Since then I’ve been battling a pretty intense fever. It went up to 103.2 earlier today then dreopped to 98.6 then back up to 102 It’s like my body doesn’t know what it wants. The area of bangkok we’re in is very touristy. Speaking broken thai and dressing extremly conservatively has been a norm for us. We cover our shoulders, wear...
Appearances
Theres a bunch of things in my life and observations that seemed liked something… but the reality ended up not fitting my initial thoughts. Thailand appears to be a land of smiles, Thai Buddhism appears to be serene, and sometimes people don’t fit your expectations. When I first came here, I had some idea of child prostitution, but I didn’t know what that entailed. Yesterday we...
conundrums and early mornings
Yesterday we came back from spending an overnight in a hill tribe village (the pulong/durang). We walked through the hills to see their farms and ate papaya straight from the tree. We ate peanuts straight from the ground (they’re purple and white before they are dried out). That night we had a “cultural” exchange with the young girls and boys in the village. Even though we...
food practices
There are quite a few things I want to talk about, so much I want to say, but I haven’t had enough time to make it to an internet cafe, aside from today! But, there’s one thing I need to discuss first: Thai food. In short, I love it and it is going to be beyond difficult to go back to America. The best Thai food I have had is stuff I had no idea what it was. One waitress was kind...
the first processes
Where to start. Yesterday we came in to the city after a nice 1 hr flight from bangkok. We had a little time to relax at our hotel room — saun doi house. The place is beautiful, talking birds, shrines, quietness, palm trees, and open air libraries. Last night we walked around town, got a low down of places to go, where to eat, concepts of thai culture, and words/tones to remember.
We went...
stil lstrangers, weird thoughts
I only have 15 minutes to type. it’s been a whirlwind: i’m in bangkok. the first flight to tokyo was very turbulent and i was on a double decker plane! it was pretty intense. the flgiht was long and boring. However, I did read peter’s mother’s card and I almost cried it was so sweet. we finally got to tokyo at 5 PM tokyo time (which was 3 am central time). Right away we had...
3 tags
legs
Well it’s my last night in america. I woke up this morning at 3 AM for my 6 AM flight. Mischief looked so confused when I turned on the light this morning. I’m going to really miss him.
I met Rosalinda at the airport for breakfast: we both landed at 8:30 AM. A little while later I met Peter at the airport. It was wonderful. Peter and I went to the Mall of America and ate dinner at...
