the rapid fire update...
Hey everybody....
Life has been grand. So grand I've had no time to breath.
So here's the coles notes of stuff I've slacked on writing about.
Mom came!! It was awesome. We had a blast... and I wouldn't have survived without her. Within 24 hours of mom's plane landing I got four new students with no warning... so, happy vacation mommy... you are being put to work. And she was a lifesaver. I showed her around Bangkok a bit. We went to the market and ate some good food, and met up with some good people. Then we went away for the weekend... plus then I convienently came down with the flu on Monday and Tuesday - so I recovered at the beach. But seriously, we flew down to an island called Koh Mook. It was beautiful and pretty isolated. One day we went on this snorkling tour and they took us to this place called the emerald cave, and you swam for about 10 minutes in a pitch dark cavern, and eventually you see this glowing light and we were in a beatiful lagoon. It was brilliant. After that we chilled at the beach, and read a lot, and had a ball. She was in Bangkok for a few more days, and then much to Mikes exctitement she flew home.
About a month after Mom left I went to Bali. It was an impromptu trip. How good is my life that I can say that I'm taking an impromptu trip to tropical paradise? I know you all are feeling sorry for me right now. Anyway, all my plans for Songkran (thai new year) fell through, so I decided... once again, to leech onto a trip with Kristen and sheila. It was really fun. Bali is gorgeous. We spend a day lounging by the pool. Oh by the way, we stayed at a REALLY fancy hotel right on the ocean... but the ocean was all rock and no beach... so we had to settle for an amazingly, breathtaking pool. The next day we went to Kuta... which is the main beach town. The day after that we went to Ubud... which is a little inland, and has cool little cultural shopping stuff... and they got the monkies. The last full day in bali we spent another lounging day by the pool. The weather was amazing, the company was amazing... I had a blast... I can't wait to go back in a week!
A day after arriving back in Bangkok, I was back on a plane but this time heading to Singapore. I had a workshop I was attending there. My friend Aynsley lives in Singapore, and put me up in her apartment and showed me around when I wasn't at the conference. Singapore is amazing. Probably my favorite place so far. It's just so lush and green and refreshingly clean after life in Bangkok. It's also really modern... and the downside REALLY expensive. A beer is 10 canadian dollars. Insanity! Great town though. I will definitely be back.
Since then I've pretty much stayed in Bangkok... if you throw in a few weekend jaunts to Samet. Life has been mad busy. I've been scrambling to get everything done before the end of the year, I have to pack... cause I'm moving. My friend Martin came over on a layover in BKK. Nicole DeMarsh came on a trip out here for a week. It's been great.
Jamie and Javier arrived on sunday night... so it was good to see a taste of home. They are in Samet right now recovering from jet lag, and leaving me alone with my chaos. They come back on Thursday, and then friday we head on our crazy asian adventure.
Plan: Cambodia, Bali, Kuala Lumpur, Koh Phi Phi, Bangkok.
I will be home late on June 20th. Mark your datebooks. Call me, if I had a phone. Facebook me or email me to let me know when you are around... because I wanna see as many people as possible before heading back out here on July 22nd.
Hope to see you all soon. Miss all you Canadians sooooo much and can't wait to be home.
Sorry that this blog is just informative and not entertaining... my brain is literally mush.
Love Crystal
one night in bangkok...
Hi again!
I still have a bunch of reporting to do on various trips that I have gone on in the last few months... however, there is a story that I want to document before it flies out of my head.
Last weekend a bunch of my friends from work decided to go to this bar district called RCA. This is a trendy area in downtown Bangkok that is lined with about 5 or 6 clubs to go out dancing.
Anyway, I had arranged for a bunch of us to meet up outside one of the clubs. Once I got there I tried to get inside, only to discover that I had forgotten my id. Oooops. But I figured, this is Bangkok, I'll throw the bouncer a couple hundred baht and he will let me in, right? WRONG. No dice. They were not budging. I even had my thai speaking friends talk to the bouncers and nope... no luck.
So we walked down the road to the next bar to try out luck and again, no one was letting me in. So I figure my new night will consist of me getting back in a cab, driving 45 minutes home - grabbing my id and driving 45 minutes back to the club, then dancing for about 45 seconds and then going home again.
Then my friend Bua shouted, "Hey - there's another white girl, wait here!" and she took off. She returned about 5 minutes later with a photocopied passport of Kristen Brandstatter from Austria and told me to use that to get into the club.
At first I was a wee bit nervous, because I've seen Bridget Jones, I know what happens in Thai prisons, and I didn't want to be accused of fraud. However, my friends assured me that it would be fine. So I handed the guy my "ID" and he looked at it really hard, and then let me in.
So then we wandered around the monsterously crowded bar. Ok - the bar was packed with people, but the congestion of the room was heightened by the wacky way that Thai clubs are layed out. They don't really have a dance floor. They have a floor that has all these little coffee tables spread out everywhere... not just bar tables around the perimeter... but ALL OVER. It's quite illogical... but who am I to judge?
Anyway, we found a coffee table to dance around and had a good time dancing for a while. The music was a mix of American pop music, thai rock and thai hip hop. Then at midnight it was Jeff's birthday. I looked over at this group of Thai girls and saw that they had 3 birthday cake candles that they lit, and then had their friend blow out... I thought it was a brilliant idea. So I swiped them off the table, and lit them for Jeff. Then he turned to me and said, "I think I'm gonna cry. I can't believe you brought candles with you! And you've been carrying them around all night!"
I replied, "Yeah! I'm awesome!"
Then around 1 o clock, I went to go outside to get some fresh air, just to discover that the doors were being baricaded by police. "Ahhh, they are on to me and my fake ID!" Just kidding. But seriously there were like 50 officers and then a camera crew and they wouldn't let anyone leave or tell anyone what was going on. So we were just trapped. So I stood in the hallway waiting to be let out and I look over at this Farang guy who was holding up, literally holding, a Thai girl who had passed out in his arms. The guy screamed, "Get a chair." I looked around me... there was barely a floor to stand on... let alone a chair. So I pushed a bunch of drinks off a table and moved the table up against the wall, and we propped her up on that... but she still wasn't responsive. It took both of us to hold her up. The he asked me what the number for 911 was... I had no idea. I later found out it is 191, just FYI if you come to Bangkok.
So I checked this girls pulse... thankfully she had one... I really wasn't in the mood to do CPR in the middle of a Thai club that's being busted up by cops. Then I tapped her face, and tried talking to her. She confusedly responded that she was ok, she just couldn't breath. But, we still weren't allowed out. So I talked her through some breathing excercises, and she said she was ok... and the guy said he was ok... so I left to find my friends. At this point they had turned the lights on and shut off the music.
Eventually, Bua got a call from her brother that there was a door at the back of the club that people could leave from. So we all paraded down to the door and walked right out. At least most of us did. There were still 3 guys that were unaccounted for. We called one of them, and they were trying to get out at another door... but at this door they were making people do urine tests before they were allowed to leave. Crazy!
Then finally one of our friends who had to do the pee tests found us, and said he lost the other two guys... these two guys are really independent and are infamous for taking off without warning, so we figured everything was fine.
We were wrong! I found out on Monday that one of our friends had a false positive pee test, and the police thought that he was on drugs, so they hauled him off to a thai prison! He had to spend several hours in a cell with a bunch of coked out Thai guys. They wouldn't let him call anyone, or call the embassy or anything! After a few hours they let him take another pee test, which came back clear, so they let him go. It was horrible.
Anyway, luckily he lived to tell the tale.
This concludes my rendition of - one night in bangkok!
chiang mai and a bunch of excuses...
Hi again everyone!
So I have a few stories to tell. Hopefully one of the following excuses will satisfy your rage for my lack of blogging. Ready...
1. The usual... crappy internet/really busy!
2. I can't upload pictures because my camera connector was kidnapped and taken back to Canada with one of Lisa's friends.
3. All of a sudden blogger is in Thai... all of the functions... the instructions to upload pictures... how to start a new message... how to finish a message... you can imagine how frustrating it is when you think you are sending something when actually you just pressed the Thai word for delete. Gah! If any computer nerds out there knows how to get my blogger back to english, I promise to be more dedicated.
Anyway, I suppose I should write about my long weekend in Chiang Mai... that I went on in cough beginning of March cough!
The trip began in a bit of a panic. The travel crew was Lois, Emily T, Kristen and I. We got to the airport and first I made the lady at Air Asia very happy if she works on commission and very angry if she doesn't... because I bought about 18 airline tickets in one shot... for when Jamie and Javier come.
Then I get a call from Emily saying that she is still downtown because she has been waiting for a cab for over an hour. She stood at the base of the BTS stop and waited... and waited... and waited...
I had her ticket so I checked in for her... and had a boarding pass issued... but obviously Em had to show her passport to get it. We waited around for a while... but time was ticking. So the three of us went to the gate. I was thinking of my game plan to make sure Emily got on the plane. Fake an injury, pretend to have a bomb, develop a hysterical phobia of flying... but luckily I did not have to test any of these because within literally 2 minutes of boarding Emily arrived at the gate. YAY!
So we had a nice flight, and then arrived in Chiang Mai. The hotel we stayed at was pretty nice. The first morning we just wandered around the city. We did some shopping. Lois did A LOT of shopping. And then went back to our hotel for a swim or a nap and then went out for dinner. After that we went to the amazing Chiang Mai market. Good times.
I liked Chiang Mai a lot, because it's city enough to always have something to do, and it had a lot of character, but it's quainter and cleaner than Bangkok. I thought it would be a lot more lush than it was. We had fun though. The old part of the city is surrounded by walls, so it makes for a very pretty setting.
The next day, we did our tour package day. We began by riding elephants. Emily and I opted not to go, because I felt so badly after my experience in Kanchanaburi that I couldn't do it again, Emily felt the same. However, Lois wanted to go, which was a decision that she later regretted. Kristen went with her. Apparently riding the elephant was a pretty scary experience for Ms. Lois - she ended up black and blue from gripping the seat so tightly.
After that we visited the Karen Tribal Village. It was kinda strange wandering through the village and making a spectacle of the local people. But, apparently the tourism industry is what keeps them off the opium, according to our guide.
The last stop on the tour was AMAZING! We went on a bamboo raft ride down this beautiful river. It was super cool. I got to stern the raft, so basically I had this big, long bamboo stick. At first I tried to do it kayaking styles... but without a paddle it's a lot of effort and completely ineffective. Then I watched the Thai guy and the front of the raft, who was actually steering our boat, and realized that it's anti-canoing. You literally take the stick and poke it into whatever you can, and push off that to move the right way. Once I got the hang of it, it was pretty fun. Although, it's not me if I don't have a klutzy moment... remember that I am one who has fallen out of a paddle boat! So we were getting suspiciously close to land, and I saw the Thai guy turned around and made a weird noise, and seemingly out of nowhere, there was this giant tree right if front of me. So like a champ I took my hand to push off the tree, and proceeded to knock myself right off the raft. Apparently a 100 old tree is stronger than me, who knew? So I quickly slid back on the raft, brushed off my ego, and continued to paddle (or push is suppose). It was smooth sailing from then on.
Good times though.
That night, we met up with some other friends who were in Chiang Mai also, and went out for this amazing dinner at a restaurant right on the river. It was really fun.
Then we went to the Sunday market, which is exactly as it sounds, a massive market only open on Sunday. It had some really good stuff... including the best pair of flip flops ever, which I wish I bought ten pairs of, cause I wear them everyday!
The last day, Kristen and Lois had to leave at lunch. Emily and I had a later flight. So we caught a songtoew and drove up a mountain to go to a temple on the mountaintop. It was really pretty. It supposedly had the most breathtaking view of the city... but unfortunately we wouldn't know because it was pretty overcast.
After the temple we wandered around for a few more hours, grabbed dinner and then headed to the airport.
Overall, it was a pretty chill trip. A lot of fun but relatively uneventful.
Anyway - today I am heading into the city... so I better get ready. Emails are my friend!
Miss you all. Coming home soon... June 20th to be exact.
Apparently if you click on these links you can access the photo albums that I have posted on Facebook. Hopefully, that will make up for the lack of photos in this post.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=1934&l=bf84e&id=505066750
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2592&l=2b066&id=505066750
