sept 03

++++++++++++

phone home

9/24/03
Wed. is my normal day off, but today I was supposed to go on this group field trip/observation of Workman Publishing for a class. I’d written down it was from 1-3pm and thought I’d even be able to get up early and get my laundry done this morning. Well, next thing 9am was 11am and I had to jump up, still groggy and get ready. I skimmed my emails and there was this one from a music mailing list about how the author of the message had just read some book called “The Tipping Point” and thought he’d now encourage other list members to send emails to friends about particular bands and a link where they could buy cds/records, whatever. I guess people who get others to do things by suggestion are “connectors” or something. I didn’t think much of the message. I don’t need to participate in a semi-experiment to know I’m not a Connector. So, I get to Workman Publishing at 1pm and no one’s in the lobby and I swear I’m not antagonistic to strangers, but totally got into it with the security guy. I said I needed to go to floor 6 and started signing the log book and he wouldn’t let me and wanted to know why I wanted up there. Security doesn’t ask why. I said I was meeting a group of people and asked if he’d seen such a group in the last ten minutes or so and he just looked at me like I was retarded and I didn’t know if he was stupid and couldn’t tell me or was being a prick and wouldn’t tell me so I skimmed the log to see if I recognized any names and touched the page and he got irate and grabbed it from me. All I wanted to know was if a large, obvious group had gone to the sixth floor and he got nasty and confrontational (I know it may seem like I must be doing something to attract these situations, I’m totally not. Yesterday UPS never called me back after saying they would and being told they’d send me my package that I stayed home from work waiting for. I kept calling back and no one would answer the numbers I was given. James called them and got an answer after 20 rings and then got hung up on. He got through to an in-charge person and wanted to know what the hell was wrong with the Brooklyn office and the guy admitted they had a lot of problems and confirmed that who ever had told me they’d resend it [I was told this twice] was flat out lying because there was no way they could’ve got the package back to be re-sent, and that the workers do this because they have to record transactions and an attempt doesn’t get anyone in trouble but a failure does, even when an attempt is useless.) I know service industry jobs aren’t the funnest thing in the world, but I’ve never been anywhere in the world where people are frighteningly incompetent and rude. Oh, I also forgot to mention that a couple weeks ago I bought stamps online from the United States Postal Service, was charged for them and have never received them. I mean, delivering the damn product is their expertise. If they can’t even get their own goods where they’re supposed to be going, I give up. So, the guy lets me go upstairs (but doesn’t let me sign the log book, which is weird, not that I like the hassle of signing them, but it was weird) and it turns out that the tour started at 12pm. I don’t do stuff like that. I’m punctual and organized, at least I used to be, I guess. I was so mad (at myself). By the time I found everyone, the tour had ended and they were just sitting down to lunch. Well, I got a free panini and goat cheese salad, and a copy of Steve Raichlen’s BBQ USA (it was the only damn cookbook on the freebie table, the rest were Boynton and kid sort of things. I would’ve liked a nice copy of “Hot Sour Salty Sweet” that I know they publish, since all I have is a ratty, paperback proof with low res. b/w photos, but expecting a $45 hardcover for free, especially after waltzing in a hour late, would be a bit much). We were sitting around a table eating and were supposed to ask the CEO or the executive editor or whoever he was (that’s the problem with showing up late) questions. Someone asked about being a small publishing company (I didn’t think they were that small, but whatever) and the in-charge guy asked us if we’d heard of “The Tipping Point” and no one had actually read it, (I didn’t know if a passing mention in a random email qualified as knowing about it) so he told this story about Paul Revere and he couldn’t remember what the term used to describe him was (I was shouting CONNECTOR! CONNECTOR! in my head--I’m always way too quiet and shy in groups, and besides I didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that I was a new fact at the table) but I knew. Revere got the message out because he knew the right doors to knock on, he was loud, gregarious and influential. Here is where I got confused, I wasn’t sure if he said there was another rider or was speculating aloud what if there had been another rider. But I think he meant there actually was, but no one knows anything about him because he didn’t do a very good job, announcing “The British are coming” to all the wrong people and in all the wrong ways. I don’t remember how this anecdote tied into the woman’s initial question about small publishing companies, but he was touting Paul Revere (you’d think he analogy would end with siding with the little guy since they’re the small company) like that’s the way to do it, and I started feeling really depressed. Seriously, I swear I’m verging on a mental breakdown. I was way overly upset about being late to this thing (when it comes down to it, no one cares but me. I think that’s supposed to be one of those therapy type lessons I would learn if I was into therapy. Fucking up, doing dumb embarrassing things means little to everyone else, they don’t pay attention, even though it’s the sort of thing that’ll induce a total social anxiety/panic disorder freak out for me) and couldn’t get out of bed, feeling down for no particular reason. And then all this hyping up of Connectors was too much. Why are Connectors so great? Maybe the other rider was a total genius. Probably not, but who says just because he didn’t ride around like a maniac yelling and warning Americans in the right way, that he wasn’t successful in other areas of his life? Anyway, I have to go back to this company again with the second school group in October since I missed the meat of the presentation and we’re responsible for writing up an observation paper. Maybe they’ll a different selection of free books…maybe the guy will bring up “The Tipping Point” again and I’ll yell “CONNECTOR!!” with all my might when he goes blank on the term (he’ll probably remember the word next time and I’ll look like a total nut for blurting over him while he’s talking). Afterwards, I went to NYU’s Bobst library to find one of the books UPS never delivered that I needed three weeks ago, but wasn’t allowed in because there’s only access for Parson’s students and faculty, not staff. I was like OK, and didn’t make a fuss because I feel sympathy for front desk library workers, but as I left I started tearing up, which I’m really not prone to do. Crying is weird, I wasn’t sad, I was annoyed, maybe frustrated. I really need this stupid book and I already paid for it once (I’m sure I’ll eventually get some sort of credit from Barnes & Noble, but the principle bugs me because I didn’t do anything wrong to screw up the order). Walking down the street outside I was overhearing these NYU brats behind me talking about jobs and the one was all incredulous that the other went to New Jersey for work and the other guy was all it only takes ten minutes and I make $80/hr. plus commission. All I could think was how stupid the one kid was for having no concept of how close NJ is to “The City’ and really curious about what the other kid was doing over there for $80/hr. The one who didn’t know about NJ still wasn’t convinced going all the way over there was a good idea, but agreed that it might be better than his lame job working in the library. I do not understand NYC college kid work study students. Their parents pay for their tuition, they pay for their Manhattan rent, they wear Dolce & Gabbana, but they all do work study. I mean, they don’t pay for anything, I’m surprised they even qualify for work study (the girls who work in my dept. all have very tan parents [I’ve seen some of them] with second homes in Europe and far-flung places). So, that little geographically incompetent brat complaining about his wretched library job (he wanted to work in admissions so he could read and reject application essays) needs to put a sock in it. So, I really need to wrap-up my travel story so I can get onto important matters like NYC’s irritating college kids and blue collar workers. I left off in Hua Hin. Our first night we ate dinner at Chao Lay, a seafood place on a pier where giant bat-like moths swooped at your head. It was fun, even the stirfried crab with curry power, which I thought sounded gross (curry powder always makes me think of leftover Thanksgiving turkey mixed with mayo and duh, curry powder, made into a turkey salad sandwich filling) was very good. Afterwards, we went to one of the little thatched roof, outdoor bars with cheap drinks and not very good bands playing. I loved our band, they were doing covers, some I knew, some clearly unfamiliar Thai standards. The lead singer was like a tiny Filipino Tom Petty (vocal-wise and in age), he had this giant ratted-out mullet that was bigger than he was tall. The other band members looked like teens. The crowd was mixed Asian and European, white kids were running around and talking to everyone despite their parents yelling at them to quit it (this older Asian guy next to us made the little nine-year-old [I know her age because she kept saying so] girl who was being precocious and rowdy kiss his much younger [30, the guy made the little girl guess her age] wife, and it was odd, if you ask me). I wanted a photo of the singer but felt too self-conscious (even though this table full of college-aged Germans had a very chunky waitress pose with them for a photo and it seemed like they were making a mockery of her) so I took one of James in front of him, but it didn’t turn out well at all, you totally don’t get the full effect of the mini balladeer. The next day, for the sheer novelty, we ate breakfast at one of the weird German places, Sunshine Restaurant and Bakery. They had a deli on the side where they sold brown bread, sausages, cold cuts and cheese. I love heavy breads and meats with mustard and sauerkraut, nothing against hearty fare, but it’s so not suited to a S.E. Asian climate. The deli was doing a brisk business too. This was the day we did pool and beach activities and I was dumb and got burnt to a bright red crisp. Like I said, I thought I hated beaches, but lounging around a pool, smoking (God bless those Europeans and their black lungs—you know if it was an American dominated resort the whole estate and grounds would be non-smoking) and having drinks brought to you and put on your tab, really is all it’s cracked up to be. I could’ve easily done it a couple more days. Since we started out the day with novelty, we continued the theme and had Burger King for lunch (unfortunately, they didn’t have anything too crazy, but pork burgers are standard as beef. I also liked that you could get chile sauce for your fries) gelato afterwards, then Hawaiian pizza for dinner. We didn’t eat any Thai food in Hua Hin. The pizza was supposed to be enough for two people, maybe two Europeans, but us never-enough Americans were still hungry, so we headed to the bar attached to the Hilton, The Hua Hin Brewing Co. not because we wanted to drink overpriced beer (like $5/pint—that’s NYC prices) or listen to a bad cover band (nothing like our rinky dink outfit the night before, this band was young and slick and instead of The Eagles they were doing Enrique Iglesias and Uncle Kracker), but because we’d seen Buffalo wings listed on the menu out front. Pizza and burgers were not enough, for ultimate wrongness we needed to push the limits of good taste. I could only imagine what Thai Buffalo wings would be like. Well, they’re not like real Buffalo wings, I’ll say that much. They’re breaded and “lollipopped” where they meat is shoved to the end, and instead of ranch sauce they come with BBQ sauce, which was the most amusing part because it wasn’t BBQ sauce, but a marina with some onions and spices in it. They weren’t bad, we cleaned the plate (of course they brought knives and forks, which weren’t used. This is when I noticed the German couple next to use eating spring rolls with knives and forks and got weirded out). The next day, Sat. we already had to head back. We’d arranged to have one of the tour guys come pick us up at 10am. Like I think I’d said, the streets are lined with guys with cars who’ll take you to see elephants and sights, but will also drive you to Don Muang airport in Bangkok. We randomly picked at guy and bargained for 1600 baht ($39, a good deal). Of course, seconds after walking away, a guy down the street offered 1500 baht. Whatever. As usual, James was all nervous they guy wouldn’t show up or we’d get scammed (it’s all verbal agreements and James made the guy write his name and price down so we’d have some sort of record. It seemed a bit much, but better safe than sorry, I guess) somehow. But it was fine. We were off. The only awkward thing is that you can’t really talk to each other, it didn’t seem like he spoke much English and didn’t initiate a conversation. I’m totally not a conversation starter. So we were silent for hours. The driver pulled into a rest stop maybe an hour out of Bangkok and said he was going to get gas and stop in the store. James became convinced he was going to take off with our bags, I don’t know why he would because he hadn’t gotten paid yet. The guy seemed fine. I went into the giant, junk-food filled store for goodies while James kept his eye on the car. I bought Lay’s chips in some sort of lime, chile, curry flavor (there were three varieties, but no English), the driver was drinking a Red Bull type beverage. We all sat silently on a bench smoking. The driver asked where we were from, I said New York (which made James give me a look like to shut up that we would now be killed because we’re rotten New Yorkers. Earlier we had joked that if anyone asked, we were Canadian) and that was the only exchange for the entire three-hour trip. He was kind of a dead-pan guy and we were nervous nellies, scared of strangers. When we got to the airport, all was fine, James gave the guy 1800 baht ($45--that was what we were expecting to pay in the first place) and he seemed very surprised and incredibly grateful and I felt bad that we hadn’t been more friendly during the ride. He was now smiley and helping with our bags, we tried to say thank you and it was fun, Thailand’s great, all that, in Thai. It was very awkward. We had time to kill so tried spending all our leftover baths in the airport and even though we weren’t hungry had to try The Pizza Company which I’d heard was Pizza Hut in Thailand, but not true because I also saw Pizza Huts. We go to board, well, get to our gate and are told we need to pay an airport tax, 500 baht each, which is expensive and crazy and totally not explained anywhere. They would only take cash, there weren’t ATMs anywhere. Aren’t things like airport taxes usually included in the price of the ticket? Can you imagine some woman standing at JFK, not letting you through until you paid cash mystery tax?! This was one of those moments when I pulled a James and thought “this is why I hate third world countries.” Very stressful. But by early evening we were back in Singapore, one night only. This is where I decided to do the splurgy hotel, so far, everything had been under $100/night, why not go a little wild our last evening? The Fullerton is pretty darn swanky, though we barely got a chance to experience it. The room wasn’t huge (we didn’t splurge that much) but I noticed the mark of a nicer room (we seemed to improve as we moved from hotel to hotel) is bed and bathroom size. The bathroom was enormous with both a huge tub you could fit a family in and glass shower stall, and the bed was so giant you almost couldn’t get up on it, if you sat on the edge your feet wouldn’t touch the ground. We were super tired (that’s one point I didn’t really make, how I was so extremely tired the entire trip. I could barely make it to midnight, when usually I can stay up all night. Though accordingly, I’d wake up easily at 8am, which never ever happens here) so we didn’t want go anywhere far for dinner. We chose 24-hour hawker center La Pau Sat. I did laksa and satay, James had duck on rice. I think if we were to be in Singapore for an extended period of time, those would become our dishes. Afterward, we walked around the harbor, tried to catch feral cats (there was a cat family that liked to hang out in the bushes on our Hua Hin patio. I’d try to get their attention but they don’t care much for people. I thought a little cat was cleaning himself, but when he turned to look at me I realized his movements were him eating a small, furry chipmunk-like rodent. Like I said, there was a lot of nature to be had in Hua Hin) and took photos of the skyline that look like lame black squares with white dots now that they’re developed. The next morning we had to check out at noon, but there was a fancy tea they do at 1pm so we had to kill time. This was a tricky day because we knew that once we left the hotel we wouldn’t be able to change our clothes or take a shower for a day and a half. We left our bags at the hotel, since our flight wasn’t until 11pm. We didn’t want to get sweaty, this was a big thing, an impossible thing. So, we tried to kill an hour without getting too hot. Unfortunately, being a Sunday in the business district, nothing was open, we couldn’t get coffee. When we came back at 1pm we were told the tea was reservation only, which had occurred to me earlier (Sunday tea is like some big deal in Singapore, I’m assuming it’s the British influence combined with the Singapore obsession with snacking) but had slipped my mind when checking-in. Totally screwed. But I got my wish to try Peranakan food, which we hadn’t really had a chance to do. I’d wanted to try The Blue Ginger, so we immediately called and got reservations for 2pm. I knew the traditional Nyonya dish you’re supposed to try was Ayam Buah Keluak, stewed chicken with Indonesian keluak nuts. These nuts, sometimes called black nuts, are supposedly poisonous and have to be soaked for weeks and all this stuff, and the dish came with two tiny spoons, which I didn’t get. I’m not sure that I even tasted the keluak nuts, the dish was good, but nothing special. I had the feeling I had done something wrong. It wasn’t until later that I realized you’re supposed to scrape out the insides of the nuts with the little spoon and it’s this amazing flavor, like a mole, that anyone who ever talks about this dish raves about. I was miffed at myself. I mean, when am I ever going to eat authentic Ayam Buah Keluak again? I also had a freshly squeezed calamani juice, I only mention that to re-emphasize my prediction that calamansi is the next hot fruit. In today’s NY Times that Apple fellow wrote a piece on another S.E. Asian fruit, the mangosteen. See? I won’t bore you with the details, but we literally spent the rest of the day until 9pm in sprawling malls (our plan to not sweat). We went back to Takashimaya and Ngee Ann City and I’m so glad we did because in the huge lower level mall space that had been an art exhibit the week before was now a massive stall-filled mooncake bonanza (pictured). It was like a mooncake convention. There were brochures (I filled my bag), samples, it was wall-to-wall people, toothpicks littered the floor (not very Singaporean of them). I meant to check out the mooncake scene here, and did a little bit, but that whole mid-Autumn festival ended Sept 11 (oh, I just realized it turned autumn yesterday. Good. The nice weather will last three weeks at most. Then instant freezing cold). With school starting, time has really gotten away from me. We did not go outside, but took a subway from there to another mall, the largest, Suntec City. It’s massive and oozes into other malls. We must’ve walked and escalated miles. At some point we were in another mall, Raffles Place, then CityLink. At one point we did have to go outside, but it was easy going, just an overpass and escalators instead of stairs (I was so spoiled when I got back to NYC, there’s nothing but stairs here) I was afraid we wouldn’t be able to find our way back to the subway. But we did, and got back to the hotel in a harried frenzy, grabbed our bags, tipped generously, and therefore managed to get the door guy to hail us a taxi and totally cut in front of the line of other waiting guests who seemed none too happy with us. I don’t get to act like a brat very often, so it was good fleeting fun. I don't remember much after that, the flight home was a big long blur. I did get rid of my last few Singapore dollars by picking up durian puffs at the Polar Puffs & Cakes in the airport. They're like cream puffs, eclairs without the chocolate, and filled with durian cream. I guess they stunk, I couldn't smell them, though, but then, I can never smell anything. I wouldn't want my parting S.E. Asia recollection to revolve around a stinky snack, but bittersweet memories are the best kinds, after all.

9/23/03
Sometimes there are days that seem shot before they even begin. Maybe it’s the sudden relentless rain. I very often have trouble getting my mail. And last week this grocery bag filled mostly with junk mail (maybe 70% of it mine, plus timely bills and the new Saveur magazine, which has a feature on rising Bangkok chefs and uses the guy from Blue Elephant where I ate. I never eat or stay at any of the places in travel pieces so I felt in the know) showed up on my front door knob. It was baffling because I don’t know who put it there or where the mail had come from (why not just leave it in the mail box?) and pissed because it was on my door. I also noticed that my other tree (they only one still standing after a mystery person chopped down my other one in early summer) had branches missing off it and strewn in my already messy yard. They were not cut, but ripped and I might attribute it to that whole Isabel thing, but the only branches torn are the ones that bordered the other neighbor’s yard, none of the ones that splay into the bulk of my property. Very suspicious. I don’t know, I’m just in one of those phases where I absolutely hate everything about my neighborhood. So, I ordered two school books through Barnes & Noble on the 8th and I swear I said for them to be delivered to my work address because I’ve had serious trauma with UPS leaving those not home notes on my door without even knocking (furthering my theory that everyone in Brooklyn is lazy, rude and incompetent) until my package went back to the sender. Well, they sent my package here at my apt. three times, the maximum. Never mind that I changed the address online on the 11th and called last week and spoke to a human who told me it would be corrected by last Tues. Yesterdsay I found out the package has been sent back. They made errors twice, possibly three times and know I’m supposed to be out my money and my books that I needed two weeks ago and will have to go out and purchase again? I lost my shit with them yesterday. James called and lost his shit (he said he wanted to yell at somebody, so I told him to have at it. I swear he’s going to turn into one of those freaks who has so much pressure and stress work-wise that at night they have to pay someone to fucked up sexual acts.) and the outcome was that they’d have it shipped back today at no cost (at this point I’d rather just go out and buy the books). My question is where are they going to ship it? I had to work today. I set my alarm for 7am and called to get the details. No one knows. I was told my package was out of there hands. I got transferred to a line where no one answered. I called again and was told to call back at 10. I’m supposed to be a work at 10, but was afraid to leave the apt. in case the UPS guy showed up. I got back in bed and got all wound up by the noisy, harsh rain. I couldn’t sleep, I was so pissed. I decided not to go to work, everything’s so wet and depressing anyway (there’s also this issue where water or some liquid keeps pooling up around my bathroom sink and in my garbage can and I can’t figure out where it’s coming from. Then last Fri. I realized the medicine cabinet is full of water, the wooden shelves are warped and apparently water is somehow leaking into them and running down onto the floor and the sink. This cannot be good. And I’m not in the mood to call the landlord). I mean, I’ll have to make up the hours, but I’ll just go in on Fri. instead, my usual day off. My yard’s a shit hole, my bathroom is disgusting, I’m in limbo and behind in school over stupid missing textbooks, and I have tons of not-that-hard-but-time-consuming homework to do (I did 90% of an assignment due tonight at work yesterday then forgot to email it to myself—now I’m going to have to do the whole thing over). So, I thought I couldn’t go back to sleep around 7:30 this morning, then next thing I knew it was 11am and I’d had all these annoying dreams. The ones where everything’s wrong and you don’t have anything to wear. In this case I was staying at my parents and the house (it wasn’t the one I’d actually grown up in) was filthy and dingy and my cousins were there two and there weren’t enough showers, then I realized I didn’t have my make up and it was time to go somewhere and I didn’t have shoes either, only these hideous white Seinfeld sneakers. I desperately needed to call someone, a guy I barely even know, have a phone relationship with, or are friends with in real life, but his number wasn’t anywhere it was supposed to be. It was a very exasperating dream. I just woke up feeling completely beat up and miserable. I’m waiting for UPS to call me back still. While groggy at 7am I did notice an odd email from a NY Times writer looking for sources to talk about intentionally taking continuous birth control pills to avoid having a period. I guess she found my entry talking about doing this during my Asia trip. Weird. But I don’t think I’m what she’s looking for because I don’t do this regularly. I do find it an interesting method of looking for subjects, though. I always assume article subjects are friends or friends of friends because they’re always in media, so-and-so writer/publicist/art director/creative director etc. You never see people like nurses, administrative assistants or hey, UPS workers quoted in lifestyle articles. Anyway, last week it struck me that I need to and will move to the Bay Area. This isn’t totally out of the blue, I think I’d mildly toyed with the idea a few months ago. But last week it rang true like a calling. I don’t know why. I’ve always said that NYC gets on my nerves, I’m not married to the city, but I don’t have the urge to move anywhere else. Now I do. This could be very stupid. I don’t really know anybody in the S.F. area. I’d have to finish school. If I were smart I’d worry about jobs and either work here for a while to get experience before moving blindly or try to line something up there before heading out. I’d really like to just get the hell out of here pronto, but I’ll be wise about it. It wouldn’t be for at least a year, possibly two. I guess there’s no real hurry. And I’m too young to concern myself with “settling down” but one day I’ll want to stick in one place and feel relatively secure and grounded, satisfied, I guess. And this is definitely not that place.

9/17/03
Not that anyone’s asked, but I thought I’d let you know that from here on out I’m 5’8.” Lying about your age is one thing (though I’d never do it, at least not intentionally. A few weeks ago I was given an apology and a belated $30 at work. I guess they give you your age in money, but didn’t have the petty cash around in July. I never would’ve known the difference, this wasn’t a custom I was even aware of. The thing was that I had turned 31, not 30, but that’s not the sort of thing to quibble about and not correcting them didn’t make me an outright age liar.) but why do so many people seem to lie about their height? I’ve been 5’7 since middle school and to my knowledge I haven’t grown taller since (though I don’t think I’ve had an official measurement in ages). It’s a lame height, a hair over average (5’4” for American women, if I’m correct) but not tall. I always thought 5’10” would be good, I was a tall kid and figured I always would be, then I just stopped all mediocre-ly, all girls stop at puberty, which isn’t really fair, but what can you do, it’s not like there’s a plastic surgery procedure for this sort of affliction (though I guess in Asia they do some creepy bone cutting, leg stretching thing to gain a few inches). But I know who are not taller than me that say they are 5’8” I also know people why say they are 5’7” who are shorter than me. I think I am right and that they are lying, or exaggerating, however you want to look at it. I don’t really think I’m 5’8” (in 7^th grade I used to pray every night that I’d grow an inch because 5’8” is the minimum for models and I knew they only way I’d ever meet Duran Duran was if I became a model. Nevermind that nothing else about me is model-like.) but in order to not appear a midget I will go along with this false growth trend. I don’t want to be left behind. By the way, I did end up eventually getting an anniversary dinner. Saturday at Jefferson in the West Village. It was my choice since I have a fear of always getting taken to meaty and/or Nuevo Latino places. But I’m just as predictable in my picks, as they’re always fusion thinly veiled as New American. It was a nice restaurant, though I have real issues with couples who feed each other throughout the meal (this young Chardonnay-drinking couple next to us, and as you know with NYC next to really means next to, only ate like half their starters, then only half of their entrees, and kept silently gazing into each other’s eyes and it was all wrong. More so that they weren’t eating their food, I mean this isn’t the large portion type of restaurant in the first place). What was striking though, was the use of calamansi in a dessert mousse. If you recall, I predicted this Filipino citrus will be a hot ingredient for 2004 (I also just read that Corporate Librarian [my intended field after graduating] is a top ten hot job for 2004 according to CNN. I am so damn on top of the trends…and yet I still feel so empty) See? It’s already happening. So, I need to get back to this S.E. Asia travelogue so I can move on with life. Our last night in Bangkok we ate at Celadon, a very pretty, minimal, zen-like restaurant in the Sukhothai Hotel, a very pretty, minimal, zen-like place to stay. The setting was pretty, the food was completely unremarkable. The most entertaining part of the experience was this guy at a table of male middle easterners, choking and tearing-up from the spice(?!) A man who appeared to be the crybaby’s son started yelling for water and making a big scene. I was just like what the heck is wrong with these people? Our waitress confirmed our bland suspicions by informing us that Celadon’s menu is toned down (we asked what the deal was with the scene-maker in the back. We found it impossible to believe he was having a reaction to the minimal use of chiles), in fact she referred to it as being “foreign food” not really Thai, as it is a place for rich tourists. Afterwards, we pretended to be guests of the hotel and sidled up to the front entrance so we could get a taxi from a Thai-speaking doorman, the only sure way you’ll know you’ll get where you’re supposed to be going. I had wanted to check out this bar called Love Sick, themed around unrequited love, where there was a room where you could break plates against a wall where your ex-lover’s face could be projected, and another room for crying. It was in this weird little complex off Sukhimvit with a cluster of bars on a side street. Well, I didn’t get to see any of the stuff I’d intended on seeing because that Thai thing happened where they give you no choice and force you to follow some odd logic. Like as soon as the owner (I think it was the owner) saw us approaching he whisked us into this indoor room with a horrible, really loud band playing and made us sit at a specific table. You can’t say no, it’s like this is where everyone is at, and this is where you’re going to sit. I don’t get it, really. So, we were in a dark, loud room with bad music blaring. And once again we were without cigarettes. I told you, I was determined to smoke and drink together indoors as much as possible, just because I could. The noise and lack of nicotine made me antsy. I wanted to see the other rooms, but didn’t dare poke around. The owner kept his eye on us continually. I’m serious. I found drinking and eating in Bangkok to be often intimidating. I ordered a kamikaze, as this seems to be a thing there (I don’t know anyone who drinks kamikazes here), it’s always on the menu, and usually colored blue for some unknown reason. But the standard custom seems to be where you buy a bottle of liquor for the table, it is kept on a little cart with garnishes and mixers, and the staff keeps your drink topped off. I’m not sure how this works exactly, I don’t imagine you polish off an entire fifth of whiskey or whatever at one sitting. Anyway, one drink was enough. We ended up wandering around the area, getting hot and sweating, finding little of interest, then heading back to the hotel for a drink at the V9 Wine Bar on the top floor, before they closed at 1am. Wine seems to be very trendy, and this bar I think was recently made over to be hipper, in this mellow, ambient DJ sort of vein. They have some new sommelier from Nobu, which they like to advertise. It had a nice view and good free snacks, I’ll give it that. Thurs. it was onto beachy Hua Hin, a day of minor trauma. It all worked out in the end, but it was nerve-wracking, dealing with the bus. I originally figured we could work out a shuttle van thing because we were staying at Sofitels in both cities, but we were quoted an outrageous price, more than even to fly. And this was my own poor planning. Flying only takes around 40 min. and is relatively cheap, but there are no flights on Thursdays or Saturdays (every other day, of course) our travel days. I figured we’d just do the bus then, it’s only $4 and air-con, and around a 3-hour drive. The taxi driver offered to take us for $50, which we considered (and should’ve gone for) but it seemed weird to take a taxi for 3 hours (though we realized later it’s commonly done) But imagine being dropped off at Port Authority, not speaking any English and trying to get to the Catskills or something. The words Hua Hin were above a window, so we got that, and I knew buses left every 30 min. so I wasn’t super worried, but like where to go wasn’t clear (we were told something different than what was printed on our ticket, and I could see a bus with Hua Hin on the side at a completely different bay). James was convinced our luggage was going to be stolen, this was the day I thought for sure he’d kill me. They put it in the bottom of the bus, like all tour buses do, but we were the first ones on the bus since we’d just missed the last one, so we were sitting on the bus for a half hour and the whole time the luggage door was wide open and James was so worried he had to keep getting off the bus and looking to make sure no one was stealing bags out of it. It’s true, no one else seemed to have full size suitcases like we did, just small bags they could carry on, so you start to wonder if they know something you don’t. The trip was fairly straightforward and uneventful, it poured sporadically the whole way, which made me nervous. I saw big fog covered rock hill/mountains, rice paddies and those cows (I think they’re cows) that are all angular and bony, maybe they’re water buffalo. Just the kind of things you’d expect to see in rural S.E. Asia from books and TV. What I couldn’t figure out were these bright, garish billboards with what seemed to be a crystal ball (or a bowling ball set in a base) and lots of numbers listed next to it. Are they lucky numbers? Is it a lottery thing? On the way back I saw monks painting one, so I’m assuming it’s a religious thing? We made it to Hua Hin in one piece, but it was confusing. The bus just stopped on what seemed to be a random street and everyone just got off and started hitching rides on the backs of motorbikes they way they love to do. We were frenzied, trying to get our luggage (being the first on the bus, it was in the way back, for a split second I actually thought it might have disappeared. I hate to seem to paranoid in these retellings, and though he’d kill me for saying so and totally disagree, James is way way more skeptical and negative than I am. I never thought I’d meet someone worse than myself. I’m not actually distrustful of the world, but we’re both total magnets for fucked-upedness, and we did get almost all our stuff stolen in Vancouver B.C. and if you can’t even have peace in our familiar, quiet northern neighbor, then what can you expect in a part of the world that’s chaotic and unknown?), attempting to get our bearings. It never occurred to me that getting from the bus station (if you could call the middle of the street a station) to the hotel might be an issue. I knew our hotel was right in town, it was probably even walkable, but I didn’t even know which way the water was. We didn’t have time to regroup before an elderly man starting grabbing our stuff and trying to get us in a pedicab. It was really too much at that point in time. Very pushy, though this ended up being an exception, as Hua Hin was way mellow compared to Bangkok. It also hadn’t occurred to me that regular taxis, i.e. cars, don’t really exist out of Bangkok. It’s all tuk tuks, samlors (pedicabs) and songthaews (pickup trucks with rows of benches lining the sides). While we were fending off the insistent old guy (I don’t know how he could possibly pedal us and our bags, he would keel over) the only other white guy from the bus, a Frenchman as it turned out, seemed as bewildered as we did. He asked us if we knew where the water and guesthouses were, which we didn’t. I did feel a little better knowing that at least we had lodging lined up already. Hua Hin was sort of a random choice. I’m not a beach or water person, but I figured if we were going to be in the tropics it would be a shame not to see a beach. I also don’t care for beach culture and like everyone can’t shut up about Bali (of course it’s a balmy low 80s and sunny during Thailand and Singapore’s rainy season, which I don’t get) or Koh Samui or Phuket, but these are places where you snorkel and do activities and there are raves and European youngsters treat it like it’s the “Real Cancun.” I could barf. Another criteria, being close to Bangkok (which didn’t really end up mattering because you can fly to all those popular islands in like the same time we got to Hua Hin in a bus), was due to my poor planning. We flew in and out of Singapore when we should’ve flown out of Bangkok. But the day I bought tickets was when they were doing that $249 RT promotion and you could only get into the system every ten tries or so and I after hours of frustration (I kept getting $900+ prices when I knew they still had cheap tickets) I just took the first flight I got with the right dates for $499, not thinking about how I should’ve used Singapore as a stopover. We ended up buying separate tickets for a RT flight from Singapore/Bangkok/Singapore from the same airline anyway. So, I was dumb, but it still wasn’t expensive. I chose Hua Hin because it seemed low key, it’s touted as Thailand’s oldest and most traditional beach resort because King Rama VII built a palace there in the ‘20s and since it has been a popular place for Thai families, even though it’s no big shakes and supposedly not as pretty as the islands. It sounded like the Jersey Shore of Thailand, totally for me, and it was. I regret only booking two nights in Hua Hin because it was way more fun than I’d anticipated. But you live and learn. We both decided we could’ve spent one less day in Bangkok (James would probably say three less days) and added one-two more days to both Hua Hin and Singapore. It wasn’t until we got to Hua Hin, eight days into our 12-day vacation, that I finally started relaxing and actually began to “get” the whole allure of the beach thing. It totally made sense. It’s a weird town, for the most part, the hotels are non-descript and cheap, I saw prices as low as $10/night. It’s not ritzy, though it’s gaining a reputation as an exclusive spa destination thanks to the Chiva-Som Resort where you can have crazy therapies and treatments and eat special food from their organic garden. Prices are like $700/night. While there, I read in the paper how David Beckham had just stayed and it’s where all the celebrities go to detox and lose weight. One of those songthaews had also pulled up next to us, and I was just like fuck, let’s just get in, and we got charged 60 baht (after lightly bargaining) which I knew was high (though still about $1.45), you could go pretty far in Bangkok for 60 baht, this was the country and I knew the hotel couldn’t be far. It was the only time on the trip that I felt taken advantage of. But I was just so beat-up and disoriented I didn’t care. As it turned out, we were like 8-10 blocks from the hotel, but it might’ve been a pain to drag our luggage on foot. The hotel was crazy impressive in a historic way and I felt sort of weird jumping out of the back of a pick up. I never did figure out how everyone else made their way to the hotel or knew how to do things, they all showed up in vans. I didn’t choose the Sofitel Hua Hin Resort because I’m crazy about Sofitels, but because it was the oldest on the beach and had more character and charm than surrounding lodgings and wasn’t expensive in the least. Built in 1924 it’s a bit of a landmark, and all that (they used it in the “Killing Fields” though it was supposed to be Cambodia). It was pretty impressive, and in some ways over the top. It’s done in a British Colonial style, which I don’t totally get since I don’t think the British or anyone ever occupied Thailand. The hotel is on 40 acres with three pools and these cute, but nutty, giant topiary bushes/trees shaped into animals. Everything is open air, which was odd. The lobby is covered, but there aren’t walls. The rooms have their doors right outside, ours also had a back patio on ground level. It feels weird if you’re used to high-rise hotels and living in an apt. (though now that I think about it, I have a front and back door on ground level) like you’re exposed. Little did I know how this outdoor exposed set up would prove (mildly) traumatic later. After getting settled in, it was already getting dark around 6:30 (it’s gets dark earlier, which I guess happens when you’re closer to the equator), so we decided to peek around the grounds. It was like a park, very lush, little fish ponds, trails, but completely deserted. It was eerie. We wanted to see the beach and walked past the pool area and there was one lone guy swimming around who scowled at us (probably a German. Oh God, Germans are going to start writing me nasty emails now). There was a guard at the beach entrance and not a single person seemed to be on the sand, I don’t know if there was a curfew or something (I don’t think so). The hotel was big into security, it’s off-putting, despite all the guys being like 24 years old and 120 pounds. They salute you, which is creepy, I didn’t know how to respond. I’m not sure if they’re trying to keep us in or keep riff raff out (the best part of the beach is the section in front of the Sofitel, but it’s not private. I think they’re just anal. In the hotel’s informational literature they say not to patronize the hawkers on the beach selling food or you’ll get sick and not to bring any of this food into the hotel and not to ride the ponies they have for rent on the beach, as they annoy sunbathers. I hate horses, but felt the urge to ride one around, chomping on fresh fruit and ice [the two items most warned about in guide books] the whole time). So, we just cautiously looked around, wondering if we were the only guests. I thought I saw bats swooping over the pools, but these half-foot wing spanned creatures also menaced us at dinner and that’s when I figured out that they were moths. Now I get the whole Mothra thing. A giant moth never made sense before. I didn’t realize how tiny the town is, the restaurant I wanted to try Chao Lay, is on a pier, and from the map at the furthest point in the little touristy market area (there’s a real night market farther up in town near where the bus let us off but we really didn’t get time to explore it). We made it there in about ten minutes. Compared to a night out in Bangkok, this was easy going. You open your door, you’re immediately out in the comfortable night air (it wasn’t as hot as Bangkok, though this was made up for in pesty mosquitos), crickets are humming, frogs are croaking. Ah, nature…eek, nature…it was everywhere…creepy crawlies. That’s when we first noticed the lizards. They’re everywhere if you look up. The structure is rife with wood rafters and little lizards all over the ceiling. We noticed this Asian family and the little girl was pointing up, looking horrified. Staring down at us was this enormous white lizard with huge bulgy black eyes, there were two slightly smaller ones near it scrambling into the rafters. It wasn’t like the little ones that seemed to be commonplace. It was hyper-reptilian. The father quietly muttered in an awestruck heavy Japanese-sounding accent “crocodile.” It wasn’t really a crocodile but it had a head like one. I was so scared after that I was afraid to walk anywhere that wasn’t well lit. There were all sorts of noises in the bushes and general rustlings. Bangkok it was a perpetual motor vehicle alert. Here it was little creatures keeping me on my guard. Barring the bugs, Hua Hin was surprisingly pleasant. The tuk tuk guys only bugged you a tiny bit, tailors trying to get you to have a suit made were the biggest harassers and they weren’t too aggressive. We even found a useful street service—guys with cars and jeeps who offer tours as well as rides to Bangkok’s Don Muang Airport. They were everywhere and just what we needed since my bad planning had created a problem with how to get from Hua Hin back to Bangkok and then to the airport for a 4pm flight to Singapore without having to get up first thing in the morning without having to go back to the Southern Bus Terminal in Bangkok and get a taxi to airport. Solved. Once out and about we were like what’s funny about this place? If you didn’t know you were in Thailand and were dropped off on the main tourist drag you might not know where you were. Peculiar pizza places were everywhere, but even more pervasive was the German influence. Beer gardens lined the streets (it's illegible, but the restaurant sign in the background of the photo on the right reads Bella Roma--we ate freaky pizza there), promises of Thai-Austrian fare advertised, Thai waitstaff dressed in lederhosen and dirndls, I kid you not. We’d stumbled into a freakin’ German resort town. It really is. I had no idea. It’s a big German expatriate enclave, they (along with the Dutch) run a lot of the restaurants and hotels in town. Consequently it attracts a huge German population. Mostly families, couples and retirees. Not the younger set, so much. When you entered an establishment the Thai staff would often say “willkommen” instead of welcome because they probably assume all white people are German. Bizarre, and a total hoot. Hua Hin was really shaping up to be an interesting side trip.

9/15/03
You might think that I had better things to do than get huffy over tidbits that don’t matter in grand scheme of things, appearing in the NY Times. But you would be wrong. I can always make room for irritation. Manhattan being Manhattan (and Target-less) they had to create a temporary store at Rockefeller Center that only sells the new Issac Mizrahi line for Target. The article (which will only have a good link till the end of the week) seemed to be about Issac Mizrahi and Target, as one would expect. I was breezing along through the short piece until the last paragraph made me gag. The last paragraph, particularly a last sentence, is what stays in a reader’s mind, what you come away with. What seemed like a semi-fluffy, informational article turned snarky for seemingly no reason:

The clothes do convey a sort of reverse snobbishness in sizing, however. Those who are cable-thin and devoted to pretty things will have hard time finding anything that fits. A size 4 is more or less equal to a size 8, and a particular red corduroy shirtdress in a size 10 looked as if it could have accommodated all three sisters from "Petticoat Junction." By the end of last week, there was little left under a size 12 in the Manhattan store, but rows of dresses and trousers in sizes 14 and 16. The larger sizes, a salesman informed, were being scooped up by pregnant women.

Ha, ok world, in case you didn’t know…Manhattan women are really thin. No really, it’s true. You never would’ve thought, right? And they don’t shop at Target because they like nice clothes, get it? So, like the two are completely incongruous, fashionable Manhattanites and Target…oh, it’s just all so kooky. And they’re being a little discriminated against, all that inaccurate sizing to make fat people feel good about themselves. They don’t need that “snobbishness.” And in case you didn’t get the picture, there is a word for women who wear a 12 and larger in Manhattan, see? It’s pregnant. Where’s the baby shower? I’ve got the most precious mommy duds for these gals. Discount store or not, I find it very hard to believe that anywhere in Manhattan there “rows of dresses and trousers in sizes 14 and 16.” I didn’t have the wherewithal to check for myself, though I did go to the Elmhurst, Queens Target yesterday and the Issac Mizrahi section seemed to be pretty well balanced, all sizes from 2-16 represented equally. And sure, mass-market stores do tend to size larger than designer boutiques (I’m not sure who is skewing the sizes, though). I can practically wear an XS at Wal-Mart (I saw Wal-Mart is trying to crack the NYC market, as we’re the only large city other than Detroit without one. And of course good ol’ Sunset Park, along with four other spots, is in the running for choice neighborhood. Oh, the area’s up and coming, I tell you. Ikea in 2005 and now Wal-Mart. Keep the federal prison and countless adult bookstores, and this will be one class act.) but truth in sizing wasn’t the thrust of the Times article at all, so why conclude on it? Living in such classy surroundings, I’m apparently sheltered from all these size snobs (I never wear makeup around here. I could probably wear pajamas [I’ve seen people do it] and no one would even notice. In fact, I wear the next best thing: horrible, cheap $7.99 Dee and Dee velour sweats/workout pants [when I’m going to the gym and running errands on the same day, not all the time] that are made for a midget, what we’d call “highwaters” in my day and giant $4.99 t-shirts that go way down over your butt. Very trashy, even I know that. But I don’t want to sweat in nice clothes, and who the hell is ever going to see me out here? I wouldn’t dare set foot into Manhattan or N.W. Brooklyn in such a get up, but when in Rome…) because I found it quite amusing how James’s sister who was visiting last week (and is barely a size 2) was shocked at how thin everyone in NYC was, or more rightly how few fat people there were. She obviously didn’t make it out far enough. Maybe I need to get out more. There’s a whole big world of women that think size 16 is maternity wear, waiting out there for me.

9/11/03
I think someone’s trying to tell me something. I mentioned how last Fri. we had to cancel dinner reservations for our fourth anniversary because James had to get an emergency wisdom tooth (which was totally traumatic. He passed out during the thing, there were complications. Once we got back to his apt .the pain medication wouldn’t kick in [two vicodins and Tylenol 3 with codeine he had been given small prescriptions for. I’m wishing we’d picked some up in Thailand, not that I think they’d dole out controlled substances willy nilly, but maybe the Tylenol 3, because I just found out I have to get another biopsy done because of what I’m thinking is my 16th abnormal pap smear. Seriously, I’ve been having two a year since my early 20s and like 90% of them have been bad. Then today I was at the dr. complaining about my dizziness, headaches and eye pain and now I’m supposed to get a CAT scan, which I wasn’t afraid of until I learned about the contrast dye component. This is the same reason why I literally ran out of the radiology lab exactly two years ago to the day, my selfish 9/11 memory, no one told me I had to have a dye IV while getting an MRI. Needles are one thing, if it’s quick, but you have to lie with one in your arm for 30-90 min. I’ll freak out. ], he was spazzing out, writhing around and making noises, and I thought for sure I was going to have to call 911 or something). He rescheduled for this Fri. but it turns out his sister is here with her husband from Santa Cruz and Fri. is the only night they can do something. We’re going to Les Halles, I’ve been informed, not that that was their choice, I think they pretty much eat sushi and tacos (that’s my impression of Santa Cruz). So, no Craft tomorrow either. I don’t even really care about Craft, wasn’t it hot in like 2001? And I’m so this minute, you know? I just want to make sure I get my special occasion dinner. Um, I think I just did something crazy to my hair again. I tried artfully lightening chunks back in July and hated it, then put temporary blue-black on it, which faded to green in less than a week. Now it was just sort of gold and brown in places, but really horrible because the gray (which is becoming like half my head) won’t take color, even darkest brown/near black, my real hair color, it just fades to a pee, amber shade. So, when I was at a Boots in Bangkok (for the record, they hover there too. The drugstore is like the size of my living room and they have four people working and trying to get you to buy lotions and things you don’t want) I saw Garnier Natea, which must be like our Garnier Nutrisse, and was struck by this dark blue hair swatch. I was seriously dark, inky, black blue, not regular black. I figured it must be a fluke because that wasn’t realistic hair color. And I’ve always had a weird soft spot for blue hair, in middle school I was obsessed with the idea of comic book Superman hair, black but blue where the light hits. (Now that I think about it, my dad painted his truck like that at one point. He was as crazy about changing his truck color as I was about messing with my hair in my teens. He later did it this candy apple red that was shimmery pink at certain angles.) I had color crayon true blue hair in the early ‘90s, I can’t really do that anymore and don’t really want to, it’s a hard style to pull off without looking dated, unnecessarily zany or goth. The Garnier Natea color is called Bilberry and now that I’m poking around I see it’s the exact same box/model as the American Garnier Nutrisse Black Licorice. That’s just seems blah and blach…but bilberry, now that’s got pizzazz. I guess it’s the same, though. So, my hair is now pretty darn black, but interestingly deep, deep, Prussian blue where there was gray. It’ll all fade to some middling shade after a few washes, but I kind of like it. This is completely unrelated, but for most of the summer months I’d walk home from the subway past the weirdly suburban-for-Brooklyn On the Run convenience store around the corner, and see these signs advertising Wild Mountain Blueberry Coffee all over the gas station. That sounded downright hideous, until I saw September’s Pumpkin Spice ads. I mean coffee is bad enough in NYC (there’s a reason why everyone drinks it half sugar and milk, half coffee. I’m a total fat and sugar fiend, but I can’t stand sweetness in my iced tea or hot coffee [it doesn’t bother me in hot tea or iced coffee]. Is there a company in the world that makes bottled iced tea that is just tea, anymore? This isn’t rhetorical, I’d really like to know. ) Actually pumpkin makes a little more sense than blueberry, but not much more. Maybe if the wild blueberry coffee were blue.

9/10/03
You know, I’m just not going to feel right until I finish spinning my meandering travel yarn. But I keep getting distracted by crap like poking around band sites and listening to random music. I’ve discovered that Portland group, The Decemberists really do something for me. I’ve decided that I like them, but will buying their new album that was released yesterday going to make me as happy as I think? Will I get at least $11 worth of satisfaction from it? Yeah, probably. I was also getting distracted by a Gallup poll phone call wanting to know about my drinking habits and whether I speak to my children in Spanish or English and whether or not I listen to and watch Spanish or English radio and TV. I don’t speak Spanish or have children, but I do like to drink. I must’ve answered all wrong (or right, depending on how you look at it) because the survey was surprisingly short. So, I left off at Tues. Aug. 19 when I was still in Bangkok. I started feeling guilty for spending so much time in malls so we decided to get some history and culture and go for the touristy Wat Pho/Grand Palace experience. I’m not so into the temples and Buddhas, but didn’t think an afternoon would kill me. And it didn’t, but that was enough. It was crazy hot, we couldn’t cross the street and couldn’t get our bearings because we were being harassed by some tout pulling the classic scam where they tell you an attraction is closed so they can take you someplace else (usually a jewelry store) where they get a kickback. It summed up all that stressed me out about Bangkok: heat, traffic, touts. For dinner I wanted to go to Hualamphong Food Station, which I always seem to hear great stuff about. They serve Issan (northeastern) Thai food and Lao items (at least I think so, not that I was able to discern this from the menu, but onto that in a second) which I had wanted to try, especially since those are som tam regions and I’m a big fan of green papaya salad. I knew this place was going to be tricky since for one, Hualamphong Station is the name of Bangkok’s train station, I guess it’s a play on words, but it spelled doom for communicating our wishes to a taxi driver. Two, I knew it was on Sukhumvit, soi 34 but that you were supposed to access it from soi 26. After are taxi ordeal the night before, there was no way I was taking chances. We just took the skytrain. It was a looong haul in the dark on narrow streets with no sidewalks. I think it was a pretty fancy neighborhood, gated homes with lots of new cars in the driveways. It probably would’ve been a peaceful stroll if it wasn’t for the blind curves and head on cars and motorbikes. My nerves were completely shot by the time we found the place (directions I had read ahead of time were wrong, given landmarks were nonexistent. I didn’t see street signs. I only discovered the restaurant because I had seen photos of the outside and happened to look up the right side street.) I knew it was open-air sans air con, so that wasn’t a shock. What was, is the way restaurant service is provided in Bangkok. I could never figure out their deal. I might have already mentioned this, they way they don’t leave you alone when paying a bill with a credit card (or cash). They stand right next to you and stare over your shoulder until you fill out the receipt and give it to them. It’s really unnerving. I don’t know if it’s just a cultural thing or part of the problem I mentioned of having way more staff than customers everywhere. But here, the problem began with the menus. We got to look at them for maybe 30 seconds. And it’s a really, really large menu. I like to read menus, I like to think about what I want. Our waiter came over immediately and wanted to take our order. He spoke zero English, I tried my tiny bit of Thai, but I don’t know how to say “could you give us more time.” In a bad sign language move James pointed at his watch, trying to get the point across. To me that would mean we’re in a hurry. But whatever, that didn’t seem to matter anyway. I don’t think he was trying to hurry us. James was having a fit. I was on edge. Maybe other people are used to someone standing right next to them while leafing through a menu. Maybe it’s supposed to be the sign of great service to have waitstaff always within touching distance of your table. He started pointing at items, things I didn’t want. I hurriedly started trying to pick things out. After asking for them the waiter made no indication that he’d acknowledged my request. I was just like fuck, how is everyone else here getting what they want? All in all, we ended up mostly with what we had wanted: gai yang, som tam (seriously the best I’ve ever had—it’s the one dish where I feel confident in claiming the “authentic” version superior to what I’ve had in NYC. Here, it’s always way too heavy on the lime and never spicy enough), duck larb (which begrudgingly James later declared to be one of his favorite dishes in Thailand) and a mild vegetable dish with a variety of mushrooms that we did not ask for. I think we’d wanted an additional meat dish, there was confusion over whether James was pointing at buffalo or frog. We got neither, we got mushrooms. Maybe the waiter thought we needed more vegetables. I don’t know. The food was really good, but I felt short-changed like I wasn’t given time to think or explore or figure anything out. I only was able to scratch the surface. I always wish I had two super powers (forget invisibility and flying): the ability to understand and speak any language in the world (I’m mad at myself because I just got my fee waiver for an intro Mandarin class, but I don’t know that I can take on an extra class right now. I already have three a week, and can’t really cram in Chinese language lessons on my Monday nights. It’s hard to turn down free things) and to be able to eat a meal, then have it instantly disappear from my body (not via defecation or vomiting, thank you) so I could eat another meal…and then another. That’s kind of decadent, I guess. Gluttony without consequence—what power! Anyway, the walk back to the skytrain wasn’t as traumatic since we knew our way around. It was just before midnight so the trains were still running, then we had the bright idea of heading back to MBK because the sign on one of the doors said it was open till 2am, which seemed implausible, but the station was sort of on the way back to our hotel anyway (it’s near a transfer point. What I found remarkable was that every single time we had to change lines the two trains met up exactly. We did this at least four times. Granted, they only have two lines, it’s not like the subway.) It wasn’t open, I don’t know what we were thinking. We called it an early night. Wed. was our last day in Bangkok and we had an early cooking class at this random place Baipai Thai Cooking School. I chose it because all the ones I had read about were fancy hotel classes that were expensive and all demo-based, nothing hands-on. Always a nervous nelly, I was scared of what we were getting into and if they’d remember to come get us (I had an old email message saying to be out front at 8:50am). They did, the whole operation was totally on the level, and it was very good fun. No one else had signed up for that day so it was like a private lesson. We had two instructors and a good-natured guy who seemed to be in charge who served as translator. It wasn’t a total from scratch set-up, like we didn’t make curry pastes or skin fish or chop chicken. Everything was prepped and measured in little bowls like you were on a cooking show and after each dish we’d sample the goods while everything was cleaned up for the next round. Cooking is a lot more fun when you don’t have to clean or do any heavy prepping. The menus rotate depending on the day of the week, but we had tod man pla (fish cakes), larb gai (chicken salad), gang penang moo (penang pork curry) and tab tim grobb (water chestnuts in coconut milk). It all turned out pretty well, though I guess James’s curry somehow ended up less oily than mine because my heat was too high and he now won’t let live it down. Afterward, the translator told James, “teacher said you make very good curry” which only compounded his gloating. He had “teacher” as his helper. I had the assistant, she’s the one who was messing with my burner, so you know. Ok, I’m being defensive. My curry was good, dammit! The dish I wasn’t familiar with was the dessert, that’s such a crazy genre, these iced, soupy sweet concoctions with vegetables and gelatinous squiggles in them. Water chestnuts in coconut milk doesn’t really convey the dish because it sounds all white when really the water chestnuts are dyed bright pink and coated with tapioca flour so they’re super shiny and springy and well, bright pink. Oh, we had to start by learning two garnishes: making rose from a tomato, which is pretty easy and creating a leaf from a cucumber slice, which was really hard (and here I will admit James’s was way better. The translator even had the audacity to ask me, “is he artistic?” I’m like hell no. It’s a lot like carving woodblocks for printmaking, and printmaking was my B.F.A. major. Me, not him, see?). Regardless, produce carving is cool. Anyway, the class was informative, they taught us about ingredients, I got to see pandan plants and kaffir lime trees. The establishment was very modern, well-equipped, the staff was nice, you get a little recipe book of the dishes you made and a photo of yourself in cooking action (which I will not put here, as I’m a sweaty mess in it). I’d totally recommend it to anyone. And a bargain at $29 each (most hotel classes are over $100). I swear I’m not mall-obsessed, but after class we went back to MBK. There was this movie being hyped like crazy, there were ads everywhere, TV shows documenting the making of it, billboards. It seemed like Matrix special effects mixed with martial arts in some sort of war revenge tale topped with a touch of mysticism. We debated seeing it at the mall, but we had absolutely no idea what it was called. I couldn’t even attempt to phonetically sound out the Thai characters. I only know some basic letters and it’s impossible for me to figure things out when they use crazy fonts like in the movie poster. Besides, we didn’t really have the time to waste (not as if we made any better use of two hours). Bad Boys II was also a big thing, but there was no way I was seeing that. Instead we walked around the mall, James trying to find shoes, me scouring for goodies, trying to get all the fast food coupons they were handing out. I was amused by a coffee place called Mr. Bean, which had nothing to do with that obnoxious Rowan Atkinson. And re-amused by Santa’s Burgers. They serve “American Fried Rice” (pictured) which has raisins and corn in it. I saw a lot of this questionable American fried rice in Thailand. Maybe it’s like our Singapore noodles that no one eats in Singapore. There was also this great self-serve bakery, (which I can’t remember the name of because there’s one just like it in Singapore with a different name, maybe St. Levain or St. Honore, St. somebody) with a bright green cake roll with a flavor only described on the packaging as “greeney” and big square loaves (they don’t have that round-top bread like we do) of blue bread. Very baffling, and with no English labeling. Perhaps it was taro? I’d have bought a loaf, but it wouldn’t keep very well in my luggage. Ah ha, I finally found that damn movie I was talking about. Apparently it’s not on the top ten list anymore and all the Thai movie sites seem to translate titles, except this one. It took a while to find a Thai/English page, the movie’s called MahaAut. Phew, I can go to bed now.

Yesterday I was reading this article “The Futile Pursuit of Happiness” in the Sunday Times Magazine (I was also poking around the food & dining section—I just recently discovered that they post things the day before they come out in print. And that R.W. Apple has this big piece on Singapore food. Last week it was Ho Chi Minh City. I don’t know much about him, except that he’s one of those older writers who has been around forever and can write about anything he wants. How does one become those people that get paid to travel around and write about what they and their wife like to eat? I guess that’s why the publishing industry is so competitive. But the Times is particularly insular and annoying. Annoying in that the writers can write about any old thing like “I just discovered a cookie that’s savory instead of sweet and here’s where you can go buy it.” Also in the Sunday magazine was this piece on grilled chocolate sandwiches like that’s some huge revelation [since I’ve been back from Singapore I created a sandwich where you use their Kaya custard jam coupled with our peanut butter, very East meets West, between two pieces of toasted bread. Do you think I should trumpet my brilliant dish?] Well, I guess the difference is that this writer’s chocolate sandwich is being done in NYC restaurants, not just in his home…and that he happens to be the editor of the style section. That’s always been a pet peeve of mine how magazine staff writes about anything like it’s a trend and they’re a part of some club in the know. Last year when I took a food writing class, this was the sort of piece everyone seemed to write, and the notion had to be knocked out of them because you can’t write about your precious little food finds and menu twists if you’re a nobody. Who cares? Your opinions don’t really matter unless you’re someone who counts. This is prevalent in fashion mags, like yesterday I also got the new “Lucky” and they always have these pages where their Market Editor or Accessories Editor show what they’re obsessed with now and tell you where to go buy them. Outside of being staff members, who are these people and why do I want to know what they’ve been buying? Duh, that’s what you get for subscribing to the “magazine about shopping,” I suppose. and it was about (at least I think, in summary, I always misinterpret/tweak the point of things) how humans forecast their feelings and how inaccurate they are. Smaller things like how thinking having a brand new car will make you very happy, but in reality it makes little difference to your emotional well-being. Or big things like how people feel children will make them happy despite hard evidence that couples without children are actually more satisfied. And why do people continue to marry when they know their odds are very poor? Rationality doesn’t help, it’s a little disheartening that we can’t force better insight upon ourselves, but it works the other way too. Broken limbs, loss of jobs, loss of loved ones—these all these cause less emotional duress than one would predict. The body wants to stay regulated, not be happy or sad. With that said, I’m totally convinced that I need a digital camera. I hate it when this happens, it’s a mania, I look for deals on the internet, compare brands, all the while imagining my new wonderful, better life with my digital camera by my side. When I get all worked up about wanting something I just have to lay in bed and read fiction, it’s very calming (last night I started “The Cement Garden” by Ian McEwan, a birthday present from my sister [she also sent a grotesque bottle of Heinz Salad Cream because she knows the stuff scares the bejeezus out of me. Is it mayonnaise? Dressing? Miracle Whip? It’s a British mystery.] and I’m wondering if it was meant to say something about me because the father in the story, right before dying, paves over his back garden with cement. Is this a jab at my skanky backyard? The landlord has threatened to gravel over or pave over the whole thing many times, which seems ugly as all get out, but after returning from Asia and finding the thing with weeds taller than humans, I’d almost be willing to have the yard cemented. It’s such an obvious metaphor for my life, unruly, embarrassing, unmanageable, depressing, ugly and ignored. Like if I cleaned it up [which I have done a couple times] and actually kept it maintained, I’m sure my life would follow suit, but I can’t be bothered.) So, I got my photos back from my trip and they’re just so blah and unremarkable. I never take photos, it’s a chore. It’s so bad that I had one roll of film sitting on a table and I had no idea what was one it, so I threw it in with the other two rolls I took in Asia, and as it turned out it had most recently pictures from my birthday in July, but also photos from Montreal where I went last Columbus Day, and of Thanksgiving when I was last in Portland. That’s nearly a full year’s worth of photos on one roll. Pathetic. And a couple years ago I became convinced that if I got my cute little Elph camera I’d take photos all the time and everything would be wonderful. No such luck. See, I overestimated the satisfaction I’d receive from my camera, and now I want a new one that will lose its charm as quickly. But I like to believe that if it’s digital, the immediacy will encourage me to use it more. Never mind that I have absolutely no money at the moment. Seriously, I might be able to pay my Oct. rent and that’s it. And the beautiful irony is that I’ve taken out $30,000 in student loans, can you imagine? Majority of that goes to tuition, but the leftover is for me to pay bills, and buy things like digital cameras. However, I’ve not received any money for this school year yet. This is becoming a problem. I don’t even want to think about how sorry I’m going to be come graduation and that money is all due back. I know I’m still paying back undergraduate loan money I used in the early-mid ’90s to buy things like John Fluevog shoes and an old Macintosh that is currently sitting under my desk at my feet because I can’t bear to throw it out. Did those things make me as happy as I thought they would? Well, actually the computer was a godsend. I was crazy about it, used it all the time, got addicted to email and the internet, typed all the time, started this website. It’s one case where my emotional expectations were pretty accurate, so there. Part of that article also discussed how people fret over job decisions, but ultimately it doesn’t matter because people will be equally satisfied or dissatisfied in whatever job they take. Perhaps, I mean there are people who always hate their job no matter how much they move around. But they must mean similar jobs because I can’t imagine being a bank teller is as good as say, getting paid to travel around the world, writing about your experiences and irritating readers with your insights. Maybe the perceived fun is just not as great as anticipated. I know for a fact I would be happier if I lived in a better location (though I’ve been told by numerous people that I’d find something to complain about no matter what). James lives three blocks from my job, four from my school. I spend 40 minutes getting their on the subway. If I lived where he lives, how could I not be happier with my change? Once again, maybe its meant that the newness would wear off quicker than I’d predict, I’d become accustomed to the convenience and long for someplace better to live. I don’t know, though. I swear if I could develop a life devoid of subways I’d be much happier. Which reminds me, why do New Yorkers care so much about the city, like any disparaging remark is a personal insult? Some stranger, a proud Puerto Rican, got all in a huff and emailed me about how I should leave if I hate it here so much and that I’m taking jobs from locals and how I probably starting getting on some “I Love NY” bandwagon post 9/11 (I didn’t) or some such shit because I called New Yorkers “selfish assholes,” and only a New Yorker would be so self-absorbed to think I meant them specifically, and all 8 million inhabitants. Who cares? It only proves my point about New Yorkers. They don’t get out much. They’re very provincial. They’re obsessed with ethnicity. Like I could say that L.A. is full of shallow pricks or to hit closer to home Portland is full of stupid white trash. I know that’s not true, the people who live in those cities know that’s not true. A city is just a city, a place to live, buildings and people, not a source of blind pride. Where you live doesn’t make you special, uniqueness is internal and universal. To attach your being and essence to a physical place is bizarre. Why would I feel any loyalty to NYC or any city, it’s not a living breathing creature, I have a hard enough time with real human beings. Creepy. So yes, please keep those pride-filled emails a-coming—all those “break her walls with your big johnson” (yes, they actually have resorted to using the term johnson) clogging up my junk mail folder are getting a bit passé.

9/3/03
Ah, back to school, and the perfect weather for it. Personally, I like it 60s and drizzling, but I think it’s a fluke. You know it’ll be back hot and sticky in no time. With it wet and the kids in school, my neighborhood is downright peaceful. Actually, the neighborhood isn’t the problem, it’s just my front porch. Last night I had my first class, which was OK, but it’s at the Brooklyn Public Library and that’s sort of a pain. It’s not super close, though not far either, and not on a direct subway line. I’ve walked on a good day, but it’s quite a trudge. Last night I debated if I should do the two subway thing or just walk over to Fifth Ave. (about five avenues) and catch a bus. It was too chilly, all I had to wear were my weekend clothes: slip-on sandals, short sleeves and a light skirt, so I did the subway. And then I wondered about the park at night. I’m not the kind of person who worries about things like that, sometimes I can be borderline stupid about safety, though I’m hardly what you’d call a risk taker. But I remembered a coworker telling me how she was robbed twice at knifepoint near the park (though not recently). Then last night I come home to see a story on the news how some woman was conked in the head, dragged into the bushes and was being strangled and having her face punched in when a cop noticed scuffling in the shrubs, saw the guy attacking her and broke it up. This was in broad daylight, the middle of the afternoon. The odd tidbit was how they postulated how he was going to rape her because there were condoms at the scene (I think they meant packaged condoms that had come from the attacker, not used, left on the ground). I’d never thought about rapists using condoms. Whatever the facts, that’s creepy, especially since the guy had recently been released from jail for sexual abuse. But enough Brooklyn nonsense, I need to talk about Bangkok because I haven’t really yet and it’s a mouthful. Sat., Aug. 16 we flew to Bangkok and were immediately barraged. I mean, I’d expected it and felt like I could deal, but James (he would probably totally disagree if he read this) was being the spaz. The whole time we were in Thailand he was paranoid our stuff was going to get stolen, we were going to get scammed, killed, thrown in a ditch, I don’t know what. I was constantly reminded “this is why I didn’t want to go to a third world country.” I don’t even know that Thailand is considered third world, but of course, I got his gist. Nothing bad happened, though there were a lot of stressful moments, 99% of which stemmed from language barriers. I kept trying to tell him that Singapore would’ve been just as jarring as Thailand if everything had been in Chinese and everyone spoke Mandarin instead of English. That’s not completely true either, the two countries are totally different in custom and appearance, but I do believe that Bangkok wouldn’t have been as bumpy if we could communicate better. We got in the legitimate taxi line outside (taxi signs inside are misleading, which I’d read about already, they lead you to more expensive limo-type services, not taxis) and thankfully the driver knew our hotel (let me tell you, it would not be this easy the rest of the trip) and it was crazy cheap at $7, including highway tolls (at least they always ask first if you want the highway or not. Heck yeah, why anyone would opt for going the long way is beyond me. Same with air-con buses vs. non. The price difference seemed negligible to me, but then I’m a wealthy westerner, right?). Sure, compared to Singapore, Bangkok seemed dingy, sketchy even, but I was already seeing its appeal: affordability, even to a poor sap like me (that’s saying a lot coming from someone who made less than $16,000 last year in the most expensive city in the country. It also made me wonder about another one of James’s coworkers who had apparently just uprooted from Singapore and had set up shop in Bangkok. We were both speculating on whether he gets his NYC salary over there, that’s totally outrageous if he does. And if so, I want James to move to Asia [and let me tag along, of course] so we can live like rich, foreign bastards too). We stayed at the Sofitel Silom which ended up being swankier than our place in Singapore. (We also ended up staying at the Sofitel in Hua Hin, not out of any loyalty to chain hotels or anything. A few years ago I stayed at the Sofitel in Philadelphia on business and was impressed by the bathrooms, very plush, the décor is always stylish/tasteful, so now we’re sort of hooked on them. At least it wasn’t a Holiday Inn, alright?). Service was out of control in Bangkok. We counted 25 employees in the lobby, alone. They had two guys in little outfits just to open one door, all sorts of other guys who got bags and taxis for you, people at help desks, tour desks, concierge desks. Since we got in late-ish I hadn’t made any major dinner plans, I just figured we’d walk to one of the nearby Thai restaurants I’d read about in my trusty Time Out Bangkok guide (it was actually a pretty good book, lots of decent insight and awareness of lame, cheesy places to avoid). Easier said than done. Within minutes of leaving the safe confines of our hotel, we realized the trouble with Bangkok: it’s bafflingly pedestrian-unfriendly. First we were hit by the tuk tuk drivers who hover on the edge of the hotel property (obviously there’s some sort of agreement), they really, really want to get you in their little noisy, smelly motor cabs, and tourists seem to love them. There was no way in hell I was riding in a tuk tuk, all I’d heard was how they end up costing more than cabs and you end up filthy after a ride, there are fumes blowing out from the exposed motor, and when it rains (as it did in frequent spurts, as it was the monsoon season) you get soaked. So, the first (and chronic) Bangkok battle is getting the tuk tuk drivers to leave you alone. I had figured on poor disfigured people and beggars like you imagine in India and there was almost none of that, just pushy tuk tuk guys and lots and lots of dogs. Any New Yorker boo hoo-ing about Queens Blvd. Being the “Boulevard of Death” needs to get out more. Seriously, if I got anything out of this vacation it was a newfound appreciation for NYC’s ease of movement. I still think New Yorkers are pushy, selfish assholes, but I take back any complaints I’ve ever made about subways, crazy drivers, travel time…oh, and heat and humidity, too. However, I’d say the two cities are pretty equal for smelliness and dirtiness. People aren’t rude, though, and that’s a huge difference. No one honks. The streets are crazy congested, dangerous as hell, I saw two motorbikes smack into each other, and no one honks. If you haven’t noticed, honking is a huge pet peeve of mine. I guess Bangkok is the L.A. of Asia. I don’t think you’re supposed to walk. If you’re rich you drive or take cabs and if you’re not you have a motorbike. There aren’t crosswalks, and there certainly aren’t walk/don’t walk signals. The chaos was coupled with the fact that they drive on the left, and that they can turn on red, meaning turns come all illogically and without warning. It also turned out that Silom Rd. becomes a night market in the evening, meaning booths taking up most of the sidewalk. When I tell people about how it’s impossible to walk in Bangkok they think I mean packed sidewalks like Tokyo or even Manhattan, and it’s not like that at all. In fact, the city was surprisingly sparse. I think they have about 2 million less people than NYC does, and it felt like even less. I know we weren’t there in the high tourist season, but we were never anywhere (bars, restaurants) that seemed to be more than 1/4 full. I think we might tend to eat and go out later than they do, which could account for a little of that, but the subways were never jam-packed and there weren’t really a lot of people out at night. Maybe we’re just warped by NYC where even the shittiest restaurant has a waitlist and at 3am you still have to fight crowds on the sidewalk. So, their sidewalks were unmanageable because they have these booths on them, tourists slowly looking at the wares, blocking up the tiny walking path in the middle. What sidewalk exists is torn up, jutting concrete, or blocked off altogether. Wearing heels is risking your life. I don’t know how people go out at night, I was convinced I was going to break my ankle, trying to avoid gaping cracks and puddles with frogs jumping out. And forget perfect make-up, as it will sweat off your face in the matter of one block. So, the ten blocks or so this restaurant was supposed to be was like a Himalayan trek. We finally make it to Soi Convent and the place is nowhere to be found. Once you get off Silom Rd. it’s dark and desolate and we weren’t sure how safe (you can’t tell in foreign countries). We went to the end and back, nothing. I was so hot and beat up at this point that we just picked the only air-con Thai place open along a block that was all Irish pubs and full of Germans (what is up with Germans and their love of Thailand?! So weird). The food at Prik Kee Noo (translated as mouse droppings, also slang for bird’s eye chiles, as they look sort of like rodent turds) was actually pretty good, even though it seemed tourist-friendly and had murals of bright, comical chile peppers with faces. This began James’s quest to find and try “E3,” (it’s E3 on the menu at Bennie’s, the so-so, though not bad, Thai place by his work) a.k.a. gai pad kra pao, chicken with holy basil and chiles. I didn’t really have a food quest in Thailand, I just wanted to see the difference between Thai Thai and NYC Thai, and honestly I didn’t find any major discrepancies. Maybe my palate just isn’t refined, I don’t know, but I didn’t find the food to be markedly different. Part of that could be due to the fact that I know we ate at too many upscale places. I wouldn’t eat as much fancy food if I had to do it again, but I got suckered by the favorable exchange rate, and the pretty décor. I also blame the heat a bit, it seemed like Thais all ate at roadside or open air, casual affairs with no English and women scrubbing the dishes in buckets on the sidewalk. I’m totally not freaky about street food, cleanliness issues, “exotic” unknown ingredients, whatever (though frogs jumping at me from puddles will scare the crap out of me). But I was so damn hot the whole time, the idea of eating outside made me ill. I regret not even having the patience to stop and check out the little food carts as much as I would’ve liked (it was then that I realized the pure genius of the Singapore hawker center. I hadn’t thought of it literally, as in an organized center were hawkers set up. Duh, I know. Was it the ‘60s? I’m not sure when, that Singapore cleaned up the city and put all these willy nilly vendors into set places with tables). Now that I think about it, Singapore is just as hot as Bangkok is but eating outside wasn’t unpleasant. I don’t like confusion and chaos, that was the problem. I also can’t eat without sitting because I’m a freak who’s never been able to chew and walk at the same time (it makes me very self-conscious). I suppose there are many factors as to why Singapore street food is way more accessible than Bangkok’s. Anyway, I think that maybe if you’d only eaten Thai food in like Missouri (don’t hate me, Show Me State) or Lemongrass Grill in NYC you’d find the quality of ingredients better, the spice-level higher etc. Not like I’m an aficionado by any means, but I know a thing or two. More than new flavors, what I was impressed by was the number and variety of dishes, things I wasn’t familiar with. That could also be what was daunting about street carts—none of it was in English, and you might not even be able to tell what an item was just by looking at it, for good or bad (after visiting Wat Pho and the Grand Palace we stopped at this little food area and got a bunch of skewers. This one looked like it had diseased marshmallows on it, but it turned out to be like shrimp toast, but cubed on a stick. Very good. James got two that the woman said were chicken, he pulled one out to take a bite, this tuk tuk guy smiled, and started pointing and said, “chicken” (odd, since they don’t always speak any English. He then started harassing us to get in his ride). Next thing I know James was spitting (back into the bag, not on the street) and making faces and going on about how the meat was rotten. I looked at what he was eating and realized it was a skewer of chicken hearts. I think the tuk tuk driver thought it was funny that some white guy was eating hearts. I thought they were fine, I ate both skewers, no problem). So, after dinner we wandered towards the hotel. I was so beat-up at this point, and a pervasive exhaustion never dissipated the whole vacation. I don’t know if it was the time difference (12 hours in Singapore, making it easy not having to change your watch. 11 in Bangkok, which is odd since they seem almost vertically parallel) the heat or just because it takes lots of energy to get where you’re going. I thought maybe we could get a drink and smoke somewhere (it’s sad when the prospect of being able to smoke in bars gets you excited) and meandered down the brightly lit street on my right. It was tout central, you couldn’t walk an inch without being harassed, there were women in prom dresses, neon everywhere, men holding open photo albums, some with pictures of women, some with descriptive sexual acts. Ah ha, we’d accidentally stumbled onto Patpong. I knew the hotel was right near the famous sex streets (and made a mental note to steer clear) but I thought it would be more obvious (as it turns out there’s a huge banner at the entrance, I was just really tired and out of it). It was really overwhelming, it might’ve been amusing had I been more alert. We walked through to the next street, then got sort of lost, lots of sois dead end, things curve weirdly. We got stuck on an all massage cul de sac. I started thinking we’d never make it back to the hotel without seeing a woman shoot something from her vagina. I don’t know why, but I kept picturing Hank Hill, and how he’d be so completely mortified. It didn’t seem like funny seedy, but like depressing seedy. Entering the hotel was like day and night, everything was clean and cool and spacious, everyone was smiling (and wai-ing. I was never clear if you were supposed to wai back or if that was weird for westerners. Is it like a Japanese bow?) and helpful. Like a fortress, coming and going like aristocracy on the verge of a coup d’etat by the commoners. Not really, but there is such a rich/poor vibe that I’m not accustomed to. I’m so used to being the envious, bitter poor person that I only imagined that the cleaning ladies, while smiling and saying hello, wanted us dead. Actually, I don’t think they wanted us dead at all, everyone seemed genuinely nice, it’s a tourism-based economy, there are a lot of service industry jobs. I just kept thinking how I’d feel. I wondered where the waitstaffs lived, how they got home, if they got vacations, and where they would go. Sunday we headed to Chatuchak Market, the huge, really huge, weekend market at the end of one of the skytrain lines. It was a giant mish mash of stalls selling everything from used Vans shoes, jewelry, and watches to poodles and fighting roosters. It’s totally insane, a jam-packed, shoulder-to-shoulder madhouse. In a fun way, of course. I only bought a watch, I’m not much of a shopper, or bargainer. James thought the best deal of the entire trip were the 3 baht (about half a penny) popcicles at Chatuchak. Even constantly drinking the 5 baht bottles of water (also incredibly cheap), I felt completely sun stroked and started breathing funny and seeing stars after about three hours of nonstop walking. Really, I got scared I was going to faint, so we managed to find an air-con restaurant in the middle of all the hub bub. Toh Plue wasn’t bad at all, they did a nice crispy catfish and green mango salad. I perked back up. For dinner we did Blue Elephant, which turned out to only be down the street, one subway from the hotel, but hell if we were going to walk. I’d learned my lesson already, plus it was pouring (it really only rained briefly two evenings in Bangkok, the first morning in Singapore, and while on the road to Hua Hin. Not bad, I was scared hearing about monsoons and all). However, getting there was a tiny ordeal because of the way the streets are set up, there are very few lights and places to turn around. We were maybe 12 blocks east of the restaurant and one major block north, but with all the one-ways, the driver had to go completely out of the way and circle around (I was hyper aware of being taken for a ride, literally. I’d heard all these stories about people wanting to go to one restaurant and being taken someplace else completely because the driver would get kickbacks. Like a nut, I always knew exactly where we were supposed to be going on the map and always had one with me, despite reading that Thais don’t think cartographically and that maps are futile [that seemed absolutely ludicrous to me, though I started to think there might’ve been some truth in it]). I know it’s sort of weird to eat at a Thai chain restaurant that’s not even Thai while in Thailand, but hey, it made “Conde Nast Traveler’s” 75 Hot Tables 2003. I’m a sucker for trendy places, and it was so not NYC-style trendy. Nothing is, I discovered. Even popular places were unpretentious, reservations never a problem. And as far as high-end restaurant food goes, it was quite good (Celadon, which we tried our last night, was totally blah). We way over-ordered and I felt super guilty since the food wasn’t cheap (by Bangkok standards. I think we spent around $80 for two including drinks, which could easily be blown on a mediocre mid-week East Village meal without even trying). I’m a total doggie-bagger, but when you’re on vacation that’s not really feasible. I just realized what a windbag I am (I’m up to page five single spaced and I’m supposed to be doing readings for class, not waxing nostalgic for something that happened mere days ago). Anyway, I’m going to be writing about these restaurants in my food section, so I won’t go into great detail here, even though I like talking about food the best. Of course James had the Lamp Chop Kaprow, really “E3” with lamb (not lamps, natch). I had the Black Chicken, which was a green curry of eggplant and black chicken served with roti, which was a very nice southern Thai touch. I was sad to leave much of it behind. Ok, briefer. Monday we did the malls. Siam Center and Siam Discovery Center are side by side, but the latter is fancier. One of them, I forget which, has an Outback Steakhouse…classy. We both got haircuts at the Toni & Guy inside because they start at 100 bucks a pop in NYC and were only $16 in Bangkok. Nevermind that my guy spoke absolutely no English—it was only $16! James can have the half-penny popcicle. I think the $16 haircut was the deal of the vacation. Then I was all nervous about whether to tip or not. That was an issue the whole vacation. In Singapore there’s no tipping anywhere, cabbies give you all your change back (not in Bangkok—don’t give what you don’t plan on getting back), cheap or expensive restaurant, there’s 10% built into the price. Bangkok was all different, some had the added in tax, some didn’t, some said to tip a little bit, some said not to, it was a mess. I ended up giving the guy 100 baht on a 700 baht haircut, which I think was 20%, I can’t do math. Anyway, the haircut is very cute. I thought James might spaz because he’s always gone to this $10 East Village barber who does assembly line cuts in like ten minutes. Here, they spent like 20 minutes washing, conditioning, massaging (I got a tiny bit freaked out when they started doing this thing with my ears). But James has gone all Queer Eye on me and totally digged the salon experience (I saw them bringing him coffee and magazines). I don’t know what he’s going to do now in NYC. Next to Siam Center is MBK, Mah Boon Krong, the lowbrow mall that’s insanely filled with electronics and well, just about everything. On the top floor they have a movie theater, a Sizzler, and these little glass pods you can rent out and sing karaoke in with your friends. I found children’s’ underwear with a cartoon beaver exclaiming, “I love beaver.” Adorable. This is where James bought his illicit antibiotics. It is like Chatuchak but indoors, air-con, multi-levled with an awesome (I never use the word awesome, but hey) food court. As with Takashimaya in Singapore, we became fixated on MBK in Bangkok (and visited both twice in a short period of time). While Singapore had Beard Papa’s, Bangkok had the freaky Santa Burger. Both have bearded old men for mascots. The funny thing is that Santa Burger didn’t seem to serve burgers, all their ads showed mounds of rice and stir-fried things. I was crazy for this food vendor section on the main floor where you could get things like skewers, fruit, candy, dried mysterious things, pretty vegetable dumplings in bright oranges, greens and purples (I thought these were dyed from afar, but it was true scallions, carrots and red cabbage in all their natural vivid glory) and fried chopped meat by the kilo (the pork was totally like lechon, crispy, fatty, so good. I didn’t really know how to ask for it, but managed to get a small serving in a baggie with a toothpick. It’s funny how everything comes in baggies, even soda. Plastic containers are not a thing there.). The food court was initially baffling because you have to buy tickets, it’s straight cash for coupons, but you have to estimate how much you’ll spend. James blindly asked for 400 baht worth (a little under $10) and we spent only maybe 250 baht on duck on rice, red curry with chicken and Vietnamese spring rolls, which is fine since you can just get a refund. Such a great deal (maybe the best after the popcicle and haircut) About half the stands have English menus, the others you can sort of piece together visually. We vowed to go back, the food was way better than a lot of the restaurant stuff we’d had, but we never had a chance. For dinner we went to this nearby art gallery/fusion joint Eat Me! (their exclamation) that wasn’t on my original to-do list, but damn, getting around was so excruciating I started lowering my criteria to what’s best of what’s closest. It was off Soi Convent, the same street we tried finding that restaurant the first night, but now we were wise enough to take a cab (as fares are so cheap, you’d be martyr to walk), which our hotel guys now got for us (the restaurant name garnered a funny smile from one of them). We’d also asked for a card with the hotel address in Thai to hand to cab drivers, which makes you look like a total retard, like those deaf people who hand out cards. The thing said “Please take me to Sofitel Silom.” So pathetic, but basic Thai doesn’t help. I knew a few phrases and my numbers, too. In the end, my attempts at Thai were even more pathetic than handing over a loser card. The only way we ever knew with certainty that we’d end up where we wanted to go was when a hotel or restaurant got a cab for us and spoke to the driver. This cab driver knew a tiny bit of English, he was the only one who did, and asked if we liked Thai food, and then seemed like he was going to take us somewhere else. Ack, the scam I had feared. But it was ok, we kept him on task, emphasizing are intended address. I’m still not clear if he was pointing out places he liked or if he was trying to get us to go to them that very minute. Dinner was fine. But James wanted to go to Bed Supperclub afterwards. I was so-so on the idea since I hate trendy clubs (though not trendy restaurants). He wanted to see it in person since the photos made it look all cool, space age and design-y. I would never ever go to a velvet rope/door policy place in NYC in a million years and was nervous about the prospect in Bangkok, but heck, we had our shiny new haircuts, why not. Little did I know that getting in would be the least of our troubles. We caught our own cab on the street after dinner and asked the guy if he knew the address: 26 Soi Sukhumvit 11. The thing is, they will always say yes and to get in. I could figure the address out no problem. You go to Sukhimvit, turn left up soi 11 until you hit #26. I’d looked it up on a map, easy. We could’ve done the skytrain, but it so hot and I was gussied up and didn’t want to walk all over the earth. Big mistake. We drove down Sukhumvit, I swear past soi 11, much past, the skytrain stations flew, we were too far east, I got nervous but didn’t say anything, traffic is crazy, mind you. I start thinking he’s going to drop us off in the middle of nowhere, chop us up, who knows what, my stomach was getting upset from nerves and the wild driving. He gets up to soi 26 and does a right. This is when I panic, he clearly doesn’t understand the address, he stops in front of some nightclub called Orbit, I guess figuring one club is as good as another (amusingly, we walk past this very club the next night trying to find a restaurant). James gets weird, rude and pushy in these situations. We kept trying to convey we want soi 11, not 26, the building is 26. We say it, we write it. I say soi 11 in Thai. He doesn’t understand 11. I wanted to get out. I knew how to get back where we were supposed to be on the skytrain. The driver seemed panicked, himself. It was all very bad, a social situation I can’t deal with. He started driving back. We hoped he got what we were trying to convey. He didn’t turn on 11 but on some other soi and down all these curvy back roads and I seriously thought I was going to puke. By now it was after midnight and I have weird issues about time, I’m very anal and irrational about it. Bars close at 2am so I was annoyed and nervous that we’d get there too late and all this effort was a waste, and who knows if they’d even let us in. We finally got there a back way, so I calmed a bit, but then James wanted cigarettes (this was a theme of the vacation, there’d be 7-11s everywhere, but he’d only realize he was out of cigarettes when we were in the middle of nowhere) and decided to start walking down the street, which pissed me off since we were late (late for what? I know, I know) and I had uncomfortable shoes on and the sidewalk was all torn up and there were puddles everywhere, so we got into a fight and he told me I was ruining the vacation. Very few spats erupted the whole trip, and every time it was spurred by a transit/language barrier trauma, not my fault. So, we got cigarettes, made it back, and this group of Asians (the women non-descript, the men 40-ish in business suits) were ahead of us and they wouldn’t let them in. It seemed as if they were being quoted a really high entrance fee and they wouldn’t agree to pay and left dejectedly. So scary. We get up to the top of the stairs and are greeted by smiles and “welcome.” No fee, no hassle, no biggie. It became clear throughout the vacation that at long as you were white (and not wearing shorts and a backpack) you were welcome just about anywhere, your expendable income your calling card. The place was indeed jetset, hyper white, futuristic cool, and still hopping around 1am. Drink prices were Manhattan-stiff, around $10 a piece. We sipped gin and tonics, upstairs where you can lounge on the namesake beds (there was a gross white guy and Thai girl on a “date” and the guy just wouldn’t leave her alone, groping like crazy, pinning her on the bed, she seemed off put and stiff. A staff member had to come over tell the guy to get off of her.) and felt mildly cosmopolitan and decadent. I wondered what sort of Thais could afford 400 baht drinks (an average Thai salary is less than $200/month). I mean, there were Thais there. I know there was a huge economic rise in the ‘90s that crashed in ’97. Every city has its permanently rich, I suppose. I don’t think they have a middle class, it’s one of those kind of places where you either have cooks and maids or you are a cook or maid. Thankfully, we were able to guide our third cab driver of the evening back to our hotel through the use of our retarded “please take me to…” card. Did I mention, that despite our nice hotel room in Bangkok, we had been given two double beds? Sleeping like an old married couple had to have added to the petty quarrelling that seemed to plague us in Bangkok. Which reminds me, our four-year anniversary is tomorrow. I just found out that reservations at Craft had been made for Fri. and will now have to cancelled because James is having an emergency wisdom tooth removal Fri. morning and will only be able to drink liquids. That’s ok, next week will be as fine as any to go out, but still, I won’t be happy if I have to eat some horrible canned soup for dinner Fri.

9/1/03
I really feel like I never make use of these three-day weekends. I haven’t done a darn thing, like a total bum. And I’m starting to think that I’m an even bigger hypochondriac than I’d previously thought. I can’t ever concentrate, my head always hurts, my eyes are always tired and my there is constant snot in my head and I can’t ever smell anything. It’s probably some migraine/sinus/a need for eyeglasses combo thing, but it’s been going for ages and today I started convincing myself I had a brain tumor. But tumors bring nausea and vomiting, so I’ve discovered, and that’s not me at all. It could be West Nile of course. I did see that they’re spraying the cemetery on my block Tues., which would imply there’s a mosquito problem in the neighborhood. So, all I did this weekend was test out some Nyonya recipes in new cookbooks I bought and saw “American Splendor.” I didn’t know a ton about Harvey Pekar, only a bit I’d read in passing over the years. It was really good, and I hate to admit that that upcoming Sophia Coppola movie looks really good, too. I just really, really don’t want to like rich, children of famous peoples’ creative endeavors, you know? But absurd images of Tokyo television shows with slow, buzzy Jesus and Mary Chain in the background can’t help but draw me in. I also realized I have a thing for Scarlett Johansen, which is totally weird. I think something’s wrong with me, I was watching her character on screen and kept thinking how I’d like to be her (as the snippet of an unformed character I pieced together through the trailer, not her real self). Why couldn’t I be drifting around Tokyo, the young wife of a jet-set photographer? But, I loved the Revenge of the Nerds obsessed character in “American Splendor.” You’d think it was a heavy-handed stereotype if they didn’t also show the real guy, equally nutty and borderline autistic. I’m afraid file clerks have much in common with library workers (in fact, I spent time as a medical file clerk in the early ‘90s). There was a scene where he was extolling the virtues of the pina colada flavored Jelly Bellies and they were playing Rupert Holmes’s Pina Colada song, which brought me straight to the beginning of my S.E. trip. After nearly 24 hours on a plane, all tired, disoriented and a little nervous about a new country, we got a cab (so orderly and easy, there are specified taxi lines at the airport and everywhere in town). It was first thing in the morning, nothing was open yet, it was pouring rain, the view from the windows were Chinese characters and palm trees, and the cab was filled with the sweet sounds of The Pina Colada Song. It was soothing, indeed. The rest of our stay in Singapore was short and sweet. After checking into the Gallery Hotel (but still too early to have our room) we wandered like tired, hungry zombies in the wet heat and Killiney Kopitiam, a coffeehouse to get the traditional breakfast of kaya (a coconut custard jam) toast and soft boiled eggs. Then headed to Orchard Rd. to partly to check out the shopping, mostly to get some air conditioning. This is where we discovered the beauty of Takashimaya. I know they have one in NYC, but I’ve never been, so I don’t know if it’s the same. James was into the clothes, I was obsessed with the basement food stalls. It was clean, bright, cute, and they every snack imaginable. Mostly Asian, of course, but that was the fun of it, not knowing what half the things were. Yet being Singapore, it was never daunting, as almost everything was in English. I’ll admit, that was a big selling point in Singapore, having all this great, crazy foreign stuff that you could actually figure out by being able to read or ask about it. It was an entire floor of sweets and fried goodies and chains I’d never heard of like Beard Papa’s, some Japanese creampuff place, cheesecake shop Tio Glutton, yep, Japanese (who else would choose such a name?), and Bengawan Solo, a Malaysian/Indonesian bakery with the most colorful mooncakes I’d ever seen (we were lucky to be in Buddhist countries during the mid-Autumn festival—their mooncakes are so much more over-the-top then the ones I see here in NYC) and kuehs, i.e. cakes, that I’m fixated on, who cares that they all really kind of have the same coconut milk/rice flour flavor. After napping, we had dinner at one of the restaurants at the hotel Coriander Leaf. Very Asian-Mediterranean fusion. Later we headed to Clarke Quay, which is sort of this manufactured entertainment district on the water (they have a Hooters). I had planned on satay, but second dinner just wasn’t a possibility that evening, I didn’t want to make myself sick. I quickly learned that carrying around a little pack of Kleenex was a necessity, they sell them in huge bulk packages at the store. No one provides napkins or toilet paper in Singapore (except at nicer restaurants. And oddly there were napkins in Bangkok, hardly a clean-obsessed city), which is sort of bizarre, considering there is fine for not flushing toilets. I guess it cuts down on waste? I mean, NYC is overboard with napkins, straws and brown bags, so I understand. Plus, it was handy to have something to wipe up the chronic sweaty face. The next day we checked out Chinatown, then visited the Singapore office of James’s co. which wasn’t really an office, but a house with two employees working on computers in the living room. One of the guys, Alvin, who’s from N.J. (I’m not sure why I feel the need to stress that he’s Chinese-American not Singaporean), took us around to find food items I’d been wanting. There wasn’t any work for them to do since the blackout in NYC has messed up the telecommuting thing. In Holland Village, this little suburban enclave, we had laksa, lime juice (a big thing, it seemed—I don’t know if it used those little limes or not) and otak otak, then headed to some mulism-ish hawker center to find things like murtabak, char kway teow and sugar cane juice. Dinner was classic, super messy chili crabs at Jumbo, one of the seven water-side restaurants at the East Coast Seafood Centre. We were immediately thrown off by the woman approaching our table, asking if we wanted to start with satay. We didn’t even have a menu yet. As it turns out, Jumbo doesn’t even serve satay. I guess she was some renegade satay hawker. This threw us off, as it was much more a Bangkok approach than a Singapore one. Touting is hardly a problem in Singapore, they’d probably cane you. I don’t think I ate the crab properly either, because even after ordering fried buns like I knew I was supposed to, to scoop the sauce, we still had tons leftover and the waitress seemed distressed and made us order more bread and there was still tons of sauce left. We had to hide the extra under the crab shells so she wouldn’t chide us. Food etiquette can’t be gained in mere days, we still had lots to learn, but there was no time. The next day, we crammed in a meal of Hainan chicken rice and rojak (translated as crazy salad, which is totally true. There are all sorts of different styles, but the one in Singapore seemed to consist of chunks of pineapple, cucumber, turnip and crullers, tossed in a sweet, spicy soy sauce, possibly kecap manis, though I’m not certain, and sprinkled with peanuts) at Kopitiam, a 24-hour basement food court in Le Meridian hotel (if it seems like we spent a lot of time indoors, it’s because we did. The weather was so unbearably hot and/or wet most of the time, we could only deal with walking outside in short bursts) before shoving off for Bangkok, and that’s a whole other story.