Amanda Takes Off...

I suppose coming in from Phuket after midnight was the start of my last full day in Thailand. Let's just say I ended up running around a nearly empty airport with three big Israeli guys (carrying...guitars) trying to find a legal taxi who was willing to meter. Eventually the four of us ended up in an illegal taxi and I got three chaste kisses when I was dropped off at my hostel.

(Now my mother is freaking out, wondering "what were you doing running around with three strange men in the middle of the night?" and my father is thinking, "That's my daughter!")

And that was the start of a fairly interesting day.

I headed over to the big weekend market, Chatuchak. I am always overwhelmed at these things, so I did what I usually do: I bought cheap jewelry that will turn my wrist green and ate a lot of street food. Here is a list of what I ate and what my mother now fears I will die of: fresh pineapple and canteloupe (Hep A), some sort of chicken dumpling on a stick thing (Avian flu), coconut ice cream (brain freeze) topped with fresh pineapple (Hep A again) and peanuts (an unknown peanut allergy), and a vanilla Coke (I am sure it was a knock off brand that will kill me somehow).

I searched and searched for some yarn. I found tons of silk and even found a woman crocheting with silk, but she told me I couldn't get yarn there. Sigh. I wanted some great silk yarn.

After a few hours of that, I headed back to the hostel, a great place called Asha Guesthouse. On the way there, I found this guy welding something on the street.

(A side about the hostel: I ended up cancelling my reservation for another hostel to stay at this one a second time. Very nice place, good people, a slightly older crowd that's not hellbent on getting drunk every night nor on place-dropping. You know what I mean—Man, when I was in [insert-never-heard-of-before-city-here] it was cool, but now it's been discovered and man, it's all been downhill. You can actually buy Coke there. Can you believe that, man?")

I read for a bit in my room, enjoying the AC, until a giant BANG! occured that knocked out the electricity and killed my AC. Afraid I was going to die of heat on the 4th/5th floor (depending on how you count), I headed down to the main floor to see who was around and I found some Americans, Bill and Leaf. I'd met Bill before and Leaf, too, although I didn't know Leaf's name. Bill was heading out to Sydney and there was a Londoner trying to plan a trip to America. We told her to be sure to check out the Grand Canyon and Mount Saint Helens. Bill bought us all a round of Singhas and we wished him a good trip. Leaf and I got started on voting and politics (we scared off the Londoner, I fear) and eventually I demanded we eat something.

After a lot of "I don't know, where do you want to eat"ing back and forth, we headed to BigC, a sort of shopping center, and put in a table request at MK Suki, where you get to cook your own meal in boiling water. It was actually quite good and cheap for the two of us to eat, although poor Leaf had to make sense of the seven sales slips that were handed to us at the end of the meal. We were the only westerners in the place (and it was packed), but unlike South Korea, nobody pointed us as and screamed "foreigners!" How nice!

Before and after our meal, we went to BigC and tried to find some suction cup hooks and get me some new shirts. Despite Leaf's fabulous sign-language for "suction cup," we didn't find any.

We did, however, find this shirt. Which neither of us could make sense of. (hoi den\hoi den.\n (1900) 1: a long wicver inserted in a split bun typically served with sauce.)

We also hammed it up in the not-suction-cup hook aisle together.

Back at the hostel, I eventually fell asleep (where I was awakened with two more explosions in the middle of the night) while reading a book exchange copy of Freakonomics.

Chaste kisses to street food to cooking my own food to mimicking licking suctions cups to giggling over whatever a "wicver" is. This is my life.