Thailand 1.1

Picking up where we left off in the Thailand 1.0 post… We arrived in Krabi; we gave the hotel name to our taxi driver and he dropped us off in front of this restaurant. I was certain we were going to have to get into another cab and go to the real hotel, because there was no way there was a hotel attached to this:

Except there was. We felt pretty sketched out about the whole thing, but the room ended up being nice and there were no giant lizards, so all-in-all, not a bad deal.

We basically only had one full day in this place, so we did a speedboat tour of the neighbouring islands. Beautiful Koh Phi Phi.

It was great, we went to a bunch of the different islands, had lunch and went snorkeling. Snorkeling is an amazing thing and I wasn’t quite prepared for it.

The next day, we went to Phuket. A 2.5hour bus ride on an AC mini-bus turned into a 6.5hour bus ride on an AC mini-bus that did not have much AC to speak of. Most people were pretty grumpy by the end. Myself included.

Our hotel appeared to be in the middle of nowhere, but turned out to be quite close to “Old Kata Center” which was a quaint little town near the beach.

The beach wasn’t nearly as spectacular as ones we had become accustomed to, but we spent a day there regardless. And because it was overcast, it was my first day on the beach without having to apply copious amounts of sunscreen.

Naturally, I burned the shit out of my back.

In order to keep my mind off the pain from my sunburn, I thought it would be best to inflict more pain on myself. If only to act as a distraction.

But also because it’s pretty. No, it wasn’t licked on by kittens and, no, it won’t come off in the shower, regardless of how much I thin my blood while I’m in there.

Next up was Chaing Mai, so we flew north and found our way to our hotel. Which ended up being so magnificently amazing I questioned how we were able to afford to stay there.

We ended up doing three tours, one included the zoo/aquarium, complete with elephant ride.

But also, pandas were involved.

The next other was a temple tour (but believe me, these were not the first, nor the last temples we would see… not sure if I ever have to see a Buddha again). Regardless of quantity, the temples were amazing, and the pictures don’t do them justice.

Last tour involved many animals. Including a monkey show, that was way more of a show than the last one.

And also tigers, even though I didn’t pet them.

And 10 levels of waterfalls that weren’t worth it after the 6th.

Seriously – I think that was the best one and we spent more than an hour walking up never-ending staircases to get to the top.

Did I mention we did this while in the jungles of Thailand? And that it was 35 degrees Celsius and humid as fuck? Yeah, I wasn’t super stoked with this part of the day.

And back down to Bangkok we went.

Next up – part three. I’ll finish off the snapshots of my snapshots and will provide some amusing anecdotes, that I’m sure you’re all waiting for.

Please note – aforementioned anecdotes do not include underage debauchery or ping pong balls.

Thailand 1.0

Here’s my attempt at summarizing my holiday in Thailand in one post. Highly doubtful, but I’ll try to keep it to a minimum because if we learned anything from my last round of Mexico posts is that too many posts leads to more than a month between the start of my vacation and the end… and that was only a week long story.

I arrived at Bangkok International Airport and found my shuttle with no problem, albeit a lot of walking because BKK is the largest airport ever (well, that I’ve been in anyway). My friends showed up at the hotel shortly after I arrived and we went out for lunch shortly after that. As I was walking down the streets of Bangkok, I was stunned at the heat, the humidity, terrible air quality and dirtiness of the streets. I attempted to eat my lunch, but it was like eating fire, so I had to switch meals with my friend’s husband. Glad he likes spicy food. That’s about the time my body went into complete shock. I did not feel well.

Went back to the hotel for a nap, after which, I awoke with my body having come to terms with being in a foreign country. We went out clubbing to celebrate. There’s this street known as Cowboy Street… most of the bars are strip clubs with hot Thai girls (sometimes ladyboys) outside trying to get you to go in. There was this one club that had a girl outside holding a sign; the sign said “Over 50 hot girls inside. A few ugly ones and even a couple fat ones”. Seriously. I should have taken a picture.

We found a club that had a live band. It’s quite funny watching a cover band singing English songs realizing that they probably don’t speak English and have no idea what they’re singing about. This was the funniest song they played. (Turn down your speakers – it was loud and maxed out my camera mic.)

Pretty Fly for a Thai Guy

The next day we went to MBK, which is a ridiculously large mall.

Keeping in mind, I was already on the third floor. Still, picture doesn’t do it justice.

Day after that, we flew south to Koh Samui. We spent one day on the beach at our resort.

The next day we did a tour of the island.

Viewpoint:

Penis rock:

I was chatting with some Australian boys at this point of the tour; one of them said “It looks just like it did in the picture”, I said “Really? I thought it would be bigger”. It took him a split second to process what I said; if he had been drinking something it would have been a spit-take. Safe to say we were buddies for the rest of the tour.

Monkey “Show”:

Which consisted of this monkey climbing a tree and knocking down a couple coconuts. It wasn’t much of a show.

Mummified Monk:

Story is that he died while meditating 30 years ago… so they left him in that position and made it a tourist attraction. I just wonder why he was meditating with a pair of Ray Bans. Not very monk-ish.

That night, Ree went into the bathroom to shower. Within minutes of her being in there I heard “Oh my God. OH MY GOD!!” I called out to her and she said “You have to come in here and see this… maybe with your camera!” I went in and this is what I saw in our shower:

It was probably 6-8” long (not including the tail). And it scared the crap out of me.

The next day we moved again, this time to Krabi and this time to a hotel that wouldn’t let giant lizards into our room.

Stay tuned for part two.

I return!

Hey folks – I’m back!!

Made it to and through Thailand and back home all in one piece. Many stories to tell… probably too many, but I’ll try to do up a snapshot of my trip. There will be pictures involved, so first I must unpack my bags and download the pics from my camera. It’ll take a bit of time (… Gorm…), but fear not, it’s in the works!

My last day in Thailand it rained like you wouldn’t believe. I joked that it was Bangkok’s way of preparing me for home. First night back in Canada, we’re hit with our usual November Rain storm.

I’m outta here!!

Alright, folks, this is my last post before I leave for Thailand. “Last post” makes it sound like there will actually be something to it. There won’t be. I’m sorry for getting your hopes up.

So… I’m leaving tonight and won’t be back for over 2 weeks (17 days, I believe). I’ll be safe and will take tonnes of pictures and eat all kinds of food (which I’ll take pictures of, like a fricken champ!).

Don’t miss me too much!!

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!

Rude awakening… actually just rude

Monday morning, I’m blissfully snoozing my alarm clock when the phone rings. My first thought was that perhaps I’d overslept to the point that work was calling me to see where I was. When I discovered it was merely 7am, that thought dissipated and was replaced with one of much more concern; maybe something is wrong.

I hopped out of bed and dashed to the phone, trying desperately to get the sleep out of my voice so that the person on the other end didn’t know they had woken me from my deep slumber (why do we do that anyway?).

ThatWhiteGirl: Hello?

Caller: Hey – is this CSPAN?

TWG: Sorry – wrong number (also, why do we do that??)

Caller: Hello?!

TWG: Wrong number…!

Caller: The fucking city is wrong!!!!

TWG: Huh?

Caller: 411 doesn’t fucking work!!!!!

TWG: Okaaaayyy…

Caller: Fuck you, you information bitch!!!!!!!

TWG: …. ….

Caller: Go to hell, you dumb fucking cunt!!!!!

*end scene* (literally)

And that’s how I started my day. It’s bound to be a good one.

Adventures in online dating–part 1

Alright… just because you guys seem to like this so much and because, quite frankly, I’m getting so much ammunition I don’t know what to do with it all, here’s a couple examples of what I’ve been dealing with lately.

 

Guy#1 – emailed me and wants to chat. We go back and forth a few times over the course of a week or so. His spelling is like a text message from a 13 year old girl, but I decided not to hold that against him. He also doesn’t believe in any punctuation whatsoever. This is becoming more and more commonplace, so again, I decided not to judge him on it.

He asked if I text and suggested we do that instead of emailing because it’s “easier”. (Yeah, full keyboards suck). I gave him my number and didn’t hear from him. He emailed me and said that his phone acts up and doesn’t always send/receive texts. He suggested I test it out. Suddenly he’s able to send and receive texts with lightening speed.

While texting I asked him what he was up to. He said “nm goin for a night swim”. I asked where, he responded with Coquitlam Centre. I said “In the mall?? “ and he said “no aquatic centre”.

Seriously? He doesn’t get that I was joking? Does he have no sense of humour? At all?? Yeah… I’ll judge him on that one, for sure.

So, he sends me a text the other day, here’s how our “conversation” went. And I use that term really loosely. (Note: things in asterisks did not make it into my text, it’s just what I did when I received his)

Him: Sup

Me: *roll eyes* Not much… how about you?

Him: nm sup

Me: *what the fuck face* Not much. You?

Him: lol

Me:

This is definitely the most-used illustration in my online dating posts. Speaks volumes.

 

Guy#2 – Roughly 4 years my junior. But age is just a number, right? So I emailed him and he responds to my email with this:

… sorry to put it bluntly my intentions on here are for meeting someone younger than myself. This helps to cover any maturity differentials and lesses the risk of dating someone with severe baggage.

What the fuck?? Well thanks for letting me down easy instead of being one of those guys that just doesn’t respond. Yikes.

 

Also… I’ve had multiple guys ask me if I have facebook. Do they realize that FB involves real life things, like my last name and place of work? Do they realize that POF only lists the city I live in and I’m perfectly okay with that? And why is it that they get all offended when I say, yes, I do have facebook, but you’re a stranger so I’m not sending you my info?

A Year in Review

One year ago today was the last time I spoke to my best friend, K. And “spoke to” is used loosely. In fact, it was the last time I received an angry email from her.

Hitting that milestone has led me to contemplate my life. What have I done? What have I accomplished?

My first thought was “Nothing! You’ve done nothing!”. But then as I stopped to think about it, I realized that’s just not true.

 

Things Heather has done in the past twelve months:

• Bought a URL for my blog
• Learned how to set up and use the thing
• Transferred my blog contents… twice
• Went to Mexico… alone … twice
• Kissed a girl
• Made out with a teenager
• Made an ass out of myself… more times than I can count
• Took dance lessons
• Learned how to dance
• Learned I love to dance
• Stopped having to be drunk in order to dance
• Got a promotion
• Started bossing people around… some people left
• Met a boy
• Started getting some
• Dumped a boy
• Stopped getting some
• Planned a trip to Thailand
• Hoping I’ll get some while I’m there
• Discovered the holy grail that is loose leaf tea
• Have an ever growing tea collection
• Lost weight
• Through dance, without even trying
• Made new friends
• Through dance, without even trying
• Became a foosball champion
• I have two silver medals to prove it
• It was a fluke…

All in all… a good year!