Seattle / end of the Trip

Now that I am in Seattle, the silence is ringing in my head. There is no truck with speakers advertising scrub brushes LOUDLY to the whole neighborhood. There are no suggestive, hopeful, "Hello, Miss, tuk-tuk?" or the constant beeping of horns as buses, cars, motos, and people weave through the streets to avoid hitting each other. There are so few people out and about. It is quiet, even in the streets. It is so quiet that I feel as though my head may just implode from the vacuum of the silence.

Bangkok

And so this trip finishes cyclically, back in Thailand's hectic and huge capital.

Last night, I saw 5 grown men wearing the pointy frog-lady hats. The women are ubiquitous in Thailand and Laos. They walk in pairs and sell bracelets, pointed woven hats with jingle bells on them, and wooden frogs that make a croak sound when you stroke a wooden stick across the top ridges. Occasionally, there is a chorus of croaks on the streets of the tourist district and the trick is to avoid eye contact. If you make eye contact or any movements that may indicate interest, the frog-ladies will come over and enticingly make the frog croak close to your ear. We never imagined that anyone would actually buy a pointy colorful hat with jingle bells on it.

I went to the dentist today. It was in the MBK center - an air-conditioned shopping mall with 8 floors. I walked three miles to get there, past the Buddha-for-sale section of the city. All of the businesses are clustered in Asian cities (ie. motorbike decals stands all together, fruit baskets sales all together, sequined bikinis all together). Isn't this the most demonic Buddha smile you have ever seen? The mall was full of people, and the dental clinic and spa was on the 5th floor. The clinic was manned by beautiful Thai women - even my dentist was a woman with laughing eyes (she had a face mask on) and patient mannerisms. She checked my teeth and told me that I had 4 cavities to be filled. Finally! a dentist who told me the truth about what did and didn't need to done. Like a real dentist, she told me to floss everyday. She didn't numb my mouth until they were filling my fourth cavity, which extends almost to the root of the tooth. I kept on jerking in pain, so they stopped drilling and put 5 shots of novacaine in my cheek. "Don't worry, you will not have to pay," the dentist said. While we waited for the shots to take their effect, she asked me about iPhone coverage in Los Angeles. I think that the most repulsive way you can view yourself in is from the wrong angle of a mirror looking into your mouth: the pores of your face magnified, your lips cracked from holding your mouth open for 2 hours, and dried drool caked on your chin. My dental work cost $130. That amount of work in the US would cost more than $600.

My last day in Bangkok, I spent the morning reading Hell's Angels by Hunter S Thompson in the shade of a cafe in the tourist district. Two other tourists tried to make friends with me, but I was done making friends. While I was talking to a skinny British chick across the aisle, the waiter asked me excitedly, "I have seen that TV show." I looked down at my book. "Hell's Angels?" I confirmed, confused, "A TV show about big men on motorcycles with beards and tattoos?" He now looked confused, and repeated, "The Hills? Maybe that is a different TV show." [The Hills is a fake reality television show about highly-sexed and money-driven teenagers in Orange County, California] In an attempt to keep the conversation rolling, the waiter said, "I like Gossip Girl."

I left at midnight from the Bangkok airport.

Leaving Cambodia, the beach

I leave in the morning, early, and tonight finally caved and bought this cute 10-year-old girl with a limp and slight buck teeth a mango shake. It has been 3 full days on the beach, and now I will spend 1 full day on a bus, and 2 full days in Bangkok before leaving.

I spent my time on the beach under umbrellas feeling the breeze come off of the ocean, which was really an inlet and not the open ocean. I sat with the Canadian Danyelle, in her stylish beach clothes. We talked when I wasn't reading and tried as hard as we could to avoid eye contact with all of the hawkers on the beach. The women trying to sell you mani-pedi-foot massage, or the worst: make you "beautiful" by pulling out all of your hairs between two strings looped in their hands. "You just try. It not hurt! You can lie to me, but you can't lie to yourself, baby." Girls and boys sold fruit atop their heads on platters, bracelets, and postcards. The girls were sometimes really sassy.

"Why you not buy from me?"

"If you buy later, you buy from me, okay?"

"What's your name, where you from?"

and the worst, "Open your heart and open your wallet."

As the sun set, there would be a frenzy of last minute selling and then most of the children would begin to drift home with the dark. Some stayed, hoping for another kind of business.

One night, there was a big jellyfish washed up on the beach that was shaped like a skull. I ran to take a photo of it, but before I could do it, a wave washed it onto a Cambodian woman's foot. Instead of moving her foot to avoid the sting, she waited there in her bikini with seaweed tucked into it, and a cigarette burning between her lips. She balanced on one foot, not responding when the small crowd tried to get her to move. When the crowd dispersed, she picked up the dead jellyfish and placed it back in the waves. Later that night, still in her bikini and alone, she danced to the imaginary music in her head, gyrating and shaking her body while a small crowd of little kids copied her. There was something wrong with her head, we decided.














This scary-looking fruit is a rambutan (I call them Rasputins) and looks like a lychee fruit. They are delicious.

Sihanoukville, Cambodia

I am alone and on the beach. Literally, I can see the ocean from this computer, just past a little crowd of tan tuk-tuk drivers. The only respite from the heat is on the ocean, where there is no break from the pedicure and bracelet hawkers. Aside from the catch-22s of traveling, this is paradise.

I have been on my own for two days now - Craig and Bob left on Tuesday to fly back to Minneapolis. It's strange being alone again. It is easier to meet strangers. I don't feel much like writing now, but I wanted to upload a few photos from the last couple of days. In 4 and a half days, I begin my long trip back home as well. Before then, I will try and catch up on the rest of my travels in my blog.

Toilets

The plumbing in SE Asia has been a source of great bewilderment for us on this trip. It ranges from fully-functioning toilets to floors (just floors). The somewhat confusing stuff falls in the middle. There are pits with textured foot padson a porcelin bowl that you do the SE Asian squat on. There are full-sized toilets with tanks that do not flush. Instead, there is plumbing attached to a faucet and spray nozzle. The spray nozzle is for your bum, instead of toilet paper. The faucet is for filling a basin with water, which comes with a plastic scoop that you use to manually flush the toilet. Sometimes, the toilets have seats. Sometimes they do not. Rarely, there is toilet paper provided. Even more rarely, you can actually flush the toilet paper down the toilet. Sometimes, there will be a flush toilet, a sprayer, toilet paper, AND a basin of water to flush the toilet with. I can't really imagine all of those things being necessary. The sinks that work sometimes have plumbing that has no outside outlet, but instead just dumps the sink contents onto your feet below. This is unpleasant to discover. Above all of these setups, the bathrooms in guesthouses have detachable showerheads that spray down on the whole setup below. Especially confounding is when the showers are directly above trash baskets, which are provided for toilet paper disposal. It seems like no one would want to deal with disintegrating dirty toilet paper on the ground, but that's the way it is. The drainage in bathrooms is often inadequate, making flip-flops mandatory.