A Beautiful Dream/Reality

I woke up this morning to find this quote on my friend’s facebook status, "That we come to this earth to live is untrue. We come but to sleep, to dream -Aztec poem.” Such a beautiful coincidence since I have been recently fascinated by dreams. I often have powerful dreams, some of which I have accounted through my previous blogpost named Living the Subconscious. Some of my dreams are so vivid that they feel absolutely real while I am dreaming and later I can remember most of the events as if they were real life events.

Among many of my dreams, there is a recent one that shall perhaps remain with me until the end of my journey. I have never given much thought to spiritual aspect of my life, which may be due to the fact that I believe in living the spirituality rather than exploring for its meanings. I believe that one can be spiritual in one’s actions, be it working in an office or merely cooking at home. It is a continuous process rather than an end for me. Hence, my dream came as a shock to me in some ways. I dreamt that I was playing on one of those huge bouncing balls, which was black in color. In the process, I lost control of the ball (on purpose) and started going with the flow. Suddenly I found that I was bouncing on mountain top and my ball rolled me off a cliff. For a fraction of a second, just before I fell, I felt afraid but then immediately after the fall I became calmer. The black ball was in a free fall and so was I. My mind became like a blank space and the only things existed were the fall and I. It was an ultimate freedom that I have ever experienced, a genuine euphoria. I remember thinking in my dream “So this is what nirvana is!”

Although it was just a dream, nirvana (as I know from my dream) is the most beautiful thing ever. It feels so real that I have come to believe that dreams can be as real as reality. I still cannot get my head around to what must have triggered such a beautiful dream but I am thankful to my subconscious for taking me to a place that many of us struggle for. From now on my motto, “ spirituality exists in every action that we do, all we need is a good sincere heart.”

A Series of Unfortunate Events

It has been ages since I watched the movie, “A Series of Unfortunate Events” and I have forgotten most of it. It is funny how my brain works; it picks and chooses between events in my life by ranking them in order of importance. For example, out of thousands of movies that I watch (and I say thousand because I watch at least one movie per week) I only remember names of hundreds ad among those hundreds I only remember storylines of half of them. I believe it’s a good thing because that allows my brain to allocate more space for other important things like friends and family.

Although thankfully my events were not nearly unfortunate as the movie, it was a series of events. It was a regular working day and I needed to send some money home because my sister had just finished her final exams and she needed to buy a train ticket to go home. Since she has to travel all the way from South India to North India and beyond, it is a three day long journey and hence equally expensive. So I headed out to the bank around 3 PM and realized, after a block of walk, that I had forgotten my bank passbook, which is a must for almost any bank transactions here in Thailand. I went back to the office with reluctance to fetch it. After I arrived at the bank, I realized that I was not carrying my passport with me which is needed for transfer of money outside of Thailand. But I managed to persuade the bank official with a nervous smile and my UN ID. She started filling out the forms of the procedure and asked for the address of the head office for my parent’s bank account. I had no idea as I had only cared to get their account numbers and swift code so I made up an address in Kathmandu. I came back to the office feeling satisfied and thankful to god that despite the hurdles, I had done what was needed to be done.

I had movie plan with a friend after work and it started raining just when we would leave so she called me hurriedly as she had managed to get a ride to the Train station. I packed my things quickly and left. Once I got out of the station, I could not find my umbrella and my wallet. That was a bummer since I had my apartment keys and pretty much everything that I needed for the rest of the day in that wallet. To add to the misery, I got drenched by the rain and my shoes started sticking to my feet since they were cotton. The Shopping Mall was chilly, which made my wet feet very cold. So I went to find one of the hand dryers in the restrooms; alas, there were only hand towels (of course). Since I did not want to get sick, I took off my shoes and walked all around the mall bare feet. Then I borrowed some money from my friend to watch the movie and went home. I had given an extra pair of keys to my neighbor who also lives in the same apartment building as I do so at least I went home to my sweet bed. The next day I wanted to pay back my friend and I fished through my wallet to get a thousand baht note that I had taken out of the ATM machine that morning. But I only had a hundred baht bill, meaning I had given my thousand baht bill to the taxi driver instead of the hundred dollar bill when he dropped me off at work. Both the bills look pretty different to each other and so I could not get my head around to how I could have made such a mistake. Even if I did, any taxi driver would have given back the change; . I was exhausted from all the events that were happening to me but I hoped and prayed that the taxi driver was equally confused and took the thousand baht bill to be a hundred bill. I want to believe that people are genuinely good and more than that I would not want the poor taxi driver to have bad karma.

Memories of a Sapota Tree

It was one of those mundane days when I ran out of milk and hence decided to visit the nearby grocery store, Big C. After getting milk, I checked out the fruit section. Thailand has amazing collection of tropical fruits, ranging from longan, dragon fruit, lychee to what not, some of which take me closer to home since I grew up with them when I was a little girl. This time I saw ovalish fruits that were wooden brown in color but had a very familiar smell. Later, the smell became very apparent and reminded me of sapetta fruit (sapota in English). I would have recognized it at the super market, had the shape been more roundish. I instantly googled it and found that there are many kinds of sapota fruit with various shapes and pulp colors.

This fruit instantly took me to my childhood memories. I spent most of my childhood in my village and I am so grateful for that because in addition to a wealth of wonderful memories that I will cherish a lifetime, I can relate to majority Nepali and most of the world’s population who live in rural areas. As land from the Tarai region is fertile, most people in my village rely on farming for living. We grow all kinds of grains from rice to maize to wheat, pulses, vegetables and fruits. Among all the fruits that we grew, sapota had its own special place. This is because the tree was located in a small farm nearby the underground water pipe and the roadside. Since the tree was one of the oldest, it was quite tall and very wide. This gave shelter to many birds and shade to the local farmers who came for their lunch break after a day’s work in the scorching sun. The farmers drank water from the natural cool water from the underground tap and ate under the shade of the tree. The tree also served as a resting place for many travelers who wanted to skip the mid day heat and take a rest or a nap under the tree. As for us kids, it served a whole different purpose. We would pick the fruits from the tree and pretend to cook rice, daal and vegetables from it in our handmade mud dishes and serve to the so called guests friends that came to visit our houses under the tree. We spent hours under this tree playing several other games such as Kabaddi, Nepal’s national game, Chorwa Nukwa, meaning Hide and Seek and London Stop, a game that I learned from my first semester in school in Kathmandu and came back to teach it to my village friends.

Alas, all good stories end, and not all of them have positive endings. I think I was in grade 10; it was a bad time for civilians, they were neither safe from the army nor the Maoists. Although Tarai region got infested with the Maoists later than the rest of Nepal, they spread like fire as they deployed majority of the youngsters who were jobless and innocent. Unfortunately, the district head of the Maoist group was from my village and he decided that we needed another mud road in the village (instead of fixing the already existing road). Perhaps, this gave him a lot of cash flow. Although the initial map was supposed to take a different route, it would take majority of and that belonged to the richest landholder in the village and his brother-in-law was an engineer involved in the map making. Hence, they changed the map at the last moment to a rather stupid one because the new mud road would run almost parallel to the already existing one. In addition, my beloved and most giving sapota tree would be sacrificed. We were not even notified about the decision, let alone offered any compensation for destroying our farmland. My parents were away when they ran a huge bulldozer through the sapota tree, leaving no mark on the ground. The sound of the bulldozer deafened my ears and the blades pierced my heart. Countless Maoists and other mean faces who stood their laughing, celebrating the downfall of a legendary tree and I stood there watching helplessly, tears rolling down my eyes. My parents arrived towards the end of the horrific scene and I was glad my mom did not have to see the whole process. I ran to her and started crying loudly, not bothered to care that hundreds of spectators heard me cry.

Every time I think of that incident, my heard shrinks but I try to hide it beneath the happy memories that I have shared with the sapota tree. The day after I bought the fruit from the super market, I called a friend to wish her a happy birthday, only to hear that she was in a hospital waiting for a surgery. Luckily, she was discharged as her body had healed itself naturally. I went to visit her straight after work and took the sapota fruit, with the hope that it would give her happiness and strength that the sapota tree had given me to build memories of a lifetime. As for the sapota tree, my mom planted another one 2 years later, and I cannot wait for it to grow into a giant tree.

The Help

This title is inspired by the New York Times best seller book called “The Help”, which I read couple months ago. Actually, I did not read it but listened to an audible book on my kindle which was for 18 hours! As much as I liked the book and am eager to watch the movie, this blog has nothing to do with the book. This is about the helps that have come to me miraculously and have made me believe that angels are with us, right here, on planet earth. I believe that angels turn up when you are away from your beloved ones, and there is nobody else that you can turn to, when you are distressed to restore your faith in the world.

I was in high school, when few things triggered sadness in my life. I was away from my family and although I could turn to some people for help, I did not find the courage to do so. I was young and scared, I felt like I had lost my way. To make things worse, the friend who has promised to take me out so that I felt better, got stuck due to some unforeseen commitment that he had never signed up for. I found myself standing in the middle of a market square, my eyes blurry with tears and my head pounding with fear of the unknown. Moments before my tears would start rolling down my cheeks, a middle aged man in a neatly ironed white shirt and a pair of black trousers approached in my direction. He came to me and asked about a rose stall nearby, “Do you know if those roses are real?” I looked back and saw that the stall had clearly printed letters saying “wooden roses, 12 for a pound.” So I repeated those words to the man and he left. Since Valentine’s Day was coming soon I assumed he was buying roses in advance for his wife. Seconds later, just when I was about to leave, he came back with a bouquet of roses and gave it to me. It was pure magic. My misery disappeared as suddenly quickly as did that man, since a second later he was nowhere to be seen. But I felt an ocean of peace pouring into my heart.

A similar incident happened on my flight to NY (from Atlanta) during my sophomore year in college. Since Atlanta has one of the busiest and perhaps the most disorganized airport, taking a cheap flight makes it worse. My morning flight was delayed four times, making it an evening flight of 7 PM. It was already late night when I reached NY. Although I had been to NY a few times before, it was the first time on my own. To my dismay, I somehow lost the address of the place where I needed to be for a dinner event. As I struggled to understand the direction given to me through phone by friends who were already at the destination, nothing made sense to me as I was not at all used to the NYC transit system, uptown and downtown were confusing concepts, when I was not explained that uptown simply meant increasing street number and downtown decreasing street number. Luckily, this passenger on my flight offered to talk to my friend and get the address on my behalf so that he could make a pictorial map to my destination. In addition, he also offered to share a taxi ride to the nearest subway station, as he said that he was headed in the same direction. I shall forever be thankful to the angel who helped me reach my destination safely when I was lost and frightful in the dark of the unknown city

Post college, I chose the unconventional road. Despite an offer for graduate school, I decided to take a leap to gain some work experience in Bangkok, Thailand. Among all the challenges, language barrier seemed the greatest one and the hardest one to overcome, as I never seem to find time or motivation to learn the local language. The fact that most of the staff in my section are foreigners and the local staff have their own small group, does not help much with learning the local culture and lifestyle. Once again, my fate found me an angel. I was coming back from work one day, hungry and tired when the sight of a little girl playing in the lobby of my apartment building caught my attention. I went forward to talk to her and ended up talking to her father. One day, he just came to me and offered to take me around with his family on weekends. Whether I hung out with them or not did not matter but what touched me most was his offer to include me in his family holidays when I was just a stranger to him.

Many more incidences like these have happened and helped me with my journey in life for which I am forever grateful. When I share them with my mom, she says that she prays every day for me from Nepal. She asks God to look out for me because she is not around and it seems that God has been listening to her. Looking after and being helped is expected from friends but when strangers step in unexpectedly that’s what I call “the help from angels” and I hope that this world is filled with many of them for everyone who has challenged their comfort zone to get inspired and explore the world.

Living the Subconscious!!!

As someone of young age, I am expected to remember things without having to be reminded. Alas, this is not true for me, I tend to forget things very easily, for which, I used to get good scolding from my mother. But even my mom lives far away to nag me anymore. When in boarding school, I came up with a solution to my forgetful mind, which was keeping a diary. I kept a dated dairy throughout my high school and college so that I could note down things with deadlines, which helped me submit assignments on time and attend meetings and activities when and where they were required. I made a very good use of the diary keeping habit and lived a very active life in college, making best of various opportunities given to me.

Last May, I graduated from college and entered work life. Coming out of the protective shell of college was a shock, if not bigger (than when I left home at an age of nine to go to a boarding school), but definitely similar. I no longer had access to free dining services, free cleaning, cheap laundry and walking distance classrooms (my work which is 40 minutes in a taxi). Most of all, I missed my diary, as I was not entitled to one at my work place (with a consultant position). This logic did not seem logical because although I am just a consultant, I believe that I do need to balance my personal and work life and stay organized in order to be productive at work. Instead, I opted to use sticky notes. The only problem with sticky notes is that you can’t really organize them by date and so you need to clutter all to do lists in bullet points, which makes it almost easy to miss deadlines.

I imagine that my brain was having a hard time as well to organize the information and store them using those sticky notes and I started experiencing sub conscious note keeping instead. For example, I was supposed to call the Air Con guy to come fix my AC but I often forgot as I was at work all day and came back home pretty late. So I started dreaming about my AC dripping water all over my apartment and flooding my wooden floor. I called the AC guy right away and got it fixed. Next thing was when I was trying to send some money home to pay for my sisters’ living expenses in Kathmandu because they just finished high school and they are preparing for some entrance examinations for college. I forgot to transfer money for couple days and I dreamt about my mother not telling me the exact amount that I needed to transfer. So I called my mom the next day to get her account details and sent the money right away. Once in office, we were discussing on fixing date for a meeting to be fixed for the upcoming year and everyone was pretty tensed up. The following night, I dreamt about having a hard time to meet the deadline for preparation of the meeting and facing others hurdles at the office.

Having these kinds of dreams has been an out of ordinary experience, and at the same time, it has definitely proved to me that subconscious mind is stronger than we think they are. At times, they are not hesitant to show their presence.

What Goes Around Comes Around

“A person should not go to sleep at night until the debits equal the credits” wrote a friend as his facebook status. The instant thought that I gathered was then many would be sleepless because as ordinary human beings not all of us care about equaling debits and credits. But later it reminded me of nature’s own mechanisms of equaling debits to credits. It may just be that I notice some things more than others do and hence there have been events in my life that have made me rethink nature. Although I cannot remember all of them to put down in this blog, there are few recent ones that I can account here.

As taking a taxi to work is the most convenient, if not the cheapest, I usually take taxi in the morning and take the boat/motorbike in the evenings. One of those mornings, it so happened that the taxi meter said 112 baht and I gave him 115. The driver did not give me 3 baht change back. I did not mind it because 3 baht is only 10 cents in US dollars. Later that day, I went shopping because I needed groceries for the weekend cooking ceremony (as I usually cook only on weekends). Although the supermarket is only 6-7 minutes away from my apartment, I decided to take a motorbike taxi from the supermarket because my bag was heavy. The motorbike rider asked for 20 baht but I offered 15 and he agreed. When he dropped me off to the apartment I realized that I only had 12 baht change with me and a 500 note. The bike rider did not have change, so he only took 12 baht that I had, saving me 3 baht. It was amazing how I lost 3 baht at one place and gained exact 3 baht at another on the same day.

Sometimes it feels like the universe is conspiring to put me in debt but I have become more cautious because I have begun to understand that debit must always equal credit. For example, the boat conductor (not sure if that’s the right word to use) does not ask me for fare often and hence I always buy the boat ticket in advance to avoid any probable greediness. Even then, the lady at the pier has once given me two boat tickets with extra 6 baht change. When I was telling this story to a friend, she was like, “that’s great, now you can use that ticket to go back home.” To which I replied that I had returned the extra ticket and change and she said that action should bring me good karma. Another instance is of couple days ago when my friends and I were walking to a restaurant for lunch from work and I found a 100 baht note by a phone booth. I got so nervous that I gave it to a vendor nearby who was selling noodles on the street and to my surprise she took it without any hesitance.

As crazy as it may sound, I do believe that debit and credit must always be equal and this maybe the reason why I do not want to burden myself with credit because I know that I cannot get away with it. I guess this is why they say, "what goes around comes around".

The Annoying Butt Market

It has been exactly a week since a colleague of mine got pick pocketed at the Chatuchak market. Her aunts were visiting Thailand and hence as a good host she tagged along with them to show them the marvelous Chatuchak market. As crowded as the market gets, there are high chances of being pick pocketed there. Hence, she warned her relatives to be extra careful at the market place but unfortunately she was the one who became the target and got robbed. Lucky for her though because she received a random facebook message the next day from some guy telling her that he has found her credit cards and apartment keys at his shop. So she was set to go and pick it up but the guy’s apartment happened to be pretty far, which made her skeptic of his story and hence she was scared to go by herself. Although I did not think that it was unsafe, I offered to tag along with her anyway. After riding a taxi for complete hour outside of the main town in Bangkok, we finally reached this mystery place and thankfully, we were not kidnapped by goons.

The first time I heard the market name, chatuchak, I could not believe it because the word “chatu” means annoying and “chak” means butt in Nepali. Although I was sure that the market had nothing to do with annoying butts I had to go check it out because chatuchak market is apparently world’s largest weekend market. It is only open Saturday and Sundays and most of the things are priced lower than you can find elsewhere. What is more amazing is that if you are bargainer then you can still make the vendors lower their marked prices.

At a glance it looks like this market has more than 1000 stalls in over 25 acres of land. The market is so versatile as you can find anything from home decorations to antiques and handicrafts, natural beauty products, toys, clothes and accessories, you name it. I got so overwhelmed by so many choices that I ended up buying nothing. So I am planning to visit there again and be more productive with my shopping. J

Men, Women and the Lady Boys!!!

One of the wonders of being in a middle income East-Asian country is that you can find photocopies of almost everything, and I mean everything. In BKK, you can find big shopping malls with fancy shops that will give you CDs of anything from songs to movies and fancy statistical softwares. One of my friends bought Stata, SPSS and Mathematica, all in one CD for 100 Baht, which is 3.33 dollars. Finding fake designer clothes, hand bags and purses is another common thing. Another friend of mine bought a PRADA purse for 200 Baht. However, these are minute things when compared to copy apple appliances.

Couple weeks ago, my visiting friend had few hours before her flight to do some last minute shopping, which included original Maybelline and Cover Girl make up items, couple silk ties, some I love Thailand t-shirts and a fake iPad. So we went looking for iPad first since it was the most important and perhaps a challenging one to find. We went inquiring shops that had the iPad signs at their displays. When we asked the vendors if they had iPads, they would usually show original ones. Then we would ask if they had copy iPads and some of them would give a strange expression, almost making us guilty for asking. We finally came to this lady who had a copy iPad 1, which she claimed to be eped, or at least that is how she pronounced it. When we looked at the box, it was written e-pad, which means that she was half right with the name.

The price difference between the original iPad and the ePad was almost thrice, it seemed almost pointless at to buy the same exact looking material with same functions for thrice as much price. Amazed at its similarity, my friend asked her why the price difference was so great between the original and the rip off version of iPad. Shocked by her naïve question, the shopkeeper replied, “man/woman and ladyboys”. Hahaha. This was the best communication method I had witnessed in a long time between two parties that hardly spoke a common language. Her referral to the original iPad was man/woman and to the rip off was ladyboys. For a woman, who hardly spoke English, she just baffled us with her explanation.

As much as we liked her sense of humor, we could not get our price range so we moved on to the next store and asked for eped this time, but were presented with Super Pad instead. It was fascinating to find that each type of the Copy iPads had its own unique style, for example, some had 3D flip screen and some had 2GB memory, others 1GB, some had webcam, others MS Word compatibility. The iPad had gotten more versatile in the fake market. We also found a nameless iPad that my friend finally settled on after complete 2 hours of looking around and bargaining. We decided to call it the Awesome Pad. During the process of bargaining, my friend even managed to flirt with the lady and exchange friendship notes as well as gestures, haha. Although buying the ties and make up stuff took less time, the tiring process of finding an ePad was definitely entertaining and of course I can never forget, the man/woman and the lady boys!!!

What the Dog Saw!

This blog titled after a book that I have been reading recently by the New Yorker Writer Malcolm Gladwell, “What the Dog Saw.” I saw the author on Steven Colbert’s show on TV and have been curious about his book since then. A colleague of mine brought this to work and I immediately borrowed it from her and have been reading since then. Although, it is not the most interesting book, it is funny that I have found my thoughts matching with his. In his book, the author mentions something on needing to write about everyday people and seeing the world from a common person’s perspective. That is exactly I have been doing since I came to BKK; funny I even started blogging about everyday mundane things.

The title was particularly inspiring for this blog because of an incident related to dog. I was at my lunch break from work last Monday and for the first time in several weeks we had decided to eat at one of those tables outside because the weather was comparatively cooler. I was staring at the road, when I saw the strangest view of my life and it was neither meant for a circus nor a stunt. It was a small cute white puppy riding at the back of a motorcycle!!! It was strange to see how he was standing at the back of the bike in a perfect balance; perhaps his four legs helped him with that. His owner looked perfectly calm as if he was carrying a human who could hold on to him in case of twists and turns. I kept on wondering what that dog saw, how safe he saw himself riding at the bike! Had he ever fallen off the bike before? As these things worried me, the traffic light turned green and the bike vanished. I blinked for a second and wished I had my camera with me to capture that moment. I came back home after work to search about that dog and someone had already managed to put his video on youtube and google, haha.

One thing is for sure, other animals are more intelligent than we think they are! Incidences like these prove to me that the world has been evolving and so are its beings for better.

Joy of a True Householder

It was finally Friday, my long awaited day of the week for obvious reasons. This Friday, however, was more exciting because I had made a date with a friend to visit BIG C and buy some household supplies and some cooking materials for my apartment because I had planned to use my kitchen for the first time in two weeks since I had moved in. So I changed out of my work clothes and made a list of things that I wanted to buy. Then I called my friend and headed towards the store. On my way, I found the same Thai couple again at the reception and got to play with the baby for few minutes.

I took a big cart and started driving around with my list and crossing off stuff. At the end, I had added nail polish and polish remover to my shopping list and had not found lentils and garlic ginger paste. So I decided to get them at an international food store that my friend’s boy friend mentioned and came back home with the shopping. Only later I realized that I had forgotten to put honey and multi-plug in my list so that calls for my shopping next Friday. As a means to thank them and to show off my cooking skills, I invited my friend and her bf to my first dinner cooking ceremony at home.

I cooked rice, chicken curry, greens and omelets. I added ghee to our meal for flavor and my friend’s bf seemed to love it. Since ghee is associated with purity, one is not supposed to add it in the middle of the meal but only at the beginning; however, we defied those rules and added it with every helping. My friends loved the food, which was satisfying because I had not cooked in weeks and was nervous about how it would come out. After the meal, my friend helped me do the dishes, which I am very thankful for because as much as I love cooking, I hate doing the dishes afterwards. I also had some left over rice, chicken and eggs that I ate the next day, which saved me from cooking by myself. There is nothing better than having company and being able to cook for them. I have finally performed all the duties of a true householder; I am now a happy householder J.

From Boxes to Boxers!!!

Hindu religion has divided human lives into four stages that everyone must experience. After passing the infant stage, it is the student stage followed by the householder stage. Although I am not completely done with my student life, moving into an apartment after college has certainly given me some feel to the householder stage. Moving into an apartment was less hectic for me because most of the BKK apartments come fully furnished and I got luckier because one of my coworkers, who is from Nepal, moved to a country office in Viet Nam, which saved a lot of shopping for me such as cooking utensils, cleaning supplies, decorations, and so on.

It was a Sunday evening and I was supposed to go collect some stuff from him to bring back to my apartment so I called him and he asked me to bring some cardboard boxes so that he could pack some of his stuff for posting. Although I had planned to take my huge luggage bag to bring back stuff from his apartment, I decided not to as it would be hard to take the boxes and the bag in the heavy rain. So I decided to wait for a while at the reception of my apartment building and found a Thai couple with a really cute baby to spend time with. After the rain stopped, I walked to BIG C, a supermarket, to get the cardboard boxes. As I had never shopped at this store before, I was not sure where I could find them so I approached a staff and asked him about the cardboard boxes. The staff gave me a strange expression and led me to one of the isles in the clothes section. It was then I knew why he had given me a funny look, he took me to men’s boxers section. Haha, the wonders of speaking different languages!

I laughed and asked him that I was looking for boxes and not boxers. I looked for a cardboard piece around, showed it to him and made a big box shape with my hands. So he inquired about boxes to the staff who were shelving but we could not find any large size boxes so I went to a nearby post office, which was on the ground floor. I bought three large cardboard boxes from them and they helped me get a taxi since the boxes were heavy and impossible to carry all the way to my friend’s apartment. I found out that they had too many stuff to give out and hence I made two trips to get all the stuff back to my apartment. One thing that I learned from that day is to speak and act when I bought peculiar things such as cardboard boxes.

Monica! O My Darling!

It was a Saturday evening and I was sitting on my bed playing with the Internet, chatting with some friends online when I got a call from a friend in BKK. At first I did not recognize her voice because I was in a lazy holiday mood until she told me her name. The idea was to go to a gay bar in Silom, which is the area where I once accidently landed in Pat Pong (Ping Pong show and red light area).

Although the idea of giving up chatting my friends from overseas, did not appeal to me, even my friend on Skype suggested that I went. So I decided to go. It was 10 PM and would take me at least half an hour to get there, meaning I had half an hour to get ready. When I reached Silom, I was glad to find another friend right when I got off the taxi because I did not want to be walking alone in that area. We waited for our third companion for the night for a few minutes and went to DJ Station bar. Once we got in, I noticed that the bar was filled with gay people of whom more than 90% were males. There were only couple straight couples. There was a stage at the center of the bar and we found out that they would have a performance in few minutes. At this point, I was excited because I had never seen any of those gay/lady boy shows before.

The bar was overcrowded but thankfully they had 3 floors. We decided to explore the top floor but were disgusted by the piss and vomit smells as they had restrooms on that floor. So we decided to get down to the second floor, which had plenty of space to stand and you could see the stage as well. So I decided to stay there and wait for the show to happen. There were about 5 kinds of shows, couple of which were in Thai, couple in English and one in Hindi. Most performers were nicely dressed lady boys with glittery clothes and big breasts. One thing that kept bothering me was why would the performers in a gay bar have big breasts? I

During one of the singing shows, the performer forgot his/her line and the tape kept playing, HAHA. It was hilarious!!! My favorite was the Bollywood one. When the famous classic Hindi song, Monica O My Darling, started playing, the performer was turning her back to the audience and had a shawl held up in the air, which covered upper half of his/her body. The audience was shocked when she/he turned around. She/he was huge in size with a long skirt, transparent stretchable quarter sleeved green blouse with big and perfectly round breasts peeking out of them as she/he was not wearing any bra and a big belly poking out from his/her body. She/he had an awful make up with black strikes on her/his face and a big flower in her/his hair. Out of all the performers, this one certainly got the most amount of money from the audience.

After the performance, we got down to join the dance floor but there was no space to even stand, let alone dance. So I suggested that we take the stage as it was empty. Couple of us had to pull our third friend who was too shy to join us at the stage. She was relieved when others decided to join the stage as well, which made the stage overcrowded soon. Some guys even started stripping so we came back down. It had been a long time since I had been in such overcrowded place with such loud music so I decided to leave by 1 AM and so did my friends.

I found this quote in the book that I am recently reading, “everything that can be tested should be tested.” Although I do not completely agree with it, it was good to see something new at a new place.

Money Karma

Since I finally found the apartment that I wanted to move in, it was time for logistics, transferring money to the owner and signing the lease. I did not have enough Thai Baht with me, so I went to the nearest bank, Siam Commercial Bank (SCB). This was only my third visit to the bank in three days! The first time was when I wanted to open a bank account only to find out that they did not allow consultants to open an account at their branch and that I would have to go to the UN branch to do it. The second time was when I wanted to cash my check for reimbursement of the visa fees from my office and now, the third time, to exchange some dollars into Thai Baht to pay my landlord.

Since the message about the money transfer was given to me only before lunch, I went to the bank to find a big crowd of people waiting for different services. The bank had been closed for three consecutive days due to some public holiday, hence, everyone seemed to be anxious to get their transactions done. After inquiring at the counter, I was given a card with no. 7 written on it, meaning I was the 7th person in the line to be given the service. So I sat by a Thai looking woman who had a similar colored name tag as I did, assuming that she worked for the UN. I found out that she was working for the ADB, which is our neighboring office building. In a moment, it was her turn and she went to the counter. Then a man came from the back row and sat by my side. Noticing that he had already submitted his document, I asked him if it always takes so long to get money exchange service at the bank. He replied that he needed to send some money back home so his transaction was taking longer. I asked him where he was from and he replied Nepal. So I laughed and introduced myself to him. We talked for a while and he left after his work was done, leaving me with his contact details so that I could contact him in case I needed any help.

After waiting for about another ten minutes, the bank announced that it has run out of American dollars and hence many people waiting in front of me left the bank to come back the next day. So it was finally my turn and I went to the counter with $700. Since they probably did not have enough money at the counter, the middle man went downstairs to get Thai Baht and came back with 21,000 Baht.

The middleman gave me the money which I took with my right hand and I had the American dollars on my left hand that I tried to give him but he insisted that I count the money first. I checked and the money was 21,000 Bhat. Then he called over a younger looking guy to assist me with depositing the money to the apartment owner’s account. So the young man took me to the ATM, which was outside the bank. After helping me with the deposit, he said that I was done and started walking back into the bank. To my surprise, even he didn't take the $700 from me. I was free to leave but I followed the younger guy inside the bank.

After waiting for about 5 minutes, the older guy finally showed up and I told that he had forgotten to take my money. He was greatly relieved and he mentioned that he has been looking for the money all over the counter and could not remember where he had misplaced it. Feeling satisfied at his relief, I handed the money to him and thanked him for helping me with my transaction.

I am not sure if Nature was trying to test my honesty this way but it was surely an amusing morning for me and I left the bank with a grin on my face.

My non Thai Accent and the Taxi Driver

It’s a Saturday and I don’t know what to do with myself. I woke up this morning and went swimming for a while. Then came back, took a shower and went to have lunch and then slept again for 3 straight hours. Although BKK survives on tourism, people hardly speak English here, which makes life much more difficult for me. If I had planned to stay in BKK longer then I would have certainly considered taking some Thai language classes. Although I hardly converse with local people (besides buying fruits and groceries), it seems that everyone understands the money language but not other things. For instance, I take a cab to work every morning but it is extremely challenging to make the driver understand where I want to go with my non Thai accent. It takes me about 40 minutes to get to work straight by a cab. Another alternative is to take a cab to the nearest pier and then take a boat to work, which also takes about 40 minutes to get to work but it’s cheaper than the first option.

My first day at the new apartment, I took a cab straight to work just because it was my first day and I wanted to be extra careful. I got to work an hour earlier than my usual time, which was good, not to mention I woke up way earlier than I used to. The guard at the first floor was a female and she completely understood where I wanted to go, which made it easier since the cab drivers never seem to know what I say. So my second day, I wanted to try the other route through the Kiak Kai pier. This time it was a male guard calling cabs for us residents. I told him I wanted to go to Kiak Kai and he just stared at me. The female guard came to my rescue and told the cab driver where I wanted to go. Although I have only been to that place once from this direction, I knew after a while that something was wrong. To my shock, the cab driver was taking me in totally different direction and stopped at a BTS (sky train) station. He did not speak any English so I had no idea what was going on. I had already lost more than half an hour and I was nowhere near work.

I had a strange feeling that he did not know where we were supposed to go and so I asked him to take me straight to work instead. He recognized the place but said he could not go. At this, I called a Thai friend and asked her to talk to the cab driver. She told me that the cab driver could not take me to either the pier or to my work directly because he had to be somewhere in ten minutes. This made me so angry and although the driver did not understand any English I complained that he should not have taken me in his cab if he was not willing to take me where I wanted to go. This meant that either I would have to take a cab back to my apartment and then to the pier or take the train for the next half an hour and then take a boat for another half hour to work. Since it was traffic time, I could not rely on cabs, so I took the train. I was so mad that I did not pay the cab driver. However, once my anger was gone, I felt guilty for not paying him, as he would have to pay to the cab company from his pocket. I called a friend and cried on the phone explaining what had just happened. He consoled me telling that if the driver deserved his payment then he would have asked me for it. Although this made me feel a little better, I could not help thinking about it for the next half an hour on the boat to work.

I am not sure if I would pay the full amount if the same thing happened to me again with another cab driver. But I think I would at least pay half the sum. I do realize that the more cabs I ride, the more probability of me rounding up in situations like this so I just got to be patient and try not to lose my temper from next time.

Apartment Hunting !!!

I hear an ambulance pass by as I am writing this blog. It is then I realize that I can actually enjoy a nice BKK skyline from my room if I pulled my window curtains. So I sit down on a cute little chair and set my laptop on the coffee table by the window. Nice thing about BKK apartments is that majority of them come fully furnished; they have a refrigerator, microwave, bed, sofa, coffee table, chairs, TV set, cabinets and so on, which makes lives of us temporary residents much easier. Although it has been only couple days since I moved to my new apartment on the 18^th floor, I already feel a need to go shop for things like cleaning supplies, cooking utensils, groceries, toilet papers, and what not. I finally feel like I graduated from college and turning into a working housewife. I am relieved, as I have already signed my lease and even gotten pass for the swimming pool, which is on the 4^th floor of the building. However, there are some things that I need to learn: buy water from the water machine and use the laundry room, instructions for which are in Thai.

Apartment hunting is anything but fun. There are few agents that you can call in BKK and surprisingly you don’t have to pay them but the owner does. However, none of those agents worked in my favor, as most of them offered me studio apartments with no kitchen at all. Given the fact that I come home really tired and I hate cooking for myself alone, there are less chances of me cooking during the week days. However, my natural human desires like having choices so it took me longer to get a studio apartment with a built in kitchen. The first one that I looked at was pretty cheap but no kitchen and not even an extra sink, in case, I wanted to build my own kitchen at the balcony. The second one that I looked at was perfect except that the price was a little higher than my range. The owner said that he could negotiate the price so I called him the next day of my visit and he said that he had rented it out already. Although I was the first person to look at his apartment and he had promised to inform me before renting out to someone else, he did not even bother. The third one that I looked at was the same as the second one except even more expensive and on 10 floor down. Then came the fourth one with okay price but needed at least a year of lease. Since my job contract expires within 11 months and I already spent a month in a guest house, I would not qualify for this one either.

Hence my current apartment has been a blessing with a monthly pay rate of exactly what I was looking for and a kitchen with microwave and refrigerator but no cooking heaters. However, there is a supermarket nearby and it is pretty cheap to buy a digital one so will have to go get it soon. Besides, the train station is about 5 minutes walk from here and there are lots of restaurants, shops, a café, a hospital, a bank, bus stations, and so on, which makes my life easier although I don’t drive. The apartment has 24 hour security, a swimming pool, a gym and the security people call taxis for me when I leave for work in the morning. Although it took me a month to look for this apartment, so far I like it so I can say that the saying “patience is virtue” seems true.

The Grand Tour!

My friend, who has been visiting BKK, went to see the Grand Palace, where the Royal family resides and so does the Emerald Buddha. This reminded me of my own trip there, my first weekend in BKK. My couple friends and I woke up early morning even on a Saturday because we wanted to avoid the scorching noon sun and heat of BKK city. We started our journey with a map that was gifted to us by a friend who has been living here for over a year. I took in charge of the map as I had taken some expedition training during high school in the UK, not that one needed such training for simple map readings. On our way, we passed Khaosang Road, a tourist hub in BKK, a monument with a pillar, on top of which were three Lord Ganesha heads attached to each other and a long garden like structure with elephants carved out of the plants. It was strange to know that Thai people prayed to Lord Ganesha as the money god because we Hindus pray him as the god of good luck.

We also passed by a shrine called City Pillar Shrine. We all went inside and were definitely taken aback by the spiritual aura inside the shrine. What was more interesting to me was the fact that many of the Buddha statues were in the form of Hindu God images, for example, one of the Buddha idols was holding flute, which is the symbol of Lord Krishna, the other was holding a book in his hand, which is the symbol of Lord Brahma. Knowing how interrelated Buddhism and Hinduism are, this was yet another eye opening realization of how all religions are the same in essence.

After being spiritually nutritioned, we moved on to the Royal Palace and the first amusing thing I saw was a poster with prohibited clothing such as sleeveless shirts, shorts, quarter length pants, tight pants, transparent clothes, short skirts, and so on. Having come from a conservative Hindu family, this made perfect sense for me. Any Hindu person in the right sense of their mind would not wear majority of those clothes while visiting temples. Since we were all properly dressed, we went ahead and bought tickets to get inside. I was almost tempted to hire a tour guide but was thankful to not have done it since there were free guides available inside the palace.

We first had the opportunity to see big demon like idols that were derived from Hindu epics and were placed for the protection of the Emerald Buddha. Then we were taken to see three different styled buildings, all of which were gold plated. The temple for the Emerald Buddha was placed at the center of the square and we were not allowed to take photos of him. The Buddha was dressed in his summer attire. Apparently, he has three kinds of clothes, 2^nd one for winter and a 3^rd one for rainy season, all of which are made from pure gold.

Then after, we went to see the palace itself and visited the royal museum. Knowing that Bangkok is the gold city, it was not surprising to see that majority things in the museum were made from gold, for example, the royal attire, their cups and plates, beetle leaf holder, gold woven handkerchief, sword holder, and many other things. It was truly like the movies, where you saw lots of golden, rubies and diamonds. I must say my visit to the Grand Palace almost tempted me to get some gold jewelry for myself. But then I am not really a yellow gold fan, I like white gold and silver more. Hence, my temptation did not last a second.

Welcome To Pattaya Beach

I feel like I am going to be sick. My throat hurts like crazy and I can hardly swallow my food. I am sitting in this restaurant called Apple, which is 30 seconds walk from the guest house that I am staying in. I asked them if they had honey ginger tea but they didn’t I told the waitress about my throat situation and she suggested whiskey, which I ordered because my boss is coming back from his holiday tomorrow and it is going to be a busy day. Moreover, I am moving to an apartment tomorrow, which means that I cannot afford to fall sick. The wireless in my room was not working so I went back to my room to get my laptop in order to check my email and facebook but the wireless at the restaurant was not working either. I needed something else to kill my time, not that I do not have enough work already. I need to pack to move out and I have this reading that I was supposed to do for my work. I am just in no mood for those things. I am tired because I just came back from a weekend long trip from Pattaya, which is the nearest beach to Bangkok. In addition to my whiskey, I ordered a boiled morning glory with garlic and no oil. To my surprise, the waiter understood exactly what I wanted and brought my order, which is shocking given how hard it is to customize and more importantly make the waiters understand what exactly it is that you want here.

As crazy as it may sound, the sickness is worth it. I took a break from my guest house and headed to Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) after work on Friday. One of my friend’s uncle is a professor there. I got to eat delicious food and the egg curry reminded me of home. Then next day, we all woke up early in the morning at 5 and got ready to leave for Pattaya Beach. On our way, we picked up couple relatives who were stopping by on their way to Australia. The trip seemed shorter because we made two stops, one at the airport and the other at KFC for a quick breakfast. The last time I went to a KFC was in Nepal with friends about a year ago. I cannot believe it used to be one of my favorites during high school. I am glad I have graduated from high school in every sense including KFC. The name of the Hotel where we stayed was Tower hotel because it had a big tower in the middle but what was more interesting was the fact that hotel has its own resort, a water park, a private beach and a fun garden with roller coasters and other rides.

As soon as we got into our rooms, I was mesmerized by the window view, which faced the ocean, the water parks and the swimming pool. It had been long since I had gone swimming, which is one of my favorite sports. So I waited for others to get settled and then all of us ladies went for swimming. The cool blue water felt so good against my body I could have slept in the pool but we left within an hour because we had to get lunch and then go to the beach. I faced a dilemma then, I was with my friend’s family relatives. As a decent Asian girl, I could not imagine going to the sea beach in a bikini. I thought of buying a pair of decent looking swimming costume but did not get a chance. So I used a cotton tube instead that I wore on top of my bikini, which worked. Also, the aunt and the relative were wearing swimming costumes as well which made it a little bit easier for me. Once I got inside the sea water though, I found that it was not as clean as we would have liked it to be. Nevertheless, the vastness of the sea attracted me to it anyway and I enjoyed it to the fullest. It was fun to play in it with the two kids of the uncle and aunt’s.

At the end of the day ended, we went to bed planning water rides and banana boat for the next day. Although called banana boat, it was shaped more like a rocket (at least that is what it looked like to me). The next morning, I woke up by a text from the kid who wanted to go for a morning walk along the beach. So I quickly got ready and took along two kids with me to the beach. The water was so clean and undisturbed that I felt peaceful. But then I got hungry soon and we got back to the hotel to get some breakfast. Then we changed for the water park. We rode the highest water slides since it did not have any queues and then we also managed to use the smaller water slides as well. We also played ball in the water and had my favorite cookie cream flavored ice cream afterwards. Then we went back to our rooms, took quick showers and checked out. It was time to get back from Pattaya. On our way back, I decided to head back to BKK because I wanted to get some rest before work the next day and asked the driver to drop me off at the nearest BTS station. My friend’s uncle asked him to take me to a road, near which my guest house was. After a while we came across a BTS station and no matter how hard everyone tried to stop the driver to drop me off there, he did not buzz. I was secretly praying that he would not hear others and just take me to my guest house, as it would have been much harder in the rain to go to my place by myself. To my luck, he drove me all the way to my place.

After I got back to the guest house, I found that there was only a double room that was available and I took it anyway because it was only for one night (since I was moving out the next day). Getting back to my room on my own felt strange after all that family and fun time in Pattaya. It is one of the few times that I have missed having a family near me. I have been living away from my family since I was nine and half years old since the best schools are in Kathmandu, which is 12 hours away from my hometown in Nepal. Overall, the weekend trip was refreshing and my throat already feels better after the whiskey shot and a bowl of morning glory soup with garlic.

Thai Zumba Lessons and Dinner by the Chao Phraya River

A friend of mine is visiting from Nepal. After her undergraduate studies, she joined teaching at a college in Chittagong, Bangladesh. Since it is summer holidays in schools now, she is visiting us (my other friends from college and I) in BKK. Yesterday, we took her to the nearby Rama VIII Bridge, named after the King Rama VIII. The Bridge is 2.45 km long and spans the Chao Phraya River. On our way, we passed series of restaurants filled with local people. Since eating out is cheaper and less time consuming, everyone eats out here. We also passed a Indian restaurant run by Nepali people. One would think that these people from your homeland would be more helpful and nicer to you in a foreign country, but instead they started making sleazy passes and comments at us. Then we passed a vegetarian restaurant on our way, which had peculiar open hours. When my friend asked as old lady, who seemed like the owner, what time they would open, she replied 11. We were shocked, a vegetarian restaurant opening at 11 pm? But then she later clarified that she meant 11 am the next day.

After about 20 minutes of walk we finally came to the bridge. We saw a group of young boys playing football by the bridge. This reminded me of my football days in middle school, when I used to be on the school team and also my first year in college when I played varsity soccer. Although I was tempted to go join them for a while, I resisted. My three friends and I climbed the top layer of the bridge and that’s when I found men fishing with fishing rods that had really long strings attached to them and they were using binoculars to detect if they had caught any fish. Although the river was dirty, it looked beautiful from up there on the bridge. There were beautiful giant ships with lighted pink, yellow and blue colors, sailing on the river. A little further down, we saw a group of at least 30 women and men dancing to the tune of some Thai pop music. There was a tiny stage in front of them with a very fit looking instructor on it. It looked so much fun that I decided to join them myself. Dancing to the fun Thai music and facing the river was the best exercise experience of my life.

It was time for some food after the random exercise. We found rows of people, especially couples sitting on hand woven mats and cooking some kind of soup by the river. It seemed such a strange coincidence that everyone would be cooking the same thing. Then we found out that you could actually order those soup pots and pick which ingredients you wanted and cook them in the hot mud pot by yourself. So we called the lady who was taking orders. Since one of my friends is vegetarian she specified that we did not want any of the seafood, or meat or eggs. She looked confused so I asked her to go with the lady and personally supervise the ingredients for the soup. Apparently, the lady seemed very disappointed when my friend rejected all kinds of fish, lobsters, octopus, meat and eggs. Nevertheless, we ended up cooking yummy soup out of greens and vegetables. The river looked so beautiful with the reflection from houses on it and the air was refreshing. The evening was certainly one of those fairy tale romantic types.

Honey Hunter

Last couple weeks have been pretty rough for everyone at office. We had a big weeklong meeting with country officers from all over the world. This stressful event went extremely successful, everything was organized and on time just as written in agenda. However, after the event, couple people in my office became sick. One of them had to take 3 days off to take a bed rest and the other one took a day off.

Even I started feeling something wrong with my throat. This made me paranoid. I did not want a day off, as I wanted to take a holiday later during winter break. I have learned since my childhood that honey and ginger cures all kinds of cough and cold. So I immediately went on a hunt for ginger and honey. I went to Seven Eleven, which is a min walk from my place. I searched everywhere but to my surprise I did not find any honey. I saw a honey like thing in a tube by the counter, picked to check it out. The label on the tube was green and in Thai. It looked like a face wash. Frustrated, I went to a nearby super market and searched for it in the section where I could find all kinds of jam and bread spread. But there was no sign of honey. So I approached a store worker, hesitant, thinking if they knew what honey meant in Thai. Luckily, she knew what I was talking about and took me to the very end of the corner most isle and there it was, in a face wash looking tube with green Thai letters printed on it. So, the thing that I found at Seven Eleven, and discarded, thinking it was a face wash turned out to be honey. On the positive side, that extra walk of ten minutes to the super market, helped me burn some fat that I had taken earlier through a very oily Thai dish.

Where Creativity Knows No Bounds :)

Among many other things such as cheap food and clothes, fresh fruits, vegetables and smoothies at every corner of the road, there is another thing that stood out to me in BKK. People here are very creative and by that I mean majority of them, be it a local vendor or a great dress designer. It is hard for anyone here to starve to death. I have seen toys, hats and purses made up of recycled soda cans. I have seen amazing motorcycles and scooters with so many businesses being carried on them. The first one that I saw was a whole vegetable shop being carried on it. Then it was a fast food noodle shop. Finally, I got to see the motorcycle taxis, where men are in orange shirts and they take you to places faster than any regular four wheeler taxis. I am yet to ride one of those taxis though.

I found a soap in Jatuchak market that had built in body scrubber, no need to get an external one. When it comes to clothing, I am sure we all have seen how creative and cute BKK designs are. I came across one of these scarves that had beads and crystals sawn into them. So along with your pretty scarves, you can also show off the fancy jewels without having to wear them separately. I am sure the Western countries will soon have them imported in large numbers. I also saw a pair of bra with detachable covers so that if you wanted to wear low cut clothes without revealing your bra then you could just attach those cute covers on top of your bras. In addition, dresses with shorts styled skirt can be found easily which are very convenient to wear. I also saw fancy umbrellas shaped like wine bottles, cartoon characters and Japanese dolls.

Creativity knows no bounds here: Yesterday, I saw rows of men standing on the high bridge of the King’s river and fishing with rods that had its strings at least 500m long. As the fishing was done deep inside the river, they could find fish at a higher frequency. The men used binoculars to confirm if they had caught any fish at the far end of their fishing rods. BKK is a city, which gets light rainfalls pretty often. Although the rain usually starts and ends within 2-5 minutes, it certainly causes discomfort for vendors that are selling fruits, vegetables, meat, etc on their carts. Hence, the vendors walk around with emergency plastic covers that they cover their carts with in case of rain and still continue with their business. To those who are looking for niche, come visit BKK and go back to start up a great business!!!

My Dream of Becoming a Bartender!

After a week of work days, Friday was finally here. After work, we all sang Rebecca Black’s “Its Friday, Friday, Friday” song. Although we hate the song, we love Fridays. As usual we took a walk to Khaosang road, searching for an interesting place to get dinner. We found The Green House restaurant which had tables set up outside, perfect for the cool weather on a Friday evening. I ordered stir fried chicken with cashew nuts and white rice, my most recent favorite dish. One of my friends ordered fried noodles with vegetables and no egg. She has to make sure to remind the waiters of "the no egg part" at least thrice since egg is considered vegetarian here in BKK. Another friend of mine ordered fried noodles with beef and basil. Along with the good food, it was great to have live music playing.

It started raining soon and we rushed inside the restaurant and grabbed the nearest table available. Although the rain stopped within couple minutes, the tables outside were wet, so we chose to stay inside. It was strange for the singer to be facing the empty wet tables outside so he changed his position to face the customers inside. Since the gap between the two pillars of his space was small, it so happened that I was the only customer that was sitting right across him. As much as I enjoyed his song, it was a bit awkward to be sitting right across from him. My friends even teased me, which only became worse since the singer smiled and thanked me when we left the restaurant.

After a few minutes of walk, we came across Lucky Beer bar that said, “we make very strong cocktails, no ID required.” My friends happened to be in the mood of drinking so we went there. The waiter at the bar looked Nepali so I asked him where he was from and he replied India. I insisted that he could not be from India and found out that he was Nepali/Burmese. My friends ordered cocktails but I had stomach cramps so I decided to spare myself. However, I promised them that for every glass they drank, I would act as the drunken one. I was staring at the woman bartender when I remembered one of those MBTI things that I did in college. It is a way of finding out the best suited jobs for oneself and my best suited job had come out to be a bartender or a barber. Being a barber would certainly need more training than a bartender so I decided to get things right at this Lucky Beer bar. The idea of bartending in BKK by itself sounded so cool. Since no one would pay an inexperienced bar tender, I asked the manager if I could do part time volunteer work for an hour, thrice a week. She did not know what volunteer meant so I had to get one of those Nepali waiters and ask them to communicate for me. To my disappointment, she refused my offer and said that she will think about it for couple days.My dreams of becoming a bartender was shattered. On a more positive note, I was spared of unpaid labor.

The Floating Market

Finally, after contemplating for weeks between doing a masters degree or a PhD, it was both relief and more confusion when I got a job offer to work in Bangkok for a year. Confusion in the sense that I was added with one more option to decided on when I was already confused between two earlier and relief because I just decided to go with the third one because I looked at it as my rescue. So I went to the Thai consul in NYC to apply for my visa to Thailand. It was a pretty small office with only couple people in line, which was a relied because I hate waiting, as I am sure many people do. The first thing I noticed in the consul was the poster hanging on the right hand side of the window with a label saying, “The Floating Market.” The poster looked amazing. My best friend who had accompanied me to the consul kept staring at it and said, “Khushbu! You are going to have a blast at BKK. A year will fly by and you won’t even know it.”

I visited the Floating market last weekend and I would like to dedicate my trip to you. I only met you few years ago and since then you have been my companion and my god father for every step I take. I vividly remember us staring, it was romantic. My actual trip may now have been as romantic but it was definitely something that I have seen for the first time in my life. There were two men rowing our boat on smooth canal water. The color of the water was clear black and I could almost feel the bottom of the canal with my eyes. Once we entered the Floating Market, it was like a festival. There were locals selling all kinds of fruits ranging from lychee, mangoes to durian on their narrow wooden boats. The fruits looked so yummy and juicy and reminded me of my own fruit farm at home. I immediately bought a kilo of lychee and mangoes.

As we went deep inside, our boat was stuck in traffic and unfortunately there was a motor boat right in front of us, blowing smoke in our faces, trying to get started and skip the traffic. Then I saw an old lady with a big boiling pot of oil on her boat and she was serving pan cakes, omelets and all kinds of Thai dishes. My head was already spinning from the smoke and the traffic and this boat by the side of me only made things worst. Then I close my eyes and remembered my own roots. I am an Asian and I have been in worst scenarios, for example, I was once stuck on a highway for 6 straight hours and there were no shops around. This thought definitely put me at peace with myself and I was able to enjoy the Floating Market more. As for the headache, I came back and slept for hours that evening and conquered it the next morning.

From Durga Temple to Sin CIty

It has been three weeks since I landed in Bangkok and although I know this is one of the hub for prostitution centers, I had not come across one yet.

Yesterday, I finally decided to get together with a friend from Wellesley College whom I met about a year and half ago at a CGI U conference. She is in Bangkok for 10 weeks for a research. It is such coincidence that we both came to BKK around same time. I called her from my office after lunch and asked her what kind of food she would want for dinner. She said that she was craving for Indian food (not surprising at all since she is from India). It was fine with me because I love Indian food, to be more precise, my hometown is 10 minute walk from the India/Nepal border so I can qualify as an Indian. Many vendors often come to me and start greeting me in Hindi, thinking I am Indian. After speaking with her, I went and asked my couple other friends at office who are also here for internships what they wanted for dinner. My Chinese friend said that she was okay with anything and my South Indian friend said that she was craving for South Indian food. Since Indian is common in both Indian and South Indian phrases, I decided that we should go for South Indian. We looked online and found that Silom area had a lot of them.

My Chinese friend got a bad headache after lunch so I headed to Silom with my South Indian friend. We took the boat and the sky train and waited for my Wellesley friend at the BTS. After her arrival, we all got together and found a nice pure vegetarian Indian/South Indian restaurant called Sagar. We ordered all kinds of Dosa, Idli, Sambar, Curd Rice, etc. It is true that I am not an expert on South Indian food and hence my friends got to make fun of me when I mentioned I had never had Idli and Sambar before. Also, the food was pretty hot for me so I did not qualify as an Indian although I look like one with my brown skin. After dinner, we came across a South Indian temple, where I hardly recognized Goddess Durga because she was not riding a tiger. My South Indian friend was delighted to speak in Tamil with the priests. In the mean time, my Wellesley friend was talking about her MIT friends who were also in BKK in her research program and that she wanted to introduce them to us one day.

After our temple journey, we wanted to check out the shops that were across the road and hence we crossed it. There were lines of tshirts, jeans, hand bags and purses from fake designers such as Paul Smith, Prada, Gucci, and so on. My Wellesley friend wanted to buy a wallet and so we stopped at a shop. The vendor lady said the price to be 400 Baht ($13). But she wanted to pay $7 so we were busy bargaining. A creepy hoarse whisper came to her ears, "Ping Pong Show." Thank God I had some background information on that from my friends or else I might have been interested. We looked around and found ourselves standing at the center of bars and clubs with half naked women and creative bikinis. We quickly bought the purse and rushed passed the market with at least ten people offering us deals for the show on our way. We quickly took a right turn and found ourselves in the middle of red light area. My friends wanted to drink and one of them suggested a road side building but before we could enter, we saw a lady with a flyer in her hand that had at least 20 girls picture on them, all kinds, from Asian to European. A woman approached me with a flyer and I scowled at her thinking, "Do I look like I am attracted to women?" only to find that she was holding a flyer with food selections. HAHA. We also found an area that said hot male, dream boys, etc. As soon as we exited the road, we bumped in my Wellesley friend's MIT friends that she had been talking about all this time. It was strange connecting faces to their stories.

It was a fun night with so many adventures and our journey from a South Indian temple to the Red Light Area.

Conversations with Italian Family, Chinese Woman and her Japanese Friend

When I landed in BKK, I was not worried at all. Thats because my work mate (who graduated from the same school that I did) came to pick me up at the airport. She had also booked a room in a guest house for me for the night so I was not worried about a place to stay. What is more convenient is that my work is only 2 minutes walk from where I stay.

Of course, I felt independent and tasted the feel of being a local when I set my journey to AIT, which is about couple hours away from where I stay (through public transport). The first thing I used was a boat. The wind felt different and free and I felt liberated on that boat full of strangers that spoke different language than mine. Then I got off Taksin pier where I took a Sky Train (BTS) to Siam. There I changed the train to Mo Chit and from there I again too another van to the University. I could have opted for a cab instead that would have probably costed me only few Baht more and saved me more time, had it not been traffic hour. On my way back from AIT, I was on the final train to Taksin river, standing in the middle with a Chinese/Japanese woman and Japanese woman on my left and an Italian family (mother, father and their two daughters) on my right. Seeing that the Japanese woman switched back and forth from Cantanese to Japanese, the Italian mother asked her where she had gotten her Cantanese from. She replied that she had spent more than 10 years in China. This was only a conversation starter. Her Japanese friend bragged about how she had been so helpful to every Japanese who came to BKK to settle. To this, the Japanese/Chinese woman replied that it was her .... to help others, however, she needed the Italian woman's help to fill in the blank for the word "hobby." To this, the Italian woman replied that she was the God Mother for them. Another man joined the conversation saying that she was actually the mother of all new Japanese immigrants to BKK.

Further, the Japanese/Chinese woman started talking about her ancestry and stated that she was named Om Santi at a very young age and that her name means positive, peace, ... She was having difficulty in finding English words to explain to the Italian woman. Also, there was big crown in the train and hence the Italian woman could not get what she meant. So the Japanese/Chinese woman repeated again, adding that her name originated from Hindu religion. But the Italian woman still did not get her. At this, I could not stop myself from getting involved as I had been patiently listening to their conversation instead of listening to my newest addition of audio book on my kindle. So I explained to the Italian woman what she meant to say that her name came from Hindu epics, which meant peace and the Universe as a whole. At this everyone laughed, saying that the Japanese woman has turned into the universe from god mother. The Italian woman asked me how many languages I spoke and I said 5. She just stared at me and smiled with admiration. It is not that fair because out of 5, 3 languages originate from Sanskrit so I have an advantage there. The train came to a hault, my stop had come. I smiled at my right and left company and smiled goodbye at them. The Italian woman thanked me for helping them out with their conversation and I got off the train, excited about my breezy boat trip back to my place!!!