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.