An Ode to a Friend!

I am very excited about this post for three reasons. First, it has been more than two months since I last did one (I had taken time off for my graduate applications). Second, it is my first post of this New Year 2012. Third and most importantly, this is dedicated to all my friends in my life, wherever they are. I went to live in a hostel when I was nine years old since Kathmandu was (and still is) the hub for quality education. I have been living away from my family for over fifteen years now and FRIENDS have played vital role in my growing up. They have been family, friends, relatives and my home.

Of course I am always thankful for the company of my friends but now that I am in Bangkok, away from all my friends from school and college, I realize how blessed I have been all my life. In school, I had friends whose parents used to visit often as they were from the city but my parents lived twelve hours away so I only got to see them twice a year during holidays. But whenever my friends’ parents visited, they would also bring gifts and other things for me, making me feel much loved. I remember one particular incident that I want to share here (I hope you will forgive me for sharing this publicly). One of my close friends’ mother used to work in the school library. Although outside food was strictly prohibited on campus, she was allowed to bring snacks as she was a staff . Being one of the greatest cooks I have met in my life, I used to love her cooking and pickles that she made. My friend always took me with her and we used to sit in reference section and share the food brought by her mother.

I spent my high school in the UK, far away from home, where I was lucky to find some really close friends who were always there for any kinds of support that I needed. For college, I moved even further to the US, where I was able to find many friends. College became so much fun because of friends. Then I moved to Bangkok, and ironically it is very close to home but I did not know anyone here. Luckily, I found couple people who were affiliated to my previous academic institutions and a friend’s close relatives. I have been lucky to have found both friends and family here.

With Christmas and New years on their way, I was missing my family and friends back “home” dearly. And then came the best times of my stay in BKK. A friend visited Thailand over his winter break and I got to spend both new years and Christmas with him and his family. Fortunately, I had long weekends during both of those celebrations and we had so much fun with family meals, shopping and looking around the city. Although I had done these things before, they were not as much fun before. I even took some time off to go to an Island (with local friends) about 4.5 hours away from the city and the place was serene. There were fireworks and live music by the beach and it was just like a fairytale.

My friend is now back to the US and my life has taken its usual course (with work and lazy weekends) but I will always cherish the days we spent together. Thank you so much for making Thailand special for me. I will live by those memories until I come back to the US and reunite with all my loved ones. I dedicate my happy days to my friends all over the world who have created such beautiful pages in the book of my life. Sometimes we tend to take things for granted but I hope that deep inside we are all grateful to such beautiful lives we have been given.

Love,

A Lucky Friend

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.

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.