The Whole Country Celebrates My Birthday!!!

April 12^th is a day of celebration. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying this because it is my birthday but because it is really a day of celebration. In fact, in Thailand it’s the beginning of a whole week of celebration. It is the time of Songkran, which is the Thai New Year. People in Bangkok celebrate it for three consecutive days by throwing water at each other and putting a kind of pale yellow powder, apparently made up of flour paste, on people’s faces. Likewise, it is the New Year for many Asian countries such as India, Cambodia, Nepal, etc. This birthday has definitely been the most special one because I felt as if the whole world was celebrating it with me (also this is my 25^th birthday, silver jubilee of my birth!). 

On the morning of my birthday, we had a small celebration at the office to start the Songkran, where we all blessed each other with water and then had coconut ice cream. Two other staff at my office also had their birthdays on the same date so that was kind of exciting! Later we went for lunch at a Japanese restaurant at the end of Khaosan Road, which went on for almost couple hours. This was the longest lunch I have had during office hours. But thankfully I was able to finish the work that I wanted to by the end of the day. After work, few of my work colleagues and I went to “happy hour” at Phra Atit Lounge, a restaurant nearby my office. So we all went there and ordered Chang beer, one of the most commonly sold Thai beers. Although I did not like this beer before, I was actually enjoying it this time to my surprise. Also, a friend brought blueberry pie (since she could not find any cake shops open) that I cut as my birthday cake.

After the happy hour was over, we went to “Good Story” across Phra Atit Lounge to play pool. I think we played at least 5 games there swapping partners, out of which my team won 2. It was 9 PM by then, too early to go home or to a bar so instead we decided to go to the roof of one of our colleagues’ apartment buildings. It was great fun there, as we sat on the wall of the roof looking upon a klong (small river in Thai) with our legs hanging down. My friends were sipping beer and I was sipping water  J. In couple hours my friends became hungry and started craving for McDonalds. Although I am strongly against such fast food places, McDonalds delivers 24 hours in Bangkok so my friends ordered Big Mac for themselves and chicken nuggets for me (chicken nuggets?).When I asked why they ordered those for me, they insisted that I told them to, lol. They were too drunk for me to argue with them so instead I just enjoyed my chicken nuggets.

By midnight we were quite tired and my friend was falling asleep on her chair so we decided to get back home, promising each other a full day and night party the next day (actual Songkran day). Next day, my Thai friend called me around 11 am, saying she will be stopping by in about an hour to go to Khaosan for playing Songkran. So I had to hurry and get ready for the game. We were joined by another friend of hers. So three of us headed to Khaosan and were joined by another friend soon. It was crazy!!! There was a great combination of locals and foreigners splashing and shooting water at each other along with some people going crazy with the powder paste. After couple hours at Khaosan, we decided to pick one of our colleagues from his house and took a Tuk Tuk together all the way to Silom. It was much more crowded and crazier. After taking half way walk through the crowded street, we all got hungry and again McDonalds was open!!! So we went there and this time I got a chicken burger. We wanted to refill our water guns but they had closed their restrooms so instead we went across the road where we paid 10 baht each to use a restroom and fill our guns. We also met more colleagues from work. Then we pushed (literally, where I was using one of our tough built colleagues to push us all through) our way to the fire department’s water hose. The strong water force from the fire hose was great fun. This reminded me of my childhood when I used to take bath in the fields by the irrigation water borings.

After a while we decided to climb on the water truck and spray everyone from up there. It was the most fun thing of the day for me. My other colleagues started climbing the truck as well and once the truck got crowded the firemen kicked us out. After couple hours in Silom, I was getting cold and tired so I decided to go back home and get dry (later learned that my other friends left soon after I did as well so I did not miss much). We all met for dinner at Pla Dib, a famous Japanese style restaurant in Aree. After a long dinner there, we decided to go to The Nest, one of the night bars/clubs in Sukumvit area that majority of us had not been to. But on our way we stopped at a traffic light at Victory Monument, where there is a nice jazz bar called Saxophone. So within the red traffic light span of 38 seconds we decided to check that one out instead. It was my first time there and I loved the live music that the band was playing. My colleague ordered me Bombay Rouge as my birthday treat. By midnight, I was getting a little tired. It had been a long day (or a long week since I had been going out so much) so I wanted to go home and rest.

Next day I got a call from my mom early morning wishing me a Happy New Year and Jurshital. Jurshital is a tradition in my Mithila culture by which elders bless you with icy cold water for strength and courage to face any cold situations in life. This is of course very similar to Songkran, the one difference though is that instead of flour powder we smear each other with mud. Likewise, Holi is very similar tradition, which is celebrated with colored water and powder colors. It is always fascinating to find different countries and cultures having similar traditions. This makes me ponder on how similar we humans are regardless of the artificially created borders.  

A Fisherman's Tale

My colleague and I had fixed lunch to catch up after the Christmas and New Years break. I found out that he had never been to the Som Tam place. Som tam (papaya salad) is an Ishan (northern) dish in Thailand, which is very popular among both locals and foreigners. Since my office is located on Phar Atit Road, one of the touristic places in Thailand, we have plenty of options for lunch and there are many places that we have not managed to explore yet.

As always we had lots to catch up with each others’ lives. He started talking about his missions (field trips) and his holiday. Then he was telling me about his uncle who owned a house in Japan. After having lived a rigorous working life, his uncle had decided to retire by a seaside in Japan. How his uncle would take him to the sea where they would spend hours fishing. His uncle could sense which parts had fish and which did not just by looking at the water. After a good catch, they would enjoy a nice barbecue by the sea. Since the uncle was from a family of fishermen, fishing was in his blood and he spent most of his day on his boat. His wife was never worried about him; she knew that he would always come back.

One of such days, he took his boat and cleaned it carefully. Then he went to the sea. But unlike other days, he did not come back that day. Hours after dark when there was no sign of him, the wife started getting worried. She inquired around the neighborhood but no one had seen him. His boat was not there in the shed either, meaning he was still on the sea. Police were called and they started a search. They found his boat floating in the sea and a half broken fishing rod. They searched the water nearby but could not find him. As much as he loved being on the sea, he had now become a part of the sea.

After hearing this story the first thing that came to my mind was: all this time he was the one catching fish and now the fish had caught him.

The Day(s) my Phone Decided to Die

It was one of those college M n C (milk and cookies) times. As much as I love snacks, I could never miss a healthy one. As soon as the time in my laptop said 9.30 PM, I grabbed my “hugs and kisses” mug and of course my phone. It may sound crazy but I take my phone everywhere with me, even in the shower. With a full mug of milk and phone in one hand and some chocolate chip cookies in my other hand, I was walking back to my room. Just when I leaned forward to open the door to my room, my phone slipped into the milk as if it did not want to be with me anymore. After almost a year of relationship with me, it wanted to leave me and that too by such cheap attempt? But I would not let it happen; I could not give up on it yet. I am a committed person and I would do anything to save my relationship.

I washed my phone with water immediately (I know it seems a crazy thing to do...washing it with water after it was already soaked in milk but I could not let my phone stay dirty and sticky from the milk. After washing and cleaning, I dried my phone with soft hand tissues and then dried it with my hair dryer. Since the hair dryer made the phone real hot, I let it cool for a while and then left it to rest for hours. After a good rest, I switched it back and to my surprise the phone started working. It did not give up on me. My love proved to be powerful.

Almost after a year of the incident I came to Thailand. It took some adjusting for us to reinvent our relationship with a new surrounding and of course the new network and sim card. We seemed to be doing well until one morning when I was really sleepy and moved reluctantly out of my bed. In the process, my phone fell into the garbage bin. I had not been feeling that well the previous night and the bin was full of cough...(I know! Yewww). Although it was disgusting, I could not let my phone drown in it so I picked it up and bathed it for the second time, only praying to God that he would do miracle again. But this time, I was getting late for work so I took it to work with me and kept giving it a jerk as if to make it vomit out all the water that it had swallowed. But still the phone was making sounds as if it was in great pain and the screen kept flashing. I even gave it mouth to mouth which I had learned recently at one of the UN training.

After about an hour of work, I could no longer bear to see my phone suffer and hence I went off to find a hair dresser. I asked the hairdresser for a hair dryer and she looked at me as if i was crazy. Instead she suggested that I took it and handed it over to a phone mechanic. But I had full trust in my phone and I did not want to hand it over to some stranger. So I offered to pay for electricity but she lent me a hair dryer and for free. Then she went off about her work, giving some private time to me and my phone. I dried my phone again and let it rest for few hours. Then with much love and prayer, I switched it on during lunch break and to my surprise, it was working again. I could not believe my luck. I felt an unnatural connection with my phone. We were meant to be together for longer than this.

It is perhaps not healthy to be attached to technology this way and one day it will probably stop working. But hey, just because there is an ending to every story does not mean we do not enjoy the ride, right?

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 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.

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.