On wednesday, i went to school and fernando explored. he ventured ALL THE WAY across the street, bought a sim card and ate street food. pretty adverterous for a first-timer in bkk...it took me a week or two to eat off of the street carts. that night, in the spirit of wacky wednesday we took nundies to RCA Route 66. it was abby's first time there too, and it was also Matt's 21st birthday! he didn't get as wasted as jon did on his 21st, but i can bet that he had a good time! that night, we discovered the best bathrooms in the world. the girls bathroom had a band in it,
fake dog statues, toilet paper, western flushing toilets, a lounge and even an "auntie" in the bathroom to help you out! and, it that sounds nice, the boys bathroom had people to massage you...andy LOVED it, but it scared nundies somewhat. he said he was mid-pee and "some dude came and started touching the back of his neck". we are all so glad and thankful that he didn't turn around and deck the guy for touching him while he was peeing. after he realized what was happening, he was stoked ;) i went home after RCA and a few of the others went to an after-hours club....i was still up when fernando came back and he started talking to me, and then suddenly, mid-sentence, he passed out. that was the end of that night. hahhahaha....good old nundies. the last words out of his mouth were, "i think i drank too much".
xin nian kuai le, or gong hee fat choi everyone a few days late!!! thursday (chinese new year) was so much fun. i will admit, i did miss my usual tea pouring, jai, candied fruit and li si that i do with my family at home, but this was pretty cool nonetheless. nundies, abby, charity, and i figured out how to say "china town" in thai (which, i already forgot how to say), and made it successfully there. the first stop was an ice cream sandwich cart so that nundies could try the famous ice cream sandwiches. then, we walked around a bit, and looked at all of the cool things they were selling--we saw lots of gold, jade, chestnuts, paper dragons, cotton candy, tons of oranges/tangerines, other fruit, candy, shark fins, and toys. i looked everywhere for candied fruit, but they only sold the dried melon and dried coconut here. it looked good because it was sold in a little pack with candied peanuts, chewy peanut candy and some cookie or something, but i didn't buy it because i was in the mood for dim sum. after walking around a few blocks, we found a dim sum restaurant and went in to eat lunch. it was filled with thai/chinese/local people, so we knew that was a good sign. we ordered a bunch of dim sum and i told everyone that we had to eat noodles for good luck and long life on chinese new year, so we ordered noodles too! we sat in the restaurant for almost three hours, just relaxing and digesting after our huge meal. when we walked out of the restaurant, the streets were flooded and it was pouring rain. i have NO idea how bangk
ok survives the monsoon season if the streets got that flooded that quickly. as we were exploring more, we started to see giant cockroaches come out from the gutters and crawl around the street. then just as i was about to buy a persimmon one crawled out from under it. and it was a HUGE roach. needless to say, i did not have a persimmon for dessert. THEN, to make matters worse, i looked down and saw a HUMONGOUS rat just chilling on the side of the sidewalk. it was DISGUSTING.....probably one of the grosser things i've seen in bangkok. i kept telling myself that it was good luck to see a rat since it is the year of the rat.....i'll just keep telling myself that....its like getting pooped on by a bird and convincing yourself that it is good luck because it is so gross.anyway, after that adventure, we went home, ate dinner and got ready to go out. that night we were all excited to go to a new bar called "glow" and went on quite a long adventure to find it, only to go inside and find that we were the ONLY ones in there. literally. so, we used the bathroom, abby and marney did body shots, and then we left. we ended up at Q-Bar, which was pretty cool, but too many old european tourists for my taste....especially when they ALL think i am thai....lol.
on friday, we were determined to do a cultural event ;), so we went to school, showed nundies our campus, and went to wat pho....or the temple of the reclining buddha.
this was AWESOME. he is about 150 feet long, and made of gold. one of the most spectacular things i've seen thus far. and, we went around sunset, right before the wat closed, so it was not crowded, somewhat cool, and the lighting was perfect. although this is the biggest (and oldest) wat in bangkok, it didn't seem that big. the grand palace felt a lot bigger to me, so i want to go back and explore wa uniforms and were able to get in for free. thammasat rocks my world! lol. on friday night, we went to a cool dance performance at some park/fort along the river, right near the rama 8 bridge. it was a modern/interpretive dance show put on by some students at another university. it was called "untouchable" and it was about the cast system in india, and how cross-cast marriages are looked down upon. i don't think i wt pho more. it was pretty cool because we wore our thammasatould have gathered any of that by just watching the dance, but that was the description that they gave us before hand!!!saturday, in the words of andy, was "the day of over-rated events"! we spend a good majority of the day in a hot van, but i thought it was a good experience. andy, marney, nundies and i booked a tour to go to the floating market, river kwai bridge, and tiger temple. he did NOT want to go back to the floating market after our first experience, but this time we didn't have any encounters with fish or komodo dragons, just mango and sticky rice and fried bananas. yummmmm....i still think it is a cool thing to see in bangkok though! after the floating market, we went to the river kwai bridge in kanchanaburi. there was a small museum, and a bridge. thats all. ;) according to marney, this was "unremarkable" and the only thing fernando and andy took pictures of were statues of men who had their male anatomy hanging out....hahaha....oh, my friends crack me up...LOL. anyhow, we spent about an hour there, and got back on the bus and went to tiger temple. this was by far the best part of the day. we got to pet unchained, very
pictures with the tigers! it was hilarious.....she was SOOOOO stoked. we heart you marns...even if you are the crazy cat lady ;)!!!! the only bad part was that it was like 100 degrees and since i was wearing a tank top, i had to put on my black juicy velour jacket. i wanted to die, until i saw the tigers, and got distracted because i was so scared to be attacked by the FULL GROWN tigers that were just chilling...occasionally making swift movements with their gigantic paws, and peeing on people.....no problemo. luckily, as you can severy very large tigers, and play with tiger cubs. marney, aka "the crazy cat lady" had a sparkle in her eye that i've never seen before (in any person's eyes, in my whole life) after she got to take pictures with the tigers. she was STOKED, to say the least. luckily, and obviously, i came out alive, didn't even get peed on during the process, AND, got some pretty sweet pictures of me with the tigers!!!
on saturday night, we went to a club called "santika" which was really cool. there was a thai band first, then they played hip-hop later. one of my favorite clubs so far...nothing much notable from that night, but really fun! i want to go back. the club was themed like a church (look at the picture), but it was a club. it was neat.sunday we sort of failed miserably. first of all, we were supposed to meet at 1, but i didn't get up until 1:20. then, we dressed up in our uniforms again to go to the grand palace to see the princess, but when we got there, they wouldn't let us in for free, and it was 250 baht so no one wanted to pay, and i've already been there, so we left to find chotechir. we walked for a long time, and finally found it, but it was closed. and i had my heart set on a banana flower salad. boo. we ate at a place on the street that was good, then wanted to go to wat arun (temple of the dawn). we told the taxi driver, but just as we were getting there, andy called (since he was in the first taxi) and told us that it was closed. AHH...we gave up trying to be cultural for the day and went home. later, we found out that andy and fernando were NOT at wat arun, but some other random temple...so wat arun was probably open. oh, AB...AB...silly silly boy.
now, the best part of the week: marney told us about a temple where you can get real traditional thai tattoos and be blessed for life by monks.....at first, we were not going to go, but last minute, we decided to stay up all night, and went to wat bang phra in the morning to get tattoos. the kind that are tapped into your back by monks. don't worry mom, i didn't get one. i heard your little voice in my head saying, "meris, think before you do things. and if you have to think twice, it is probably a bad idea." hehehe....plus, i didn't know what design i would get or anything...so you can breathe now. however, nundies' mom might not be breathing so easy....he got a 10-inch tiger tattoo on his back.
it is probably the coolest thing ever, but he said it was soooooo painful. and i know that he has a super high pain tolerance. it took about 30 minutes, but it didn't bleed too much, and it looks pretty gangsta!!! lol. oh nundies.....gotta love you! unfortunately, we had a bad mean taxi driver who we paid to take us back to bangkok, then when we got home, he wanted 400 baht more...we refused to pay him so he called the police. i told fernando not to pay and i was grouchy, tired, hungry, had a tummy ache, and had to pee. nundies knew i had a bad combination of emotions, so he sent me upstairs and dealt with the taxi driver. hahaha....then, i laid down in bed and couldn't sleep because i drank coffee. i kept having bad thoughts that nundies might be going to thai prison since he didn't come back for 30 minutes, so i went back downstairs to investigate. finally, he bargained the taxi driver down to 200 baht and paid him and left. it was a fiasco. it was so weird...they were just standing around, no one was angry, smoking cigarettes, and wasting time. the taxi driver could have EASILY made those 200 baht by driving people, but instead he left his car running for the entire time and just stood there and kept telling us to wait. strange...frustrating, but a good story. i think it was the most angry i've been since arriving to thailand, but i'm over it now. and still love it here! lol. good times...good times...
to celebrate my official 1-month anniversary in bangkok i:1. ate chicken in my soup last tuesday night
2. started brushing my teeth with tap water
3. took out the hair extensions
(Me eating chicken!!!)
that's the end of the story of my life for the past week. hope you enjoyed it! xoxooooo
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