Ange: This is Thailand -- 2010-03-15

Fell asleep pretty late, endured the heat of the night (which actually feels quite "normal" to me), heard a cow mid-morning, before I'd totally woken up, etc. All very exciting. ("We have a cow around here?!" "It's the cow sound at the end of the music the ___ [Ange doesn't remember who] man plays...")

We had a lovely little brunch/lunch... well, I was up really late compared to everyone else, so they'd already been talking for over an hour by the time I showed up, but it was swell.

Did some work. Got a transfer off. Need to do some more work/transferring tomorrow (that's my reminder, ehe).

Then we hit the mall. Walked there. Saw some sights and sounds.

I repent: The men here are not effeminate, in general. In fact, they are much more manly, as a whole, than some other nationalities (aherm-aherm -- not pointing any fingers anywhere), so it really must have been the plane/airport environment, aherm. Special. Anyway, I did see more real-ness and it was interesting.

The smells of Taiwanese food/cooking are definitely not present here. That's immediately noticed (by me) when walking down the streets, even past street food vendors. Well, of course they won't have Taiwan smells here, but it's just weird to be walking in similar settings and not getting those (now) familiar aromas.

You have never seen malls until you've been to Thailand. I'd heard about these malls, the one near the house, here, is not even that huge, but it's huge enough! Even your average American mall pales by comparison. So, we tromped around. Now, I'm not a shopper -- so un-female in that way. But we were on our mission. Mission checklist: limes/sugar/straws, perfume knock-offs, natural bead necklaces... and just generally peeking around... We managed to entertain ourselves for the entire afternoon. Hrm...

Food here is just too darn cheap! I never say "darn". I also never feel quite so comparing and worldly-like about the convenience of some things and then feel a small murmur in my heart that they aren't so at home... :D Even at the mall! It was all affordable! Ack! Ack! Even affordable on a non-existent "traveling budget". Ack again! They had a steak... at the mall... for 150... at a coffee shop!!!

Then I got a haircut. Never, in my life, has my hair been this short. It ended up shorter than envisioned, but I had a sneaky suspicion that would happen, so I had prepared my heart for it. My braid has never been at a not-past-the-bottom-of-the-shoulder-blades level, ever before. Shocking! Oh well, Change Journey!!! :D She did a good job and the beginning shampoo took almost more time than the cut itself and by the end of it I felt like going to sleep, haha.

We had a swell dinner that Shane prepared, quite expertly. Broke out the cachaca, to introduce Paul and Faith to caipirinhas... endured their wannabe-translation of the Portuguese... no, it wasn't enduring -- it was quite amusing, actually! Ahahaha. Good times.

Then we stared at goats. I hope they're sorry.

The shower head has already flown off twice, today.

This humidity/climate is not good for my skin. Aaaahhh... :(

Things could be much worse than bad skin.

Like, you could have no skin.

Or you could be having to get up at 5:00 tomorrow morning.

The weirdest thing, ever, is having traffic coming at you from the "wrong" direction. I had to work it out in my mind... it's just wrong to have it flowing towards you on the left side... think about it... in regular society, you're walking in one direction and if the traffic is on your left, it's always going in the direction you're going. Turn around and the traffic is on the right and, of course, not going in your direction. Not so here. It totally throws off one's equilibrium. I tell you! Never thought about that till coming here, even though I've been to other right-handed countries.

I also had never contemplated how many grimy hands touched that hair-cut-ing-samples magazine before I did, until handling one today, in this country. Think of all the life prints you're handling, just right there...

I also had never thought about how I might be breathing Adam's recycled air/breath, until I read this verse, the other day:

"The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits."

I also think it would be extremely weird to run into Boris on chatroulette.com. I am so not going to be frequenting that site, I'll have you know.

If you place your fingers wrong (read: one key over) on the keyboard, when you go to write "note", you end up with "bite". I discovered that years ago. It was always so much fun when it happened in "bite to Crystal Persephone Claire, from your Reporting Office."

A pretty pink tuk tuk (and Ia pulls out her zen exercises):