Thailand Travelogue: First Impressions

No, I have not recovered from jet lag yet. It is almost 8pm right now and I feel like I've been up all night! My parents and I have been doing a lot of shopping these first couple of days for office odds and ends. Bangkok has an entire 5-story mall dedicated to computers and related paraphernalia; I think Asians like technology more than even we westerners do! One thing I keep noticing is that most people here in the city wear earbuds. I can’t tell whether they like to be connected to their cell phones at all times (everybody has cell phones and they use them often) or they are listening to music. Maybe both – aren’t some cell phones able to double as mp3 players now?

To say that Bangkok is a bustling metropolis doesn’t cut it. The city is packed - bursting at the seams! I could never drive here. Today our taxi got in a fender bender with another taxi. This must happen often enough though because they simply pulled over, inspected the damage, and our driver flagged down another taxi to take us while they figured it out. No one seemed very upset. If I were driving, on the other hand, I would have a nervous breakdown just trying to take a turn! Of course, such fear and hesitation would guarantee me an accident right then and there anyway so I’d have good reason to be scared spitless.

And boy is there a lot of people. You feel too large and clumsy to walk around without bumping into stuff or people. One can be overly courteous too; I quickly found that letting someone by means I can’t move for a couple minutes as fifty people stream by. You simply assert yourself – walk wherever you’re going to walk and it all starts to work so much better! Don’t even think about wanting personal space.

As can be expected when so many people live in such close proximity, there is an assortment of smells to assault the senses everywhere you go, such as: dirty dogs, food, sewer, flowers, body odor, perfume, car exhaust, etc. I’m amazed that the street food vendors can make a living. I'd have a hard time being interested in even the best looking food when I can smell the sewer near by but people either don’t care or are used to it. But they also don’t seem to mind eating right next to a busy street! Sometimes you can feel the grit from car exhausts hit you in the eyes yet you see people calmly eating away right next to traffic. Amazing. Some people do care about the fumes though. Most of the street policemen and other people who have to work by the road all the time wear those white face masks that you always see in the pictures. The ones I don't get are the nose masks! How on earth is a little piece of paper that isn't even sealed well over your nose going to help filter out the air you breathe?
And they like to keep everything open too. E.g. the stores aren't sectioned off by walls - you're walking a long through the mall and next thing you know, you're in one of the stores. And the restaurants are often just sectioned off spaces. We ate lunch literally at a table on the walkway right next to shoppers passing by.

Yeah, Bangkok is neither green nor romantic. It is a bustling city; foreign and Asian in many ways but familiar to experiences I've had in others. They took a lot of ideas from Britain I think, even though they never were a British colony. E.g. driver on the right side of the car (and drive on the left side of the road). Plugs and electricity same as England also. Surprisingly, my brain hasn't tried to speak Spanish (my mom keeps saying pesos instead of baht when referring to money); instead I keep trying to speak what little Hungarian I learned last summer!! Weird, don't you think? Or not, I guess, as that was my last international experience. Well, that is all for now. My parents are waiting to play scrabble (if I can stay awake).
Ever seen a squat pot before?

Thailand Travelogue: The Beginnings

Here begins a travel log of my first visit to Thailand on the pretense of seeing my parents during an all-too-short (three week) summer break from school. Thailand has been at the top of my list of places to go in this lifetime for quite some time now probably thanks to the 1999 film, Anna and the King, as well as thanks to a couple of my friends who got to go at about that time and told enough stories to awaken anyone’s curiosity!
Let me begin my tale with a pre-flight anecdote. As many of you know, I am a master procrastinator. Therefore one cannot be surprised this outing was preceded by the usual problem that plagues last minute air travel: a dearth of reasonably priced flights. In fact, three grand was the first rate I saw! After some casting about though, I discovered a gem that I think is worthy of sharing with all of you: hotwire.com. They beat the next lowest quote I could find for a round trip to Bangkok by a few hundred dollars! What’s the catch, you ask? Well, they do not tell you what airline you get or the flight time until after you purchase the tickets. They do, however, have a list of the airlines they use so at least you know what you won’t get; plus they let you know whether you fly AM, PM or redeye as well as the number of stops. Armed with those clues and my clever powers of deduction, I figured out the airline and the times from flights given on other travel websites. Pretty clever bit of detective work, eh? :o) WHAT?! No? Oh, fine. Say what you may, I still think it was a stroke of genius – and I bought the ticket.
So with my bank account not as badly drained as it could have been, with my bags not packed to the hilt, and with myself most definitely not unexcited, this adventure begins on the 4th of August with the 22 hour sitting marathon that is the transpacific flight to Thailand via a layover in Tokyo. Of that entire episode all I have to say is, why on earth does it have to be so grueling to sit all day? You’d think your body would conserve its resources with all that rest so that you can be a fountain of energy when you finally arrive. I mean, it works with kids during car travel doesn’t it? Sadly, we all know such is not the case with anyone older than eleven and, by the time I arrived at the Bangkok airport at midnight on the 5th, I definitely suffered the effects of sitting for so long. You know what nerdy thought kind of redeems it all though? The fact that after a year of medical school I actually have a decently thorough understanding of the body dynamics involved in leaving me feeling so crumby! The waning novelty of that thought will most likely not buoy me patiently through the return flight though; some other measures possibly involving chemical substances will have to be taken at that point in time. For now I am excited to see my parents again and to be in Thailand, the land of “Anna and the King”!

News, updates, etc.

Life has been hectic this summer and I don't think I'm the only one who feels that way. We were told the summer load at our medical school was going to be lighter than the fall and spring semesters but they LIED!! This is the closest I've come to failing one of my courses so far. I'm getting tired, burned out, whatever you want to call it. Yet I can't look my professors in the eye and complain we don't really need to know this stuff like I used to be able to do before medical school. As much as I may dislike memorizing lists of drugs, they matter to my future career and to the lives of my future patients. The responsibility that doctors shoulder is a bit frightening. Our mistakes could have dire consequences... but that's why they keep us in school for so long!
Now I can say I have tried acupuncture! One of our professors and some classmates are doing a study on whether acupuncture can relieve stress. So they ask us volunteer subjects some survey questions every week before taking us into a quiet room where we each get needles stuck in our head, hands, and feet and we lay still for twenty minutes. I'm not sure I'm sold on it yet. Yes, I feel very relaxed during those twenty minutes and usually feel stress free the rest of the day but the needles kind of hurt! The one at the top of my head I don't even notice but the spots where the needles are in my hands ache for about five minutes after they're put in and sometimes they itch the entire time. Still, it's an interesting experience.
I moved to a new place before the summer semester started. The third floor condo I live in now is a huge step up from living in a basement. I liked the landlords at the last place but my new landlords aren't too bad either. I live by a river now! I can look out on crew teams training in the morning and on water skiers in the afternoon right from our deck. I've attached a picture of what the river view looks like early in the morning just to make you jealous! Michigan may spend more than half its year in a dark, cold, miserable winter but the summers are really spectacular.

Grand River from our deck

A Memorial Weekend Spent in Montreal

Chris and Anne

So Chris has been happily married to the girl of his dreams since one-thirty in the afternoon on the twenty-eighth of May, two thousand five. Theirs was a lovely wedding held inside Birks Chapel at the majestic McGill University, where they met. Cameras rolled and tears flowed as the vows were exchanged. Chris' unique creativity was invested in the ceremony, instantly recognizable in the music of the processional but moreso it was felt during the reception that followed. Joy and fellowship filled the air as the festivities... Wait a minute, WHAT HAPPENED?? I am a whole stinking day older than the guy!! My parents were already pregnant with me at my age! Some of my peers are already siring their own offspring! Where does that leave me? Sheesh, well, be that as it may, I am very happy for Chris and Anne and I know God has blessed their union. In turn, may they together be a blessing to everyone in their lives as well.
I enjoyed much more over the weekend than just the few hours we celebrated Chris and Anne, however, because Michal, Christopher and I not only represented the contingent of old buddies from Arizona at the wedding, we were released upon Montreal to wreak havoc as we saw fit. Boy did we do our job well! I believe much credit is due to the excellent breakfasts we ate every morning at Chez Cora Dejeuners which held us through to dinner every evening. We spent much of our time at the Old Pier juggling fire batons with the street performers; sneaking into the Cirque du Soleil; shooting tourists in the clock tower; ramming paddleboats and leaving them to sink in two feet of water; kicking down signboards; knocking over pedestrians in our rented skates and bike; charming the waitresses into serving us food not on the menu; and, most importantly, giving the local drivers a few really good scares. Well, you tell me how we were supposed to know the red octagonal signs that said 'ARREZ' meant 'STOP'!
We also spent a few hours in Montreal's very own Notre Dame first scandalizing fellow patrons by pointing out the horns protruding from Moses' head and then going to confession for the aforementioned crimes. Once our consciences were cleared by reciting Hail Maries and attending French mass, we moved on to Saint Joseph's Oratory, which is perched on a hillside and overlooks the city. We tried to be good but it wasn't long before we raided a Father's chapel-turned-museum to read a few of the prayers people left for him. Most of them were in French so I won't repeat them here. We thought our rampage was to meet an early demise at dusk when what appeared to be a crowd of zombies filed toward us from across the plaza, but it turned out they were just the local parishioners holding a candle vigil for the Father whose chapel we had just, uh, inspected. In order not to arouse any suspicions, I covered up the skull and crossbones shirt I was wearing, Christopher hid his camera and Michal tried to look nonchalant as we chanted along with the crowd all the way down to their underground sanctuary where we accidentally signed to have someone canonized thinking it was a guest book.
Ah but it wasn't all fun and games as I have since paid dearly for that weekend in Montreal. My car died from the journey. She blew out her engine on the freeway but held together long enough for me to make it home before giving up the ghost in the school parking lot. I had to have her towed to the mechanic who took a look under her hood and concluded she needs an engine transplant. As she is getting on in years and we have only been together for ten months and my insurance does not cover the procedure, I think I may let her rest in peace while I find a new vehicle to take her place.
I hope you have enjoyed reading about my weekend as much as I enjoyed retelling it. As a disclaimer, however, this is my blog and my story so the facts may have been embellished just a tad and the truth may have been twisted just a teensy bit. It's more exciting that way.