Alexicon Across Borders

It's amazing how lightly I usually take something until I'm knee deep in it.

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I've been back in the USA for about a month now, which has given me the chance to look back on my time in Thailand and reflect on what it was that I actually did for 5 months. It may seem like I did a lot of traveling and sight-seeing, but that paints an unrealistic picture of what my life was really like. The mere fact that I was living in Bangkok (one of the most interesting cities in the world, no doubt) was adventure enough, although I probably took that for granted when choosing blog content. In fact, my best memories were the daily, mundane things that I didn't even think about. Like walking to school everyday, exchanging smiles with the familiar street vendors along the way. Or standing face-to-shoulder with 50 people on a bus that should really only be able to accommodate 25. Or trying time and time again to conquer the "squatter toilet," which would never fail to reveal itself at the most inopportune moments.

While I may have not mentioned them before, now that I don't encounter those  rewarding little adventures anymore, I realize how important they were to me. Enough so that now I am starting to question myself on how I fit into this world. It's quite a strange feeling being thrown into an unfamiliar way of living all alone, slowly learning to adjust, only to be yanked right back out and into the old way, as if the new one never happened. I hate to say it, but you start to feel more irrelevant than you ever have before. Like you've lived a whole bunch in such a short amount of time, but you have to pretend you're "the same" in fear of seeming snobby or too self-satisfied. I definitely fell in love with Thailand, and am seriously counting down the days until I can return.

I guess the only appropriate way for me to approach these feelings is to end this blog with a post containing some of my favorite scenes from Bangkok, and to encourage everyone who sees them to go abroad if they can. It was a ridiculous, revealing, overwhelming semester, and I can't overemphasize how grateful I am to have been given this opportunity. You may have reservations whether or not you can because of this or that, but just trust me on this one. YOU WILL NOT REGRET IT.

Hopefully, this time in my life and everything I gained from it will manifest into some awesome contribution I will make to the world someday, but for now I'll just leave with a shameless plug to my non-exciting, non-travel blog of my American exploits. Keep up with me at ALEXICON.TUMBLR.COM, and you can judge for yourself whether how truly "life-changing" my Thai experience was. Later, y'all!!!

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The hardest goodbye in Thailand was the one I had to say to all my friends in the Muay Thai club. When I first came to Thailand, it was all so foreign to me. Girls were so proper, and boys were so frail. I was pretty off-skelter until my friends took me to the club for the first time. Then, every time I'd go there, it instantly made me happy. I loved seeing all the friendly faces who had accepted me right away. Training was something I could recognize (having practiced Taekwondo most of my life) and the people had personalities I could automatically relate to even despite the language barrier. It was funny too because from then on, every time I would tell someone else that I was training at the Muay Thai gym, they'd just look at me and laugh. But I wouldn't really expect a lot of people to understand--understand that people who train together, stick together.

I really don't know how to say goodbye. I feel awkward and unable to express myself, so I usually just end up exclaiming "I'm so sad!!" while laughing unconvincingly. I leave quickly, and sometimes without saying goodbye at all, to avoid confronting strange emotions. I didn't even go to my high school graduation. And I know that toward the end of the program I didn't make it to the gym as much as I would've liked to, but I still consider all of them the best friends that I made in Thailand. So, here are some goodbyes that I wish I said instead of being so weird and incognito about it:

Ming: You are such a beautiful person inside and out. Words can't even express how happy I was to meet you. Every time we got to see each other, it made my day better. I'm still so mad I lost the pictures of us at Loy Kratong!!! And I still want you to come study in San Diego with me. So get onnn it, girl ;) But I really do believe I'll see you again someday. We'll make it happen, for sure.

P'Por: Thank you so much for befriending me and being like a big sister to me. You are so cool, and you kick so much ass! Like all the guys said, you are a powerful woman. I definitely look up to and admire you. Good luck on your thesis, I know you'll knock it out of the park =]

P'Nat and JongMin: You two are simply awesome at what you do. Watching you both train everyday, and seeing how passionate and humble you both are is an inspiration. Jay, thanks especially for being such a good friend!! Have fun for the rest of your time in Thailand, buddy.

P'Karn and P'Jip: Thank you for training me and all the encouragement you two gave me. You guys are a killer team, and it sucks that I didn't get to give you both proper goodbyes before I left. I enjoyed all of my conversations with you especially, P'Karn. Your unconditional love for martial arts helped remind me why I love doing what I do as well. I appreciate everything you do for the club, and I hope to see you guys  if  when I come back.

Beam and Built: You girls are the best. Seriously. You're so young and so smart, and you both are amazing for choosing to go against what normal girls your age do and practice Muay Thai. With your talent, I have high hopes for your girls' futures. So study hard and come visit me in California someday =]

Kenan: ...you're too cool. At Muay Thai, at life, at everything. Haha I really enjoyed the words we would exchange, and if I'm ever in the Philippines at the same time you are, we should eat some Filipino food together!! XD

Angel, Austin and Tory: I wrote a lot about all of you already, but thanks for having my back, guys. I didn't forget about my first Thailand experiences with you all, and am so grateful for having you guys there. We will definitely all see each other again!!!

Ajarn: You are someone I hold very special to me.  Your warmth is infectious. I truly felt like we were all your kids, and feeling that you cared pushed me to be better. You were the perfect person for me to call my teacher! I hope I made you proud.

*sigh. I don't usually like to sound this corny, but I felt like I had to say all of this stuff and get off my chest how much you guys meant to me in Thailand. I am really going to miss all of you. If any of you are reading this, you have a friend in me forever! I love you guyssssssss

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The Story of Belen's Toe.

With two days left in our trip to the South, my friends Belen, Zack, Jack and I headed to the coastline of Krabi called Tongsai--a more affordable alternative to the popular coastline of Railay. To get from Tongsai to Railay, one had only to walk about 45 minutes down the beach, crossing a daunting stretch of rocky terrain. We were told the unmatched beauty of Railay Beach would be well worth the effort. Not that I actually made it there, or anything.

No, the evening we arrived in Tongsai, Belen and I were perfectly content with the coastline we had already happened upon. Tongsai is not only remote, but absolutely gorgeous and underrated. So, at least for the night, us girls wanted to just chill at the bars nearer to our Tongsai guesthouse, while the boys made the trip to rage with one of their homeboys over on Railay. We told them to be back early in the morning so we could all go kayaking. (HA.)

After having, admittedly, maybe a few too many beers, Belen and I walked hand in hand through the dark (using her cell phone to light the disheveled path) to our little shack of a guestroom. They called it a "Nature Guesthouse," and in nature we were. Tipsy and tired, we took a couple of pictures and fell into sleep. Or at least I did.

In the middle of the night, I'm suddenly awakened by this wailing little Mexican girl, who is clearly drunk and keeps repeating "Alexa!! HELP! What happened to me??!!!" Confused, we step into the bathroom and turn on the lights, and I suddenly want to puke.

Belen's legs are covered in blood, and her left toenail is barely hanging onto its nailbed. It's black and evil, and her knees bear deep scratches as evidence of a rough fall. She's simply hysterical, and I keep asking her what happened. To this day, she sticks to the story that she has no real recollection of when or how she fell. Panicked, I call Zack (who is about an hour away, remember) who is not exactly in his own right mind from the craziness of his night. So, all he can do is try to calm me down while I try to calm her down and stop the blood. I hand her two Advil, we construct a makeshift covering for the toe with Kleenex and small BandAids I luckily had, and then we try to fall sleep until morning. She kept crying about how she thought she was going to lose her toe (obviously it wasn't thaat serious, though) and that she wanted to go home. It was really dramatic.

In the morning, when the boys finally get back, Zack carries Belen to a speedboat so that we can be taken back to town to see a clinic. While waiting for the boat, we run into a few friendly travelers who happen to be doctors as well who help bandage her up and carry her to the doctor. The clinic in Ao Nang cut off her toenail and spent a good 20 minutes cleaning it. Shit looked freaking painful.

Anyways, Belen left that afternoon back for Bangkok. She obviously didn't want to stay at the beach, so I just chilled by myself for the next day and a half until my flight back to BKK. The end.

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More pictures of Maesot, Marcie and family. And food. Omg, the food. Can we just...ugh.

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Usually I spend my Christmas with a bunch of family, little kids running around everywhere, and lots and lots of sweets. This Christmas, although unconventional, was not far off from that description.

On Christmas day, my family had donated money and a buttload of ice cream to the Light School, an orphanage/boarding school in Maesot. We came and “helped” pass out ice cream to them. I put that in quotations because by the time we actually arrived, they had been passing out the ice cream for an hour or so already, so all the kids were on their third or fourth helpings. Although we were only there for a short time, I got to speak with the orphanage’s main director and got some questions answered about what it was like working there. 

Because Maesot is right on the border between Myanmar and Thailand, there are so many ethnic minorities that live in the community, and most of them are quite poor. Over 100 children, Karen, Hmong, Burmese, Thai, etc, live there. So orphans as well as children whose parents don’t have enough money to look after them will be placed in the Light School. And all 100+ kids sleep on the floor of 2 empty rooms—rooms that seriously didn’t look big or reinforced enough for more than 10 people to live in. They get most of their funding from private donations, and a lot of foreigner volunteers come to give their time. The woman that I was talking to told me that she was initially supposed to stay only a few months there, but once she met the kids she just couldn’t leave them.

I know it sounds cliche, but it was really emotional for to me to realize that that many kids had no parents, and were growing up to learn to fend for themselves. Especially on Christmas day (despite the fact that they actually don’t care about Christmas in Thailand). And in Maesot alone, there are over 80 schools just like the Light School. It’s the kind of memory that sticks with you.

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Because I was still in Thailand for a few days while almost all of my friends had gone home in time for the holidays, I chose to not be alone like a sad stray dog outside of 7-11. So I went up to Maesot to visit my uncle and his business-oriented family, who lives in that northwest town of Thailand. (Technically he is my granduncle, but I call all of them "Uncle" and "Auntie" because splitting hairs in big Asian families just gets confusing.) I took my friend Marcie along with me as a travel companion, as she would have also been by herself for Christmas.

Our whole time there can basically be summed up as incessant sessions of feeding, punctuated every so often with some light sight-seeing. But, as we were missing the holidays back home, all Marcie and I really wanted as an appeasement was insanely good food. And the food that my family gave us in the north was by far the best food I've had during my entire time in Thailand. So I guess our all our Christmas wishes came true, after all.

The bus ride to Maesot took about 7 hours, and we, unanticipated by my poor sleeping Auntie Doris, arrived at 5 am. She picked us up in her pajamas and then drove us to one of my uncles' hotel. It was really nice, but we only slept there a couple hours before we moved into the guest room of their freaking mansion. It was pretty surreal being in there, and a little creepy at times when no one was there. It was seriously that swanky. Did I mention they were a family of entrepreneurs?? Let me further illustrate.

At one point, Marcie and I went with my Uncle Nick to a very important meeting across the Myanmar border, into a province called Myawaddy. In the meeting, some extremely important officials and business owners were discussing Thai jewelry export into Myanmar, asking about trade regulations, customs procedures, foreign investment support. At least that's what my uncle tells me went down in that meeting. Marcie and I were just sitting in the back the entire time, hella random in there, with blank-ass looks on our faces. Then they took us around to look at some pagodas and go antique shopping. With the damn owner of the biggest jewelry factory in Thailand, the chairman of Myanmar border trade, and several other serious VIP's. Marcie and I's only saving grace when people asked was that we were from the prestigious Thammasat University. Ooooo, big shots, right?

My aunt also owns a mini-mart in Maesot. It's actually like, a two-story Walgreens, so calling it a "mini-mart" is a little laughable. Once, when we were bored and were let loose in the store, Marcie and I were shamefully caught by my granduncle in line trying to buy some Kit-Kats. We felt so damn lowbrow, it wasn't even funny.

We even visited a school founded by my granduncle. It’s a Chinese school with 8 grades total, so it was way larger than I expected for such a small town. The school had regular curriculum, but specially supplemented with classes in Chinese language and cultural studies. So I was totally hounded by my uncle for not being able to speak Mandarin. I could have told him that I took three years of Mandarin in highschool, but why embarrass myself more??

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The Best and Worst Trip Ever

Sorry I haven't been able to update for a while. Things have been quite busy as my trip in Thailand is winding down. But last week I went to Krabi with my friend Belen, as I mentioned in my last post. Let me tell you why it was the best and worst trip ever.

So Belen and I were planning this trip a good two months ago, and we were envisioning it as being a smooth, relaxing end to finals, with just one or two cool friends, at what we were told would be one of the most beautiful islands in Thailand: Phi Phi. This was not how it ended up being. 

First of all, Ko Phi Phi is definitely not an island that you can just lay out and relax on. It is a party island, full of Australians and blonde-haired babes trying to get their fire-dance on. Then, instead of inviting one or two of our close friends to have a chill time, we forgot that we were inviting our friend Zack--an exchange student in our program notorious for his drunkardly wild ways. He invited two of his "bros" with him as well, so you can just imagine how our quiet and calm trip was turned upside down. It includes a story that I will tell in a later post about Belen's toenail (I'm sure those of you who have seen my Facebook lately are curious about this). So forget depending on the regal beauty of clear waters and rugged cliffs to regenerate me, I should have instead been preparing my body for the island with tons of sleep and electrolytes.

Also, my procrastinating self didn't finish a final paper that I still needed to turn in, because of all of the hectic-ness of packing up my apartment and moving my things. So I ended up having to drag my laptop with me all over the island, scrambling to find WiFi at every corner while my friends were splashing around on the beach. Boo.

Our most "successful" planned event was when we all went on a booze cruise tour, which then literally turned into a morning reenactment of The Hangover. Except much sadder, as one of our friends lost his DSLR and ALL of his money. Depressed, he went home early, and everyone else began to follow suit, as they too were beginning to run out of money. I had been the only one to book a flight back to Bangkok (TWO MONTHS AGO, remind you), so I ended up being stuck in Krabi by myself for 2 days after everyone got on buses and freaking abandoned me. By then, I was so exhausted from the series of unfortunate events that had happened, I just wanted to get back home.

However, I feel like I am exaggerating a bit. I mean, it definitely wasn't all bad. Tonsai, a coast we stayed in for a night, was totally gorgeous, as were all of the islands we were at--despite the crowds of tourists and beach parties. We still had a ton of fun on the booze cruise, where we got to float in the ocean, explore sea caves, cliff jump, and kayak around, all supplemented with healthy portions of Chang. Most importantly, I got to hang out with some cool friends that I probably won't see for a long long time, as I'm the only one left in Thailand. So I guess I'm honored that I got to be there for their last hurrah in the South, chaotic as it was. At least we got some stories we will all laugh about years later.

Merry Christmas, Krabi Gang, I'll miss you all!

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3J Court Apartments

I checked out of my apartment yesterday, because of my plans to travel around Thailand after finals. I'll be staying with a friend back at 3J Court for a night or so before I officially have to say goodbye, but last night was the last time that I could actually say that I was living in Bangkok. Now, I'm just kind of drifting.

As some of you may know, I live my life in constant procrastination. So moving out was not the reminiscent stroll through my life here like you would hope. There was no slow and symbolic taking down and rolling up of posters, no sentimental glance at the empty room as I shut the door behind me. No. Because I waited until the last possible moment to pack, it was more like an "EFFFFFF, I have 3 hours to get all this shit together! Leave it! Trash it! Stuff it!!! WHAT TIME IS IT??!!"

It's not really the apartment itself that I'm going to miss, because I'll have plenty of apartments in my lifetime. It's the building staff, the janitors, the security guards, chefs, etc, that greet me every day who made it all the more real that I'm leaving. Of course, I'll be back in a week to crash there at my friend's place, but they didn't know that. When they saw all my stuff packed and ready to go, they said, "Good luck." And I wanted to cry. This is the first time I'll be moving completely away from somewhere, confident that this is most likely the last time I will see these people ever again.

Buuuuuut I am trying not to be too caught up in sad goodbyes. So I snuck out of Bangkok last night to go to Krabi with my friend Belen for a few days. Thus, after a freaking 15 hour bus ride, I am sending you this weekend update from Krabi!!! See you guys on the beach ;)

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I can't believe how long ago this was, but I went to watch the FIFA Futsal World Cup over a month ago in National Stadium. And no, that wasn't a typo for "futbol," futsal is indoor soccer. I had never heard of it before, either.

This match pitted Spain against Thailand, but the odds were not looking to be very much in our favor. Thailand had lost against this team before in the bracket, and the tall ass Spaniards had at least 3 inches on each of the Thai players. So it was actually a pretty pitiful performance given by the Thai team. It included a move in the final quarter where, for some reason, the coach thought it'd be a good strategy to just forego the goalie altogether (not that he was particularly rocking at his job either) because they needed more forwards playing at one time. Baaaad move. They lost two goals within 10 minutes from kicks across the freaking court.

Nonetheless, you could smell the home-team spirit and excitement in the air. When the Thai team finally scored a goal in the last few minutes, all hell broke loose in the stadium. 5 straight minutes of dancing and cheering and streamers that were being held in for ages got released, and it took a couple minutes for the janitors to clean it all up before the match could proceed. This would also be the Thai team's last game in the tournament. So when it ended, they made sure to come out and show their gratitude to their unconditional fans with a big bow and by joining them in a linked-arm song.

Go Thailand!

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I realized that I hadn't really blogged about my trip to Singapore, after spending yesterday with Limei (whom I traveled there with), and today with Megan A (who just came back from there). So, here's a long overdue post about my 3-day visit to the economic hub of Southeast Asia.

We avoided getting too SingaPOOR by staying with my friend Limei's sister and her husband, who live in a small apartment there. It was still very cute, had a fantastic view and was in a great location in the city. And they were wonderful hosts. Limei's sister works long hours and is dead tired when she gets home, but she made sure to show us a good time while we were there. Her brother was also staying there while visiting from Beijing, so it was like a little sibling reunion for them.  It was nice seeing Limei excited to be with her family after knowing they'd been apart for so long =]

Plus, her sister had a little dog (named Jackie Chan) so whenever we had down time we got to play with him. It was certainly refreshing to see a nice clean dog instead of all the stray ones that I have had some horrifying experiences with in Thailand.

Because one of Megan's old roommates at UCSD was from Singapore, we met up with her at the botanical garden. But it was HOT, so we ducked into a shopping mall after a measly hour and a half. Not that we could afford anything there, we just wanted to look around and see what all the hype was about "Singaporean shopping." Maybe if we had known about the more hipster boutiques we could have found something more impressive, but it seemed exactly like the Grand Canal Shoppes in the Venetian at Vegas to me. Random-ass indoor river canal and all.

At one point, we stumbled across the mall casino. We were curious to go inside, until we found out that Megan's roommate as a Singaporean resident would have had to pay 100 Singaporean dollars just to walk inside the casino. That's about 80 bucks! It was part of some crazy deterrence law to prevent Singaporeans from getting addicted to gambling. Us foreigners could doom our souls for free for all they cared, though. They also had a lot of taxes on alcoho,l and a car cost a lot of money to own because of high gasoline prices and tolls.

I mean, you must have heard these stories about Singapore. That's it's a complete police state while being a marvel of modernity. It's totally true, and I would describe Singapore as being a "beautiful man-made city." Nothing was natural there, everything was extremely contrived and carefully placed for a reason. From the trees, to the laws, to the sky-scrapers, everything was controlled to the "t." But you couldn't really find anything wrong with it either. Everything was very aesthetically pleasing, efficient and clean. So I can't say I had a lot of wild stories from there, but being in Singapore was definitely a nice little getaway in the middle of the craziness that is Southeast Asia. 

(and the food was sooooo goood!!!)

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There's this stray cat that basically lives in my apartment building. It gets trapped everywhere, defecates wherever it gets trapped, fights/screams with its imaginary friends outside of my door at ungodly hours, and basically annoys the hell out of me. When I see it sitting at the bottom of the stairs or in the lobby, I will literally take the elevator to the 3rd floor and walk back to the 2nd (my floor) so it won't see me walking up the stairway and follow me into my hallway. Even if I try to block it while squeezing through the door, it's so freaking fast. Every time I leave my room in the morning, I pray not to run into that little asshole.

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These photos were taken when my family was in Bangkok about a week ago. They only stayed for a couple of days before heading up to Mae Sot to visit my uncle, and so I decided to stay with them while they were here.

Which meant that, I too, was practically living at the Healthland massage parlor and spa. Sure we went to a couple of markets, visited a temple and ate a few times, but they always had to work in a visit to Healthland to the schedule. But I'm not complaining at all. Shoot, my mom shelled out 25 bucks for me to get a full "body polish." Which meant that, for an entire hour, a woman scrubbed me down with some unknown substance and lotioned me up from head to toe. Yes, it got weird. Yes, I got ticklish. But my skin was also craaaaazy smooth after that.

My grandfather is pretty old, and my aunt got taken out by an ankle injury on the second day being in Bangkok. So even though I wanted to show off my handle on the crazy Thai public transportation system, we were a little immobile and we basically took taxi's everywhere. But our time was really limited as well. Because once we called my uncle from Mae Sot, letting him know they were in Thailand, he basically had all of our activities mapped out for us before we got off the phone. He set up all our meals, got us tickets to shows, etc. All Asians know how relatives can get when "guests" arrive.

Anyways, like I mentioned, my family decided to get a suite for all of them at the Lebua State Tower, which was featured in the movie, The Hangover 2. On our last night, we went to the rooftop Sky Bar where the scene was shot. It was filled with booshy people buying 16 dollar martini's, and the guards wouldn't even let us take a picture unless we were at the bar.

The hotel was super swanky, I actually squatted in the room for 3 hours after they checked out, using that time to take advantage of the bathtub and internet. Living in the lap of luxury, you know.

*Sigh. It was really nice taking a little vacation while my family was here. Now I'm back in Bangkok, in full finals mode, while still trying to savor the few weeks I have left here in Thailand. I predict that I will be seriously lacking sleep this month...

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We took a day trip to Bangon to see the Golden Rock Pagoda the next day. Starting at 4:30 in the morning, it took a 3 hour bumpy van ride just to get to the bus station, where we transferred to an even bumpier shuttle bus ride for half an hour. Although, because my mom speaks Burmese, we managed to get snuck onto the bus that the locals take, which was brutal trying to get a seat on while coming back down the hill. My dad got elbowed by an old lady, and a dude tried to push me off when we were all claiming seats. But I guess I understand why everyone's so much more desperate to get on it, because you are literally at the top of a mountain, and therefore kind of stranded. But at least we got on the bus that brings you all the way to the pagoda. Apparently, they make foreigners walk half of the way. Effff that, it was HOT.

Not only was it hot, but it was blinding! Everything at these pagodas are either white marble or painted bright gold. Looking through my brother's pictures, I was wondering why I have this perpetual stank face on. Then I remembered: Ahhh, the squinting.

After leaving Golden Rock, we went to, you guessed it, more pagodas! Yayyyy...Haha I think I would have appreciated them more if I knew where we were going or what things were called before we got there. When you're traveling with family, you kind of just do what they want to do and don't have a choice in the matter. So I'd just wake up and be instructed to get out of the car, which kind of takes away from the experience and excitement of traveling on your own.

Also, at these pagodas, instead of just being barefoot in the main pavilions like Thailand, you can't wear your shoes anywhere on the temple premises. This includes all of the gardens, walkways, etc. So by the time we leave the temples, our feet are nasty caked in who knows what. Haha, washing my feet in the hotel at the end of the day was always an ordeal.

We'd often see people bringing picnics and in huge groups of people with lots of kids. The pagodas seem to be where everyone spends their weekends with the family. I guess that's exactly what we did too, sans praying or eating.

By far the best part about going to all these sights is always the travel time. Looking out windows and taking it all in at your own pace without the obligation of being at an "attraction" is why I love traveling. It's something you can experience without saying so. Coming back down on the bus, the scenery was so peaceful and uncut. Despite the fact that I was clinging on the side of an open truck for dear life while we took 180 degree twists and turns down a mountain, I still felt really happy to be looking out and thinking, this is Burma. 

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On our second day, we literally took a trip down memory lane and visited the street alley that my family lived on. They all said that the place had changed quite a bit, but at least it gave a better picture to some of the stories that my mom sometimes tells me about her childhood. My mom and aunts passed around stories of the little flashbacks they could piece together, fuzzy since it had been about 37 years since they left and were last there. Some of them were still quite young at the time, but my mom was the eldest and had lots to say about the place. It became a real lesson in the history of my family tree, and I was surprised to learn that most of my mom's relatives (whose connection I never really thought to question while growing up) could be traced back to their respective spots in this little square area of Yangon.

A couple of the neighbors noticed us hovering over the seemingly random "Unit 271," so my grandfather struck up a conversation with them. When he explained that they all used to live in that apartment nearly 40 years ago, they looked at him in bewilderment and asked, "The engineer?" Although they didn't know him personally, apparently they had heard rumors of him and his position as a "big man" on 39th street back in the day when all of the communist riots were going on. Cool, huh??

We also visited the school that my mom and aunt went to when they were little girls, and spent a long time talking to the principal and teachers who happened to be hanging around the school grounds on a Sunday morning.

The rest of the day was spent going a little further out of the city to find other famous pagodas, but now their names escape me. One of them was on an island though, and a popular attraction for locals was to feed the surrounding catfish with rice cracker balls. I didn't even know fish could be so aggressive. It was strange to watch.

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This morning, we visited a fishing pier that's owned by one of my uncle's closest friends. He gave us a tour of the place where they sort literally thousands of fish for export and to disperse to local markets. They don't usually give tours there, so the entire time we were perusing the stinky premises all of the workers were closely watching us. Talk about living in a fishbowl...eh, eh?? =P

After the tour/lesson about fishing, we got to taste some of the seafood that they just cooked up for us. As Anthony Bourdain would say, "Oh yeahh. It just doesn't get better than this."

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First day in Burma! We spent the whole day temple-hopping and shrimp-eating. But I'll get back to the latter in the next post. Luckily my brother just bought a new camera, so my posts won't be completely anemic without my poor Nikon baby =[

It's much cooler (temperature-wise) here than it is in Bangkok. I wish I would've known that, then maybe I would have packed something other than short-shorts to wear around. And maybe I would've been able to avoid some awkward stares from disapproving locals. Whoops.

Anyways, the temples in Yangon are so awesome! I much prefer them to the temples in Bangkok. They're more majestic, in my opinion, and wayyy less crowded with tourists. Thailand is so unbelievably congested with tourists lately, I'm so glad to be away from it all. The temples here actually look like places of worship. Go figure!

We visited the Chauk Htat Gyi Pagoda, Shwedagon Pagoda and drove past Aung San Suu Kyii's house.

P.S. I love being chauffeured around for a change!!!

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back to the mother's land.

Greetings everyone, from Burma!

The whole gang is here in Yangon: my parents, brother, aunts and grandpa. We're here for a week, staying literally right within walking distance to the place where my mom grew up. Just trying to get a visa from Bangkok for the child of an ex-Burmese took 3 weeks and 5 sweaty trips to the embassy, so luckily my mom was in Thailand last week and helped me communicate with the processors. I guess it's much easier when you speak the language. The language of monaaaaayyyyy!! Haha, just kidding, y'all.

But we're here, and we made it!!!

Then, after everything, what's the first thing I do when I finally do get here? Lose my freaking camera on the plane. -_______- Yes, I am devastated. And after this trip, I have to go back to Bangkok to take my finals, which I am utterly screwed for. But let's not talk about all that.

For the time being, it's great to have my family with me. Especially when I need to keep my mind off of the all the Yuletide spirit that I'll be missing back home in Amuuurica. At least they are feeding me as if it's Christmas every day =]]

Speaking of which, we're going out to eat soon, so I'll update you on all of the adventures we've been having when I get back. That is, if the food coma doesn't stop me again, which is definitely what got me literally mid-sentence last night.