Hearts of Darkness

Among the many, many differences between me and the Thai people, this is one of the more unfortunate, and one of the more obvious: I sweat a lot in this climate. Thai people don't. As Lacey gracioulsy pointed out on our first outing into the streets of Bangkok, "Your face is covered with little droplets of sweat."

We had set off across the city in search of a super-cool contemporary art space/"concept mall" called Playgound, that turned out no longer existed, or was under extensive renovation or something. (uh, hello, memo to Lonely Planet) Then we went looking for a vegetarian restaurant called Tamarind, which was empty and bore a for rent sign. (See previous parenthetical aside) So we wandered around the up-market rich Thai people/ ex pat area of Bangkok (wayyy across town from our hotel) when it started to storm. Thunder, lightening, the whole bit. This was real, tropical, torrential, typhoon-style downpour. They don't call it the monsoon season for nothing.

Me: Lace, did you know this was the rainy season?
Lacey: Um. No. Did you?
Me: No idea... Hmm. Maybe we should have checked that before we left?

We made it back across town with a cabbie who shreiked whenever we hit a big puddle, or the rain got more intense, or we narrowly missed a tuk tuk. Not exactly reassuing, but he expertly navigated the roads-tunred-rivers and dropped us off at the hotel soaking, but fine.

Then, joy of joys, we got to take an overnight bus! This really reminded me of IHP, though we only did that once, and it was something we planned on our own. The bus was decorated in shimmering pastels (blue, purple and pink) and there was a psychadellic falling leaves theme throughout. We purchased dinner at the bus stations' 7-11 (which seems to have a total monopoly on the convenience store market here) and I ate a really intersting "crab stick and mayonaisse sandwich", "super extra barbecue" potato chips, and a heart-shaped doughnut with no hole from Dunkin Donuts. Just as we were settling down to sleep, the bus people provided, for our entertainment, some weird movie about a monster in a lake I think, starring James Van Der Beek of massive fame from the piviotal TV series "Dawson's Creek". It was dubbed in Thai, and they played it twice, back to back, even though everyone was asleep. The ride was not as awful as I'd originally anticipated, due to the indespensible "Simply Sleep" and of course earplugs.

Still, we crashed hard, for two hours, when we got to our jungle bungalows. Which are really awesome. We're right on the edge of Khao Sok national park, deep in the oldest rainforest IN THE WORLD. I suppose it's rather unfortunate that I'm reminded of every Vietnam movie I've ever seen-- but really, it DOES look just like Apocalypse Now! Huge limestone cliff/mountains protrude out of nowhere, and the jungle is dense and everywhere, and green green green-- I'm half expecting a bald Marlon Brando to be spying on us from behind a tree. We went tubing this afternoon, down a lazy river; it was wonderful, and pictaresque and again reminded me of too many movies. Then we went to a temple where we fed monkeys and took pictures of them (kind of fucked up and exploitative, but the monkeys seemed to enjoy it) and then we came back to our resort/hotel place and drank tropical drinks and ate delicious Thai food. (Dynamite, no surprises there.)

The rest of our group is mainly unfortunate, and no, I'm not just being an asshole. There are the pair of Irish girls I've decided to call Paris and Nicole, but with bad teeth, who light up their cigs at every available opportunity. There are two Scottish couples who look alarmingly alike, beyond their pale creamy complexions and rust colored hair, only I like one of the couples and not the other. (The one I don't like wore raincoats while we went tubing) There's also two British boys who are barely eighteen and behave accordingly, a sweet Japanese guy called Masa that I want to make friends with, two girls from Wales who are fine, and the only other Americans, lame Bostonians who actually FLEW here from Bangkok because they couldn't stand the idea of an overnight bus. Come on. I may bitch and moan, but I also know when to suck it up.

Lacey being quiet and shy, and me having a penchant for whispering more obviously than I think I am in front of people, I don't think our fellow group members are going to try especially hard to make friends. This suits me fine, as I am here to be with Lacey, and see stuff, and eat, and get as many more massages as possible.

Our one pineapple daquiri each seems to have gone straight to our heads, and I'm tired from too much movement and too little solid sleep. It gets dark quite early here this time of year (by seven PM) and I think I'm going to wash and then sleep sleep sleep.

ALSO-- We're going to ride elephants tomorrow!