crazy white girl with a kitchen

Finally, pictures from Thailand. Here are some from a night of watching Muay Thai. The big guys were bloody, violent and insane…and so were the little ones.

It’s like a cruel joke. A week ago, I was riding the river boat in Bangkok, sucking in the warm (yet grossly humid and polluted) air. This Sunday morning, I waited in a line outside Toys R Us in minus 10 degrees celcius weather to see if I could buy a Wii. My boyfriend was in a line a few stores away at Futureshop. After half an hour (into a two+ hour wait), I couldn’t feel my toes anymore.

 The good news is that Michael scored a Wii (after buying someone’s presale ticket, neither one of us would have gotten one, otherwise) and we played it for the rest of the afternoon. I do not consider myself a gamer at all (not having been brought up on any systems) but I am in love with the Wii. Zelda is just so much cooler when you can actually “fish” with your wireless remote or “swing” your sword. It’s intense, and I think it gave me tennis elbow. BUT IT’S THE COOLEST THING EVER!

There is not much talk of the tsunami in these parts, even though it was one of the hardest hit areas of Thailand. There are bits and pieces everywhere you go, though. The signs for the tsunami memorial at Kamala Beach (to be opened on the 2nd anniversary this forthcoming Christmas), the smattering of spirit houses and banyan trees on a hill overlooking the private beach to Le Meridien hotel which lost entire families and most of their staff to the rogue wave, the small blue signs with a wave upon them, marking the ‘tsunami zones’ and escape routes, the book entitled “Tsunami Stories” that is on the bookshelf of the condo we are renting, the videos distastefully for sale in the streets of Patong beach, metres from the beach that was drowned under the wave a over a year ago. Leave to the street vendors to capitalize on that.

The most touching memorial I have seen was the small room at the Bangkok Phuket hospital I had to visit this week. It was a quiet glassed in room with a small description of who funded the memorial and what occurred that day in December 2004, and then dozens of 8×10 black and white photos of the days that followed.

The memorial was set up by the British Government, thanking the hospital for all their work during the days after the disaster. The hospital, which normally sees 200 patients a day eventually took in 400 inpatients and treated a further 1000 in the streets and homes as outpatients. The empty, sterile hallways I had walked to get to the memorial were shown in photographs full of tourists and locals alike, laying in the halls, being operated on, waiting to find someone at the contact centre. It looked similar to what I imagine a MASH unit during the Korean War might look like, minus the army green and dirt.

It was an extremely poignant display, and really showed the scope and horror of the disaster. In the book in our condo, I read a story about a tourist who had received a gaping wound from his ear to his chin, leaving his jaw and teeth exposed. He was brought to the Bangkok Phuket hospital by a good samaritan, only to be told his injury was not serious enough, he had to be driven a further eighty kilometers to the hospital at a nearby city.

Even as I write this, I over look the ocean that rebelled that day and wonder what it was like. How far out the water went, how quickly it came in, where it rose to on the buildings. I have been told the watermarks were evident on buildings immediately after the disaster, but have since been covered with paint and new bushes or trees. The Thai people are extremely resilient, but they are also extremely eager to move on. Another day brings a completely different outlook on life. No need to look to the past for answers, everything lies in the future. “Mai pen rai” means “don’t worry about it”, essentially. This, in a phrase, equates to the Thai attitude, even when it comes to something as horrific as a killer tsunami. Life goes on.

As my mom says, it’s not a family vacation until someone gets sick. This trip has been no different.

Within two days of arriving here in Phuket, my dad had gone to the emergency room at one of the local hospitals to receive treatment for his ear and sinus infection, in hopes of being able to take a SCUBA course. He was put on a course of antibiotics and has successfully beaten his illness. Within two days of that clearing up, my right eyelid started to swell up. By the end of the day, it had pretty much swollen shut and jokes about being a pirate ran rampant. In the morning, we decided to return to the town to visit another hospital. This time, the Phuket Bangkok International hospital, which is a private hospital. Check in was much like checking into a hotel, except they took my picture with a webcam. The time it took from the moment I walked in through the expensive frosted glass sliding doors into the soothing temperature controlled air of the hospital (now without that Sterile Smell(tm)!) until I got my bill and prescription was about 20 minutes. The total cost was just under $60 Canadian and most of that was my little shopping bag full of eye drops, eye salves and antibiotics. It was pretty amazing.

Anyhow, it was just a complicated eyelid infection, and it has since calmed down and ‘depuffed’. That is a relief since there was talk of having to return to have it lanced. While I am no fan of hospitals (who is?) I can honestly say I would not mind having to return there. There was a lovely coffee shop, automatic escalators that turned on as you approached them, beautifully decorated waiting areas with cushy suede couches (which would be prime for sleeping on as you waited for someone to come out of surgery or the like, which is kind of lost on the people visiting as your wait time does not seem to be very long) and 20 plus specialized departments.

Things have come a long way since the days of the dirt floored hospital my brother had to visit in Songkhla, Thailand over 15 years ago. In a land that has seen the slow introduction of western conveniences over the past decade, modern hospitals are probably the most welcome one.

Finally here in Thailand, and finally remembered to blog. I’ve been here for just a bit over a week, but it feels like forever. We are in one of the condos we have rented and it’s fabulous. It’s called the Aspasia (http://aspasiaphuket.com/2bedroomgrandsuite.htm for a preview of our room) and it’s ridiculously beautiful. Mostly I laze about, eating fruit and reading books. We’re due to start scuba courses, fishing and other activities soon, but truth be told I’m fine drinking iced coffees and lying about. More to come!

The day I arrived home from Montreal two weeks ago, I got a cold. With the help of ColdFX and a lot of rest, I pushed through and seemed fine. 

Until last night. This mother effer is back with a vengence, and I am on a plane for a REALLY long time on Sunday; I NEED COLD REMEDIES, STAT! I’m willing to try anything and everything, so get posting.

I have two memories of Toronto and Montreal. At one point, I was about 13 years old, and my aunt drove my brother and I through downtown Toronto. All I remember is the Skydome, which at the time, was a big deal. Even further back in my memory bank, I remember my family getting lost in Montreal, and no one speaking English. Not surprisingly, this happened almost a decade later in Paris.

Anyhow, Michael and I are off out east. We will be in Toronto, then taking the train to get to Montreal. I’m thrilled! There will be cobbled streets, cheese at markets, cheval tartare, poutine, the Insectarium, bagels, maybe the Six Flags Roller Coaster Park, and assorted other fall fun.

Three weeks following that, I’m off to Asia. Summer has begun.

With my Geology course packed up, and just over a month to go until Thailand, I’ve found myself yearning to do some more learning. I would love to start another course at school, but that will have to wait until I come back in November. Until then, I have decided to really dedicate myself to learning Thai.

 My local library has several CD packs, to varying levels of completeness. Someone has stolen the book from  a Berlitz travel guide, another person CD 1 from a four CD pack (why did you have to take the most important one? WHY?). I was at my wits end, too poor to pay for the Rosetta Stone language pack I saw advertised one night, late, on CNN (the CIA use it to learn languages! WOW! It MUST be good), and unable to find a local community college that taught a decent course. So, to my great pleasure I discovered last week that the Edmonton Public Library has joined the 21st Century and has electronically licensed audio language packs. They are even Pimsleur courses, which are pretty decent. So between that and the one complete ’hard copy’ Thai course at the library “Learn Thai in Seven Days” I hope to be able to speak much more than I previously could. This will hopefully aid me when I am conducting interviews for a possible work project I am going to try and do.

Next step: learning how to write it?! Maybe not THAT soon.

Okay, this is getting out of control. In the search for more centipedes this weekend, Mike and I visited a reptile show. We missed the last centipede by about ten minutes, but instead ‘settled’ for a few new friends.

I don’t know if I mentioned it in the last creepy crawly post, but in addition to the two centipedes, there is also a tiny little Brachypelma albopilosum, or Honduran Curly Hair tarantula currently living in a pill bottle. She’s a voracious eater, and is named Sparkles. She burrows a lot, and is still a bit too small to capture with a camera, but here is a picture of what she will look like when she is older. 

 

 At the most recent reptile show visit, we collected a few more friends. My brother, who is strangely deathly afraid of spiders, wanted his own little “sling” (spiderling, that is) and so I picked him out a tiny one inch Costa Rican Stripe Knee. He’s named it Miss Cleo.

For myself, I splurged and got an Avicularia versicolor. They are known by a few common names, one of the most beautiful (and appropriate) being Blue Martinique Tree spider. They are amazingly colored, and can turn brilliant shades of green, red, blue and even purple later in life. Again, she is really small and can’t really be photographed, but the time will come. She’s arboreal, so she spins webs, and is out all the time for me to spy upon. I really like her, and she seems really calm, so I hope to be able to handle her one day.

 

  

I hope this is what the as yet unamed tarantula develops into. This next pic isn’t her, but it sure looks like her, in size and color…

I’ll try to run updates from time to time. They live at Mike’s house, my mom isn’t too eager on having little spiderlings running around, surprisingly.

My first set of good friends got married two weekends ago in a lovely ceremony that really showed who they were well. I took photos at the wedding, but my favorite ones are of the gift opening. Here is a sequence of photos that show Dan and Roz opening their biggest and best gift. Any guesses on what it is? I will post what it was after the photos.

What was it? Roz’s parents gave her $25,000 to get her Ph.D. started. Dan started crying before Roz did, and they both sat there in shock a little while. Even typing about it now gives me goosebumps. What a lovely couple, and what lovely families. Good luck to you, guys!

A few weekends ago Mike, my boyfriend, and I stopped at a small farm outside of Red Deer in central Alberta to check out some invertebrates. We went into a barn and spent a good hour poring over hundreds of Ziploc containers full of mother scorpions, tarantulas and centipedes. There were also pill bottles full of baby spiders. It was amazing.
Centipedes were originally illegal in Canada, but recently have become popular pets, and have proven difficult to find. When we arrived, the proprietor had a larger centipede and a baby centipede that Mike took. As well, he also picked up a tiny 1″ curly hair tarantula. The baby centipede unfortunately died the next day, but Bill Kunstler (the centipede) and Sparkles the tarantula are doing well. And yesterday, Mike received a new centipede (as yet unnamed) from Montreal via overnight shipping. It’s terribly exciting, and they are far less creepy and far more interesting than you might think.

This is Bill. He is sleeping in the corner, his head tucked up under him. He typically burrows to sleep, leaving just his antennae sticking out. He’s pretty strange acting, very epileptical, almost, tossing himself around his home, heaving about like a drunken sailor. He’s not that great at hunting, but acts quickly when the time is right.

This is the new pede, nameless for now. We think it might be female. She acts very different from Bill thus far, very slow and languid… yet quick to dart under her cork bark hide, or to lunge at a cricket. Her antennae are especially sensitive and move about like small fingers, testing the ground around her.

while i work my way through the month from hell, i must repeat the mantra “retail therapy is a lie”. sometimes it helps. what helps more is staying at school or work until after the shops have closed.