the art of not being annoyed.

i recently read a post on tips how to become a travel blogger. one point mentioned that you should find a part of the world, any part really, to write about other than thailand. according to the author thailand has been covered left, right, and center and there is nothing worthwhile to add to the conversation. lucky for me and you, i am not a travel blogger. so for the next view weeks you will have to endure/ may enjoy my stories about thailand. take it or leave it.

for this holiday i really wanted easy. that sounds a bit odd, because shouldn't holiday always be easy? but i really wanted to go some place where as little as possible could go wrong or displease me. i didn't want adventure or challenges, i have the biggest challenge ahead of me with my move, so all i wanted was peace and quiet, pad thai, soak up all the sun before moving to eternal winter germany, and snorkel my little heart out. with that in mind i set out into a holiday where i only wanted to do what i truly want to do. again, isn't that what you always do in any given holiday you will ask. personally i think the answer is no. we always have this little voice or big guide book in our mind that tells us you must see... you must do...you must not miss! but what if i don't want to see or do? what if i do want to miss?

i am sitting on the little balcony at my asadang room and can only hope that my mozzie lotion will last in the bikram-esque temperatures and humidity (not from me editing one hour later, it doesn't). i have my laptop, a somewhat cold singha, and i actually feel i want to write, that it is not a chore, but a joy and i can finally write down the things that have been going through my mind for the last days and weeks. also it is only 8pm and yes, i am in bangkok. i guess some people would see my evening as a complete waste of time, but honestly i couldn't be happier. this is something i want to do. just like the nap i took this afternoon. and the fact that i spent 1/12 of the last 24 hours getting massages. happy feet i have. and all the pad thai i had so far, which i will tell you about tomorrow, because they are worth to have their own post.

anyhow, so with everything i am doing right now, i am asking myself consciously all the time – do i want to do this? i just reread my first bangkok post from last year and funny enough i had the same sentiment – what do i want to do? strange how i tend to forget this ever important question in daily life. or maybe i haven't and that's why i am giving up everything that i know and love to move to another continent for the vague idea of what i really want. i don't know and i don't think i am ready to dive into these feelings quite yet. for now i want to be here, really here. i need a sneaky little love affair to take my mind of things and for that bangkok is truly wonderful. and before your mind turns dirty, by love affair i mean a little city dalliance to get over cape town. for everything else i believe bangkok is like vegas and what happens here, stays here.

bangkok is boiling right now, both literally and figuratively. it is hot and humid, songkran, the thai new year's is about to commence, and yes, there are still demonstrations and such happening. and, just my luck and don't tell my parents or aunt sylvi – my hotel is right next to some government building or other that is completely roped off with fresh, out of the factory, barbed wire. nothing too scary, but taxis have trouble getting to my place and so it seems easier to just walk.

on my way to my massage yesterday i walked past the barbed wired building and the only nuisance really, was that my dress got caught twice because i was more scared of the motorbikes on the road than the barbed wire on the sidewalk. which i know is a little thing, but i also know what that stuff has done to a few of my clothes on my balcony already, so i will not be repeating this rookie error any time soon. other than that all was calm and there was even a whole stretch of wire decorated with different coloured tinsel pompoms. sorry, no pictures of the barbed wired building, it seemed like asking for trouble with fate at the time. and also, tinsel or no tinsel, barbed wire really is not very pretty and it feels frivolous and stupid to take a picture of it when i don't know the whole story as to why it is there and what is going on here.

tonight after my evening massage – yes, that is an actual thing! - i tried to take a taxi back as it was already dark and i can now proudly say that my sense of direction in bangkok is better than the taxi driver's. i kept on gesturing where to go and how to get to the hotel, but he wouldn't listen. obviously me, being me, got quite annoyed. which you cannot ever be in thailand, being annoyed is not a thing here. and so obviously yelling wouldn't have helped, because my thai yelling skills are still quite bad and so was his english comprehension. when we arrived after a 15 minute detour, i did have a bit of smug told you so face and he? he just laughed and laughed, i guess at himself and for me actually knowing the way and gave me a discount on my fare. and that's when i realized that i came to thailand for two reasons: to eat ALL the pad thai and to learn the art of how not to be annoyed.

pictures:
my very uncreased borsalino thanks to julia!
evening desk.
first singha and then i had to leave it because they told me no pad thai tonight!
my neighbour: wat ratchabopit.
streets getting ready for songkran.
wine, move along, i have a new favourite drink - thai iced tea.
orchids at the asadang.

yoga at its best.

yesterday i had the fun task to go and buy myself a new airbook. unfortunately it wasn’t as fun as i had envisioned it because i had to go to the v&a, i was hormonal, and the sales person at the istore wasn’t as clever as i would have hoped for so it took forever. no, actually scrap the first and the last – i was just hormonal. i watched glee afterwards and cried all throughout.

at 10pm after i was done with all the crying i decided i should do something useful and so i started to download over 2000 holiday pictures on the new airbook. for some reason that didn’t work immediately and once it worked, it took forflippingever. that didn’t help my overall mood. i thought i decided to write a little story about it all, only to realize that i couldn’t because i didn’t have a writing program yet. bleh. luckily that was the moment when i came across the pictures i am about to share and they made it all better. pictures from the bestest and most fun yoga class ever.

so my plan was to do lots of yoga while travelling. i bought a yellow sticky towel in lieu of a mat and downloaded the bikram dialog on my computer, i packed a set of yoga clothes and started to envision myself practising on a hotel balcony, bamboo floors, gentle breeze, overlooking the ocean, and all. alternatively i was being surrounded by some little vietnamese kids, teaching them tree and lion pose, laughing and giggling a lot. not sure how i acquired the kids in my vision, but i wasn’t questioning that at the time.

and then reality came along.

it started well enough in bangkok where i had made contact with a local bikram studio before and actually found myself in dire need of a good stretch on my first day. you’d assume that an hour and a half is plenty of time to get places, however in bangkok it is not especially if like me you can’t read thai and don’t trust directions. so after an hour and twenty-seven minutes i was already dripping sweat (thanks, humidity!), it was about to rain, and i was about to cry, because i had just spent an hour and twenty-seven minutes trying to find that damn bikram studio that didn’t want to be found. i was about to give up and look for a cocktail instead when i finally saw a sign “bikram this way”. it was after an hour and twenty-nine minutes that i arrived out of breath and by now completely drenched at the studio. hurray.

class was as it was to be expected- a bit underwhelming; after an hour and twenty-nine minutes i guess i really needed bikram himself to be there or for them to throw confetti at me for making it in time or something. nevertheless i got my stretch and thanks to the teacher took the boat back to my guest house which was awesome.

• after that my yoga practise became even trickier and i could give you some excuses why i was so lazy for a month because of it, but actually i have solid, good reasons: 
• a sticky towel only sticks on a mat. it doesn’t stick on any other surfaces, something that i wasn’t aware of before i bought it.
• a sticky towel doesn’t substitute a mat. comfort wise you may as well be rolling around practising on a bare floor.
• most 1 or 2 star hotels don’t have balconies overlooking the ocean.
• people look strangely at you if you stick your tongue out at their kids. try to explain that you weren’t being impolite, but wanted to do yoga with their kids is hard in vietnamese.
• whenever there was time for yoga, there was also time for beer.
• drinking beer makes you less sticky than doing yoga.

so it should come as no surprise that the only sort of yoga class happened after two beers, on a junk boat, in swimsuits with more laughter than proper breathing. mind you, it was one of the best (and nobody pulled a hamstring or went overboard which always makes for a successful class!)

sorry no editing, no out-takes - they were all just too awesome:

bangkok, baby!

i arrived last night at 2am in bangkok, which now had completely spoiled my plan of having my first pad thai upon immediate arrival. it took another two hours to get from the plane to the asadang, but once i arrived everything was just right. i have told you of my high hopes for this guest house and you know how it sometimes goes with high hopes. they get disappointed and especially if you spend an exorbitant amount of money on something, it usually cannot live up to it. well, it wasn't that case last night when i arrived. i will write a proper story about it at some point, but just know for now this place is magical and if you ever come to bangkok stay here immediately and book the room with the balcony and the tiniest spiral staircase that leads up to it. i swear back in the day they used this room to lock up the naughty princesses: the most beautiful, but the most difficult to access room in the whole house!

it was 4am by the time i arrived there and i was completely hyper and instead of taking two sleeping pills i had a beer on my balcony. then i jumped around like a crazy person, uuuhing and aaaahing over the fresh orchids, the shampoo that smells like jasmine, and the fact that the mini bar is free. when i finally did go to bed i couldn't sleep because i was planning my day ahead which resulted in me oversleeping and waking up extra groggy.

cats on a hot tin roof are my neighbors.

now after my first day i am back on my balcony. with a big bottle of singha which the kind chaiya organized for me from the shop next door, because wouldn't that just cheaper. water is rippling next to me by the canal that i'm overlooking and the night is warm. you will ask why the heck i am at my hotel and not out on a saturday night in bangkok, right?

i had a bit of a revelation today. here was my original plan:

get up at 9.30am.

see wat pho, the grand palace with the emerald buddha, and wat arun.

eat pad thai for lunch.

find that little massage place which a journalist friend of mine recommended for a cheap, but incredible thai massage.

go to the night market to eat THE pad thai, a tip from yet another travel journalist.

have at least a beer on khaosan road.

i only got as far as wat pho two hours after my intended start in the day. which i realize now is because my alarm was set to 9.30pm. after seeing the reclining buddha and some others, i wanted a massage then and there even though i knew it would probably be cheaper at the little massage place. i didn't care, because i was technically at the thai massage centre of the world, it was hot and humid - by the way if you don't like the temperatures in a hot yoga studio, do not come here! - and i wanted to not have to run around to find a massage when there was one right in front of me. after the most blissful 30 minutes my feet ever had, i also realized that i didn't want to spend thb 500 ($15, zar 150) to see the grand palace. ups. scandalous, i know. but i started to ask myself - what do i really want to do and spend my money and time on? not what people think i should do or the guidebook or my friends who have been here or the travel bloggers i like and read. what do i want?

 peekabo buddha. it think he not only looks enlightened, but also a little bit cheeky which i like.

and so i went back to my hotel to have a coconut ice-cream snack. then i managed to find my way to a bikram class, which i will tell you more about later, because i still think it was quite an achievement. i took a slow boat home and got probably the best view on wat arun, lit in the dark, dazzling, and grand. then i went to eat pad thai next door to the asadang. and i ate all of it. and if there would have been any space left in me i would have ordered another portion. it was THE pad thai for me tonight and i almost wanted to cry it was so good. 

and now sitting on my princess balcony, being eaten by mozzies, listening to the sounds of a city and feeling very content. that contentment that comes with truly hearing me, feeling me, checking in with me, being me. mind you, i am also incredibly tired and full, not only of pad thai, but of a new city. a city that i want to become friends with and maybe more. i don't want to be over it before it even started just because i tried to do it all in two days. bangkok, i like you, so let's take things slow and have another beer on my balcony first, okay?

view from the boat. sorry for the quality and lack of wat arun, but my iphone was really scared to end up in the water. 

Hotel dreaming.

My parents did their share of luxury travels in their days, but understandably so, that was before I came along. I think after a few attempts to have me sit still and enjoy a meal prepared by a Michelin Star chef, they realized, though I wasn't a fussy eater per se, that the art of fine dining was still lost on me. Obviously the same went for 5-star hotels and boutique guest houses. I was completely content with fries by the beach as long as there was enough mayo to drown them in and our holiday bungalow as long as the top bunk was mine.

Even when I was a bit older and had learned the art of appreciating a glass of French Champagne at the Ritz, we would still keep accommodation modest. Our priorities called for simple accommodation which just had to be clean and in close proximity to said treats and other attractions.

When I was older and started to travel for work things got slightly different and most trips I went on got even the mere assistant fancy suites. But they would also come with an aftertaste of very early mornings, lonely late nights with room service and TV, and overpriced toothpaste from the hotel shop as I always, always would forget to take my own. And as much as we all like the idea of steamy hotel room sex, nothing makes you in fact feel lonelier than a king size bed, clad in Egyptian cotton and no one to share it with but the resort kitten - which is no euphemism, but an actual cat who I shared my bed with for an entire week while in St. Barth’s once.   

Though I am not a camper/backpacker/dorm-sharer, with these memories in the back of my head, I actually never minded keeping accommodation simple when travelling for fun. On my last trip to Morocco I realized I must have a door to close and a bed by myself and that is all the luxury I really need. So when I booked my upcoming August trip - Yes, I may let you know right here: Trip to Cambodia and Vietnam is approved, flights are booked, and can you hear me screech in excitement? – I didn't mind booking budget hotels as long as I could upgrade to have my own room.

As my itinerary starts in Bangkok I decided to add two nights to acclimatize and explore the city. Unfortunately I had the silly idea to look for accommodation myself (instead of going with the cheap hotel, where my group is staying the first night of the trip) and I found The Asadang.

It is four times as expensive and I could buy massages and Pad Thai with that extra money for the entire month.

Why do I need a fancy hotel just to sleep?

And who goes to Bangkok to sleep anyhow?

I don’t care.

My heart longs to go there...

And this is what you missed II.

What got me excited…

 

 

Remember that one? Yes, this was unfortunately playing over and over in my head last week. Probably because I finally decided on my travel destination for August…drum roll please… Vietnam. Yes, I am perfectly aware that Bangkok is not in Vietnam, but the trips I’m currently looking at all start there. So when this song got stuck, I thought it could be exciting to add a crazy night or two in Bangkok to kick-start the adventure.

What made me nostalgic…
My first boyfriend got engaged. It didn’t come as a surprise, yet it still hit me just a little bit. I haven’t really thought about him or even spoken to him in years, but it’s still somewhat strange to realize that he is really and officially not mine anymore and that our plans for happily-ever-after didn’t come true. I guess I just felt sorry for a moment for my former 17-year old me, who so believed in this first love.

What made me pretty…
On Saturday I got a haircut at The Lobby for the first time. I was a bit scared upon walking in; if there was ever a place made in hipster heaven this is it. But to my surprise I learned that you can still entrust your hair to a stylist who is so hip(ster) that he wears a little hat while he cuts your hair and serves BOS ice tea. My hair now looks awesome and yes, I let it down big time at night!

What made me sad…
You also missed my Mum’s birthday yesterday. And so did I. I hate the fact that I am always far apart from at least half my family, especially on those days when there is roast beef and bubbles. Happy happy, Mami!