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.

dulce vita.

i am sitting at dulce cafe (aha, her spelling is not so bad after all) at the airport. probably for the last time in a long time. one last, quick airport post. don't think i am able to write more than that yet because while i'm wearing waterproof mascara, my contact lenses have been giving me grief and i just don't feel like crying anymore right now. which obviously i would, because…dah, i'm leaving cape town for good. and while everybody has been so so lovely with kind words and messages and perfectly boiled eggs for breakfast, i actually hate goodbyes. i wasn't able to do anything more than to give everybody a quick hug and a peck on the cheek. i am too good of a cryer. and while i am writing this i realise i need to change the topic… so on that note next time you hear from me, i will be sitting on the most wonderful little balcony in bangkok and then i will tell you all about my last week in cape town and how i hated it because it was so bloody perfect and much more.

for now just goodbye, beloved city.

it's complicated.

so here is something that i learned: people are extremely nice to you if you are about to leave the country for good. in my case all these nice people are usually already quite nice to me, so nice, that i am sometimes not sure how i deserve it. but right now the niceness has gotten to a whole new level.

hi, world!

today is my second last day of work and i thought i should check in because tomorrow i will probably be too busy with all the crying and all the champagne drinking. right now i am equally excited and terrified. fact is i really, really like my job and the people that i work with and the house i work in. the house actually smells like my grandmother’s house, which is really odd considering that the houses are on other ends of the world and not in the same climate zone. but my cousin, who once visited me here and who also knows how our grandmother’s house smells like, concurs. i love this smell, it makes me feel home, which i guess is why i always really liked my office. this morning the smell made me a bit teary.

but back to the nice people. people want to see me, take me out, and they send me more giraffe pictures than usual.

this was a pin i got this morning from claire which of course had me squeal in excitement. anybody flying from california to cape town within the next week and can bring me one please?

besides feeling very grateful for all this love and attention, i feel … odd, for a lack of better word. i am still here, my mind is elsewhere, then i get mad at my mind for not being here, then i’m here, the sun is not, i get sad, i get anxious, yesterday i felt like i just wanted to run away from it all…south africa, germany, my decision, i feel ridiculously happy, i have been sleeping badly with horrible dreams though sometimes a good one sneaks in that makes me optimistic again. argh. if my mind was to be described in a relationship status, it would definitely be it’s complicated.

as i will not be having my awesome desk calendar from the weekend onwards i started to make my own for next week. and it scares me not because of the things i have written down, but because of all the things i probably forgot to write down.

 

i guess i should add write goodbye cape town post, but realistically my next post will my typical airport, drinking too many G&Ts before boarding post. i hope you will bear with me, i will make up for it with an overload of thailand beach pictures. as i said i’m complicated right now.

life erratic.

so on tuesday i started the morning with the usual...not wanting to get up, finally getting up, showering, and only after walking through my apartment several times – barefoot – and putting my contact lenses in did i realize that there were maggots on the floor. yes, i know what you will think of me now. in my defense i will say that while i struggle daily to get out of bed at a reasonable hour the maggot thing, while it has happened before, doesn't happen daily, thank god. though if you saw me how calmly i destroyed every single one of them without doom and without any vomiting, you’d think it is a regular occurrence. i promise you it isn’t. while my flat is never that spick and span that i would offer you my floors to eat from, it isn’t thaaat bad either.

i did work up quite a sweat though which didn't help the make-up on my face situation so i ended up at work late, hair uncombed, and face bare. oh well. how was your morning?

i spent the next few hours pondering what the maggot situation meant – was it hotter outside than i realized? did i throw out meat and just forgot about it? did the maggots come from space? was i just a slop? should i be able with 35 to offer my guests floors so clean they could eat off them if they wanted to?

obviously i am now convinced that maggots are just another form of evil aliens.

last week i was talking to a client of ours about my pending move and was proudly telling him how good it felt to get rid of so much stuff and the realization that i really don't need lots. that same evening i received the first quote from a removal company and it brought tears to my eyes. i looked at my, what i already thought tiny pile of things i wanted to ship, and had to reevaluate here and now just how little i was really attached and weed through this tiny pile again to make it even tinier.

how am i supposed to live without my two white plastic animals?

or without my three champagne glasses, sole survivors of many beautiful dinner parties?
or my falling bird picture that julia and nele gave me a few years ago for my birthday and that i once dripped body lotion on which didn’t matter because it looks like a bird feather?

some stuff just is important...

luckily natalie gave me another shipping company's name and they are much much cheaper, but cannot ship furniture. alas, my beautiful chair needs to stay. at this point i had already said my goodbyes and didn't care all that much anymore.

so when i got to the office on tuesday and after deciding that maggots are evil aliens, i called the shipping company, ordered boxes, and paid a deposit. only to get a better quote from another company literally 5 minutes later which could ship everything including my chair, because who are we kidding – i love that chair! i immediately cancelled the first order of boxes only to change it all back after some more 'careful' consideration another 10 minutes later. maybe i didn't need to bring my chair after all. or maybe the chair could travel on its own with the one company while the boxes went with someone else?
when i got home i first made sure that the floor was now maggot free and decided to put things in piles. then i took my pictures down, only to put them up again a minute later, because really the boxes would only arrive on thursday and why live with bare walls any longer than strictly necessary?

see where i'm going with this? my life is a bit erratic right now and while i apparently have no problem making decisions, i can’t stick to any it seems.

the boxes arrived including bubble wrap, marker, tape, and packing list. you can imagine how excited an organized control freak like me gets if a company not only delivers boxes to you, but gives you all the other stuff you need to pack them too?! and before you ask, no, this is not a sponsored post…

so i started to pack while watching old bachelor reruns and drinking wine. pictures were taken off the wall, my pizza spade taken apart to fit into my suitcase, and glasses bubble wrapped and taped so well, i threw them around the room a bit and they wouldn’t break.  all in all a normal evening. till i ran out of wine and decided to move on to drinking malibu on ice. which in my defense i would have never thought of if it wasn’t for natalie who deemed it a good enough pre-dinner cocktail a few nights prior when i had nothing else to offer.
so while i think i cannot be blamed for all weird things i do, i took this as a sure sign that it is time for me to move and to finally get my life back on track. just remember that next time you find yourself alone, drinking malibu on ice – as sweet as it tastes, it ain’t a good thing.

yoga class with johnny cash.

when you feel a bit stuck and uninspired for a long time it is a good idea to try something new to shake things up. like, i don't know…move to another country. if like me you have already set the wheels in motion for such a move but still feel a bit meh, i recommend yoga. for as long as it takes. once it took a month. a month during which i didn't do anything but sat on my couch and watched tv and only left said couch once a day for a bikram class. in this case i made the decision to move after this month was over and that's when i came to cape town, but somehow the yoga and the shaking things up and the move all seem connected to me in one way or another. you will understand my frustration that right now i am not only feeling stuck and uninspired and ungrateful - because really what a moron am i not to enjoy my last summer weeks in cape town? - but on top of it yoga is not helping. i don't like the classes here, there is not enough bikram classes, and whenever i go and try to let go, i get annoyed anyhow. i know those nobody’s issues but my own to sort out, but still…

a plan formed when i realized that lent has started. i am not catholic and while i know plenty of non-catholics that just use it as a time to kick a bad habit at least temporary, i have always been a bit at loss as to what that could be for me. i don’t really eat much chocolate so 40 days without would be no challenge whatsoever. no wine for 40 days i simply wouldn’t make and why should i set myself out to fail?

so i found this post on berry diaries yesterday and was immediately intrigued. what a genius idea instead of eliminating something negative from your life (and that would be the second issue with not drinking wine – wine is of course never negative, so it doesn’t count) add something positive each day like spending at least 10 minutes on your yogamat.

maybe i need 40 days and a few different time zones of yoga this time to shake things up. we will see. but i am excited. i will even attempt to post a toe selfie of my toes on mat every day on instagram and i while i made a hashtag #40daysonmymat don’t hold me to it, i am even worse at instagramming than i am at not drinking wine.

however here is day 1:

 

10 minutes of sun salutations to johnny cash. i don’t like yogi music and he did bring a good rhythm to my breathing.

please do excuse the state of my toes and my mat.