Shop-a-holic

Marie made my feet numb from all the walking and hiking we did in Europe last year, and now Alyssa has done the same by making me shop 10 hours a day. I have never shopped so much in my life. I have bought plenty of clothes all for under 5 or 10 dollars. Most of the shirts I bought were about 3 dollars. Thailand is good to the shopper.

Breakfast yesterday was a type of porridge with rice and fish sauce, some ginger, chives, and pork balls. I was afraid it would taste like the congee from the plane, but it was actually really good and flavorful. Her aunt Nanina (naw-knee-naw) also got us these things that are kind of like fried bread or doughnuts but taste different, and delicious. I ate like 7 of them. They are like Alyssa's favorite things I believe. You can get them in LA but obviously not as good. Then we had to wait around for a while because her Aunt Tan was really late to pick us up.

We finally arrived at the Chatuchak Market which is the biggest market in Bangkok. Probably the world, it is seriously massive. We met up with her two cousins Nhat and Te. They are 20 and 22, brother and sister, but Alyssa doesn't know them that well so at first it was rather awkward. They only spoke to her aunt but I think we grew on them. The market was seriously gigantic. We spent hours there and Alyssa spent hundreds. Ok, maybe just a hundred dollars, but she bought a lot. Her aunt did quite a bit of shopping as well. Her aunt also taught us that gay guys here call girls Chanis... a type of monkey. They go ewwww chaniiiii. So now we are going to start calling stupid girls chanis.

For lunch we ate at the market and had basically boat noodles. The broth is made with a touch of pork blood of course. It was really good and only about 70 cents. We then continued then continued to shop, stopping by some stands to get drinks and coconut ice cream. The ice cream was home made and served in a coconut shell. It was so freaking good. A lady boy made mine. He/She is a very good ice cream maker. Oh and bargaining is funny. They seriously charge me so much more because I am white and then Alyssa's aunt will go over and get a much cheaper price. She does most of the talking, obviously.

A couple side notes: you aren't supposed to touch people on the head because it is disrespectful. For some reason, I have been touching or almost touching her little cousins head 20 times a day. I have no idea why, this is not a normal practice for me. It just keeps happening. Also, there are so many freaking white guys with little Asian girl friends. It is really gross because the guys are old and disgusting. And the girls like, touch them every where in public. Yuck. And I have been having weird dreams in Thailand, including being involved in a gang and drive by shooting/stabbing while ordering quesadillas, doing yoga with Madonna, feeding a blue whale, and more. The blue whale was actually really scary. Those things are big.

We went to an outlet mall after the market. This place is wholesale so you have to buy quite a few things to get the good price. I didn't buy much here, the clothes were pretty ugly. Ta and her uncle came too. It was pretty uneventful, mostly we were super hungry and ready to eat again. We drove over to Khao San Road, the very very touristy backpacker street, to have dinner in this pretty secret location. There are so many tourists here. I don't understand why they flock here, just to hang out with each other and not meet any regular people from Thailand. So many cheap bars, lots of bad music, tons of carts selling gross looking pad thai and egg rolls for a couple cents, and plenty of cheap crappy clothes, which we bought. This used to be the Siam Square of Bangkok but has since been taken over by hippie travelers. Oh and being the only white one in the group, the people selling things only approach me. I just wanted to say LOOK I AM WITH THESE LOCALS I DON'T WANT YOUR CRAPPY JEWELRY OR BUCKETS OF GROSS ALCOHOL OK??? But they wouldn't understand.

Dinner was amazing. We went to this store called It Happened to be a Closet. Ok, it is hard to explain but imagine a really awesome, colorful store filled with really expensive clothes almost like anthropology except stacks and stacks of clothes. There is also a salon/spa and bakery inside. And to top it off, a delicious restaurant. With only a few seats to choose from around the store, we picked the table inside the kitchen. The decor is like urban outfitters/anthropology. It is just all so cool. And the kitchen is like one you would find in a house. The food is like, Thai-Italian which was surprisingly amazing. Apparently that is very popular here. We had bruschetta and little sausage rolls to start, then came the giant prawns with masago, crab, and a really good salad. We ordered two types of spicy pasta and finally the snowfish, Alyssa's favorite. It was all so so so good.

We went on a hunt to find roti, a crepe-like dessert, but failed. We will get it in Phuket, hopefully. We all took two tuk-tuks to get back to the car. It was fine, nothing special. Cheap, which is why even locals use them. We passed by dozens pof mango-sticky rice carts. Why the hell don't we have those in LA? So simple and so freaking good. My plan is to eat some every day I am here.

I want to learn Thai now. It is awesome.