One Night in Bangkok

For Heidi.

The story of MY one night in Bangkok.

Is that a Fat Joke?

I left for this summer hoping it would be a chance to lose weight and it turned into a growing experience, if you know what I mean. My running shows blew out about the same time that my host mother concluded that fried chicken and doughnuts were all I wanted to eat and so you can imagine the result.

My lovely Thai mother is trying so hard to find foods that I'll like, she'll give me a fish head and a doughnut and if I choose the doughnut, she concludes I must have a crazy sweet tooth. To confirm she offers me pig skin and an ice cream and when I choose the ice cream she assumes sugar must be all I ever want. Though her food is delicious, at this point I'm feeling a little like this bear and very ready to choose my own foods and PORPOTIONS.

Anything but Laos-y Pt 1

This past week was our “last hoorah” trip to Laos before everyone in the group goes their separate ways and get blown to the ends of the earth (for most of us, Provo is that place...). We drove for a day up to the northern border of Thailand and then stayed in this swanky guesthouse that looked like something out of a jungle/movie before waking up the next morning and crossing the river into Laos.

All told, it took us three days to get to our final destination of Luang Prabang, Laos, but what a three days they were! We rented out a slow boat for our group, so 2 of the 3 days were just floating down the Mekong (dodging the Nagas) and feeling like spoiled rich Colonial tourists of the 19^th century.

We all took for granted how breathtaking the sights were. Two days of boating (and playing cards and reading Life of Pi while adrift myself, and making creamer and sugars drinks) brought us more shades of green in the flora and fauna on the shore than I even knew existed. We stopped for the first night in a place whose name I never caught, but it was a village that consisted of one main drag and one hotel and one muskrat whose mouth (yes, mouth. Not teeth) had been removed and was still bloodied from it. We named him Job, cause that's a lot of suffering.

Contrary to popular belief, that's actually not a painting. That's the real Laos. It's beautiful. It was such a surprise to me because I went there sight unseen, with no prior knowledge of the place or what it offered. The Laotian people look a lot different than the Thais too, as different as Cambodians from Thais.

Also, because Laos was once a french colony, they have bread. We took much advantage. Many baguettes (I'm not going to mention that they were filled with peanut butter and banana and nutella) were had by all.

(NOTE: THE TAIWAN AIRPORT WONT LET ME UPLOAD VIDEO, BUT IT WILL COME LATER)