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wMonday, April 26, 2004


things i forgot on previous post (read previous post first, if you care)

monday 12:07

more words come shooting into my head as soon as i walk away from the computer yesterday. some of the things i forgot to add were:

whenever you enter stores, restaurants, your own bungalow, you always remove your flipflops & leave at the door. this may be true of most beach towns as well as the muslim religion in general, but for me, this is an interesting custom. dogs are in all the restaurants, sprawled out on the cold tile floor as you step over them to sit down to eat. cats jump on your lap as you're enjoying your lunch. the workers are all barefoot inside as well. the cement of this town/island (Patong/Phuket) adds 20-30 degrees, but everything is listed in celsius so i have no idea what it is. kg, meters, bahts...yeah, i have basically no idea about the details of what i'm doing anywhere, how far away places are, how much things weigh (laundry is only 30-40 baht per kg...it think, which is less than a dollar, but i don't know the kg conversion) so i'm basically walking around clueless, not clueless in a bad way but more of a 'no problem' thai kind of way. i'm already sort of speaking differently, not an accent or anything, but more basic broken english. "no sell in czech?" = "they don't sell that in czech?" i'm either sitting around a table listening to thai conversations i don't understand, then it quickly changes to czech conversations i don't understand (but neither do the thai people, so we shrug and laugh and that basically says it all). oh i learned another thai word. mao = drunk (but i think i've written this already) sounds like 'may mao' = not drunk. jill thai is me mao = me drunk, as i tap myself on the chest to indicate 'me'. using basically sign language, as communicating with kids, animate what you're doing, walking (fingers walking on the table), eating (hand to mouth motion), sleep (closed hands next to head, eyes close). you get the picture. so if i return with these habits still, tell me that i don't need to because you understand english. but i tell you what, you can understand a LOT without the same language. you can see fights & lovers' quarrels on others' faces, you can almost follow an entire joke through the punchline without understanding a single spoken word just following facial expressions and hand gestures alone. it really is quite amazing how alike we all are as a human race. and yet the small things...that is all that separates us from one another. the world is really quite small. so julian, i can see how you picked up mannerisms & accents & lifestyle by being somewhere six months. six months is a long time! jitka now eats with a spoon and shovels the food onto the spoon with the fork. it's rude to still eat as i do with the fork, and i should eat with the spoon as in thai. so i finally tried it last night. no problem. it's rude for me to still do many things that i do, but i'm sure it would take me six months to finally learn many things correctly, right as it's time for me to leave. i don't see how jitka goes from thailand to czech republick. what a cultural difference to witness. oh it's so funny, i'm so naive. i see a european, and think 'there's a european.' whereas jitka comments to gabi, 'oh they just look so russian.' so i started asking with everyone, where are they from? they're swedish, german, dutch, hungarian. i need to learn so much in the world.

deaths. in phi phi while we were there, one person drowned. two people died of heat stroke in phuket on friday. these deaths are mostly the europeans. on the new year here (april 12/13, before i got here) something like 560 died by car/motorbike accident alone. (i don't know what that means, really, deaths that day in all of thailand? but it was what they were talking about in samui.) they have a different attitude about death here. perhaps it's the muslim influence. i don't know. i heard yesterday that there was some muslim-christian violent conflict on the border. that saddens me, deeply. especially 'cause it's supposedly in the name of religion. our elephant driver was christian yesterday, converted by a missionary from california. that was something new i had not encountered until yesterday.

plans change around here often. no true concept of time. no true concept of time. except hot day...and after the sun sets. unless you're working that day, then you know when you open & when you close. but even then, that's not always set in stone. some shops just close if there's no customers or if it's too hot, some shopkeepers are sleeping as you walk in & you don't want to disturb them, and others are watching their television shows & they don't want to be bothered with you instead. some make you feel as if you're invading their territory. and some are very, very friendly.
so basically we're on jill-time around here, which is okay by me. leaving for the beach at noon, really meant 2:30 (and then in reality, we didn't leave till 4pm)

last night again, we sat with momma/poppa from holland, and kop the tattoo artist whom they met five years ago when he tattooed for the first time then. and they return every year. they miss their grandkids this year, so three months was too long for them this year. i asked who the three kids on her arm were, although i already knew. yes momma from holland has her grandchildren tattooed on her left arm. a man from france was sitting there with us as well, with who i assume was his thai girlfriend. we're all leaving in the next couple of days. the off-season has already started. jitka took a picture of the french man's tattoo then poppa from holland pulled up his shirt to show his back & wanted jitka to picture that too. then french man pulled down his pants to show an entire thai village that was tattooed on his thigh, all by kop who i believe has a japanese wife. kwan the taxicab driver, jitka, gabi, & me. i think we did take a picture of our table, somewhat a crown & anchor feel, sitting around a table on a hot texas (thai) night, and just drinking beers and not talking about much. the front porch away from home. kop had a shirt of Cradle of Filth (the back said jesus is a cunt) eek, as we discussed black death rock vs black music vs speed metal as i delivered in my best impersonation of the music that my friend mike listens to, and that's universal. thai death/speed/whatever the f - mwwwhooaaaahhhggrrrr - yes, i can't understand the lyrics, whatever the language is. but yet, people still like the music. anyway, that was one successful conversation. kop & the french guy (never got his name, he looked a bit like harvey keitel & had a shaved head with a sort of rattail/tiny mullet existing in the back which his thai girlfriend braided) they went camping, kop no speak english, french guy no speak thai. yet camping side by side, fishing trip i believe, with a few others, is successful without words.

oh the bathrooms around here are all one room: shower, sink, & toilet. the shower water basically runs down the (somewhat) slanted floor into the corner drain. and i like it. it makes sense. except you have to remember to remove the toilet paper from the room temporarily. one funny thing to me is watching myself shampoo my hair in the sink mirror. i don't know why, it's not the funny, but i guess i never really get to watch myself washing my hair ever. the little things in life keep me amused. especially like some of the advertisements here. some billboards. and i turned on the television last night and watched some commercials, and you can guess how they're going to end although you have no idea what the words being said are. little scenarios/dramas are acted out the same in whatever country you're in.

another funny thing about the thai massage lady was her trying to ask if my bruises hurt and if it was okay for her to press on those areas. had i said no, i wouldn't have gotten much of a massage, well because you see, i have bruises everywhere. yeah i have a tendencey to fall down a lot. bruises on my arm from the bags that are too heavy and pinching on my arm yesterday, bruises on my my knee from the sloppy rock climbing on the wall drunk in the bar in railay beach, bruises on my back & elbows from falling flat backwards off the side of the longtail boat onto the bottom planks of the boat, bruises on my other knee from falling on the same boat ride later (yeah the boat driver did not know how to react to clumsy me). so yeah, facial expressions can convey a lot. and stephanie, you're taking me rockclimbing next moday when i return.

o. swimming with the fish. the beautiful fish. i could never eat another fish again. nor do i want to. snorkeling, i kept swiveling myself around & around, taking in a panoramic view of it all around me, all around me. i could not believe. at one point, i wanted dearly to touch one of the fish, to just touch it like a pet. but then almost simultaneously i realized that i did not have to touch it physically to make this experience true. but that the truest essence of this experience was that they were actually just letting me swim alongside of them, almost welcoming me into their world. i envisioned huge fish nets sweeping in and destroying this natural beauty, and i was glad that i was still able to swim with the fish.

hey, i arrive tuesday 7:33pm if anyone wants to pick me up, that would be awesome. if anyone wants to whisk me away to somewhere at 8pm if i'm still standing too. cheers all, my vacation is almost over. i hope all is well and yes, i did buy some gifts after all and had to buy an entire new bag to bruise my other arm. love you. oh, i need to buy a motorcycle, if anyone can help me with that purchase would be awesome.

p.s. i'm a time traveler on tuesday. going back in time is an interesting concept. i leave tokyo at 6pm tuesday, and after a 10-12 hour flight, i arrive in dallas at 3:30pm in the afternoon. i'm pretty amazing, eh? superman II...watch out!


posted by zenbetty at 12:39 AM