The Courage to Be ImPerfect: From Bankok to Burqas

Ahhh back in Bangkok. The smell of tuk tuk exhaust, pad Thai and vomit never smelled so good. We booked ourselves up at the D&D hotel mainly because they have a pool but it did not meet our expectations. Bangkok is the city that never sleeps. Outside of the hotel a DJ that played loud dance music all night long. By bar of course I mean a cooler full on Chang and buckets full of rum and of course by DJ I mean Lady Boy with per I-pod. The patrons of this bar are some of the douchiest looking people ever. I was loud and I’m sure to some obnoxious when I was younger but I could not possibly have as many people who love me as I do today if I had ever acted as douchy as some of the travellers I’ve met on this trip so far. Not just in attitude and mind set but in general appearance as well. Now we all know that I was not a very cool kid... a shocker I know. I had outfits that my friends still make fun of me for 20 years later. One such gem is an outfit that my mom made for me. It was a sweatshirt with the map of the world and little pictures of the endangered species from that area on it. Not geeky enough? How about the matching jeans that had the same map on the lower left leg? I loved LOVED that outfit. Well apparently I was just too early with my fashion trends. One of my other favourite looks from my childhood was a one piece outfit that was made of a light cotton flower patterned material and buttoned up the front. The shorts part of it was comfy and looked almost like coolats. Remember those? I am pretty sure they were all I wore on the Washington trip. Well they are cool again! The girls rocking outside of my hotel at 4am were decked in sweetass outfits that my aunt Kim and I rocked in 1986. Mom jean shorts, neon jewellery, feather earrings... oh I’m sorry ONE feather earring, a purse big enough to fit a Yugo in and a Marb light always in hand. I guess I hit my peak of cool too soon because in Thailand, in July, I am far more worried about staying cool than looking cool.

Even on limited sleep we realized that in order to stay in Thailand for the rest of our trip we would have to leave the country and fly back in. After an entire morning of Liz and Laura searching web sites, making phone calls and figuring things out we found the cheapest solution... Malaysia! The next morning we were on a flight to Kuala Lumpur for a couple of days. It was a nice little jaunt. Our first night there we decided to grab some dinner and drinks at Reggae Bar which after 10 pm was only reggae in its decor. I’m pretty sure Ice Ice Baby is not part of the reggae genre but it was a blast to dance to. We got the party started and within minutes the dance floor was packed with people jamming out to mid 90’s classics.

KL was interesting for me because I had never seen a woman in a burqa up close. It was very interesting to see them haggling with street vendors over the price of a fake Louis V bag or Tiffany bracelet. After I got over my initial shock and I’ll admit discomfort I mainly just felt bad for how hot they must have been.

We of course went to the Hard Rock Cafe to have a look around and to get my pops a pin. After that we went to see the Petronas towers which are the world’s largest twin buildings. We didn’t go up in them but admired them from outside. Had ourselves a nice little walk around the park and dipped our feet in the pool before heading off to “Little India” to get a few photos. Before we knew it we were heading out on our flight from KL to Phuket to start our island hopping adventure.