Bangkok: Day 6

Siam Ocean World

Saturday morning Michelle and I visited the aquarium and met up with my dear friend, Shong. Shong and I met on Myspace back in 2007 when I was still doing web comics. He was my very first fan of my comic strip "Marksville" and has always been so kind to me so when I decided I was going to visit Bangkok where he lived, I knew that we HAD to meet. Since he worked during the week we met up with him and his partner, Mario, on the weekend. Originally we had planned on going to Safari World but Shong had told us that Safari World was a bit far from the city and we had wanted to go to Chatuchak Market that day too and they closed around 5pm. I'd only been to one other aquarium before, the one in Seattle, so we decided on Siam Ocean World instead since it was right in the downtown.

As many of you know, I suffer from social anxiety disorder so although I was very excited to meet Shong and Mario I was also very nervous. We met them at the mall where the aquarium was located and I gave him a little Mickey Mouse plush since I know that he loves Disney. The aquarium was really cool and we were there for a pretty long time. I think we were there for about 3 hours. My favorites were the river otters and the penguins but we saw a bit of everything including some sharks and a massive manta ray. The place was so huge that it made the Seattle Aquarium look like small potatoes. After the aquarium Shong asked if he could treat us to lunch. Michelle and I hadn't eaten since breakfast and I knew she was hungry so we all agreed to have lunch even though I'm a bit weird about eating with people. I don't talk about it a lot but I've had an anxiety related eating disorder since I was about 15. It has nothing to do with my weight but I have trouble eating with other people sometimes since I carry most of my anxiety in my stomach. I didn't want to tell Shong about this because I really wanted to make a good impression but internally I was freaking out all through lunch. Before I knew it I was feeling really sick :( The thing about social anxiety, though, is that you don't want anyone to know that you're not okay so you keep how you're feeling to yourself to appear more "normal" but then that just makes it worse. I'm pretty sure that if I told people I was having anxiety and feeling ill that they'd be super supportive but part of this disorder is an innate fear of judgment and rejection from others. It's all very complicated and hard to explain if you've never dealt with social anxiety before.

Anyway, so I excused myself to go to the restroom but since it was a shopping mall there were a million people waiting in the restroom and so I bailed thinking I could wait until we got back to the apartment. When I got back everyone was pretty much finished eating and they asked me if I was ready to go the Chatuchak Market place. I didn't want to be a buzzkill and have to announce that I was having a panic attack in the mall so I told everyone I wanted to peek in Forever21 real quick, which was half true. They waited outside and I rushed back down the stairs in search of another bathroom. It turned out there were only 2 bathrooms in the entire mall so I had to walk all the way to the basement. I hate hate HATE using public bathrooms in this situation but my stomach was super upset by this point so I didn't have a choice. I was only gone about 10 minutes but when I came back to Forever 21, my friends were GONE. It was all I could do to stay calm. Michelle and I had agreed that if we ever got separated to meet back at the apartment. I knew how to get back from where I was but I couldn't imagine where they could've gone. So I waited and I waited wondering what I should do. (I'm feeling anxious rn just remembering this scary moment). I kept thinking, "You have one more day of this trip and you managed to get LOST." After about 20 minutes of despair Michelle came out of Forever 21 and was like, "THERE YOU ARE!" Apparently, they'd been waiting inside the store for me the whole time and I'd just managed to walk past them several times without them seeing me or me seeing them. Aiya!

After I'd been found I relaxed a bit and we got on the BTS and headed over to the market. This time I was thankful that the BTS was so freezing because being cold calms me when I'm having anxiety. Watching the funny commercials on the ride over helped a lot too (distraction is very important during panic attacks). By the time we got to the market I was feeling a lot better (my anxious episodes usually time out after an hour or so these days--which is a vast improvement since before they could last several days at a time). I was so glad to have Shong there once we started walking around because the market was pretty overwhelming; there were hundreds of vendors selling just about everything under the sun. I hadn't done any shopping for my friends and family yet so now was my time to really get to business. I bought some more elephant pants, coin purses, a tote bag, handmade journals, candles, and all sorts of other cute stuff. Before I knew it I'd managed to fill two bags full of souvenirs. After we'd gotten our fill of shopping Shong asked us if we wanted to see the pet section of the market. We did.

I wish they'd allowed photography in the pet section because words can't even describe it. It was unlike anything I'd ever seen before. They had every kind of pet you could possibly imagine for sale and THEY WOULDN'T LET YOU PET THEM!!! It was physically painful for me because y'all know how much I love to pet the critters. Before I knew about the no touchy rule I pet the itty bittiest pug puppy and quickly got the smack down. We saw puppies, kittens, bunnies, hedgehogs, mice, rats, hamsters, geese, chickens, sugar gliders, lizards, snakes, frogs, parrots, piggies, squirrels, and even monkeys! It was banaynays! I wanted to just stuff a bunch of puppies in my purse! Tbh, I was really worried we were going to see some dead animals since it was so hot and they were all crammed in these little cages (so sad) but surprisingly we didn't see a single one. Once we'd looked at just about everything there was to look at Shong walked us back to the BTS. Shong was such a dear and is honestly one of the nicest human beings I've ever met. He was so kind and helpful and just cute as can be. I'll never forget his giggle when I told him about my infamous Thai massage. He and Mario would like to visit Disney World someday and Michelle and I agreed to be their tour guide when they make it out to the states.

Minus my anxiety attack, I really had a great day and am so glad I got to meet my friend of so many years. I hope we'll meet again someday soon.

In my next post I'll tell you about our last day in Thailand where we visited Elephant's World. Thanks for reading!

Bangkok: Day 5

Island Girl

On the fifth day of our trip we woke up very refreshed from a much needed night of peaceful sleep (10 hours). After we got dressed (i.e. put our bathing suits on) we headed towards the beach in search of breakfast. There wasn't that much open at 8am (I guess people sleep late on the island) but we managed to find a little café. I got a glazed donut and an orange smoothie that tasted just like a melted orange Creamsicle. It was SO GOOD--OHMYGOODNESS! After breakfast we walked down to the beach and it was almost deserted. We found a free spot to put down our things (some spots you have to pay to sit in their beach chairs) and then we hopped back in the water. We swam all morning and it was the best ever. I remember breathing in the sea air and thinking, "Is this real? Am I really here?"



Sunrise at Koh Samed

Like the day before we were in and out of the water and it was lovely. While we were floating around we saw this inflatable beach toy drifting out to sea and Michelle decided she was going to save it. She swam SO HARD! That girl can SWIM! When she finally managed to retrieve it this guy comes over to us and was like, "Thanks for rescuing my tube!" and Michelle was like, "WTF! I swam so hard for nothing!" Poor bb. Another funny thing happened while we were swimming. I had told Michelle to keep her eyes peeled for jellyfish because you never know when jellyfish are going to be around and soon after I said that she was like, "OW OW OW! MY FOOT STINGS!" We quickly got out of the water and examined her foot but it looked fine. After a minute or so she said it didn't hurt anymore. Weird.


I bought a dress in that shop on the right ;)

But about an hour later I'm swimming and my hand stung out of nowhere and got all red and I was like, "SOMETHING BIT ME!!!" and she was like, "LET'S GET OUT OF HERE!" and we beat it out of the water. After that we just sat on the beach and people watched and enjoyed the scenery. There was a group of Japanese girls that took selfies of themselves jumping for over an hour. It was super cute. They didn't once get in the water either, it appeared that they just came to the beach to take cute pictures. While we were watching them we saw a doggie that looked just like Michelle's dog, Bella. I whistled at him and he came right over. He was super chill and sweet and sat in the shade of my beach chair the rest of the morning. Also while we were being beach bums I saw this merchant from the day before who had this gorgeous elephant shawl that I'd wanted so bad. I'd been looking for him all morning and then there he was and he still had the black shawl so I snatched it up.



me at our bungalow

We caught the ferry back to the main land around noon. We were the last ones on so we had to stand the whole way back (bleah!). It was pretty bummer watching the island get smaller and smaller as we sailed further away. While we were on the boat I saw one of the prettiest little girls I'd ever seen in my life. She looked just like little Chiyo in "Memoirs of a Geisha". I think I even snapped a picture of her when she wasn't looking. Shhh! Tbh, the bus ride back kind of sucked. We got stuck in traffic so it took about 5 hours to get back to the city. We were pretty starving when we got home so we met up with Michelle's mother and went to that same yummy restaurant on Thong Lor. Since it was a Friday night the place was absolutely packed to the gills and we had to wait forever for our food. I had a bit of trouble communicating to the waitress that I wanted to add tofu to my curry so we ended up getting a ton of additional dishes that we hadn't ordered but we wound up eating all of it, haha. After dinner we had a bit of a sweet tooth so we got a gelato then headed back home. I think the ants in my bed had missed me because again I got no bites while I was snoozing.

Minus the super long bus ride home, it was a great day. The next day I'd be meeting up with my online friend of 8 years, Shong, for the first time. I'll fill you in on that meeting in my next post. 

Bangkok: Day 4

Thursday morning we were up before the sun. We walked to the BTS in the dark and then rode over to the bus station. On our walk there a bird flew into all the billions of telephone wires that are strung all over the city and got zapped. Poor bird.

Our bus left around 7:30am and OH MY GOSH! It was freezing cold inside this thing! We were dressed for the beach too so we froze our buns off the whole way. It was a pretty long bus ride to the coast but we chatted and looked at all the cool scenery along the way.

We got to the coast around 11:30am and would then take a ferry to the island. As soon as we got to the dock a lady told us we needed to get in line to pay a "national park fee" in order to get to the island. It was only like 6 bucks but we were still annoyed. The ride on the ferry was pretty exciting itself. The boat pulled up as close as it could to the dock but there was still a gap of about 3 or 4 feet that you had to walk over on a little wooden plank. I was in flip flops so I was certain I was going to fall in (I didn't). Once we were on the boat, the ride was really smooth. Tbh, I hadn't been on a boat since I was 10 years old. I love riding on them, though, I find boat rides very dreamy and romantic. While Michelle and I were sitting there this guy who was by himself asked if I could take his picture. I did but since the sun was behind him you couldn't see his face at all in the picture. I suggested he move to the back of the boat so the lighting would be better but he was like, "No, it's fine. I'll just edit them afterwards." Okaaay. I'd like to see the app that can add light where there wasn't any to begin with...

When we got to the island they hit us up for another 3 bucks for some other wacky entrance fee but we were so happy to finally be on the island that we didn't care. We managed to find our motel pretty easily, I think it was called Barbados Terrace. Once we checked in we went in search of food. I wound up getting pad thai (again) since we were on an island and my options were limited. After we'd eaten we went back to the room and relaxed a bit (and connected to their free wifi) before we headed down to the beach. When we finally made our way to the beach we totally freaked out. It was frikkin' paradise! I could not believe my eyes! The water was turquoise blue and was warm enough to just jump into. Our time on Koh Samed and swimming in the Gulf of Thailand was a time of pure joy for me. I remember telling Michelle over and over, "I'M HAVING SO MUCH FUN!" or "I'M HAVING THE BEST TIME". It was a truly magical experience. We loved not having anything else on our itinerary besides swimming and eating. All afternoon we were just in and out of the water. While we were swimming we saw this brown thing floating in the water and I was convinced it was a manta ray but it turned out to only be seaweed, haha.

Once the sun started to set we decided to do some shopping (I bought a super cute little tie dye dress) and got a few snacks. Michelle got some fresh watermelon and pineapple--that she was kind enough to share with me--and I got some more mango sticky rice. SO GOOD! For dinner we went back to the beach; all the restaurants had set tables and cushions up right on the beach and everything was lit up with little fairy lights. For dinner I got fried tofu but it was the strangest tofu I'd ever had. It was the consistency of custard which is not my favorite consistency for food but I was starving so beggars can't be choosers. While we were eating a skinny little kitty cat came over to see if we had anything to share but I doubt she would've enjoyed my tofu so all I gave her were pets.

That night we slept like BABIES. I guess it was a combination of not getting enough sleep for the past few days, being on a bus for the majority of the day and swimming in the ocean for hours on end. We went to sleep around 9pm and didn't wake up til 7am the next morning! I wish I could swim in the ocean everyday and sleep like that. Normally, I don't sleep 8 hours all the way through so it was really amazing to be out like that for 10 hours straight.

In my next post I'll write about our last day at the beach aka paradise.