I say Patt-aya, you say Pat-ta-ya

I say broccoli, you say bloccoli. And you, whoever you are, are welcome to say whatever you like, as long as it gives me cause to laugh at your English language skills (which are better than my Thai skills. And OK, probably better than my English skills, too.)

This weekend I went to a beach near Pattaya. Pattaya is about two hours' drive from Bangkok and wow, the place is like a Conde Nast Traveller ad for itself, minus people in bikinis with eating disorders (unless you count morbid obesity). The natural inhabitants of Pattaya itself are whores, fat white men, rabid dogs, Germans, mosquitoes and ants, but I was smart and went a bit further down the road to where there are only Germans, mosquitoes and ants. Imagine a beach bungalow near a warm, blumarine sea with a stereotypically tropical Thai vista from the little porch thing and me gloating on a banana lounge right in front of it. Covered in ants.

Here's what sort of thing I mean:

That's my towel there. I might be exaggerating a little about the ants.

Also at the weekend (just quickly: what's with saying 'at' the weekend, anyway? Is it even grammatically correct? Does anyone know? Is there a link I can click to find out? Anyone???), something happened with the Thai Prime Minister resigning or being fired, so there'll likely be a lot of civil unrest soon and I may be kidnapped or beheaded on guerilla TV for being white. If so: hi mom!

I don't really have anying else to write this week apart from Jenneth loves me. She wrote something about me on her website and so if you want to see the two of us getting it on in a bath full of marshmallows, clicky to her page: JennethLovesBek.com. Scroll down for the luuuuurve.

bye now!

I went to Cambodia

Behold the entrance to Cambodia - Camboosha - where I spent a grand total of twenty minutes walking in and out of gates having my passport stamped and trying not to get Japanese tourists stuck in my shoes.

The whole border run to Cambodia thing is exponentially less exciting than it sounds. Before I went I imagined it would be a kind of Tour of Duty scenario (actually I've never seen Tour of Duty, so perhaps more a Tomb Raider thing) where I somehow acquire guns and ammo belts and run around in the forest shooting the shit out of Charlie/stealing ancient artifacts out from under the Nazis' noses/reuniting the sibling tigers who were cruelly separated when they were cubs.

It wasn't like that. The most exciting thing that happened was not dying. Which seemed like a distinct possibility at some points during the trip. Like the point where our cab driver got the car to exit the Earth's atmosphere going over a hump or the bit where we mowed down a family of six on a moped and spun into a tree (hey, it could have happened). Luckily, I managed to get a bit of sleep - in between the times my skull was hitting the roof and the times it was hitting the side window.

Actually being in Cambodia was more like a concept than an actual experience. I'm sure somewhere there's a rule about visiting countries that states you must do more than just walk over the border and back again to be able to say you've been there. Still, my passport Deals In Absolutes (my favourite phrase this week). I have been to Cambodia.

But rewind: why am I spending six hours in a cab just to walk across the Cambodian border, however ornate, and get my passport stamped? Because non-residents with the type of visa I've got (Type B... Hey! Same as my hep type! Whee!) have to leave Thailand every 90 days - it's, like, the law.

Other than forseeing my own horrific death on the roads of north-east* Thailand, it's been a slow news week. I missed a bunch of stuff in Australia, though. Like snubbing Good Vibrations, winning Juanita's 30th birthday air guitar championship trials, sensuously rubbing moisturiser into Aarron's sunburnt cleavage and witnessing the erection (teehee) of the 'Entertainer's Delight' sign in front of the Landsdowne residence. Hopefully Aarron will let me rub her cleavage when I come back.

I'm seeing Christie & Harmonie again tonight, on the final date of their Hot Doctors 2006 South-East** Asia tour before they go back home. I'll give them some stuff to take back for people, as I know they're desperate for more shit to carry.

* Have no idea if I was actually in the north-east as have no idea where cambodia is in relation to thailand.

** Once again, just pulling geographical co-ordinates out of my ass.

Painted My Toenails Red

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone! I heard about the parties and the engagements and other tacky-holiday-related shenanigans. It's been another week of non-stop thrills & spills this side of the... checks google earth ...Indian ocean. The most adventurous thing I did was paint my toenails this congealed blood colour, which has actually turned out to be a more profound and disturbing experience than I ever expected.

It was supposed to be a kind of romantic gesture to myself for Valentine's Day (not the only one, either), but has ended up causing me trauma every time I glance downwards. It's been since high school - which was what, six years ago now? - that I've taken to myself with nail varnish and... GOOD LORD, JUST LOOK AT THEM!!!

The whole thing was inspired by Ziyi Zhang in Memoirs of a Geisha, forgetting that my feet are less like those of a petite, powdery geisha, more like those of something that might dwell in a rainforest canopy eating insects and berries. My feet are those of our primate ancestors. So not only do I have feet similar to those of a spider monkey, I've drawn attention to them by painting the tips of them bright red, and I kind of look like I've stood too close to the edge of the escalator. For several hours. I'm trying not to look at them now, but my desk is glass and I feel them staring up at me constantly.

Back in the Beforetime (Saturday) was Satoshi at Astra. He flew in for his new Renaissance mix album, still caning the progressive 4/4 and causing me to drink half an entire jug of Malibu & pineapple. Satoshi is supposedly over 40, but I think this is in dog years because from where I was standing he looked like a 17 year-old surfer with sun-bleached hair and a tan. His hair is actually grey... as you can see from my intimidatingly good photography:



Sunday caught up with Bum, the Thai go-go girl from a few weeks back. We used to see her in passing at Penny Black quite a bit, so it was good to hear that she's quit her position(s) at Rawhide and is looking for another job that doesn't involve tearing up thousand baht notes and yelling at Jon. (BTW, she had the missing piece of that note all along. Case closed! The CSI: Soi Cowboy team heads to Mr. Donut...)

Then yesterday was V-Day. Thanks for the VD wishes, especially to Mon who might one day break the internet with all the smileys she fits into one email (i <3 u). My VD featured a trip to chinatown for an assortment of chinese-flavoured oceania. There was no popomundo.com but the night did involve enough alcohol so that throwing an egg at people working in an office block seemed like the funniest thing since my cat 'accidentally' fell into the bath. Like, 'Happy Valentine's Day, you hard-working motherfuckers - get a life! Here, have some egg on your window! We're better than you are - losers! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!'


The best food in Chinatown and possibly Bangkok and maybe even Thailand, no, the entire asian continent, the whole world, the milky way, the universe.

So tonight one of Ed's friends is in town. I'm told he works for the Dirty Sanchez crew - a bunch of Welsh Jackass-style guys who do amazing and shocking things like punch themselves in the genitals and giggle about it. They're going to Patpong, because filming a bunch of rowdy lads at a Thai ping-pong show is a concept so cutting-edge it will likely saw your television in half from the inside then sever your arms off when you try to put the pieces back together.

That's all. Hi to B3 and Georgie, who join my captive blog audience this week and condolences to Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise who broke up. And congratulations to Lee, who keeps getting writing props here's why and to Jo & Kathy who had their second engagement party and no doubt continue to frighten everyone with their displays of affection.

xx

This post was sponsored by Xanax.

weak 11: bought an ipod it's black and shiny

Hi, meet the new addition to the nerd family, 'Emilio'. Emilio joins my iBook, my dvd player, my poorly copied yet cheaply purchased DVDs, some very temporary bottles of alcohol and me in my bangkok pad. No, I haven't got a kitten yet - all the ones still left at the markets when I got there (at closing time) looked too close to death for me to get much torturing out of them. I'm not really going to do that, you know. I won't have to. When it realises all it has is a lifetime of me drinking red wine and watching Buffy repeats to look forward to, it'll be stabbing itself with blunt, rusty instruments.

I'm starting to think a kitten might even be too cool for me. Perhaps I should get something geekier that won't realise the magnitude of my lameness. Like a bunch of axolotyls or a mexican cockroach or a sock puppet.

The times I wasn't buying an ipod I've been nerding it up online - I joined myspace so I could whore around the internets for some friends and then Ed sent me a link to popomundo.com, although I'm saving that one so I have something cool to do on valentine's day that doesn't involve my wrists and some razors.

What else? I cut myself a fringe at work with the work scissors. Got drunk on Wednesday and Friday nights. Wednesday, with the owner of At Corner - the local - where we discussed the obvious virtues of Anaconda and I lost face by being beaten at Connect Four.

Friday the whole work crew went out to dinner and ate a few metric tonnes of softshell crabs before getting plastered and not being allowed into the popular clubs. This was ok, since the popular clubs have apartheid as a door policy and give preference to farangs over Thais, regardless of age, girth or visible body hair. I think I speak for most of humankind when I say I'd rather be in a rowdy Thai bar than a nightclub full of people who forgot not to look like Bobcat from Police Academy. Plus, it's way more fun when a Thai dude sings the shit out of a song than when a white guy does it. White people even get all excited and try to take pictures of it.

Aung, the guy singing doesn't even look like that in real life.

Anyway, I'm off to play with Emilio and try not to permanently crash his hard drive like I did to his predecessor. This saturday night is the Satoshi/Renaissance night at Astra and I'm really hoping I won't be progressive-housed to death.

If you want to join my grand total of 17 friends on myspace (which so far consist of Sydney music nerds, some perverts and an illegal drug), clickez-vous myspace.com/faranggirl.

ok seeee youuuu bye bye bye.