Easter in Bangkok

We didn't make it to Laos. Booking the overnight sleeper train to Nong Khai is so simple a homonid could do it, but not me. Every time I try it's booked out. Apparently you can book in advance for things like trips and transport and hotels, but I've only ever read about this in books and still it smacks of sorcery.

Luckily, Lebua at State Tower (above) does allow for frantic last minute decisions, so we spent three days and x amount of bahts consoling ourselves with sundry hotel-related indulgences. Highlights included being a drunk, obnoxious baboon in the restaurant (me/champagne), downloading Trivial Pursuit online (him), having 'chest muscles' massaged at length during the Relaxing Aromatic package (me - no, it was not relaxing), performing the 'yes-that's-my-car' routine seven billion times (him/mustang) and writing a long-winded and heartfelt obituary (for my credit card). It was fun. The holy trinity would have approved.

Next on the 'me' show: I jog now. It's 'only' on a treadmill, but it's better than hardly moving at all, which was what I was doing before. One finds oneself the recipient of some contempt from sanctimonious fitness 'experts' for using a treadmill, as if it isn't really running. I don't know why. It's not as if running on the streets in Bangkok is an option. Or am I wrong? Let's see... I guess if you can avoid being struck by a motorcycle, don't mind exhaust fumes, can easily climb back out of open sewers, love 80 per cent humidity, can bring gumboots in case of a flash flood and can leap over the heads of slow-moving Thai pedestrians then yeah, the streets are pretty OK to run on.

Anyway, after an initial week of partially metabolising my internal organs through heat exhaustion, I found the airconditioning switch in the gym (it's in a cupboard). This is information I can now lord over the dimwit Johnny-come-latelies who still train in the heat, which I do at every possible opportunity. It's been four full weeks since I began my regime, so I'm practically an elite athlete now. Look out for me in Beijing.

Kitten update: Zorro comes homes tonight. This is justice come full-circle considering The Ninja has always been topcat (so sorry). He had about twenty conniption fits when I got from from the hotel due to his feelings of neglect and when I come home with a cat smaller, cuter and nicer than he is he will finally know what it's like not to be the most popular one anymore. Heh.

Other things: Stef is going home on Friday, it's Songkran on the weekend (don your water-proof clothing), Dallus is still chugging along and I'm coming back to Sydney late May for my mum's birthday, an occasion on which I'm hoping she is fully clad in both over- and undergarments.

This is all, good friends. I hope to take better pictures of Songkran this weekend than I managed to last year.

bye!