Bangkok, Thailand: Week Seven

20th - 26th June 2011

Well, well, well, what a treat you are in for if you happen to be reading this. BIG news! This week, we did bugger all worth mentioning but because I've paid for a (relatively) expensive coffee caramel frappe I'm going to put finger tip to keyboard and tell you alllll about it.

As usual on Monday, Djalma went to work mid-morning, I woke up feeling rather shocking so stayed in bed most of the day and did nothing, no power walks in the park, no yoga, no writing and definitely no housework. Djalma brought lunch home, we played some cards, watched a Dispatches show about climate change (very provocative – according to the show climate change is normal and the carbon we produce is a tiny weeny little bit of what the earth produces naturally) Djalma fell asleep watching it, (he seems to be taking to afternoon naps like a little baby) I woke him up and we went for a walk in our little park. Strolling around the greenery in the coolish evening, we talked about Bangkok, our future plans with regards to working, training, travelling, family and most importantly fitness. We decided to get up extra early in the mornings so we could do yoga together and feel prepared and energised for the day, as I write (it is now Tuesday the 28th of June) we have not managed to do this once, not even in an afternoon. Finding our beef noodle soup lady all shut up we walked across to another food-stall offering chicken noodle soup and filled up our bowls with bean sprouts, hot basil, peanuts, fish sauce and a touch of chilli. Back in our little flat we put on The Tourist and watched a very predictable spy/love story with a too think Angelina Jolie and a Johnny Depp who I can only think of now as Captain Jack Sparrow.

As you know our plan to get up early and practise yoga together has, thus far, failed abysmally, but we planned to get up at 6am on Tuesday, needless to say... It never happened, I had an awful nights sleep and ended up sleeping in until fairly late, meanwhile Djalma dragged himself out of bed and went to teach his two classes that day. When I did manage to drag myself out of bed, I went for a power walk, did my yoga, cleaned the flat and went out for breakfast in the afternoon. Back at the flat I wrote up week five which I struggled to get out, I would rate on the same difficulty level as forcefully ejecting a turd which has no desire to see the light of day, painful and time-consuming.
In the evening we watched Matt Damon and the anorexic girl from 'The Devil Wears Prada' in The Adjustment Room, wonderful film, much better than The Tourist.

Wednesday began very late for me and Djalma, the beginning of his mid-week weekend, we stayed in bed until 11.30, I went out for a long power walk round the park and did some yoga while Djalma lazed in bed, playing solitaire on the computer and wasting time on FB. Djalma, inspired by my dedication to fitness (hahaha, NOT!) then dragged himself out to the bigger park to do his own set of exercises, which by the way, are building up his muscles handsomely and giving him cracking knots in his back at the same time. He brought back some awful chicken gloop and rice for lunch and then... we played some more cards.
I feel that our epic card games deserve a separate mention, prying me away from my love for (the Lambert/Mathie version of) Gin Rummy he has taught me three new games, the names of which I don't know in English, only in Portuguese; Tranca (my favourite), Buraco (second favourite – if you get a full run from Ace to Ace you get 1000 points) and a type of Solitaire for two or more players (the name eludes me just now). We play up to 3000 points which allows for a good 3-5 games depending on how well I play/how my luck goes/how many beers are impairing my judgement. Djalma usually wipes the floor with me, which because I'm such a poor loser puts me in a bad mood and makes me feel a little bit depressed, but that afternoons game deserves special mention; the score was 3230-820 to yours truly! I tried not to, but I couldn't stop laughing (at him and at my good fortune). Unfortunately for me, Djalma took the next available to kick my ass at cards again and I was back in my place – losing.

We had a couple of beers, clearing out our fridge supply and after dinner on the street, we saw The Green Lantern at our slightly more local cinema in the Century Shopping Centre at the end of Rang Nam Road. Getting our freezing butts out of the cinema we decided to walk a good half an hour to the couch-surfing meeting which is held every Wednesday not to far from us. We got another beer and then joined other travellers/locals in a small bar tucked away in a small Soi (side street). It was a nice evening, and it was good to meet new people, one of things we had talked about on Monday night was the need to make some new friends, I'm not greedy, I only want one (I'd love more) if I could choose I would make this one friend a blend of all my girlfriends back home and then we could talk about boys, sex, clothes, make-up, good hair-masks, the joys of hair removal, a mutual jealousy of gorgeous feminine Thai women and so on, the things that don't really crop up in conversation with Djalma. Oh, and with this (imaginary) friend, I would discover a cheap local wine bar where they also serve delicious cheese and fresh bakes bread, and we would have all our girl chats there. The people where nice, very nice actually I think we're going back this week, there are two girls in particular who stuck out in my memory; one was a Filipino and lovely, she even had special shortbread form the Philippines, the other was English and wore the too-big contact lenses that give me the creeps and who asked me, having just met me, if I was a douche-bag. How... wonderful. I wasn't quite sure what to say to that, what can you say when some one asks if you're horrid or not? 'Um, I hope not', 'Of course I am, you mean you aren't... could have fooled me' or, as Djalma suggested when I relayed this story back to him on our way home 'yes I am and this is a douche-bag only table, if you're not one then piss off'. Unfortunately for me and fortunately for this girl, I'm not exactly quick off the mark when it comes to witty retorts.

On Thursday we slept in again, I wasn't feeling too great, the beers last night had failed to loosen me up one bit, instead they just gave me a headache. I went downstairs to our pork noodles man and got us some breakfast some Khao Klook Kra Phrae Kai, I think that's right – I made a concerted effort to memorise this particular dish because it's the best one he does, its steamed chicken stir fried with a little chilli, garlic and some Chinese sauce with green veg and it's delicious. We kicked back and watched Space Balls, something I'd been wanting to watch for a while and the reason why we downloaded all the Star Wars films. Honestly, I don't now why we bothered, Star Wars was good but Space Balls was shockingly awful, it completely bypassed the category of 'so bad it's actually a bit good' and went straight to 'a load of old shite'. With a belly full of period pain and lots of aspirin in me, I was still complaining so Djalma went downstairs to our local 7-Eleven and got several bars of chocolate and some crisps, I managed to eat three chocolate bars while he kicked my ass at cards again 4320-1430.

Well these are the only days I've made notes for, Djalma worked again on Friday, I did some yoga and walking. Saturday we had off and we spent the day at home not doing much, Djalma took a new class for the following day, we watched a film or two, played cards, and went out for dinner at one of the street-side restaurants to have this amazing dish; plain rice with little bits of chicken stir fried with a little bit of spicy sauce and green veg, accompanied with a fried egg, gorgeous.

Sunday Djalma started teaching the new class, six hours in one day, he spent most of Saturday preparing for it and worrying about not having enough material and students falling asleep after lunch. It turned out he didn't have to worry, the students were all good and he actually ran out of time. I felt a bit weird spending a Sunday without him. Tie spent on the internet actually bore fruit when I found this plan for running 'Couch to 5K Running Plan' for anyone who's interested, here's the link: http://www.coolrunning.com/engine/2/2_3/181.shtml

I did the first “run” which was actually just twenty minutes made up of 60 seconds jogging followed by 90 seconds walking. It wasn't too bad although my legs were a bit floppy by the end of it, back up our six flights of stairs (which are getting my legs in good shape!) I practised some yoga and then trawled the internet looking for inspiration and ideas about running and yoga. Djalma came back from class early evening, happy with how things went, I felt so relieved for him, I couldn't imagine planning for a six hour lesson and we kicked back and watched some Transformers. As well as cards I think that Transformers also deserves a special mention, is it wrong that I love it? Optimus Prime is such a dude and his voice is so cool, I loved how the robots were all gangster my favourite line in the film goes is from the 'weapons expert' who is waiting outside Sam's house while he looks for his Grandfathers Specs (the key to saving the world of course), the robot overhears Sam's parents (legendary parenting skills, I love it!) and turns to Optimus Prime and says “The parents are very irritating. Can I take them out? ” Well it doesn't look so funny here, I think you have to watch it, anyway – I can't wait to see Transformers 3 at the cinema, does that make a BIG kid? I don't care!

Well that's a weeks worth of fun in Thailand, I 'll try to do better next week and perhaps take a few photos so you have something pretty to look at, thanks for staying with me if you got this far!