5:30's not so early

we made it! 13 hours in the air, a stop in taipei, another 3 hours (bridesmaids is a great movie, by the way), and we hit bangkok. the city is incredible, and we've come to terms with the temperature and our levels of sweatyness (both quite high). our days have been starting before sunrise because we've been having a hard time fighting the overwhelming tiredness that sets in about 6pm and the nagging awakeness that comes around 3am. i'm also pretty sure our bed is made of some sort of bamboo and cement epoxy, but we have good pillows and air conditioning and thai iced coffee so all is well.


josey loves traveling with me.

we rode to our hostel in a tuk tuk, a three-wheeled open-air car thing. i want one real bad.

 rest stop for water, snacks and beer.

 insomnia attacks. our street at 4:30am.


i wandered into this market, which was buzzing at the crack of dawn. i saw lots of crazy stuff.


eggs come in brown, white, and pink.

this was just sitting out on a table at the market. he looks like he's napping. i can't tell if that makes it more or less creepy.

 thankfully, he actually is napping, amid bags of kibbles and bits. life is good.

 wandering down the street we found mini pancakes! i'm inviting these folks to the next bishy's baby brunch.

 we went to some temples. this one is wat bensomethingoranother. there's a good story behind this temple trip, which i'll write up later.

 we also went to the grand palace, where the dress code is strict. josey wore his translucent t-shirt, which was a no-no. so embarrassing!

 

buddha just relaxing at wat pho.

in the words of the wise rafi ajl, most honorable pedicure.

the flower market was filled with orchids and i had to keep fighting the urge to buy stuff because who buys flowers when they're living out of a backpack but OH MY GOD these prices are so cheap! 20 baht is less than a dollar! (i am my father's daughter.)

kelly gets here today for the weekend! then we're off to krabi on sunday.

there will be dust

burning man makes a mess of everything. it's a hell of a lot of fun but it's a little bit like taking your belongings and food and getting in a clothes dryer with an open sack of flour. if you're new, they (rather lovingly) make you lie down on the ground and make a dust angel when you arrive. chapstick melts, like, instantly. the credit cards in my wallet that i left in the car are permanently warped from the heat. i brought a chocolate bar and ate it with a spoon. so at a very early point, like hour two of day one, you realize fighting the mess is an absurd and hopeless battle and you quickly and quite happily settle into eating dust sandwiches and taking dust baths and drinking dust beer. and it turns out to be pretty awesome. plus your hair looks really good.

 we are almost there. my hair looks only ok so far.

 we are there!

who left this flamethrower lying around? good thing i'm drunk.

we dyed ourselves. rafi opted for purple, a wise choice.

josey and i went red and got a lot of corny sunburn jokes. friendly as they may be, people are burning man are no funnier than people in the real world.

we caught the sunrise. we had to seriously bundle up because what's great about the desert is that when it's not excruciatingly hot, it's blindingly cold.

we rode bikes and sat on a pier and met lovely humans and climbed on things and went to a wedding and napped and danced until the wee hours became the big hours. and seven days and three pairs of gas station sunglasses later, we came home. as happy as i was to once again have a toilet that flushes that i don't share with 50,000 other desert nomads, it was a totally amazing trip that i would gladly do all over again. and after a remedial job dusting off our backpacks and a totally expert job q-tipping our ears (it just feels so great. am i wrong?), we set off for southeast asia tomorrow. more on that soon.