T and S hits the road!

Hey this wireless interwebs is just miraculous. You pays your little bit of money, gets the card, types in the funny numbers, and heres you are, sending peerless words of wisdom all the way from busy downtown Bangkok.

As you know, we got exhausted leaving, and it's taken about 48 hours of 'holiday' to start feeling like it IS a holiday. But today we found the tailor and ordered clothes lavishly. It's so cheap it's almost embarrassing. I say 'can you make me two of these?' and the tailor says 'yes I give you a special price for two the same' and then I realise it's only about $10 in the first place! Even M, the least sartorial person in the world, saw that it was easy and fun to look at fabrix, go 'hmm' a bit, and order an extra pair of daks. In the end we left an order for 12 garments, which will all be ready in 27 hours!! Amazing. I'd still be winding the bobbin...

After that bit of major fun we walked along to a nearby hotel for some air-conditioning, and found we were sitting in a VERY posh cafe overlooking the river, which was teeming with an assortment of boats, barges, crud and tourists. Note placement of the word 'tourist' lower in the word chain than 'crud'. Hefty lard-ass Amurricans infest everywhere, altho less so on the streets around our hotel (INTERESTING TRAVEL FACT: this hotel - the Baihoke Sky -is the tallest building in Thailand. It's as tall as 182 ppl standing on top of each other. Ow!). The streets are a mass of stalls - a standard chaotic Asian market - and the lard-asses don't seem to do bargaining, cruddy roads, or mingling with the locals (as far as I can see). I, otoh, plan to get amongst it!

I booked into the hotel beauty salon at 9pm (yes, it's a 24 hour place) and a very nice, strong, happy masseur got to grrrrrips with me. It was a very interesting massage - face down on a fairly hard mat on the floor, and the masseur used her forearms, elbows, knees and bum (yes!) to push, stretch, prod, dig, wiggle and squish me from the top of my head to nearly my knees. I found it a bit hard to get up afterwards, but now, 2 hours (and a very nice pedicure) later, I feel very loose and comfy. I'm glad I brought my trusty heat pad with me, tho. It was a life-saver after the long flight.

Tomorrow we'll take a river cruise to see three temples and maybe the grand palace. And I think I need to investigate a few silk shops, you know, just in case giant moths eat my workroom while no-one's looking and my stash gets munched down to critically low levels....and, as a friend reminded me, I need to stay in the moment. And when moments involve sorting through hundreds of rolls of silk and imagining an entire new travel wardrobe of fabulously flattering, lush and lovely garments, I can do that! Again and again and again, for as many silk shops - erm, I mean moments - as necessary. Commitment, fortitude and a healthy excess baggage allowance, that's all it takes...

I'd better go, M wants a turn at the webs. I won't bore you with details of the tropical fruit extravaganza breakfast special will I? or mention that the breakfast rom is in fact an entire floor of the hotel, with counters for 7 different cuisines, dozens of eager staff, and bottomless coffee? No, I wouldn't be that cruel.

Today purrfumed by eau de traffic, paw-paw, jasmine and orchid displays, and the exotic sandalwood-based scented oil massaged into my feeties. Yeah!

Reaching SILENT SCREAM status..!!

I've been trying to make bookings through the Tiger Airlines (domestic) site, and not only have I failed, but the b@st@rds have LOCKED my credit card.  Because I kept trying to make the payment by pressing AUTHORISE and it kept going boinnngg! and going "ner-ner we won't let you.."....

Which means that A) purrfect dorter doesn't have flights booked for next week, when she's bravely offered to visit us to help with our pre-overseas trip nervous breakdowns, and B) I have to wrangle my credit union tomorrow morning AS WELL AS the eleventy other things I need to do.

Sheesh.

And, waaah, I had three jabs today, so I have three sore limbs.  That leaves one hip to lie on, but not the matching arm.  Could be interesting finding the correct painless pretzel-position in bed tonight!  I had a shot of cortisone into my right hip, which has bursitis or somesuch ow-ey joint problem.  Couldn't be identified on the ultrasound, but as the pressure of the ultrasound thingy was making me yip and leap about on the bed, they observed that it was 'fairly tender' and agreed to do the deed.  Then we charged off to the gp for typhoid shots (going to Bangkok first), and a HepB booster for me cos my immune system (which is usually a very dodgy opurration) seems to have eaten up those antibodies and doc says I needs more.  The practice nurse offered to give us tetanus boosters as well, and was quite keen to give M a pneumovax jab, but fortunately she checked with the doc and he said a very firm no.  Thankyou Saint Steve!

Yesterday our plans for the doing of things was thrown right out of the window when a friend, who came to have lunch, was so ill with side-effects of new and vital medication, that I insisted on driving her home.  She could hardly walk, hardly speak, but on a very wet and dingy day seemed to think she'd be orright driving quite a long way home.  Nope.  I couldn't let her go.

We got a few things achieved, but it was so upsetting to see her in such distress that we kind of found ourselves in Tilleys on the way home, having nice comforting (large) glasses of wine and gins and tonics.  That wrote off the evening quite nicely!  Today's attempt was kind of scuttled by the jabs, which left me needing a nanna nap, zzzzzzzz.  And wrangling airlines is really not very much fun.  Growl growl.  And yes, I am still composing the letter to Mr Branson about our Cairns-Brisbane-Canberra debacle.  Mostly I'm removing adjectives.  It's not safe to send yet.

The purrfume of the day is just the Prada I put in my hair last night.  I was too crumpled and dribbly, when getting ready at the cracked dawn to get to a 9am appointment to have something sharp and nasty done to me.  Perhaps I'll sleep in some Chanel No. 5 Huile Sensual, yes that's a good idea.

Tomorrow I have to look at pavers and pick up my other new specs (which I hope might be the style my father finally approves of.  He's my style guru but I rarely get the paternal nod of approval).  And we must get to the tailor and the chemist and the bra shop and the backpack shop and shit I forget what else.  I think I'll have to change the physio appt for the third time this week, which is probably driving them mad.  Oh yes, because I made the physio time too close to the end of gym.  Heh - do you know how alien that sentence is to my real life??  

Heh.