Happy Hour & Starbucks

FRIDAY, AUGUST 12:
Well, happy hour last night was a lot of fun! About 40 teachers from TCIS showed up, so it was a success! We went to The Local, a funky decorated small bar in our neighborhood of Thong Lo. TCIS teachers were the only people in the place, which was nice, so we had a chance to get to know one another a bit better and talk to people we hadn't met yet. It is really a great group of people. I think this school year is going to be a lot of fun!

We left The Local and walked up Thanon (the equivalent of road/street in English) Thong Lo to an outdoor street restaurant called Fifty-Five that Rico (whom I call Suave, of course), Tyson, and Craig frequent. I had rice and cooked greens, while the others went for soups and meat. After dinner, Rico, Tyson, Alex, and I went to a bar right up the street from our apartments called The Coliseum. It was hysterical! The place has a giant, stone Jesus on the roof and he's holding a frosty mug of beer. I can see it from my bedroom window and I've been wondering what it's like inside. Well, the place is HUGE and it was packed with Thais. We were immediately approached by a lady boy who seemed to have taken a liking to me :) There was a big stage with a Thai guy on a microphone and, of course, we couldn't understand anything of what he was saying, but suddently he'd start gyrating around the stage! It was a riot! A bunch of girls in skimpy outfits would come out and dance around. Some of the Thais in the audience were dancing; it was way funny! I'm still not sure what was going on, but it served as entertainment for us for an hour or so.

I went home, crashed, and woke up around 4:00 am with food poisoning! I think it's the first time I've had it and it was not fun. I don't know if the veggies in my dinner were not clean or were sitting on raw chicken or something, but I vomited about four times before all was said and done. I called Suave later in the day to see if he was sick from his chicken and he said no?! I guess I would've been better off eating meat!

I felt good enough around dinner time to take a shower and Leah and I headed to the Starbucks in our neighborhood to drink our favorite Frappaccino Light Coffee and relax in a big, brown leather chairs upstairs. While Leah ran to the Tops Marketplace (a nice, little supermarket right next door) to make herself a salad, Peaw, the young girl who took my order, came upstairs and said, "I'm sorry. In fifteen minutes, I bring you coffee, okay?" I didn't understand what was going on, so I replied, "Okay."

Leah came up right afterwards and I told her the story, laughing. We were both perplexed and sure enough, after about fifteen minutes, Peaw came up carrying a tray with a French press filled with coffee, three espresso coffee cups, a plate of small pieces of a blueberry-filled muffin on toothpicks, and two paper cups with two different kinds of Indonesian coffee beans inside. She was accompanied by a male co-worker, Noon, and they both sat down on the foot stool in front of me. Leah and I were cracking up and just looking at one another with confused expressions on our faces.

They sat down and Noon, who could speak English pretty well, said he was going to give us a coffee tasting. He began to brief us on the Indonesian coffee from the island of Sulawesi that we were about to taste and he had us comparing its coffee beans with another cup of coffee beans. It was all pretty funny, but very nice. We talked to Peaw and Noon for about 20 minutes; I'm not sure who was working for them at the counter downstairs, but it was great! I told them that we had just moved here and we taught at TCIS. I practiced the handful of Thai words that I could remember with them and they understood me - yeah :) My word of the day is "rot fai faa", which means Sky Train. After our taxi cab confusion on Thursday, I decided it was important to know how to say.

Leah and I stopped at this internet cafe on our way home from Starbucks. It's only 10 baht for 15 minutes ($1/hour). We're trying to get both cable and high-speed internet access at our apartment, but the language barrier seems to be causing a problem with our building manager, Liza. We also need to have the washing machine fixed, as well as Leah's shower head. Other than that, everything works :) It's Friday night and we're off to possibly check out a movie. The great thing about Bangkok is the more time I spend here, the more I like it! I'm hoping that will continue.