hey friends!
here's to another day in bangkok: karlene and i just spent the last two hours stuck in rush hour on a rather full bus. and by rather full i mean like sardines-in-a-can full, i'm sure you can imagine. we were dowtown after meeting up with a fellow manitoban friend janessa plett, who is teaching/outreaching with an organization called Reach.
it was janessa who took us to our first thai massage experience. the three of us got dressed in scrubs that were just a little too short and a lot too baggy. hot stuff. then we all made to the top floor (perhaps so they couldn't hear our cries of pain?) and had our feet wiped with a cloth that smelled of the candies grandma and grandpa brought from paraguay. remember those chalky, minty ones?? ...never mind.
after the minty feet, our masseuses proceeded to twist our bodies like pretzels and pound out different muscles in a style reminiscent of tenderizing meat.
"does anyone else feel like a limp noodle?" i gasped before my foot was wrenched somewhere around my mid-back and i caught myself looking straight at the back of my thigh.
karlene giggled from the bed next to me, something she had been doing throughout the entire experience due to her immense ticklish-ness. or maybe she was getting nervous about the soft-sized masseuse who had just jumped onto her calves.
"does this hurt?" she asked in thai.
karlene giggled.
after we swivelled and swayed our way out of the shop, we unanimously decided that it had been a good time and we all felt very... flexible.
we went for dinner before heading home on the bus. on the way to the bus stop, in a twist of fate, i happened to be the victim of a rather large stream of bird excrement. karlene found this particularly funny since she had gotten bird poo in her hair in the ancient city and i had been less than sympathetic. so i braved the bangkok rush hour traffic and a crowded bus with a conspicuous stream of white on my right shoulder. add flecks of toilet paper where i had madly tried to wipe it off, and my black shirt was fashion central.
this past weekend was a mosaic of new experiences, from taking the skytrain, a water taxi, seeing ancient temples at Wat Pho, going to church, and shopping in the biggest market i've been to yet. but these are stories for another day, till then, i love everyone and good night!