On Fire!

I just got to Bangkok, not feeling so social, my body is hot and tired, but I planned not to pay for a hotel room. 9 hours left to fill up the hours until my flight in the morning, and I felt so unprepared. How could I let yoga go so carelessly? I feel my gut worse than I’ve felt it in years. I walked up to the Khao San street corner to embark on my endless eve. The streets were littered with trinkets, leather bags, hat shops, tattoo parlors, and tanned people, and a hot shower and a warm bed was more like a dream than the impending reality. Inevitably, I had to release the hopes from my thoughts because a calm evening was to be an impossible scenario for me. I just had to kill time. The first two shops I passed were sex shops, one selling toys and the other selling services. Indulgence and decadence hung like smog over the sidewalks, as I peered down the way only to see people stacked up on top of one another, waiting in line to be scammed, buying nonsense souvenirs, sucking down hand grenades, scanning the streets for the infamous Thai sexcapades. Hopefully, I meet some nice tourists for good conversation and drinks. So, I just sat down on the street curb instead, watched the sun go down. I bought a fresh papaya for 80 Baht (about $0.10), and observed the vendors and tourist exchange. It took me about an hour of sitting to figure out the obvious underground transactions occurring between strikingly beautiful Thai counter girls and the European tourists. At first, it seemed like they were also buying fruit, but later you see them walk behind the alleyway…
Lights and lanterns strung across the streets with backpackers and tourists hanging off the balconies, and people were having a grand ol’ time.
$1000 Baht:::
280 two vodka drinks
100 bottle water
80 Papaya
60 bathroom usage
100 frozen yogurt
…
I met two wonderful Swedish backpackers that bought me dinner and accompanied me for the rest of the night. What amazing blessings!
Thank you, Oscar and Lars, my travel soul mates from the opposite of the world, turned my night of lonely observation into enjoyable participation!

and off to the mainland... i go..

AWOL

Back in Hong Kong, and I feel at peace and at home. Today is my last day of work with Jenny and Sharon said her and her friends want to throw me a going away party at the beach.
5:30am and 5 beers later…. Shit, my flight is in 4 hours.

Bullseye

I never meant to hurt Wei. Although, I do believe he is resilient and probably hasn’t considered me much more after I left. Someone told me that the Chinese are overly romantic, equally as melodramatic, and will always be out for a Tsing Tsao beer or ten after a breakup. So, he through a fuss about me leaving a day early, pissed and moaned about me to his roommate that night, and was probably back at the bar slamming drinks to be completely erase the visit. The morning is fresh and without me in the room, he can recalibrate himself, aligning his thoughts and focus to yet again another exciting week at the office. On the plane this afternoon I decided to quit racking my brain about sex and morals…. I didn’t commit fidelity by cheating on my conscious or anything by sleeping with him. I did, however, pretend to enjoy kissing him in public, when that was the exact opposite thing I wanted to be doing. I suppose this is what women tend to do when they use their sexuality to get to where they’re going. From this experience, the only thing I vow to myself is that I will never again allow myself to get so irritated and continue to pretend, resulting in a relationship that I perceive as a mode of personal gain. I know it may not seem like the biggest deal in the world, but damn do I feel like a conceiving dog! Next time, I will just leave. And stay true to myself.

Shit

So, I ended up telling Wei that I was sorry I was so irritable because it was my time of the month… not exactly the truth I was going for, but I covered all basis of my worry. Despite my hopes to open all channels of communication, sending the man into a whirlwind of my woman psyche, I used the oldest trick in the book. Now, even though it ‘s harder to act pissy than it is to act sweet, I’ve at least bought myself a free pass to the many eye rolls I can’t seem to control. Also, no sex, and no questions. I imagine karma will bite me in the ass next month for telling a lie about menstruation, but, it’s the best I could think of without making it so uncomfortable for the both of us.


Editor’s Note: This entry is incriminating. I apologize on behalf of most women that have found themselves in this situation, using these excuses.

Missed the Mark

I haven’t been a very good yogi. My appetite has been for something else lately. I’m not really sure about some of the decisions I’ve made in the last few days, especially concerning Wei. I’m hungry for love, excitement, stimulation, but not for a companion. I’m constantly thinking about the next time I can have a couple drinks with him so his personality will be more bearable, or when I can have the city to myself while he is away at work. I’ve been smoking a lot of cigarettes, just puffing the feelings away. I can’t believe how easily I’ve situated myself to use someone; it is taking so much energy out of me. This morning I spent some time meditating. My mind was so shuffled; I could only sit for 5 minutes or so, which resulted in a notable failed attempt at yoga. I haven’t successfully finished a physical practice in weeks, what is going on!? I’m hoping to find a way to tell him what I want, or what I don’t want (for that matter). Maybe today, when we climb the Great Wall, in the blissful serenity up in the mountains of China, I will find that strength down inside to be honest with myself and my current benefactor. I will muster the gut to blurt out that I no longer want to continue pretending I’m a weeklong girlfriend to someone I don’t really know. That maybe I was expecting friends the first few days, not getting through into a fire of sexual escapades locked in the room every moment I could potentially be spending falling in love with Beijing instead.

Onslaught!

Wei has worked as a very successful graphic design animator for building design proposals… he is also completely obsessed with work resulting in him putting in anywhere from 3 to 10 hours of work a day the entire time I was visiting, even on Saturday and Sunday. This was not a bad thing. I really enjoyed having the late afternoon to myself, drinking milk tea, trying all the random fried vegetarian snacks on the streets, walking in and out of shops, taking a little bit of Mandarin away with me from each place. I would meet him for lunch at 1pm at a traditional Korean restaurant, and then be off again into the afternoon, taking yoga classes and renting bicycles to trek around Sunlitan, the shopping district. The freedom was wonderful and the city was inviting. Buildings were significantly smaller than the structures in HK, which is neither good or bad in perception. Both cities harnessed this wonderful excitement that reverberated through the streets, pumping prana into the veins of the street lights, illuminating the store front windows. Hong Kong's overdone 64 story building spectacles well exceeds Beijing's humble attempts, but the coziness and warmth of the city is much appreciated on this very very cold day. I parked my bike and wandered slowly through the main corridors, long streets lined with red paper lanterns and side car street vendors, appreciating the life that hums so closely to the sidewalks, and down under the streets.

The times I had alone were my favorite. I wonder why I felt this way. How selfish of me to look forward to the next moments Wei wasn’t around, when he was the one that brought me here. But, the truth was, it’s been two days and I’m already feeling suffocated. I wasn’t even sure how much I liked Wei at this point. Either the Chinese are super indulgent and affectionate to any woman, or he was totally smitten by me, which I couldn’t understand since we’ve only known each other for about 12 hours up until this point, including the hours spent sleeping. I often felt myself rolling my eyes at him when he wasn’t looking and looking at the clock, asking him when he needed to go back to the office again, hoping I would have a couple more hours of sunlight to bike around and be on my own.

Turn the Safety Off

Wei showed me off at the party. I felt like a mess. I traveled all day long, spending 12 hours straight, worrying from bicycle to ferry to subway to taxi to bus to plane. The only thing I wasn’t riding was the back of a panda to make it on time. We didn’t arrive back at the house until 4 am or so. Early in the morning, we went to a charming breakfast place called Grandma’s (first time I’ve had an egg breakfast on this trip) and headed to the Forbidden City. I was so privileged to be there, but must admit the sites themselves are traditional, full of heritage, meaningful, but completely lacking nature’s pure beauty and grace that I so happily indulge. I mean, it was cool to see the Emperor’s concubine chambers and where the queen slept with the same old Chinese silk from hundreds of years ago, but I noticed how quick I was to zip through the temples, and find a coffee shop in the park, just to take my espresso and lay in the grass, taking in the city air.