solo in suphan

i've been here by myself since tuesday evening. it actually hasn't been as horrible as it sounds. i've gotten to watch a bunch of movies/tv shows (friday night lights is rocking my world), go running/swimming/biking a bunch, and i've done a lot of suphan exploration. and a lot of sleeping.

speaking of sleeping, something gross happened while i was asleep last night. i woke up in the middle of the night cuz i was hot and sweaty (regular occurrence) so i turned on the a/c. i heard a rattle then a PLOP on the ground. i got up to investigate and what do i find on the ground but a DEAD GECKO. indeed, a gecko died in my a/c (or maybe from the fall...i dunno, he was fully in tact but definitely dead) and then fell out at 1:30 in the morning. i got two cups to try to pick him up and be rid of him, but when i touched him he did one of those i-still-have-a-little-bit-of-life-in-me flinches. i screamed and decided he could stay there until the morning. but by the morning he was covered in ants. maybe leaving him there was a mistake.

oh, something cool happened on my run this morning. i ran into this mini parade--maybe 50-ish people dancing in the, one truck with a fancy thai umbrella and a guy in the bed, and that tell-tale band type music that accompanies parades, but with its thai twist. i think maybe they were bringing some offerings to some monks because people were carrying dishes of stuff and yellow cloth at the end of the parade. they looked at me looking at them and they were like, "DUDE, white girl! you should get involved in this!" so, red-faced and incredibly sweaty, i joined'em. i did the white man, point-your-fingers-and-shake-your-butt dance for a couple minutes, they made me take a couple pictures, and off i went.

just another day, eh?

oh, btw, i've been here by myself for so long not cuz i'm a loser (i'm pretty sure the front desk and cleaning ladies think i am..."nicki...living alone?" yes yes, just for now khum. don't worry.). it's cuz i'm waiting for mom and pops, who will be arriving in bangkok in 31 HOURS, BABY! here's to hoping the red shirts don't shut down the airport.

(p.s. they've spent the day caravan-ing around bangkok in an attempt to pretty much halt the city. they've used this time as an opportunity to also apologize to the bangkokians for disrupting their schedule by passing out pamphlets and flyers that say "red-shirt people love bangkokians." i think if i lived in bangkok and someone handed me that while they were simultaneously making it impossible for me to get around the city, i'd punch them*. but that's just me.)

(*damn english language lacking the non-gendered singular pronoun.)

as it turns out, ireland's influence on thailand isn't huge.

it's pretty much nil, if you can believe that.

you think that's stopping me from a good irish meal? HELL NO. i went to tesco and bought some potatoes, carrots, cabbage, and onions to make a good faux irish dinner.

"but nicki, what about the seasoning?"

they had whole black pepper AND whole coriander, if you can believe it. i didn't, but then i saw it, so then i did. i've got lexa's hot pad and pot now (ftw!), so i've got my irish stew simmering. my apartment smells just like ireland.

vic even sent me an AWESOME headband. celebration on.

it didn't feel like a city under siege

maddy and i went into bangkok this morning. my passport was stranded at the chinese embassy (i'd dropped it off there to get a visa about a week and a half ago), and i wanted to get it asap just in case anything went wrong and i need to fix it. maddy's going up to chiang mai tomorrow (and we're headed back up again together in april for songkran), so we wanted to get some train tickets.

we got on the 7 am van outta suphan to victory monument and were in bangkok by 8:30 am. when we got out of the van, we saw a parade of red-shirt cars going down the street, cheering for the protests and inciting cheers from some people on the sidewalk. i mean cheer in the most traditional sense--think high school sports game cheering. it was happy and seeming had no malicious intentions. just like "heyyyy guys! check us out! honk if you love the red shirts!"

but maybe i'm just bad at reading people cuz later today, around 1:30 pm, some people set off some m79s at a military building. the current gov't isn't stepping down or dissolving, btw. the protestors say they're gonna pour donated blood all over a big gov't building tomorrow. not really jovial in any sense of the word. 

anyway, i'm alive. no other run ins. we stayed on the sky train/metro, got on the van back to suphan at 1 pm, and were back in our rooms by 3 pm. it's weird...this protesting stuff is scary but at the same time wildly intriguing. blasted poli sci degree for making me think about my own safety second to the political  situations.

"according to his twitter page"

political times are a bit rough in thailand right now. this is to put it lightly--protests in bangkok are the headline story on bbc online right now. to be perfectly honest, i'm no expert on the situation, but i'll tell you what i understand of it (then you can google it yourself and tell me how wrong i am).

so thailand had this prime minister, thaksin shinawatra, a while back. thaksin is part of the red shirts, or the united front for democracy against dictatorship. rural farmers, especially from the north of thailand, make up a large base of the group, but it's also got a fair amount of students and activists who are worried that the opposition--the yellow shirts--are to elitist and are a threat to democracy.

the yellow shirts, or the peoples' alliance for democracy, are indeed mostly elite types--businesspeople, urban middle class, etc. about five years ago, they started accusing thaksin of corruption, abusing power, and generally not respecting the monarchy. (they wear yellow because it's the king's color.) they said he was giving lots of money to the farmer types illegally. in 2006, after thaksin had been in power five years, he was ousted in a military coup.

thaksin was accused of corruption and conflict of interest and was facing big fines/a jail sentence. so he fled the country and went to cambodia for a while. despite having been ousted from power and fleeing the country, he still has a lot of support here. the red shirts want him back, so they planned a big peaceful protest in bangkok today. a bunch of farmers have been traveling down from the north since friday. the government's handed control over to the military, and they've set up ID checkpoints for people coming into the city.

meanwhile, thaksin left cambodia, was in dubai, and has now gone to germany to kick it with his daughters. how does the government/bangkok post/everyone in the world know this?

"Thaksin Shinawatra has left Dubai to join his daughters in Germany, according to his Twitter page."
(from the bangkok post)

twitter, ftw!

saturday night, babyyyyyy

it's 12:31 am. i'm sitting in my apartment by myself, seven tabs open on the internet, sober, and chatting with a student on fbook. man, life differences.

p.s. MOM AND DAD ARE COMING TO ASIA ONE WEEK FROM TODAY!!!!