I'm stepping Into the Twilight Time Zone
Trip Start
Jul 12, 2010
1
5
9
Trip End
Jul 31, 2010
Pattaya, Thailand
Sunday, July 18, 2010
My initial exposure to the city was an exotic resort style hotel with a tropical swimming pool and an infinite waterfall. The white glistening European bodies of the overly hair riddled men contrast with the lush green foliage such as I have never seen in my life before. This land is a flora-lover's dream destination minus the white guys in Speedos.
Still feeling extremely jetlagged, I find myself waking up every hour, on the hour. Fatigue isn’t even an adequate enough term to express the amount of tiredness I am feeling. Every time I pass a horizontal piece of furniture, my body gravitates toward it like an orbital satellite. Kermit has even threatened to croak….
So many things to see in Pattaya, but here is a very quick run through of what I did: I fed giant tortoises, ate a fried grasshopper, paid money to use a coed floor toilet without TP (thanks for the baby wipes tip, Al), had 2-hour ionic full body and facial massage and lost 2 centimeters of my waistline in sweat, watched weird fish cleaning people’s feet and ultimately found and pet a baby lemur, though I lost the evidence. Very, very sad face about that.
Most of all in Pattaya, I walked. I walked around puddles of mysterious fluids, stepped over crippled beggars on the sidewalk, dodged freakshow like characters, hurried past desperate prostitutes. But as I walked past all of these different variations of humanity, one thing was incredibly apparent. Behind each sad pair of eyes, inside each flesh-covered chest, beneath each depressed spirit, there beats a heart that in its whole looked exactly like mine. This is what I take home with me from Pattaya.
Many of you are wondering what the heck I'm doing here in Thailand and what kind of job I have to do. Well, I would tell you, but then I'd have to kill you. Espionage really isn't as glamorous as Robert Ludlum makes it out to be. In fact, this type of spy packs three bags too many, all proudly displaying their "overweight baggage" stickers, wears inappropriate heels, chokes poor native bystanders while spraying a ridiculous amount of OFF and gives a shellshocked bellboy a flashback while dropping items in the lobby that mimic the sound of bombs. Not that I'm doing spy work or anything... sheesh, I wonder if I had clearance to say that.
