I have no idea what day of the week it is. I'm still moving through bizarre waves of being tired and rarely hungry. I'm living on coffee and a few bites of street food and hard napping. Aaron and I are arranging the apartment and I'm crabby from heat and a lack of internet. I work offline for a few hours, wrapping up a freelance job and am eager to find wi-fi. Aaron heads off to his morning tutoring session and I hit the streets to find a mall that might have internet. It's early morning, the sun hidden behind haze and I'm walking down narrow sidewalks lined with shops, spirit houses festooned with flower wreaths, enormous cages full of rabbits, and signs boasting English phrases that don't quite make sense. "Your own private shortcut" - an ad for fully-furnished condos.
I stop at a street vendor and get iced coffee in a plastic cup then wrapped in a plastic bag. I've noticed the use of plastic bags is staggering. I've seen a coke emptied from a glass bottle into a plastic bag and a straw inserted. Buying curry on the street involves putting the hot food directly into a little plastic bag and tied shut, then re-bagged for carrying.
I end up at a fairly Western style mall that is empty and open air for the most part. I walk up non-moving escalators, between darkened shops, no one around, and even find a nice public restroom open. I head home and work, waiting for the painting to arrive and for the shops to open.
The painting arrives strapped to the top of a tuk-tuk(sp?). I take a picture as the sight of this vehicle topped with a 5x7 canvas is, well, you can see for yourself. Aaron calls out for the land lady and she comes down to translate as the tok-tok driver is trying urgently to get some kind of information from Aaron before he'll take it down. Aaron has to provide the receipt and we perform all kinds of twister moves trying to get it upstairs. It's one foot shorter than the ceiling height when we finally get it in the decided place.
When I come back to the Western mall that afternoon, no one has internet. Finally I find a coffee shop that does but I'm handed a ticket with a username and password that lasts for 60 minutes of wi-fi. As much as I admire the strategy of ensuring any given computer-loving customer will only linger for an hour, I am only 30% into a site migration when my time runs out.
I'm hungry, frustrated that I've been trying to get a signal for three hours and only got that little bit of time. Aaron is carrying huge bottles of water that I turn into trash cans when we drink it all, and wants to get home and prepare for an interview over a home-cooked dinner. I urge him to go without me, I'm craving soup and hoping I can maybe get online one more time. I reassure him that I'm completely fine by myself and will manage in a sea of Thai folks to secure internet and dinner. He bends over and hands me the wad of baht that has fallen out of my pocket accidentally, turns and leaves.
On my way home, I cruise through a night market outside of a huge indoor market and spy a shop of mini skirts which seem like the perfect clothing for the heat. I motion to the skirt and my waist, than make a questioning gesture to the shop keeper to see if they have my size. She laughs, hard, and shakes her head no.