Back From Bangkok

Though our flight out there via Chicago and Tokyo took awhile - to say the least - we made it to Oriental Bangkok; albeit a good 14 hours later.

The trip specially planned to spend time with Emma was very very nice. We, yes, including the Tay family, had a really good time just hanging out, getting to know my now-walking niece and got to spend a lot of time together in the pool everyday, had side-by-side cabanas where we napped and ate and just had good times. We ate a lot of good food - but that's no surprise, I know - had new experiances eating at road side stalls and my one big trauma - getting into a toilet with a toilet seat only to realize there was no toilet paper and no flush TOO LATE hahahaha! That was quite an experiance. But while I wasn't amused with the entire situation while going through it, I laugh about it now - 'coz what else am I gonna' do about it lol.

It was a short four day trip. We all wish it was a couple of days more. Next time at the Oriental will be longer for sure. Then again, I suppose like the husband believes, it's better to leave wanting more than leave thinking you've seen and done and wanted everything out of the place you just visited. Makes sense to me. I'm going to see my niece (and family of course) in a few months in Oz. I can't wait. By then, she'd be running, saying more words and be even more fun to play with.

By the way, I'm about 8,000 miles away from making Platinum Executive on American Airlines and I'm totally psyched about it :) Bruce says I'm probably the only unemployed PE (certainly in Memphis) hee hee. Even he might make it to be a PE this year with the crazy summer travels this year. I'd probably make the special 25th annivasary rewards for platinum executive travellers by the end of the year (make an extra 25,000 miles on top of making PE) so I'd be even more 'special' (not special ed) and I believe get another free round trip international upgrade hee hee. So exciting :D

Three Time's A Charm?

Well, we were on our way to Bangkok... everything went smoothly till we boarded flight AA153 in Chicago. The sensor on the plane was broken and while we sat in the blasting freezing plane for a couple of hours and made small talk to the fellow passengers sitting on the same row as us, they finally announced that the plance was going out of service and that we would have to change planes.

YES(!) of course we missed our connection despite having a generous 3 hour layover for us to change terminal, get dad's special Nikka whiskey and maybe make a phonecall or two.

Last night, for the third time in a good five weeks, we went through customs in Japan again and strolled into arrgh... Japan... together with about 100 other unfortunate souls, checked into the not so nice Narita Excel Tokyo Hotel. I suppose I was so beat and pissed by the time we got to the hotel, the last thing to complain about was the room (I'd admit it's much bigger then our room in Osaka lol) and the set meal provided at the Japanese restaurant in the hotel. Bruce rested peacefully while I layed in bed (pissed that I slept too much on the plane) in my hotel yukata (Bruce commented that I looked like a hospital patient the first thing he got up - not THAT funny!) and watched CNN most of the night - like I need to know more about the damn situation in the Middle East? (SNORE). Yes of course I'm sleepy and cranky now lol. But what's new?!

So once again, we're on our way to BKK. Here we are sitting at JAL's smokey ass Sakura Lounge while my brother, sister-in-law, Emma (and nanny in tow, of course!) are on their short flight there already. American Airlines has wasted our one night hotel at the Oriental and a good five hours away from our niece which we're flying a gazillion miles to go spend time with. Sorry ass airlines and airline people - I think they're worst then bankers and lawyers!!!

Oh well.... what can you do right?! We can bitch and write all the letters we want after this... can't buy the time that was burnt last night. I just wanna get there in one piece as scheduled today!!!

Z's

I'm so sleep deprived it's not even funny. Since returning from Japan, I can't say I have made myself stick to the local time. Hence, I've been sleeping at past 4am, as late / early as 6am... then waking up at 9am in the midst of bright sunshine. That always gets to me since other then the summer season, I enjoy waking up at no later then 5am in the dark and starting my day while the rest of the neighborhood is asleep. I like it that way. So to wake up with the screaming sun sorts of pisses me off. I don't know why, it just does.

I suppose part of the reason why it hasn't been a priority to get back to local time is 'coz we're leaving for Thailand tomorrow. By the time I get there, I'm sure I'd be so confused I won't be able to figure out what to do. But... with the excitement of seeing little Emma, who cares about sleep :) EKT is fifteen months old now and she's walking. Her uncle Bruce will be meeting her for the first time so he's really excited as well. He's really sweet to her, buying her special presents just from him. Of course, he buys all the presents she gets from me also lol but that's different :D

I took a nap this afternoon from 5 - 7pm before dinner... I should be good to go till mid morning and definitely gonna sleep well on the flight over there. Too bad the flights are completely full and our upgrade requests to business class are denied. But as tired as I am, a couple of games of sudoko on my DS and I'd be good to go. I won't even need to watch my Korean dramas on the plane :)

Delayed Osaka Curse

So we got through our Osaka without much of a hitch (minus the hotel situation lol). But since we got home, my poor husband has been so sick with high fever and stomach problems. The poor guy. All day yesterday, he was either in bed watching tv in a foetal position or dead to the world, trying to sleep it out to fight the returning high fever.

Last night, he finally had a bite to eat. Melted provolone in crispy pita. I don't know about you, but back home we believe dairy isn't a good thing for diahrea. Everyone here seems to believe differently though. So cheese it was. It didn't help that while we watched the World Series of Pop Culture on VH1, they played the bloody Taco Bell ad for their new spicy chicken crunch wrap forty five times which tortured my poor husband lol. The image of melted cheese can kill a man who hasn't eaten all day hahaha!

I'm hoping he'd be alright and will be able to at least get out of bed today and have a decent meal.

Sometimes it's a little scary when you're responsible for someone else's health. I mean, when I was younger, there was always someone I could go to and whine and tell them how sick I was and I'd be taken care of. I had my mom at home and when I left home at 17, I had a nice young couple who were my friends who would take care of me. It was miserable being alone in Arizona when I was really sick with the flu and worst now that I am supposed to be the caretaker. I'm no doctor and all the home remedies I know are from the 17 years I stayed at home and gotten from mom... It's times like that that makes me even MORE glad I don't have a kid. I would so panic if I had to try and take care of a sick child when he or she can't even tell me what the hell is wrong lol.

Oh well, such is the mood this morning... sleepy (my time difference is still messed up so I'm just hanging out and staying out of the heat - air-conditioning is SO nice to have and be around lol) and hoping the husband feels better. He took some po chai pills last night so I think the stomach should ease up a little... as long as he eats, I'm happy.

A Blog-Worthy Trip

We just returned from our second trip to Japan this summer and I must say, it's been very interesting and more fun then ever. Not just 'coz we had made lots more crazy fun Japanese friends, had horse meat or almost killed ourselves eating yakiniku lol... it's just crazy times in Japan all over again :D

We flew into Kansei International Airport for the first time and took the Shinkansen (bullet-train) to Tokyo immediately. Needless to say, upon arriving in Tokyo and being in some form of transportation for many more than 24 hours, the first night was pretty uneventful. The next few days we hung out with our friend Julie, had the best ramen in between shopping and hanging out, saw the Kohnos' and went to a beer garden atop Keio Shopping Mall and just had a really nice relaxing time.

Day four, we took the shinkansen to Nagoya where we met up with Jun (our ex-sushi chef at Rainbow Roll in Tokyo) who'd gotten married about a year ago and moved away. We saw him one night in Tokyo but it's just been different not being able to see him every trip. Our meal in Nagoya was interesting, to say the least. Not so much the food though is was very good - we had unagi on rice with green onions known as hitsumabushi. The real even for Julie and I was more about meeting Jun's wife. I mean, he's been putting up with a lot of crap from this psycho woman (yes, it's only his side of the story, true... but he's our friend... :D). So we're expecting a hot young babe and a little spoilt brat... in walked oba-san ie, old lady HAHAHA! (sorry no picture lol). Okay, so she isn't old; but we're sure she isn't in her 30s. The part that got us sick is that she's 10 weeks pregnant and is still anorexicly thin. Anywayz, she was nice enough... well other than that part about spilling my cup of tea on me hahaha but that's just an accident - or so we believe lol. We hung out a good half of the afternoon and then got on our merry way back onto the train to Osaka.

Osaka's been an interesting place for both Bruce and I. His first trip there, he fell deathly ill. His second trip there and my first with him, supposedly with my brother and his wife, the four of us got deathly ill in Tokyo the day before we were supposed to train it to Osaka. At the end of the day, they shortened their trip and went home while Bruce and I actually stomached the 3 hour train ride into the city, walked a good 20 mins around the blinding neon lights, turned right around and headed back to Tokyo. Fun... NOT! That was a good two years ago since we even mentioned Osaka again. We've sort of been avoiding the Osaka curse for a bit. This time, since we'd already been to Tokyo for Bruce's birthday in June, we figured we'd check out Osaka. Our friend Julie whom we missed in Tokyo on our last trip thought it would be fun to hang out with us in Osaka and vice versa... and so, the trip to Osaka was concrete.

To say the least, the start of our Osaka trip was less then ideal. We arrived, got to the hotel only to realize both Julie and us had made reservations at different hotels with the same name lol. Neither hotels had our reservations and Julie had actually made a mistake on her reservations lol. She was a little hard on herself since she is by profession, a quart-time travel agent... we headed to our hotel and found the room not abled with internet connection. We moved to hotel number three into our little cubicle and headed straight out to the restaurant that Julie's friend Junko had been waiting for us since 7pm. It was now past 9pm, crazy storming / typhooning and just insanely hot. This was the night we met Junko and restaurant owner Joe (yes, he's Japanese).

Day five, day two in Osaka, Joe took us to a fancy tempura place... and then we met Julie's friend Takashi. This was the night we had horse meat. Not just plain horse meat but RAW horse meat. Yup, horse sashimi hahaha! Honestly it was quite tasty... but I don't think I'd volunteerily order that. I mean, it's horse. YUK! We also had raw cow liver (this was not so tasty 'coz it just tastes way too livery for my liking) and just weird food. Most of them were tasty though... we went on to another bar where we met Hideki. Cool crazy quiet (well quiet to us 'coz he doesn't speak that much English lol) drank with us and then took us to a transexual bar hahaha! Yes, we went and yup, we had fun :D

Day (six) three, Bruce and I did the Osaka style eat-till-you-drop lunch at a what-seemed-like theme food court. It was very nice. We had some okonomiyaki, some tako yaki and honestly, we were so full we couldn't go on :) Night three, we hung out with Hideki for a couple of hours at a bar and sushi restaurant before meeting Junko for a crazy too-hot Korean/Japanese yakiniku. Ok, this was the moment Bruce thought about killing me. I'd been dreaming of grilled beef since our last trip in Tokyo when John took us to this awesome place and had the best beef... so when I mentioned it to Junko and all the transexuals that I love niku, they all said I have to go to this place. BIG MISTAKE lol! It's not fancy, nor was the meat lol... not air-conditioned so you know how HOT it was in this tight little space called a restaurant... no chairs so we had to kneel or pressed our asses on non-existent flat cushions... it was just hilariously not so funny hahaha. The husband was giving me I'm-gonna-kill-you looks and I was in so much pain I couldn't help but laugh and drink myself to a stupor lol. All in all, we had fun. Of course, after dinner, we had to close up the evening with more drinks at another bar :D

There is just too much to talk about to put them in black and white. Like the relationship pyramid that all these Japanese we met on this trip... who is sleeping with who, who's bf is actually married with a kid, who's paying a 7k alimony a month or who is impotent and who is about to get married but not dumping the lover lol. It's a trip! The watermelon so square it doesn't look real... People from Osaka are awesome and fun and crazy! Can't wait to get back there... but only if I get to check into a bigger hotel!!! :D