Friends make all the difference

I was in Bangkok by myself a week ago, since Jamie wanted to take a week long vacation to visit her friend in Phuket. I decided to get a much needed haircut at MBK, the huge mall in downtown Bangkok, which is where I met my great friend Da. She was my hairstylist and after my haircut she gave me her number to call her if I was stuck somewhere and needed a translator. I thought that was really sweet so I asked her on a girl date to dinner. We went shopping that night instead and a couple nights later I met her and some of her friends for Japanese food. Da loves sushi. A lot of her friends are musicians so I ended up going to a bunch of their shows with her for a week, which is how I met Bom. He plays the guitar and is damn good at it too. Da has a great condo in Bangkok, so I stayed at her place, which was incredibly generous. I am teaching them English and they are teaching me Thai. There is definitely a language barrier sometimes and things get lost in translation, but it somehow works out.

The day after I befriended Da, I went on a search for a restaurant I had read about in my Lonely Planet Bangkok. It was hard to locate so on the walk there I stopped at a small restaurant on the corner to ask them if they knew where the other restaurant was. They pointed me to it, since of course it was just across the street, but it was closed. I ended up eating at the place on the corner instead. The cook was super nice and he knew English really well since he had lived in San Francisco and there was a girl there who I thought was beautiful. She was also really friendly and they were all curious as to why I was traveling alone. She asked where I was headed for the day and I told her I was going to walk to find this bookstore. She said she had a free day so her boyfriend drove us to where the bookstore was and we went site seeing for the day. We needed a quick rest at some point during the day and some A/C so we stopped in a cafe and she treated me to cake, she would not let me pay! Her love for cake is equally matched with mine. ;-) That night we ate dinner in Chinatown since the Buddhist Vegetarian Festival was happening and we met a couple of her friends later at a quint rooftop bar. Isabella is one of the kindest people I have ever met.

Not sure if it is fate or luck or happenstance that has brought my new friends into my life, but that week in Bangkok has been the best in Thailand yet. On the way back to the house in Khao Yai I saw four wild elephants. In Thailand elephants are the symbol for good luck and boy, was I sure feeling like I had hit the jackpot.

Things and places become so much less important without people to share them with and I am so grateful that I have met some special people to share and enjoy this little part of the world with.

Also, great news! Jamie wants to stop her work/research 3 weeks early, which means I will finish work and leave Khao Yai on November 17th and head back to Bangkok. Khao Yai is beautiful, but I am ready to leave. I'll be in Bangkok until Beth, John and Dave arrive on December 23rd. I'm planning to take some Thai language classes and just enjoy the time.