Schnecken on the run

Besides my personal embarassement of sporting an atrocious red and white stripped sun-effected body, there are always monumental moments when travelling.  We have a laugh over something daily, actually so often that we start to live in our own bubble of confused and comical interactions with asian culture and the people.  Daily visits to public toilets in Thailand include never having any toilet paper while at the same time trying to avoid falling into the hole-in-the-ground style toilets which are commonly used, but on a side note, I have heard, that they are extremely friendly on the bowels…! And how about the water hose beside every toilet hole — from it´s  PSI index, it would be better used to put out an apartment fire.

We have a much easier time ordering our meals in Thailand compared to the constant battles in China – which were always fun and usually ending in great tasting pork dumplings and stir-fried asian spinach.  We succumbed to western dining last night in KOH SAMUI and chose an Irish pub.  Thommy´s love for double cheeseburgers grappled him like the devil and there we were once again pigging out at 11:00 pm with Chang beers and live music!  Sweet deal ….along with the side salad being a slice of lettuce in the hamburger bun and not as an accompainement as the menu stated.  Of course the waitress´s explanation was basic and understandable: „There is a small side salad and it is served ON the burger“.  Silly FARANGS asking silly questions!!
As for the „SAME-SAME-BUT DIFFERENT“ products, the vendors are honestly admitting that the products are fakes, as with 6 years earlier when I was first here, they spent their days trying to convince you that without a doubt they were real.  When I ask the question now & truly only for giggles, the answer is „Of course FAKE, you take back to Europe and everybody LOVE!“  Silly FARANGS asking silly questions!

We had one to many visits in Bangkok to the Canadian embassy-due to certain early morning office hours and with our luck another day being a holiday-OH CanAdA DAY!  After our fourth visit, (yaddy yaddy ya!) as we headed out of the building, Thommy was chased down by a security officer and told that he had a parking ticket.  Of course Thommy said that he does not have a car and that the officer was obviously mistaken.  We both had a little chat and decided we could keep walking and tell this lady in a loud voice for the 10th time that we live out of a backpack and tuk-tuks get us around, or that possibly we should just follow her.  We decided to be patient and see why she had her feathers in a ruffle.  She took us back to the 15th floor and into the embassy where a tiny Thai guy sheepishly awaited us.  The twist was that he works as a courier and he had laid down his parking pass on the main desk just as we had approached.  We needed to write our phone number down for the passport officer, so we grabbed the closest scrap paper, wrote the number down, proceeded thru the security gate and gave the paper to the passport officer. AH HA! It was super funny to see what chaos we had caused and what exactly had taken place.  The Thais are obviously so polite that the courier worker thought it would be best to inform a security officer and she was sent to follow us all the way down to the main floor and wait for Thommy to come out of the loo.

As for our own security, we now have placed a full metal guard up against all TIME SHARE PRESENTATIONS!!!  I know, I know!  The word on the street is always negative about these blood suckers, but we did it! Our 45 min presentation turned into a 5 hour session ending with torture…It was all stunning and we were both impressed, but the hostage holding in the heavily air-conditioned room after we were in the rain and with absolutely no food in our stomachs was too much. We let them down with good, direct german style.  With sad faces and thourough dissapointment from the entire team, we were quickly booted out to the street.  We were amazed how they managed to use guilt tactics and what lasting effects they have on a person-we both had TIME SHARE nightmares that night.  It started on the street with a little scratch & win card that a cute blonde asked Thommy to scratch.  AND jumping LOLLYpops!…he had scratched the 1 of 6 from the pile of 300 cards that had the amazing 3 stars in a row which meant they were entitled to a 100 $ commission and we would win this fabulous prize of cash, dream vacation, video camera or a laptop….if of course we just showed up for the 45 mins of a friendly and interesting presentation-which was quoted as not being a TIME SHARE deal.  Just before she got us into the presentation centre, she prompted us a tad and this is where the little, white lies started.  We had to be staying in an expensive hotel and we also had to be living in an english speaking land to be eligible..along with a few relationship and job questions just to filter out the BACKpackers with no money and bring on the true BUYERS. So our profile looked quite promising after we had re-invented ourselves as a couple living in Canada and staying at one of the most expensive hotels on the beach.  Poor John (our presenter to the „SYSTEM“) thought he had sealed the deal with us and that we were going to join up as fast as we had scratched the card.  The whole office had met and greeted us and gave us the impression that our lives would change once we joined up with them and their „SYSTEM“.  When the push came for the big SELLING moment, they were all hit with a shocker when Thommy said that he would never sign any contract without logically taking some time to research it and think about it over a drink.  Their answer was simply that this was an absolutely ONLY on-site sales and it was NOW or NEVER.  We quickly were shown the door with a tacky white t-shirt with the company name in big, black writing and as for our prize…a dream vacation for one week which means they would pay for our accomodation after tons of exceptions, taxes and more presentations…basically much more hassle that it would be worth.
Later that evening, as luck would have it, we were sitting in a cheap looking internet cafe when suddenly the BIG HOT-SHOT financial guy from the time-share company showed up…we surprised him cuz he was wondering why we would be here if what we had said about staying in the fancy hotel was true.  He asked us, „Are you guys staying here?“…We said, „Of course not, we just got massages around the corner and must check our email quickly“-but of course at this point it was a bit too obvious that we were backpackers and that we were probably staying in the area with the cheap bungalows and not in the dreamy, posh resort.  But what a guy, he walked outside and loudly asked the owner of the internet cafe, if we were staying in his hotel or in the area…I bit my tongue to not answer him with, „You know, where we are staying, we wouldn’t lie to you (-;“.
So we will say a sorry now to our friends and family, we don’t have a time share to offer you…with extra weeks that we would try to convince you to use up!  OOOpsy!

Soon we will be on our way to journey thru Malaysia, saying a good-bye to green curries, daily thai massages, the cutest mango sellers EVER (go Canada go!), crystal blue, warm water and golf courses which fill Thommys dreams.  I bought the KICK- ass TIGER BALM to always bring back the memories but this time I left the disco balls and hollowed out music-making croaking frogs…more for the next backpackers~ ~