Oh Asia..

VISA ISSUES SUCK. Seriously. So over it.

As I mentioned to my darling friend just before leaving, deep in my rather embarrassing mind I liked comparing myself to one of those princesses that was whisked away from danger and put on a train to anywhere with guards and jewels. Unfortunately, I was really boarding a train to the middle of absolutely nowhere with a plump, fairly boring, passable-English speaking thirty-ish year old woman as my guardian. There wasn’t much danger besides death from that silent assassin, boredom. No, this wasn’t punishment (although I do wonder…) it was necessity.

Well the next week was possibly the most sleep I have ever constantly had. I’m talking midnight to nine, two to six daily for lack of absolutely ANYthing to do. We were sharing a room to keep expenses down but goddam this city had NOTHING. Everything was closed thanks to a certain occasion being celebrated, and as the cuisine is a personal favorite of mine I had been hoping for decent fare, but no, absolutely not. Another new experience: I have never eaten fried chicken for six days in a row before. Nor have I been to the same few shops daily when I had nothing to buy whatsoever. Life’s all about new experiences – well frankly, you can skip these if they’re on your list. Thank god I really, really, really like fried chicken. My guardian claimed she had been here plenty and knew the shops and restaurants but surprise surprise, from the very beginning she said the hotel she knew had shut down as had, over the course of the next week, all the shops and restaurants. Suspicious hm?

So we were left with me, this lady and my computer. Thank god for the computer, but explaining certain words to a thirty-ish year old woman can be slightly uncomfortable. Maybe it was my fault to pick movies like Love Actually, Forgetting Sarah Marshall and the largely thought/question-provoking 40 Year Old Virgin, but at her repeated insistence for a “Romance movie” and my collection of guys-in-college-gathered Kick-Ass, Fight Club, Batman type movies, I didn’t have all that much to go on. I didn’t exactly fill my external hard drive with chick flicks since I had no intention of entertaining. So eliminating anything with too complex a plot (I was not explaining the Butterfly Effect though I did watch that for the first time ever and loved it! Nor Midnight in Paris although that movie certainly has a new take on romance), scattered accents (my ever-favorite Snatch) or too much blood (Tonight we dine in Hell ring a bell?), we ended up with the films I mentioned above. The only one I really answered questions for, to be fair, was the 40 Year Old Virgin because that was enough to weird me out and put on my headphones for all future flicks. The first couple of questions were perfectly fine, and with a younger sibling I’ve had to answer certain ones before. “What is crush?” was a piece of cake, especially after she had just divulged every scrap of information pertaining to her newly forming boyfriend. Which, by the way, was a strange mix of girlfriends-sleepover-gossip mixed with the feeling of unfamiliarity of a complete stranger. Anyway, the one that prodded me to put on headphones for the rest – the innocently phrased “What is Chlamydia?” Er... Sexually Transmitted Disease was simple enough (usually I would have insisted on saying Infection, but I had the feeling the politically correct version may not have spread to this side of the world yet,  even if the infections themselves had) and I just agreed when she asked “Like AIDS?”. AIDS is a relatively new phenomenon here and thus every form in this bloody nation, be it for university, volunteer work, actual employment, whatever, requires constant HIV testing. Yeah I’m a tad bitter because I am absolutely terrified of needles and it’s not like they need it once every six months – they seem to ask for it whenever the mood strikes. Anyway, not wanting to get into the nitty gritty oh-so-appetizing details of Chlamydia, the headphones came on. 

On a lighter note, some "highlights" of the trip: 

funny ass condoms

Isn't he adorable?

Woof!

And the titillating bathroom wall in our last hotel (it was the last night once we crossed over the border)

Damn it's good to be home. Although, of course, after one whole week of hell (on the very last day I found out my companion speaks to God, in her head, on a regular basis and of course like EVERYone I seem to encounter these days, is homophobic....) I still came home without the visa I went for.