July 15 to 16—Home Home Again

Dear Family and Friends,

Sunday, July 15, Martha awoke at 10 AM to the phone ringing; now, anyone who knows Martha in the Morning knows that her function is low for at least the first hour. She often cannot speak for 20 minutes. So when she got off the phone with her family's friend's son, Craig, all Dani could say was "Why aren't we meeting him for lunch or going on his city walk with him?" Martha had no answer and no way to get back in touch with the guy in Bangkok for one day only before he headed to Chiang Mai for several days of trekking. Stupid mornings! So, Martha went back to bed.

Once fully awake, the day turned into a blogger's dream. Martha and Dani chilled at home ALL day in the AC, slowly continuing to build the scaffolding to share this journey of a lifetime. Always at the ready to get down to business, Martha went back to bed after the disaster of a phone call and slept until about 1 PM. Dani enjoyed computer time before Martha got to work catching up on the blog (she managed about five days’ worth of copy and got us finally about into Thailand on the postings!) while Dani took her turn at napping. Dani went to the local market at Central and then made a fantastic dinner of fish balls, noodles, bok choy, carrots, and spicy spicy stuff. Martha couldn’t sleep after her intake of Buddhist ideas from Saturday (or was it perhaps the late awakening?) and was up until 3 AM, which was just fine because she also got some work done on her book! We’re at about 36,500 words, folks!

Monday, July 16, we had another glorious down day, awaking relatively early—8:30 AM for Dani, closer to 10 AM for Martha. Dani headed down to the gym and Martha joined her a half hour later. Both of us ended up on the treadmill for a half an hour or more. While Martha decided to do some light upper body work, Dani headed to the sauna to sweat out any residual toxins from the city air. Martha joined her there for a good 20 minutes in the steamer. After taking advantage of our posh living space, we were joined by Sheila on her mid-day lunch break from work. Across the street at the Vietnamese vegetarian nook, we enjoyed a plate of rice, veggies, fake eggs (what IS that radioactive-colored ‘yoke’?) and seaweed soup. Back to apartment, Martha settled down to blog as we finally share our settling into our apartment in Bangkok.

A bit antsy after two days indoors, Martha, Dani, and Sheila headed out into the drizzling night air, walking into the Italian section of town near their embassy to find a different Tesco/Lotus from where we have previously visited. We bought our little coupons to dine on noodles instead of the pizza that we were contemplating—somehow we cannot get ourselves to dish out 160 baht (over $5!!) for a pizza pie until one of us is consumed by the craving. Martha enjoyed a watermelon bubble tea with her meal; love bubble tea! Dani decided that she needed chocolate while we were at the store, so we entered; Sheila wandered off to buy some items of her own while Dani found Reisen that should very well make the grade.

On line as the store was about to close, two ‘boys’ bullied their way into the lane by standing directly next to us and placing their large bottle of booze on the belt. Dani moved our items up as Sheila joined us to pay for everything at once. The guys were trying to cut the gentleman behind us, too, but he was having none of it. Finally, the lady immediately behind him said something emphatic in Thai, and the more-sober of the two gents moved them back in the line, still cutting several customers!! It made for nice homeward conversation, however, as we talked about our lives’ confrontations, judo, and personal security on the rainy walk home.

In love and light,

Martha and Dani