Sadness...

Little girl from Thepperasit slum...yes it is a girl!

The water well at Thepperasit slum

Makeshift homes surrounded by garbage

Lady we lent money, so she can start her little restaurant at the slums

Song of the Day : Collective Soul "The World I know"

This morning I walked to the closest International telephone booth at 6am so that I can book an early flight back home. I've never been up that early. It was actually rather pleasant. It was quiet. The sidewalks were clear of slow walking pedestrians, so there was no walk rage for me! People slowly setting up their food stands. No sounds of the hundreds of motorbikes/scooters whizzing by. I heard about this but never thought about actually waking up to witness it....but there were so many monks walking the streets. It was a sea of orange! Early in the morning they would walk the streets and people would give them food. It was so unreal and very lovely!

I almost got attacked this morning by a little dog. As I approached the phone booth he started barking. The dogs here don't usually attack people and I never feared the stray dogs. So I continued to walk towards the phone booth. Then the little pup got up and started running towards me barking. As he approached I could see that his eyes meant business. So I slowly started to walk backwards, ready to kick him if he jumped on me. He kept running towards me so I turned around and made a mad dash. Luckily for me, he was tiny so I was able to out run the damn dog and walked another few meters to the next International phone booth!

I was finally able to reach my travel agent and book an earlier flight back home. We've been playing phone tag for days. I knew the day was coming, but to actually confirm the date makes it official. I feel really sad to be going home. Especially after hearing it's been the worst winter yet. It's like I will soon be going to the major extreme from HOT! HOT! HOT! to Cold, dreary, snowy and depressing. The funny thing, is that when Reena told me that her mother will be flying from the Philippines to Montreal on Christmas Day I thought it was totally unheard of. That it would suck BIG time to fly alone on Christmas. The funny thing is....is that I will be flying solo on Christmas Day! We are 12 hours ahead so in reality my flight at 6:40am on X-Mas day is really 6:40pm X-mas Eve. The good thing is that I will arrive on X-Mas day but at 7pm.

It's funny because it's been over 2 months here and we are finally discovering so much about the city that we haven't due to our weekends of laziness. So now I am totally dedicating the little time left I have here, to live it up. Reena and I will hit the bars tonight to see "our" girls and to finally pull an all nighter. Da Big J encouraged us to do an all nighter to really see what the city is all about. We will be stepping into the darker side of Pattaya. We also decided to pay for a girl's bar fine and really unpack her. So last night Reena walked around Walking St in search of a GO-GO SHOW to tap. Reena wants to find the worst of the worst. I don't know if I can handle it. I am still traumatized about the first GO-GO Show where we encountered Laht!

Reena also has this fixation of re-visiting our "Mangirls" (Girls who want to be Boys) Mike & Goon. I don't know if you recall but they were the ones we thought were young men so I decided to practice my picking up skills on them, but we later discovered they are girls! Anyways, as much as I do not want to see them it will be fun to take pictures with them so that y'all can see what we were dealing with.

Walking the streets is kind of sad and hard because I am slowly telling people I am leaving. I don't want to tell them all in one BIG BANG coz I know for sure my "ALLERGIES" will start. I miss the tightness of the community and I feel even sadder thinking about the people in the slums. There are 2 little girls that I sooooooo would love to adopt but I know for sure my mom would give me 2 swift kicks in the arse because she claims I am not "responsible" enough. I can only agree with her 40% so I guess the timing ain't right to start adopting kids. I would still love to do what I can to continue helping the slum project, even if it means coming back again within the year (hahahahahaha!).

So with that all said and done, I will get on off of this chair and enjoy what Pattaya has to offer! I still can't believe I traded my beach shorts for snow pants! Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!