Joy

I can’t keep you sufficiently updated on my life in Thailand if I don’t mention my new girlfriend. Relationships usually aren’t something I openly discuss so this is sorta weird for me but, then again, what is a blog really for? The very integrity of my blog would suffer if I failed to mention something as big in my life as a new girlfriend! So anyway, her name is Joy and she works at the Suvarnabhumi Intl. Airport. Not a stewardess but a different job for Korean Air. She was born and raised right here in Bangkok and lives on the northern rim of the city. It’s actually past the farthest Metro station and really close to Bangkok’s other airport, Don Muang. She actually gets to work by taking the shuttle between airports! We’ve been going out for around 2 months and have been meeting up whenever we can find the time. Our work schedules are completely opposite. She works the graveyard shift from 10pm – 4am and goes to bed when she gets home. Since I have work most days until 7ish there’s not a lot of overlap in our free time. We usually meet for dinner on her one night off (Saturday. Coincidentally the night before my earliest and longest day) and then again either Monday or Tuesday night before she goes to work.

Most recently we went out on Monday night to a place called MK which was really cool. I think it’s called Chinese bbq style or something. Anyway, there’s a big boiling pot in the middle and you basically order slices of meat or vegetables to dip in and they’re cooked in like a minute. Then there’s all kinds of sauces to dip them in. Maybe they have restaurants like this in the states but I’ve never seen one. You can also just load up the pot with other vegetables and things to get a good flavor. I ate a veritable smorgasbord of delights that included things like pig liver(good) and jellyfish(nah). Also with your bill you get a printout of the nutritional information for your meal, but I ate so much that the numbers were all skewed. Delicious!

After that we took a ‘dern len’ through the market and bought some English/Thai movies. This brings up two things. The first is my love of the word ‘len’ in Thai. It literally means ‘play’ but if you put it after another verb it pretty much means to do that activity leisurely. ‘Nang’ means sit but ‘nang len’ is more like lounge, also ‘dern’ is to walk where ‘dern len’ is to stroll. The other point to bring up is how incredible a foreign girlfriend is for learning a foreign language. So far our dates have been about 95% Thai. Joy understands English very well but has a hard time speaking it which is totally fine with me since I get a major reason to study Thai before our dates and then get to practice with her. There’s no way I’d know what I do now without that which is neat because just today I was complimented on how well my Thai has progressed! So if anyone’s thinking of visiting... try to book a flight that gets in between 10pm and 4pm :)

International Relations jokes and Joy-related inquiries welcome in the comments.

one love,
j