humans are funny

Author: laurenne

  • Farewell my big Asian friend.

    Oh! Southeast Asia, I cannot believe it is already time for us to part! At first we didn’t get along, I admit. But that was before I knew the art of cutting in line, disregarding traffic laws, hocking loogies, and ignoring someone’s presence for bargaining purposes. It took me a week to understand you. Sorry, Vietnam, for pegging you as a heartless meanie. I had to acclimate; now I miss you dearly.

    Oh, SE Asia, how can I hate your odiferous gutters, rats on sticks, wailing roosters, polluted streets, or cantankerous traffic when you give me so much? Your fruit selection itself has opened my eyes to the wonders the world can produce.

    How can I be mad that your obsession with money forces you to give up your most beautiful women to the highest paying Westerner? Your devotion makes me forget those odd pairings. Your faith, when it comes in the form of incense and candles and flowers and head scarves and monks, is beautiful.

    How can I hate your unpaved roads and lousy infrastructure when I instantly forget the journey as soon as I arrive? The moment I see the Christmas lights around a bar and the corner store filled with bamboo brooms, NIVEA sun creams, and toilet paper sold by the naked roll, I feel at home. And when the lady comes toward me with her larger than life calculator to show me the price, I want to buy everything just so she’ll continue our creative non-verbal communication.

    You know, you really taught me a lot. And converted me too. I am in full support of the squat toilet. Squatting turns out to be much easier than hovering. And cleaner. Except you duped me that one time. Remember when I was squatting in the hotel by my suitcase and I accidentally peed on the floor? SE Asia, you got me!

    You are really funny sometimes, you know. I have been brought to tears by many a menu. Do you misspell things on purpose just for our amusement? You didn’t really mean to write Booty Shop, right?

    SE Asia, how will I get used to living without your curiosity? Who will ask me how much I paid for my ring? Or how much I make? I can live without the virginity question though, Malaysia. You know that I am surely a virgin so stop asking.

    Oh Asia! How can I leave you? You have beaches, trekking, boating, wildlife, ruins, high rises, noodles, spices, men in sarongs, and best of all, food that constantly arrives out of nowhere. Plus, your squirrels are cooler and your abundance of baby corns is astounding

    I am sad we have to part, but I am positive my love will keep me coming back. So… yeah… I guess I’ll see ya later? I’ll tell India you say hi. What’s that? You hate India? Oh, I forgot about your racism problem. We’ll have to tackle that one when I get back. Until then…. Adios! I mean… well, pretend I said something Asian.

    The things I will miss the most:

    Random animals being nasty in the street.

    The Asian soda pop: sugar cane juice squeezed right on the street.

    The formal bow greeting.

    The hideous mannequins.

    The Too Much Butts.

  • The answers are in the holes.

    Passed the flurry of rainbow headscarves, I entered Kuala Lumpur’s Chinatown. Convinced by a pushy maitre d’, I sat at a table in a pricey restaurant on the main thoroughfare to eat some garlic asparagus and watch the people variety pass by.


    I learned a lot at that table. But mostly I figured out why I like Asia so much.

    The table was wearing her red dress that day. Right in the center were two holes. She’d gotten one from a group of rowdy Aussies who were careless with their cigarettes. And the other mysteriously appeared in the rinse cycle. The maitre d’, who wasn’t pushy at all with the table, had found a fabric the exact red of the dress and expertly stitched round patches over the holes. His hands were quite nimble and the threads fine. Even so, the patches were large and obvious. They sat dead center atop the table. My drink fit cozily above one as if it were a coaster.



    But the table didn’t mind. Her dress still fit properly and smartly accentuated her curves. Those patches saved her from being sliced into rags. And so it was… two big patches atop a table at a pricey restaurant in a Malaysian Chinatown.



    Imagine a patchy table dress at a snazzy restaurant in Manhattan. Big shots would cry, “What is this, Jersey?” And the perfectly useful dress would end up at the house of some smart Asian waiter.



    In the West, perfection is always a new tablecloth away.

    In the East, perfection is patches.

    Other things I learned in KL:

    The twin towers are there in the day…



    And at night!



    Peacocks can go bald.



    So can Italian men.



  • Peeps! And it’s not even Easter.

    I have fallen in love so many times on this trip (with people and cities and desserts and landscapes) that I fear my heart won’t remember how to function in normal society. I guess I am going to have to keep falling in love forever. With everyday items. That is my plan. What a lovely plan.

    I cannot help but give my heart easily to strangers… the wrinkly man who tries to sell me his stomach-curing herbs by rubbing his tummy and making fart sounds. The woman with tattooed eyebrows who asks me a million questions and then surprisingly buys me my lunch.

    Sure, a sunset is nice. And a local plate of mee (noodles) goes down with a sigh of satisfaction. But the people are what make it.

    The following are people who have really made my heart’s dimples show:

    1. Doug and Susan – Susan saw me in the lobby of my guesthouse in Alotau, PNG and said I could tag along on her hike to collect plants for a research grant. She failed to mention it was a 7-hour uphill journey through untouched jungle that required guides to machete a path before us. Hanging out with botanists was a hoot. They spoke a language of genuses and species. This Mangifera indica is riveting! Then they let me swing from a tree! I love botanists!

    2. Stewart Family – I met Melissa at the meditation retreat in Australia. 10 days later when her parents came to pick her up, her mom and dad refused to let me take the 2-hour train to Brisbane. They insisted on driving me. Then they insisted on letting me stay in their house. Then they gave me a shower and a bed. Then they cooked me dinner. THEN, when I had to get to the airport by 5am, the entire family woke up at 3:30am to drive me to the airport. THEN, they parked, walked me in to get to my boarding pass, AND BOUGHT ME BREAKFAST! Then, they escorted me to the gate and waved to me as I boarded the plane. Yes, they really did all that. And they didn’t steal anything from my bag. I’m still in shock.


    3. Fergus Kelley – For work, he deactivates landmines in Laos or treats AIDS patients in Africa. For fun, he visits orphanages or Thai prisoners with unjust sentences. He’s probably the most sincere and compassionate person I’ve met. Ever.

    4. Butterfly waiter – When we entered the Butterfly Garden restaurant in Cambodia to a lack of butterflies, we asked the waiter where they all were. “Dead,” he replied completely deadpan. He was serious and his simple clarity still has me laughing two months later. Dead!

    5. Bree and her mom – After a two-minute conversation, they had invited me to the party of the year in Alotau. I saw traditional dances, ate wine and cheese!, and met the who’s who of the Papua New Guinean beach community. And they saved me from Mr. Palm Tickler (see below).

    6. Nick – This Kiwi actually gave me the shirt off his back when I was cold in Sydney. Who does that? Nick does. After meeting the douches below, this guy restored my faith in the gentleman.


    7. Mrs. French – When I lost my camera during a swift trot at the horse camp, Mrs. French spent hours overturning leaves to find it. Don’t tell her that a monkey broke it anyway.

    8. Frenchie – Most men are positive that a woman traveling alone must be lonely and horny and yearning to sleep with him. He had no such thought (out loud)! Plus, he spent hours in cafes with me doing crosswords. And he told me bedtime stories!

    9. The village trek/pii mai team. Maya, Danielle, Lindy, Erica, Anne, Paul, Pieter, harada, Joya, Mads. Who knew such a random group could get along… a 40-yr-old teacher from Africa, a posh 19-yr-old couple, a bunch of hippies, 2 loudmouths, and some crazies. I’ve never felt so at home.

    10. Suan Mokkh nun – she has the smallest voice and emits peace wherever she walks. But her English is what drew me in. “If you know some old peoples, maybe you can taught them this excercises. Sometimes some old peoples have some problems in bones. Arthritis, yes. And maybe you can taught them this exercises to help them. Maybe your parents are old peoples. Or maybe your grandparents are old peoples. You should teach them this exercises. If they are old peoples.”

    Unfortunately, there are almost as many people who really piss off my heart. But they make for good stories:

    1. Bed masturbator – A French guy I shared a room with thought that, since I couldn’t see him through the mosquito nets, it would be ok to..um…have a party for one. But I could sure hear him. Go masturbate on your own watch, buddy. Sick! I left immediately the moment the sun showed up.

    2. Palm tickler – ew. This guy let me know he wanted to do me by slipping me the old tickly-finger-in-a-handshake trick. I felt dirty immediately. To be fair, I probably looked like a prostitute in Papua New Guinea as a woman traveling alone. But still! That trick is so seventies!

    3. Cyclo driver – This man screwed me over for a hundred dong. Jerk! Ha, I said dong.


    4. Dick in sydney – This jerkwad squeezed my boob quite roughly the moment after the flash illuminated. Then, when I didn’t slap him, he told me he owed his baby momma loads of money because his pull-out method didn’t work during a one-nighter in Singapore.
    “Didn’t you wear a condom?” I asked.
    “Are you kidding?”


    6. Bus pukers – if you get motion sickness, maybe you should find transportation other than public bus. This couple, one of their mothers, and a baby sat next to us at the start of the 12-hr ride to Luang Prabang. All three adults puked the entire ride. Not only did they try to pawn their baby off on us for 12 hours, but they puked in bags, tied them in knots, and left them all over the floor!


    7. Thai swindler – A very fat lady at the tourism office with a sweet face and matching voice lied to me about my visa, telling me I had to pay a whole lotta money to renew it. She told me I would get arrested if I didn’t and gave me 10 minutes to decide. The minute I had handed over the money, I realized it was a hoax. Whore.

  • eye-lands

    Now we are caught up to where my camera was chased into the sea by a vicious monkey.
    Yet I find myself on a jungle island filled with photographic treasures.

    If I had a camera, this is what I would shoot:

    Monitor lizards the size of Gary Coleman
    The ‘beware of falling coconuts’ sign
    A ripe banana tree just outside my window, bursting with fruit within reach
    The sand that feels like flour and leads directly to my door
    The handsome dive instructor with a smile resembling a box of white
    My sun-drenched skin now the color of honey
    The myriad of hammocks
    The view from the boat. So much jungle, the island looks uninhabited
    A three-legged snapper turtle looking for food on a coral wall
    Corals that look like puffs of Crackerjacks, huge brains, bins of jelly candies, fancy feather fans, antlers, big wads of chewed up BubbleYum
    Three bamboo sharks hiding under a boulder, 20 meters deep
    My new Canadian friends, eh.
    A sea green spotted gecko devouring a dragonfly
    The bats that flew into my room at night!
    A turtle bigger than me! His little nub of a wagging tail as he surfaces for air
    Island school children waiting at the boat stop to get to class.

  • beautiful vomit


    Koh Phi Phi (pronounced pee pee) is another paradise in paradox. I hate the word breathtaking, but I really think this island on the Andaman coast of Thailand deserves it. If there were a beauty competition among islands, I’d say it would win every time, provided the judges had really bad sinus infections or were born with the unfortunate inability to olfactor. The island stinks. There is some sort of sewage problem, and at times it felt like someone had shoved one hundred NY sewers up each nostril. The putrid stench made cats wail and forced many a fork down at dinner.

    If you get past the smell, you will have the opportunity to enjoy spotless white beaches in bays surrounded by lush green jungle.

    Unfortunately, you might have to drink in these beauties to the tune of DJ Tiesto and puking partygoers. Once again, the locals have found the best way to cater to tourists is by selling them buckets of alcohol. And sometimes they give the buckets away from 11:40 – 11:50 or from 12:10 – 12:20, creating a stampede of frat bros and cheap bitches in party dresses.

    Everyone is dancing on the sand. Everyone is tongue wrestling with strangers. Everyone is getting tattoos at 4am. Everyone is too inebriated to think my joke about Koh Pee Pee smelling like Poo Poo is funny.

    A Phi Phi sunset. No Photoshop. Of course nobody saw it but me.

    I won three buckets of moonshine by playing this game in which everyone ties a balloon to his ankle. The last one standing with a balloon wins. It came down to me and a Korean chick. She played dirty and kicked my shins. I slit her throat.

    No party in sweltering weather is complete without fire.
    Mental note: Butt cracks and cigarettes always get the guy.
    Mexicanas en la casa, chingon.

    PS The last time I found myself on a party beach was here. Since then, two people have died on that very slide! WARNING! Alcohol and ghetto slides made from kitchen tiles lead to very bad circumstances. Do not try at home. Or in Asia.