Chao from Saigon!

It's been a long week in Thailand, but fun nonetheless. Thailand was a blast, me and my mom went on a tour with a bunch of Viet-american families from the Bay Area and we were a RIOT! one of the guys on the tour is my UC Davis' friend best friend from Alameda! Some other kids were around my age and we drank and watched ladyboy and sex shows. I even watched the ping pong sex show with my mom, yea kinda awkward and its not as cool as ppl say it is. The ladyboy show was AWESOME! They looked gorgeous, more beautiful than models. The Thai guys are so petite and graceful, they make perfect ladyboys. Now the real girls in the sex show... not so pretty, not even cute, now i can see why so many Thai guys would rather go out with ladyboys.

I also rode an elephant and watched all these random Thai cultural and animal shows. There's this adorable little 6 year boy from one the families that we kept messing with. He made "houses" made out of pillows and mats at our thai dinner dance show, and he made me lay on his "bed" throughout all of dinner. Our tour guide, Apple, was hilarious! She's Thai, but she speaks English and Vietnamese so she makes fun of everybody.

We went to the beach resorts in Pattaya which were full of Korean, Japanese, and Taiwanese tourists and it got crazy! I went parachuting and jet skiing! There's this one guy from Sac in my tour group that kept hitting on me, nice guy but he's soooo loud and obnoxious and he won't stop hitting on me and buying me drinks. He won't take no for an answer! Jesus! My mom's like "stay away from guys like that! don't take any of his drinks, no good!" haha.

Once we hit the road back to Bangkok, there were Vietnamese tourists from Vietnam everywhere! Weird how my whole tour group speaks in Vietnamese around English speaking Asians in Pattaya, then we only speak English when we're around other Viets. Its like we have a secret language.

Anyways, I'm in Saigon right now. Even though my tour group was suppose to part ways at the Bangkok airport, we somehow ended up near each other in Saigon, so we're all hanging out and setting up more Viet tours together. All the moms are best friends now and their adult kids, including me, are getting along great. That's all for now.

I'm in Taiwan right now, Lily's motherland, for a layover to Thailand. It looks just like America, except all the women in the airport here are thin, pale, and tall. There's a man photographing miniature figurines on the floor, as he's crawling on the walkway. I think I'll leave now. More posts and pictures from Asia as the summer progresses.

Tomorrow is my last day of work!!!

No work for 6 months!!! I might be the only one excited to be unemployed, but I can't help but feel happy to sit back and relax after 5 years as a working girl. Eventually I gotta make money again, but for now, I'll take it easy my first semester then pick up a research job at Berkeley spring semester so I can qualify for research grants next year.

As a parting gift, my bosses let me pick a free pair of glasses. I chose this cute Kate Spade pair:

This weekend started off with a bang: 3 vaccine shots in my shoulders by a nearly blind nurse, woot!

I realized I was screwed when the RN said her name. She gets seen at my optometry office every month, so she must be going blind. She tried twice on each shot and put the bandages nowhere near the bloody holes. Anyways, I think she stabbed me in my axillary nerve cause I couldn't move my left deltoid muscle upwards for 2 days. That made moving my furniture from Davis to Berkeley a challenge on Saturday. Later that night, I shook off the sore shoulders with some drinks at Sino and V-bar. Good 'ol alki always numbs the pain.

If anyone wants to check out my new place on College Ave and Derby St, you can see it this Friday when I move more stuff in. Its a very nice place in a cool, safe neighborhood, pics will be posted when everything is settled.

Then on Sunday, I surprised Jon on his birthday with a traditional Thai massage in SF. They worked on his sore back and my screwy shoulder. Miraculously, they healed my shoulder! We ate at Jon's favorite restaurant, the original Mayflower for dim sum. Then hung out at Japantown where I got my fobby Japanese haircut from Aya, the layering queen. I really like this fob look and I hope Jon gets a Jay Chou haircut so we can be fobs together.

I compared my tiny size 5 feet to Amy's equally tiny feet, only this time my feet were ginormous as if they had Elephantitis. 6 hours of apartment hunting in Berkeley yesterday felt like 6 hours on the Stairmaster. At least I'm getting killer calves from all this walking.

I'm so excited to move to Berkeley, but its so expensive to live there ... I feel like getting into Berkeley for optometry school is easier than securing an affordable apartment at a decent location. My rent is gonna be ridiculous, even with a housemate. No car because parking and car insurance costs too much. Lucky for me I got more student loans and that lofty grad scholarship, so I won't be dirt poor. Food is cheap, so people better visit me! I'll scare the homeless ppl away for you. :)

I'm gonna go apartment hunting again with my classmate Chris this Monday. Wish me luck.