How to Go to Hospital in Style

I’ve heard people complain that the Montreal - Toronto route is too long a haul for a weekend visit. It's not a complaint that I will be making again. Mae Sot, the town where I rent a house and spend most of my week, is an 8 hour bus ride from metropolitan Bangkok. There are no trains and flights were recently cancelled (due to sketchy safety concerns about the airline's planes.) A weekend trip to Bangkok usually involves at least one overnight bus. For 365baht, you can take the "first class" ride, with air conditioning and somewhat comfortable seating. For 565 baht, you can have a VIP bus. Both provide the traveler with cheap snacks, a dark frigid environment, occasional movies or karaoke opportunities (just what you want at 3am) and the requisite midway stop for food. On the VIP bus, you are provided with a food coupon which you must use (the bus attendants insist on waking you up to get it and will drop food on your lap if you insist on sleeping through the noisy, bright, commercial encounter. Typically you leave Mae Sot somewhere between 9 and 10pm and arrive in Bangkok anywhere between 4 and 6am.

There are a large number of busses coming into the station at that early hour. The bus stops and everyone piles off, collecting bags and dispersing in a hurry. Before you can even blink your crusty, sleepy eyes, the bus has pulled away and is gone, leaving you surrounded by touts prodding you and shouting, "Taxi? Tuk-tuk? Taxi? Where you go?"

My parner in crime, coworker and traveling companion, Brooke, and I have perfected the art of Bangkok hotels, checking in at the earliest possible hour and enjoying two full nights of sleep for the usual price of one. At 5am, we were nearing our hotel.

The taxi turned at the last minute off of the busy thouroughfare into a dark, unpromising looking alleyway of high walls and locked gates. Brooke spotted the sign up ahead, "Opera Hotel."

“That must be it,” she said, peering through a gate into the spacious car park, gleaming glass doors to a lobby with a fountain in it.

“Here,” said the cab driver, pulling into the parking lot opposite. Although it was a decent place, it certainly lacked the glass fronted lobby and the cool cascading fountains. We walked into the lobby and I started giggling manically, a likely reaction when I have very little sleep.

In the lobby of the hotel was a body wrapped in a white sheet laid out over three chairs. About five policemen were sitting around talking and looking serious. One seemed to be writing something down and on his way out. Brooke seemed unconcerned and walked up to the front desk to begin checking in. When I could control my laughter, I whispered to her, “Brooke, we’re checking into a hotel with a dead guy!”

Brooke looked up startled from filling in the paperwork. She stared at the porter who was slumped fast asleep propped up in the corner behind the desk. “Really? How can you tell?”

“Not him! Look behind you. There’s a body covered in a white sheet and the place is swarming with cops!”

“Don’t worry about that,” she said, “this place is always full of cops. They like to hang out here for some reason.” And she went back to filling in her paperwork.

Sure enough, when I glanced over again soon after, the “corpse” had changed positions and put his leg up. The presence of the police remained a mystery to us all, however, and, sure enough, they hung out in the lobby the entire time that we were there, sleeping, relaxing and chatting.

The purpose of my visit to Bangkok this time around was to visit a diabetes clinic at a private hospital I had found on the internet, have blood tests done and attend an appointment I had made there with an endocrinologist (a doctor specializing in, among other things, diabetes.)

I am a Canadian and when I am in Canada, I usually get excellent health care. I have to make appointments months in advance, of course, but it’s usually all paid for and I usually get quality care. The hospital where I see the doctor may be dingy, and the lab isn’t exactly speedy, but the job gets done. I’m not sure what the exact costs are, particularly of the blood tests. I know that an appointment with the endocrinologist gets billed at $90 and could last anywhere from five minutes to fifty.

Nothing in my health care history had prepared me for the experience of the private hospital.

Entering the lobby is like entering the lobby of a major international hotel. It was full of light flooding down from plate glass windows. There were artificial trees and plants and plenty of comfortable sofas, carefully arranged in cosy groupings. There was a Starbucks tucked away in a corner and an information desk directly in front of the doors, staffed with beautifully uniformed, immaculate woman eager to greet and direct those who entered. The uniform of most of the staff was silvery gray, more suited to a first class flight attendant or hotel manager than a hospital.

I took the escalators to the third floor, passing an extensive food court with a McDonalds, a French bakery, a Japaese sushi restaurant and an Italian restaurant as well as a Thai buffet. At the registration desk, I merely had to present my passport and fill in a simple, one page form. I was directed by to the area of the hospital that housed the diabetes clinic.

At the front counter, I was directed to station 6 where a nurse checked my temperature, height, weight and blood pressure and screened me for flu symptoms. Then I was ushered over to station 7 where I had only five minutes to wait before it was my turn to see the doctor. We discussed briefly my history and the tests I wanted done and I was referred to station 5. At station 5, they took my blood and directed me to the x-ray lab. The shirt I had to wear while getting a chest x-ray was so fashionable and fit me so well that I considered slipping it in my bag. I waited less than five minutes for my x-ray and was told to go back to station 7 in two hours for the full results of all my tests.

Results for my Complete Blood Count, a simple test to look at the composition of your blood, were not complete in two hours in Calgary, even when they were marked “stat” and the balance of my fate was resting on them.

Two hours were wiled quickly away. I started off by treating myself to pastries and a latte at the bakery, curling up in a big comfy sofa and reading my book for awhile. I watched people go by. Everyone I saw was well dressed and had an air of confidence. They must hide the really sick people away, I thought. I took a short walk in the neighborhood to explore and came back fifteen minutes early to take my seat in the waiting room. “Ms. Jones?” Before I had even sat down, the doctor was ready.

I had been able to read most of the doctor’s profiles online when I researched the hospital. The majority of them had received training in the United States. Although clearly competent and very patient and knowledgeable, I was this doctor’s first diabetes patient with an insulin pump, not very surprising considering their cost. I also live a fairly unique lifestyle: I’m not sure what kind of doctor would be qualified to give me advice on adapting my diabetes needs to refugee camp life. But he took the time to answer all of my questions, go over my blood test results in detail and I left feeling fully satisfied.

An important feeling, I might add, when the nurse presents you with a barcode and number and refers you to the billing station. When they called my bill number, I was presented with an invoice for over 8000baht, or about $200.

I left the hospital feeling immensely relieved. I think if you smile at a doctor in America, it will cost you that much and my organization’s health insurance policy was picking up the bill for me (this time).

Brooke was in Bangkok anticipating a similarly painful appointment although hers was with the dentist. She feared a major cavity requiring all kinds of oral surgery fun. I left my appointment to meet her and was surprised to encounter her leaving the dental clinic just as I pulled up outside it, not with a line of drool hanging from her lips, but with a radiant smile.

Healthy and happy, we celebrated with an indulgent two hour long Thai massage in a lovely spa that was dark and cool and delightfully calm. From there we took ourselves to a sushi dinner and a little shopping excursion. Since we both anticipated disaster and escaped unscathed, we were determined to celebrate, feeling fabulously light hearted and glad to be away from Mae Sot and all the reminders of work. I somehow managed to forget my pressing “to do” list all weekend.

Sunday morning, we had breakfast in the hotel diner, sipping instant coffee in a vinyl booth and eating eggs and bacon. It all seemed deceptively un-Thai. But then we headed to the northern end of town, near the bus station to where there is one of the largest markets in Thailand: Chatuchak weekend market.

We spent the whole morning there amidst the crowded stalls and dark alleyways shopping for Christmas presents, bargaining with shopkeepers and weaving our way through the piles of goods and hordes of people that descend on the place over the weekend. The whole time my mind was occupied with the people I know, their tastes and desires, and the challenge of finding things that fit both their proclivities and light airmail envelopes. All the while, I knew that miles and miles away people I loved were doing exactly the same and where I was sweaty and hot, they were puffing their way through the cold, snowy streets, their minds occupied with the same thoughts.

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end and soon, our feet were exhausted, my wallet was empty and it was time to grab the bus back to Mae Sot. For reasons I have yet to deciepher, VIPs and First Class people seem not to travel in the day. Or, if they do, they must condescend to travel second class, because those are the only busses available to Mae Sot during the day. The second class bus has no air conditioner, narrow seats and nothing at all to recommend it. It’s usually quite slow and tedious, with the sun pouring in through gaps in the curtains making you sweat and stick to the dull brown seats. But however I might complain, it gets the job done and takes me home.

I unlocked my front door at 10:30pm Sunday night to greet the devastation left to me by Frankie Baby – the kitten that (thanks to Brooke) has a name and (thanks to a stable diet) has energy to burn wreaking havoc in my house. Welcome home.

The Kitten

I was speaking with the two EIP teachers in our office hut in Umphium when the kitten tottered into the room. At first I thought it was the kitten that one of the teachers had adopted and brought to camp. They have the same coloring. Also that cat has a tendancy to sleep in the ashes of the charcoal fires to stay warm and this kitten was filthy.

The kitten who weakly made its way into the room was much smaller than the official EIP cat (named, like every cat I’ve ever met in a Burmese context: MiMi). I tried to feed it some milk. It drank a little and then fell asleep in my lap. Quite frankly, I was not exactly happy to have it there. The thing was tiny, had a scar on its side, was missing significant patches of hair and seemed to be covered in soot. It looked as if it would vomit worms and die at any moment.

Well there’s nothing sexier than vomiting worms now is there? So of course, I had to take it home. I stuck it in a cardboard box and loaded it into the truck and headed down to Mae Sot to find a vet. If I hadn’t been going back to Mae Sot that very moment, I’m not sure what would have become of that cat. It obviously didn’t have a mother or a family and it looked like it was on the edge of death as it was.

The vet looked dismissively at the little mewling pile of dirt on his table and said, “wash it and feed it,” then sold me some milk, kitten food and shampoo.

So there you have it. How I came to have a tiny pathetic creature as my roommate. The little thing was not happy about being washed. It was the most miserable, tiny pile of bones I have ever seen. I have seen rats in Bangkok bigger than this animal. It protested the water weakly and then just stood on the concrete floor of my bathroom shivering while I washed scoops and scoops of dirty water off of it.
Mostly if I am at home, it curls up in my lap or rides around on my shoulder.

And now I am soliciting ideas for names. For now, I have absolutely no inclination to name it and left to my own devices it will probably remain nameless. But if it continues to live, I suppose that in a few weeks I should name it something. Any ideas or suggestions?

Happy Birthday to Me (part 2)

If I hadn’t had the left over pizza to entice me out of bed, I’m not sure I would have made it to work. I had a chest cough and felt exhausted and I considered calling in sick. I had planned to give a morning workshop to my students in Umphium first thing on Monday, but I had given many of the responsibilities to the In-Camp Coordinator, so I briefly entertained the idea that she would be able to handle everything.

As it was, I somehow managed to get up and dressed, munching on my left over pizza as I walked to work. I slept the whole two hour drive up to camp and stayed awake just long enough to give the workshop. The workshop was a little bit of a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants operation as I hadn’t really planned it out well and the In-Camp Coordinator was herself home sick for the day. When it was over, I took myself back to the girl’s dorm and fell asleep on the bamboo floor. I woke up in the afternoon and tried to get up, but my body wouldn’t let me, so I drifted off to sleep again, this time to the sound of the girl’s laughing as they came back after classes. When I woke again in the evening, my body still insisted that I keep sleeping, but I managed to rouse myself and get off the floor.

The students in the kitchen were cooking up a ridiculous load of food. When I asked them why we had so many different vegetables (and eggs! the extravagance!) they answered evasively, “vegetables were cheap today.” Uh huh. I was too tired to get on the case, so I curled up on a bamboo bench and read a magazine until dinner was ready.

When I went back in the classroom I had woken up enough not to be terribly grumpy. The whiteboard had been covered with elaborate drawings and a big sign that said “Happy Birthday Jonesy!” There was a feast spread out on the tables, in honor of my birthday.

After dinner, they kicked me out of the classroom and I waited in the dark outside, watching the stars until they allowed me back in. The classroom was ablaze with lights. Candles on the table formed the word “Jonsy.” There were two cakes there as well, cooked ingeniously over a charcoal fire, which proved to be both moist and delicious. The students were all sitting around in a circle.

My first surprise party ever had a Master of Ceremonies, also known as the Chairman, who started off the proceedings by announcing the agenda. My birthday party had an agenda! The agenda included a speech by none other than myself. I have to say that it was the first time I have been required to give a speech at my birthday and I almost couldn’t do it, my heart was so full. There was an opening and closing speech and songs by the boys and girls and speeches by students and the other teacher. I sat there watching the candles melt and feeling overwhelmed by all the attention and good will and love all focused on me.

The Chairman asked me, “what do you want for yourself for the next year?” I answered, “to feel as loved and as blessed for the rest of the year as I feel right now.”

After the closing prayer, they sung my happy birthday while the candles on my cake burned. I made to blow them out after the first verse, forgetting that here, there are three: Happy Birthday to You, Happy Long Life to You, & May God Bless you Always. The little candles had almost become part of the cake by the time I got to blow them out. There were 24 candles and 8 stayed lit after my first attempt. A good omen for my romantic life this year, I can hope. :)

After the festivities we hooked the television up to the car battery and watched a movie in honor of Halloween. My birthday celebrations therefore ended with a viewing of the most strange random movie I have ever seen: Hellboy. For those of you who haven’t had the dubious pleasure, it involves Nazis opening portals to realms where gods sleep, Americans trying to stop them, a guy in a mask who is really made of sand, a blond German named Ilse (or course), and, of all people, Rasputin. Oh, and Hellboy himself, of course, a red muscular creature with horns, a liking for cigars and a stone arm. Since there must be a love plot to every Hollywood film, there is the tragic longing of Hellboy for the unexplained beauty who occasionally spontaneously combusts and the unnatural affections of the lovely Ilse for the immortal Rasputin. Happy birthday to me!

Getting back to the Sot

The bus station in Bangkok looked like an airport during a blizzard. People were sitting on every available piece of floor. The busses for the next four hours were booked up. Rather than spend all day waiting for a bus, then on one, only to arrive at the nearest town 2 hours away from Mae Sot and get stranded there because there are no connections at night, I opted for a ticket on the luxurious night bus and found myself in the north of Bangkok with 11 hours to kill before my bus.

After checking my bag, I took a taxi to Chatuchak Market. Although not nearly as big as the warren of stalls I experienced in West Africa, it is still one of the biggest and most exciting markets I have experienced. Usually the taxi drops me at Gate 1, the main entrance, but this time, I was left at the other end of the market, and entered into it in the Pet Section.

At first, I encounter only fish. There are fish of all colors and sizes, mostly floating in plastic bags. For only 350bhat, you too, can take home a hand-sized ray. Ahead of me, I hear a strange singing and soon pass a stall full of buckets and tanks crawling with meal worms and crickets.

Further in the market, the fish give way to reptiles. The snakes and lizards seem at home in the stifling heat of the market. There is a miniature crocodile (or was it an alligator) and various sizes and colors of snakes. Next come the birds. First a collection of fighting cocks in their bamboo cages on the ground with their proud necks and beautifully colored feathers. I passed a stall with a cockatoo perched out near the passing people and another with a cage full of baby parrots. Everything that is not a fish or reptile looks as if it struggling just to breathe and the parrots are laying in a heap, panting, looking gray and deathly.

I stand for several minutes in front of a cage with an animal inside I can't identify. It is small and sleek with dark, beautiful fur. It looks a little like a ferret in that it is long and elegant but it's body is wide and fat with small feet and a long tail. The head is rodent-like but with floppy ears. It is hanging over a water bowl, sipping water and panting in between sips.

The market is endlessly fascinating. I lose myself amidst the rows of cheap clothes, of house decorations and paper products. You could spend all day there, but my feet are quickly getting tired and the day is hot, so I cram onto a skytrain and jet into the city.

I have been in Thailand now for exactly one year, so I feel no guilt in saying that I spent part of my afternoon in the Pizza Hut, gorging myself on a meat lovers pizza. I then took myself to see a movie. I didn't have much of a choice of titles, so I ended up watching something called "Proof" in which Gwynneth Paltrow stars as a depressed mathematician. Can't say it was terribly thrilling but just the idea of spending an afternoon eating pizza and watching a movie was fairly novel for me. I even spent the rest of the time I had to kill sipping a soda and reading a fashion magazine (did you know that most Marie Claire readers use 3-5 products in their skin care regime at least twice a day? I think I use one, if you could soap as constituting a regime.)

The bus pulled out of Bangkok at 10:30pm and I fell asleep immediately, pulling the blanket up over the intruding chill of the airconditioner. I slept through most of the ride, yet somehow managed to arrive home at 6am Monday morning feeling exhausted. It was dark and the sun hadn't yet come up, so I grabbed another hour of sleep in my bed before having to get up and go to work. At least, however, I was home. And even when home is an empty wooden house on stilts in a strange little border town without much popular appeal, coming home still feels good.

Happy Birthday to Me (Part 1)

Well folks, this is my first post as a 24 year old. Adult-hood has been stealthily sneaking up on me for a while now. But I only recently realized that it has over come me. Despite fleeing to the other side of the world, credit cards, student debt, taxes and financial investments have all found me. Although I got rejected from my organization’s health care plan, I now have a “prosperity” fund where the organization contributes a small amount monthly towards the time when I will no longer be their employee. That’s right, folks, I am now saving for my retirement. I spent the day writing reports to the Thai Ministry of Education, reviewing our budget, filing the performance appraisals I did with my staff recently and making yet another schedule for the upcoming month. It seems that I have flown across several continents only to become a desk girl.

“Hardly,” I can see some of you scoffing now.
Hardly, indeed.

On Wednesday I went on my first official business trip. I eschewed the 8 hour bus ride from Mae Sot to Bangkok a short, smooth ride on Thailand’s boutique airline: Bangkok Airways. I took a cab directly from the airport to the Amari Atrium Hotel. If it were up to my organization, I wouldn’t be staying there. Even with the special rates we get as a non-profit organization, it is too expensive for us. My accommodation and meals were being covered by the international organization that was hosting the workshop I was attending. I arrived the evening before the workshop started and after a long, hot shower, went down to the hotel spa where I indulged in a professional haircut.

For those of you who haven’t seen me, I haven’t cut my hair for over a year, since leaving for Thailand. Among the people with whom I work, long hair is considered the source of a woman’s power. Some Karen women have incredible long hair, down to their knees. A Long-Hair Contest is actually part of one traditional celebration in the refugee camp where I work. Unfortunately, long hair is not for me. I tried to grow it out, I really did. But it was such a pleasure to have short hair again, nothing damp and sticking to the back of my neck.

The workshop was long and intense. Every day we worked from 8:30am until at least 6pm. In the workshop’s favor, the lunch break included the most luxurious buffet imaginable for a girl who eats mostly rice and boiled vegetables. Whole plates of cheeses, grainy breads, and platters of sushi. Breakfast was equally delectable: a poolside buffet on a rooftop terrace looking down at the city with an omelet chef and whole wheat croissants and fresh fruit and even vegemite. Coffee breaks had espressos and tea along with cheesecakes and hot mini quiches. For this very reason, my coworkers were all a bit jealous about my attending this workshop.

The luxury and the food were a necessity however. There was not a moment that I, and the other workshop members, were not engaged in thinking, discussing, answering questions, acting out role plays, reading, making decisions, trying to apply knowledge. There was an incredible amount of knowledge packed into two days, and despite the heavy pace, much of the agenda had to be scrapped. Meanwhile, we waded, as best we could, through the dense material involving legal background, management practice, creating policy and case studies.

The topic of the workshop: managing investigations into sexual abuse and exploitation of beneficiaries by aid workers and preventing such abuses by creating a culture of safety. I can’t tell you any of the stories that I heard during that workshop, because I respect the confidentiality of the speakers, but it struck me that as the white middle-class optimist that I am, I am so shielded from the great amount of sh*t that goes on in this world. Honestly, sometimes it is so hard to believe the unthinkably awful things people do to each other, and worse, how they are able to rationalize their behavior as normal.

Enough about that. I mention it only to tell you how I spent my birthday: in a fabulous hotel, talking about terrible things. It was not all bleak, however. To begin with, the workshop was very action focused and there is a lot I can do with the information and skills that I gained. As a matter of fact, now that I am back at my desk in Mae Sot, I have already started and that feels good. It feels good to be doing something. Secondly, during one of those ice-breakers that we all know so well, it came out that it was my birthday. The facilitators of the workshop ordered a chocolate cake from the hotel which arrived in the late afternoon, much to my surprise. It had candles and everything and I stood there in a circle of strangers as they sung me Happy Birthday. The cake had unidentified nuts, so I couldn’t eat it, but the thought was filling and sweet enough.

We finished up Friday night around 6pm and I felt drained. Nevertheless, I jetted off in a cab to a new hotel, threw my things on the bed, jumped in the shower and got dressed and was on a boat heading down to the Shangri-La hotel for an evening of fun.

From October 27th-30th, the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) hosted their tenth annual international conference in Bangkok. I only heard about it a week previously and looked at registering only to find that the costs ranged from $200 - $400 USD. Considering that I would miss half of it and that I don’t get paid in USD, there was very little chance of my being an official guest. But when a workshop boasts over 2000 participants, there is a fairly large chance that I would be able to slip in unnoticed.

So I got on a boat and sped down the black river to one of THE most posh hotels in the city. There is no better way to travel through the great monster that is Bangkok. The river is wide and open, so you travel with the breeze in your face and a feeling of space that you find almost nowhere else in the city. At night, the shore is ablaze with lights, during the day, temple rooftops glitter in the sun.

It was no surprise that I was able to slip into the Gala Evening at the Shangri-La. It was a surprise that I ran into the one person I knew would be there almost immediately: a Scottish Professor I had met a few summers previously. I sipped red wine with her and her partner for awhile while the band played and then while the DJ started heating things up, but very soon the two of them pleaded exhaustion and retired. They had introduced me to a few people but I hadn’t really latched onto any one or any groups, so I drifted around the dance floor a bit, generally enjoying myself. It is a beautiful thing to see such a large group of diverse women, in all their different styles of dress, after such a long day of talking about all the problems they face in the world, out there together on the dance floor, shaking whatever it is they have to shake. I tell you, it is a sight guaranteed to make you smile and it certainly lifted my spirits after a long day. The high moment came when the DJ played a song that sounded so familiar, I didn’t even notice it at first. Immediately, a lot of African women started screaming and hit the dance floor. It was the number one hit while I was in Benin. They used to play it so often that we all would groan when it came on. But when a friend of mine made me a CD with that song back in Canada, I found how much I love it. Every time I hear that song, all of Africa comes flooding back to me. So I found myself shaking my booty like it hasn’t been shaken since 2000, amidst a large crowd of women who can shake their booty with far more style than I, but we were all smiles and laughter and red wine.

The Shangri-La is an enormous hotel with many layers, floors, wings, stairwells and secret (or so it seems sometimes) passages. It has had so many additions put onto it that the floor plan no longer makes much sense. The AWID conference was spread out throughout the hotel including uncountable meeting and conference rooms along with a space providing free massage and an internet corner. Every two hour block presents itself with at least ten workshop choices. Impossible to pick. I was in workshops from 9am to 7pm on Saturday, so naturally I availed myself of the free coffee and snacks and of the buffet lunch. I listened to women from all over the world running, researching and participating in amazing programs. I chatted with women from countries you rarely hear about in the course of your average North-American life and filled almost every moment with new learning.

The busses and boats taking people to the Celebration Dinner left at 7pm, just after I finished my last workshop, so naturally, I came along.

We cruised up the river to the Royal Thai Naval Academy, where tables covered in white linen had been set up on the lawn and sailors in full uniform served us unlimited quantities of wine. After all the official speeches, a Thai drag show performed. It was quite strange to see the flamboyant performance amidst the formal setting, and fabulous to see the feminists get up and dance, and crowd around the stage at the few moments of near nudity.

I sat at a table with the Scottish Professor and a woman I had been trying to meet in Montreal for a long time but who had always eluded me. Also at the table were women who are key activists in the Vagina Monologues campaigns in the Middle East (introduced to me as “The Vagina Queen” and “The Vagina Princess.”) I cannot tell you how much I admire the work that these women do. And there I was joking around with them as the night got raunchier and raunchier and saucier and saucier. Most of the women at the table as the night wore on worked on issues related to Kosovo, Bosnia and Croatia, and this, and other things, made me feel so out of my depths but also so stimulated.

Finally, the sailors cut off our wine and herded us back to the boats. Everyone was heading back to their hotel, so I decided to join them. Even though the bar and pool were closed, we collapsed by the pool and ordered gin and tonics. Actually, I went to the bathroom and somehow the gin and tonics continued to materialize. Who ordered and who paid for them, I am still uncertain.

And the evening went on from there, in a wash of delicious Middle-Eastern accents and fabulous conversation. It was inevitable that we should all strip and invade the pool. Some time after, sitting in our wet underwear, the women started singing me Happy Birthday. It was quite fabulous. When everyone decided to call it a night, one of the women who wasn’t sharing a room invited me up to hers and so I got to indulge in yet another night of luxury, this time at the Menam Hotel, not quite as fabulous as the Shangri-La but definitely better than the guesthouse where I was staying for the weekend.

So of course, I availed myself of the fabulous buffet breakfast in the morning and the lovely coffee which was so necessary before hitting the last morning session at the Shangri-La. I hopped in a cab with a presenter for the panel I was going to: another women I had been wanting to meet, an activist from Pakistan.

I had left my office in Mae Sot on Wednesday, joking about how I was going to crash the AWID conference, but I had no idea then, just how well and truly I would succeed in crashing almost every aspect of it. I really am quite proud of myself.

(the story of my birthday is not quite over yet, look for my next posting, coming soon to a blog near you.)