Sankar

June 30

Today was not a very exciting day. This will probably be a pretty short post.

When I got up in the morning I decided to wash the clothes I hadn't washed through the university in the bath tub. Laura had given me 3 of those pouches of laundry detergent. I figured they would probably burst in my bag so I needed to use them anyway. The water by the end of that was pretty disgusting looking. Brown. Dirty. Bleh.

After that, I went downstairs and talked to May, the g adventure rep, about getting money and when I could pay her. She was super nice and really great about everything.

That day, I pretty much spent the entire day at the Internet cafe. There was a hostel or smaller hotel just 2 shops over from the Bangkok Centre Hotel that gave you an hour of Internet for 40 baht. They also had an SD card reader slot in their computers so that was really great. I ended up being lucky and not really having to pay for all the hours of Internet I used because when I tried to sign in it said there was 13 hours of Internet time left. I didn't really ask about it...

I went through a lot of photos and posted up through the first month of photos to Facebook. It was a pretty long and boring day.

Around 7pm I headed back to the hotel and I had to meet Sankar for dinner around 8pm. We were meeting at the Si Lom Complex Mall near the information desk on the ground floor.

I made it to Si Lom a bit early and as I was walking to the mall complex I passed a part of the street that was lined with banks and ATMs. I figured why not try my credit card one more time to see if I could actually get money. I had emailed Sankar before and he said it would be fine to borrow money from him if I needed any. I put my card in and tried to withdraw money and it worked! So that was really exciting. I have money again!!!

I got to the mall complex and walked around trying to find the information desk. The first floor I was on was B which I'm assuming even in Thailand B doesn't mean ground floor. So I went down the escalator and then walked around trying to find a sign. I was definitely on G. Now that I knew I was on the correct floor I walked around to try to find the information desk.

It was 8pm and I was standing at a desk that no one was working at but looked information-y. I kept not being sure if I was in the correct place though because Sankar didn't show up until around 8:10pm. I wasn't too concerned about it because even when I met him at his apartment he came a bit after the meeting time we had set, but I was a little nervous he would be waiting for me somewhere else. But then I saw him descend from the escalator.

We met up and he asked what kind of food I wanted... Thai or some country I had never eaten their food before. I told him I didn't really care and that I had never had whatever countries food before. He said we should go to the Thai place. Sounded good to me!

When we got there it kinda seemed like a lot of the servers recognized Sankar. I never asked if he came here a lot. He also asked if I wanted him to order for us, how hungry I was, and how adventurous I was with food. I was starving since I hadn't eaten since breakfast, I think I can say I'm pretty adventurous with my food since I have eaten crickets and scorpion at this point. I was very happy letting Sankar order since the menu was huge and everything looked really good... And we all know how I am with making decisions. Ha.

He told me we had gotten a lot of food and when he said that he really meant it! The table was full of small dishes for us to share. Everything was really good. We had ginger pork, chicken wings (which apparently are famous in some places in Thailand), rice, and a number of other dishes that I don't remember what they were called, but they were very flavorful and tasty. Not too spicy as well which I was happy about.

Sankar and I had a good dinner together. We talked about Thailand (he can speak limited amounts of thai but pretty much only to get around in taxis and ordering in restaurants) and my travels and India (his family is in Calcutta), our families. It was fun. I am glad I met up with him. We don't know each other very well but it was still fun and I really like Sankar.

At one point we were talking about India and the server came up and he said something to him and then said something about how all the food was taken care of. I said thank you but he had actually been asking if in India our food was taken care of on the tour. So that was a little awkward. He did end up paying for dinner and he wanted to buy me dessert after but I didn't want cookies or anything so we settled on fruit (watermelon, papaya, pineapple from a street vendor). I also felt better about being travel sick in India because Sankar said he still gets sick when he goes to visit. He also payed for the cab back and dropped me off at my hotel before he continued on. So that was really nice of him. I kept trying to give him money but he wouldn't take any. I didn't end up needing money from him since my credit card worked. He told me if I needed money to just shoot him an email and that we could meet up before I left.

He told me I should have gone to the weekend market. I guess there is a bunch of live music there and it's really cool... Missed out on that considering it was Sunday night. But oh well. I also found it strange that he went to a taxi stand to try to get a taxi instead of just pulling one over on the side of the road. (Now both him and Brett did that but Matt just taught us how to get them on the side of the road so I'm not sure which one is more correct or if it matters?)

It was a really nice evening!