Thailand 2012: Day 1

First stop! Thai boat noodles from "Doong Deng Dai"
My sister's poor driver was waiting for me for 2 hours though. Anyways, I finally got to my sister's place around 4 am. Then napped for about an hour and a half. By 6am every one was up to go "Tak Baht" which is kind of like a morning offering to the monks. Thai monks walk bare feet early in the morning for their food for the day. People would line up in the morning to give them offerings including food, flowers, etc.

After that, I ate... and ate... and ate... OMG!!! I had Yentafo (pink noodle soup), Kaomungai (Hainanese chicken rice), and a lot of other stuff lol. Lunch was at "Doong Deng Dai" which is a Thai noodle house. The name is an alliteration to something bouncy which probably refers to the meatballs. They have australian imported Beef which was super tasty.
Doong Deng Dai Spicy!! (already)
Then, we stopped by Swenson for Icecream. I love Mango Icecream from Swenson, but they only have that during the summer. boo~

Swenson
After that, I went to check in at my hotel, and took a shower. I needed that. Check out my super cool room at Emporium Suite which is directly connected to the BTS sky train. My room


Dinner was at a japanese restaurant called Miyabi. I think the Uni and the Amaebi here tasted great. I usually don’t even like amaebi, but this place had very very good amaebi :). They had fresh wasabi! Something that's quite hard to get in the US. Yummy!
Back to the room, figured out how to call mom and got facetime to work. Then flopped.

Thailand 2012: Boarding!

Thai money always reminds me of Monopoly money. So colorful!
Decided on a last minute trip to Thailand. Well, my mom's friend who is also very dear to me contacted us saying that he will be in Thailand. He lives in Italy and usually whenever we go to Italy, we would stay at his place. He's really one of the most awesome person that I know. So my task for this trip is to take care of his group and pick up my left over plush toys for my shop.

I took EVA air for the first time this time. It's a Taiwanese airline and it is quite nice. Although since I just came from James' wedding, I've been hearing chinese for days now lol. I sat next to two young guys from US that were going to Taiwan. One lives in Arcadia and the other lives in Torrance. They were very friendly and we chatted a bit. It took about 14 hours to Taiwan. I didn't watch that many movies this time. I watched Frankenweeny, Paranorman, ooh Samurai X (Kenshin movie.. i'm such a nerd), and another Japanese movie about a dog that I thought would be like Marley and Me but it was kinda bad lol. Then I switch plane there to go to Thailand. On the new plane, I sat near an elder lady. She is Thai and was so talkative. She kept talking about her daughter. It's quite cute that she's so excited that she's about to go see her daughter. She kept saying how beautiful her daughter is and that she was an idol, but now is an air hostess and so many people were hitting on her lol. Mothers are so cute, right? She showed me pictures and her daughter is very very pretty indeed. She was a wheelchair passenger, so when we landed, I walked with her out. She told me she owns a Thai restaurant in orange county and that I should go visit her sometimes :).

Onward to my Thailand trip! woo hoo~ I can't wait to see my little Nephew <3
Reef & Polo

Caravaggio @ LACMA

crazy monkeys artists
After our oil painting class, Kevin had a brilliant idea that we all should go to LACMA for the Caravaggio show. Javiar, Jose, and Amina also joined us. Javiar and Jose just came from Spain a month ago and they will only be here for 3 months. It's also my first time hanging out with Amina outside of class. I'm so glad that we all could go together. There were so many people since it's the first day of the show. I think Kevin was a little sad because he thought there would be more Caravaggio artworks, but it seems like most of the artworks were by his students or the other classical artists that he'd inspired. The artworks were still beautiful though. I also learnt that Caravaggio's first name is Michelangelo! I didn't know that before XD. It's been a while that I got to hang out with a big group of people, so it was a lot of fun too. Thanks to Kevin! yay! As usual, we weren't allowed to take most of the pictures inside. There were some exceptions, but of course the "no photo" signs were next to the ones I really like :(.
There were also some other areas, but we ran out of time. In the american art section, I thought this was cool. I want one! lol
very cool drawers design.

Talisman enchanted Tattoo

I just got a tattoo. My mom actually persuaded me to do it for good luck. It's an old thai tradition that dated back for a very long time. This tattoo is actually a spell that works kind of like a talisman to ward off evil spirits and bring you luck. It consists of 5 lines of scripts. The master that did the tattoo is very skilled and hard to find. There are a lot of copies of his designs, but I got the real person >:D.

I like that this looks pretty and the lettering is very interesting. Plus it also serve as a charm. He was so skilled. It took him only 15 min. It was done with a bamboo stick. For thai talisman type tattoo, you can choose to have it done with oil (which is invisible) or with ink. I chose the ink because I think the design is pretty plus I like it as a memory. For one, if I'm going to get a tattoo, it felt nice to have it done the traditional way. I feel like I'm preserving our tradition somehow lol. Secondly, it's something that my mom felt strongly about. I know she loves me very much and it's a charm that she wanted on me, so it's also a reminder of the love from my mom <3. It went by pretty quickly. You have to pray as he's putting the tattoo on you. I think my tolerance for pain is quite high. I didn't move at all. Everyone else said I looked so zen lol. Other people would flinch or cry :(. Overall, it was a very interesting experience.
My back
Not my back, but that's the process. He blesses you afterwards too.

Surrealism Show @ LACMA

I like how the art extends over to the sidewalls.
Mitsu wanted to go check out the Surrealism show at LACMA even though we are both not really into surrealism art lol. I like some of them, but most of them I didn't really get it. A lot were kind of scary and super weird too. I mean I'm into weird art, but these were REALLLY weird lol. It was nice that I get to see a lot of the originals from famous surreal artists though. I remember that my friend, Lak, was very into Max Ernst, and I finally got to see some of those pieces. When we worked together, he had his book and we used to always say Loplop (randomly) since it's Max Ernst alter-ego that's a one eye chicken (see? Weird!! but I have weird friends so I'm quite odd sometimes too. It's your friends' influence, you know lol).

They didn't let us take any pictures inside at all, so I don't have anything to post for the Surreal art section :(. We did explore the other sections of the museums and they were very interesting to me though. I really liked the Polynesian artifacts section. I think if you are into character designs, those artifacts are such great references! There were crazy masks, helmets, and some items that I thought would make very awesome weapons (in my head). I was so excited because of all the possibilities. I also liked the Japanese art section. They have miniature sculptures that were like an inch or two inches tall that were super intricate.
For lunch, we went to Toscana in Brentwood for Vongole and Shrimp Gnocchi with vodka sauce. Desserts were from Harajuku Crepe in Beverly Hills. First of all, I love Japanese Crepes because unlike french crepes, they have a little bit of a crispy texture on the outer edges. They are also not as mushy as the french ones. The thing that makes Harajuku crepe special to me is that it's the only place that I know that serves flavored crepe batter. I got an Earl Gray flavored one with homemade Mochi and vanilla ice-cream. My friend got a green tea flavored crepe with Black Sesame Ice-cream. They were so delicious. :)