Monthly R.E.P.O.R.T
Are people still doing these?
After a couple months of absence on here (except for when I posted short fiction) caused by a mental breakdown I come with a summer vacation R.E.P.O.R.T!
alternate title: Thailand R.E.P.O.R.T (or maybe R.E.T.P.O.R. because I did the E and T together…)
Reading:
I recently read Mary-Helene Bertino’s short story collection Safe as houses and I was blown away by it, I’m really excited to read her novel Beautyland next.
I decided to pick up Safe as houses because I kept thinking of a specific short story I’d read in a creative writing class two years ago called Sometimes you break their hearts, sometimes they break yours, it is one of the funniest and (strangely) human stories I have ever read. My best friend ( dora 🎀 ) and I reference it all the time (I took that class with her, in fact I met her there).
Sometimes you break their hearts, sometimes they break yours is a short story about an alien woman living on Earth. She works in Laundry Business Solutions as a sort of receptionist, but that is just a cover, her real job is gathering information on humans to send to her planet (Cricket-rice). The first time I read the story I found it incredibly well written and imaginative, the second time I read it I couldn’t stop crying. It’s an amazing exploration of loneliness and alienation (I can’t think of any funny alien pun to make, so just imagine one and make sure it’s funny) in a way that doesn’t sound self-pitiful or egotistical, in fact it sounds so human because of its sometimes infantile and detached tone.
The entire collection (Safe as houses) is a great read, it will stay with me for a long time.
Eating (and Traveling):
I have spent 10 days in Thailand and Cambodia with my family and I thoroughly enjoyed their cuisine, especially Thai.
My family and I were in Bangkok for three days (of which I missed two because I got sick), then we flew to Chiang Rai, spent two days there, drove to Chiang Mai and then flew to Cambodia, to Siam Rep.
I will mention how absolutely disgusting (and I mean it, I think that’s what got me sick) a certain airline’s on-flight food was because it definitely impacted my memories of the trip. I mean, nothing in the trays they gave out was edible, there were many strange goos (entrée, main dish, dessert)… Just thinking about it now makes me retch, and I do not gag easily.
On the first day out in town we went to visit various places, a couple temples and a mall where we had lunch. We ate at a place a tour guide recommended and it was some sort of chain restaurant. Their whole shtick was making “homemade-style food”, whatever that means. We looked over the menu, picked a bunch of plates to share and waited for our server to come.
A man wearing heavy makeup (white base, dark eyebrows, heavy blush) came to our table while we dined, he worked for the restaurant and I assumed he was some sort of manager or something. This has nothing to do with the food I ate but I found him remarkable.
I was already feeling sick while we had lunch and I got so dizzy I barely remember anything now. I remember walking out of the restaurant and believing I was dying because my vision was blurring heavily. We took a tuk-tuk back to the hotel.
Tuk-tuks, especially the drivers, fascinated me because there was not a single traffic law they were following. It was just neon lights and glitter and going over the speed limit. Red lights were completely optional, and nobody gave a fuck.
That night, while I was sick in my hotel room, editing photos and wallowing in my misery after vomiting everything I had ingested in the past few hours, my brother was out in Chinatown eating scorpions and considering trying various kinds of bugs and little critters. He said it was like eating a strangely seasoned prawn, but not good, like eating a strangely seasoned bad prawn.
Most of the days we ate a variation of Pad-Thai or some other kind of fried noodle dish, which were all obviously delicious.
On the third day I began to feel better and we went to have dinner at a more upscale restaurant (I do not remember the name of any of these places, sorry!) and I had a pasta dish with scallops and some spices I can’t remember now. There was a lot of dishes with scallops in Thailand and Cambodia. I drank cosmopolitans and french 75s with too much gin.
In Chiang Rai we stayed at a disneyland-esque hotel for a night. It was one of those huge resorts, made of plaster and wood, with a lot of waterfalls all around. Activities for children, kiddie pools and whatnot.
I spent the day napping in my bed (I had woken up at five a.m) and getting ready to go out at night.
We walked around a night market where my brother begged my family to stop at Every. Single. Store. And ended up having dinner at that same market’s food court (if that’s what you call it). My father was hellbent on having a hotpot (while it was 30 °C, with a humidity of 90%) and so we got a hotpot.
When we got to the stand we saw slabs of meat covered in flies that rested on a makeshift table. The woman behind the stand smiled. My dad and the woman both spoke weird mixes of their native language and english, he asked her about the meat, about how a hotpot worked, about the price and size of the meal. We went to sit on a yellow metal table and wait for the food to come. My dad gave my brother and I a couple hundred baht (about 5 euros) and told us to go get noodles or fries or whatever we wanted. I got fries because I had been seriously craving them. We got corndogs and spring rolls and braised duck. (I know most of these dishes are not Thai and I do not care.)
When we got back to the table the soup was already there, I tried the broth before anyone added in the meat and it was really good. I am not a picky eater, but I was still not feeling great and I kept myself to the plate of french fries in front of me and little else that night. The warmth from the pot made our faces glisten with perspiration and we all lost our appetite quickly.
The next morning we had breakfast at the hotel and got in a van to drive to Chiang Mai, stopping at some temples along the way.
Chiang Mai was my favorite part of the places in Thailand we visited. It was very calm, and a good mix between a town and a city.
On our first night we went to see a Muay Thai fight because my younger brother is obsessed with MMA, and boxing, and whatever. He’s seventeen.
We took a walk through a market in the afternoon and ended up at a bar that was clearly made for American tourists (it was called “Beer Bar”, had Budweiser and bud-light and Coca-cola filled refrigerators, neon lights and a disco ball). I got a water, my brother got a Thai tea drink and my parents both got beer. We sat and talked about where we’d have dinner that night while It never rains in California blared through crackly speakers.
We decided we’d get to where the fight was happening and we’d have dinner somewhere around there but once we got there we only found barbecue and hotpot street food places, with fly-covered meat and fish out in the open and no english speaking staff. My father and brother ordered a barbecue and my mother and I didn’t have anything there, we had fries outside the Muay Thai stadium.
The next day my brother went to take a Muay Thai lesson with my father, and my mother and I took a walk and stumbled upon this small coffee shop where we had some great coffee and shielded ourselves from the scorching sun and the high percentage of humidity. We asked the woman working at the coffee shop if she knew of any place we could take a cooking class and she suggested one we didn’t really like, but my mother spent the rest of the morning looking for a cooking class we could take, and so we scheduled one for that afternoon.
For lunch we decided we’d try a pasta restaurant that was right in front of our hotel, which is incredibly touristy of us, but whatever. It was my vacation, not yours, so fuck off.
At four p.m. we got picked up by a truck, with a group of other people, and taken to where the class was going to happen. We were with a young spanish couple, a quiet french guy and two british guys. We each cooked a soup, a rice/noodle dish and a curry. I am not the best cook, I’d say mine turned out okay because I was (anxiously) following instructions.
The next day we were back to the airport and to another place. We landed in Siam Rep at night and decided to have dinner in one of the restaurants in the hotel. It was this upscale restaurant, empty at that hour. They had two tasting menus to choose from, a vegetarian one and a regular one. I had a pomelo salad with scallops (told you, they love them) and a rib eye steak. I’m not one to love fruit in salads but it was wonderful. For dessert I had a coconut and chocolate thing that I can’t remember the name of but I dream of. Genuinely.
The rest of our time in Cambodia was spent hiking, visiting temples (which were beautiful), or swimming in the pools at our villas. I don’t think I have had as much fun in my entire summer as I had swimming with my brother.
Like all good things, our trip came to an end a while ago. I would say I made the most of it, even if I got sick.
Playing:
Animal Crossing: New Horizons has been in the game rotation recently, as well as Red Dead Redemption II. I use both games to destress, honestly. I like to make my Island pretty and my character pretty in animal crossing; and I like to run around in my horse and make my Arthur Morgan pretty in RDR2.
In terms of music I have been playing a lot of Oasis, because of the reunion tour, for which I didn’t get tickets so I wallowed in my room for days. I’d say Rockin’ chair and Bonehead’s Bank holiday are two of my current Oasis favorites.
My album obsession right now is, to nobody’s surprise, (What’s the story) Morning Glory? by Oasis.
I have been playing Chocolate by The 1975 on repeat for the past month because one of my friends told me she had been listening to a lot of The 1975 lately, and I remembered how much I loved them. I’m trying to channel that one photo energy.
I recently saw the new Superman movie and (as a longtime DC fan and comic book nerd) I loved it so much. It was funny and sweet, nostalgic but not self-indulgent, and Superman was really hot and Clark Kent was a fucking loser, oh god, I want him.
(Sorry, yes, I find the conventionally attractive man with the dark hair and blue eyes and big biceps hot. Sorry. Ugh.)
I also watched Gia Coppola’s The last showgirl starring Pamela Anderson and I was blown away. I sobbed on a plane. I really don’t have much to say about it except that it was wonderful, an incredibly nuanced take on womanhood and girlhood and sex and sexy-ness. I will definitely watch it again.
Obsessing over:
Lately I have only wanted one thing: To have a little drink and a cigarette with my friends. There’s nothing more special than splitting a bottle of cheap wine and a pack of Marlboro Golds with one of your girls. Talking until it gets dark, laughing and maybe crying and just letting it all out until you remember you missed the last train and will now have to pay for an Uber— Fuck! But it doesn’t matter because you feel light and airy—and tipsy— and you can do anything. Am I right?
For the record, what I have been obsessing over is not the alcohol and cigarettes, it’s hanging out with my friends. That’s just the setting. Stop looking at me like that, ugh!
Recommending:
I heavily recommend you read anything by Marie-Helene Bertino. What a great writer.
Journaling, or keeping a diary or some sort of notebook where you can reflect, or draft things, or scribble and doodle and sketch. A little portable home, someplace you can leave a mark.
I have honestly been so lazy this summer I don’t have much to recommend (I do not recommend that).
Traveling:
You already read about it in “E”, but here are some photos.
Okay, if you made it this far tell me what you have been reading, eating, playing, etc. I’d love to know!
As always, this one is for my Tumblr angels, I know you girls read my stuff!!
i love this, it makes me wanna go out more so i actually have things to do a r.e.p.o.r.t on. but i will try 🫡
reading: not any books unfortunately, but a lot of class slides and substack blogs (selfishly been rereading my own, as well)
eating: lots of pumpkin desserts and drinks for fall (idc if its basic, i love them). and chobani flips, love those
playing: "inside" on my switch lite. it was on sale and i wanted a new game that would inspire me to use my switch, so i bought it. music-wise, a lot of rnbiana grande and the past day or two, sabrina carpenter's new album (my favorites are "when did you get hot", "my man on willpower", "tears", and "never getting laid")
obsessing over: not sure, really. writing, i guess. its the thing ive been excited to come home and do most, so i suppose that
recommending: i want to recommend taking time off of short-form content. im not saying social media as a whole, but i love watching long 30+ min youtube videos, shows with episodes that aren't constantly "bam!bam!bam! exciting thing 24/7!!", and i dunno. i want to recommend taking your time in what you do and what you watch and listen to. i feel myself ready to skip songs if theyre over 2:50 and getting bored and i hate that:(
traveling: lately nowhere, but i do have a fall trip planned that i might write about. itll be my first time flying alone, traveling alone, going to the location, and being in a new timezone. so many new things.
that is my r.e.p.o.r.t, it was really fun to do. i dont know if you came up w the idea, but its so fun