Penang -- Week 28 -- Thai II, Jacuchi and All

Week 28
WEEKEND, September 19 - 21
Uneventful weekend.  Friday, dancing again.  You know those nights when for some reason everything is just more fun?  Well we had a blast dancing this week.  I have a sneaking suspicion that it has to do with what I ate beforehand.

Saturday, we're at the mercy of our ridiculous internet.  We're being throttled.  We're pretty sure they have sort of limit on our downloads and they slow our internet way down if we go over that limit.  At the beginning of the month, internet is fine, not great, but doable.  By now, after all our heavy downloading of TV shows and movies, everything is crazy slow so we can't really download stuff to watch.   So, crazy as it is, we make a drive down to Agilent to make use of the internet there.  The guards are sticklers though, so Regin and I have to wait in the car while George grabs the videos, puts them on our iPhone and iPod and then we go home and watch!  Ugh!  It would be so much simpler if we'd just go ahead and get the pirated DVDs!

Sunday... I don't even remember Sunday.


MONDAY - THURSDAY, September 22nd - 25th
We have our air conditioning units back again!  WahooooOoooooooOOOOOO!  I feel like I'm in one of those York Peppermint Patties ads.

Monday I'm checking out local eBay sales, for the heck of it and I spot this.

That's a pretty sexy bathing suit for locals.  Most of them seem to just wear t-shirts to cover up when they go swimming here.  You have no idea how risque I felt wearing this.  And that was a shirt over a tankini (bikini bottom exposed, yikes!).

Hey, anyone want a boob dress?  If so, I know where you can get one. 

Wednesday I'm back to the spa for another massage.  They tell me to have a seat and wait.  Then they come and grab me and lead me to my same little room.  Woah!  What about the "jacuchi" (jacuzzi)?  Blank stares.  I'm supposed to have a jacuzzi bath first. Oh!  They had no idea.  So I'm back out to wait while they prepare it.  It's a nice enough bath.  Nothing special.  It's really just a regular bathtub with jets, but whatever.  It'll be good to relax the muscles before my massage, see if that helps.

The massage is more of the same, only a little less intense poking/pressing on my back and no crick at the end.  The bath didn't help that much though.  She's still commenting that my back is very hard.

I guess the main difference between this massage and the last one (or any other I've ever had for that matter) is that my masseuse is using the phone!  I thought I heard her texting, but I wasn't sure.  Then I hear vibrating and more button pushing with her free hand and the one working on me seems... somewhat... distracted!  And I think, is she really trying to get away with this?  Then the phone rings and she answers it and sits and chats on it for a while!!  "Trying to get away with what," she seems to answer!

Unbelievable!  I could complain, but she tells me it's her last day there and she's back home to Bangkok tomorrow.

I think it's my last day there too.  I get out of the hour and half massage and I'm put in the tea room and then they try and tell me that my bill is like 150 ringgit, when I had previously been told it would be 88!  I'm told it's because I got the 1.5 hour massage instead of the hour massage.  I never said anything to anyone about it being 1.5 versus 1 hour, and the woman who told me it was 88 never said anything about it being for only an hour, so I refuse to pay the extra.  She offers to show me their price chart.  "You can if you want to, but it won't change the fact that I was told it would be 88 ringgit."  Finally she gives in and gives it to me for 88 before she tries to sell me on a 500 ringgit package.  "No thank you."  She pushes but there's no way.

Photos from the week:

In the alley directly below our sea-view window, we occassionally see this sort of scene.  A man, squatting by the gutter cleaning a fish and rinsing it in that blue tub in which other people might also rinse raw, whole chickens or even their hands.

Hey, anyone ever seen one of those naked boy lamps?  (scroll down in the link to see what I mean)  They are so cute/funny.  I couldn't help but think of them when my naked boy was walking around the apartment with this hat on his head.

And Reem, we've been finding that the shirt that you gave Regin is maybe just a little too appropriate for him.  That devil tail sure belongs right on his backside when he's doing something like this:

Nothing is safe!

Here's Regin eating a sandwich, when for the first time it hasn't been cut into bite-sized pieces.  Such a big boy.

He avoids the crust just like every other kid.

Oh and he's been drinking on his own from a big boy cup for ages now.