Rachel's Pages -- Rachel In Thailand

When I wrote this, I had been back in Taiwan for a month and a half. I got back from Thailand on the 6th of November of 2002 and stayed there for two weeks. It was a very emotional trip. When I wrote this, I was on the verge of crying, and I really can't say exactly why. Sadness, jealousy, vicarious joy, gratitude, guilt... It makes me a big complicated ball of different feelings, all competing to make me cry.

What follows is as I originally wrote it.

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Planning for the trip

For a long time, I've wondered how I would ever finance SRS. This past summer (2002), I tried to work a lot of hours and save a lot. By the end of the summer, I had about US$3000 saved. I hoped and believed that my parents would be able to loan me the other half. I believed they would on a commitment from my dad. Well, I have to be careful about taking what he says for granted, because his memory is probably even worse than mine, and he often says things from his heart rather than things that make sense with his checkbook. He's very kind and I'm very grateful to him, but I know that I can't always rely on him. When I asked him again about loaning me the rest of the money and heard his answer, I was very depressed.

However, the next time I called, I found out that my grandfather had bought me a life insurance policy when I was born. He had been an insurance salesman, as well as a great artist. He used to give me oil and watercolor lessons when I was young. He was also a high official in B'Nai B'Rith. I've seen pictures of him shaking hands with Menachem Begin. And he was also very generous, because he bought me and all his other grandchildren a life insurance policy when we were born. Now, thirty years after the policy was purchased, the dividends had long since paid off the fees, and in fact built up a nice little nest egg of extra dividends against which I could borrow -- about US$6000.

Well, of course I was going to do so! I may never be able to pay back the amount I borrowed against, but then, that just means that the death benefit is lessened. I don't know if that will ever matter. I don't have a boyfriend, much less a husband, who could ever be affected by that. As it is, if I died, my parents would need enough to ship my body back to the States and enough to ship all my stuff or burn it or whatever.

As soon as I found out the possibility of taking out a loan, I called the insurance company and checked on it. Yep, US$6000 was mine for the asking. I scheduled a vacation for when it would work with others' schedules: the end of October into the beginning of November, 2002. It was strange to see the date slowly coalescing into reality. A date I'd dreamed of for so long was slowly pulling itself into physical form, like an image forming in a hazy crystal ball.

I started making preparations. I e-mailed back and forth with the staff of my chosen surgeon, Dr. Preecha. You can see all the info they've put on the web at www.zundara.com. [Note: as of late 2004, his main site is now at http://www.pai.co.th/. Zundara was apparently just a transitional site; it is now dead.] His main nurse, Ms. Morakot, was very helpful with my concerns, though not perfectly so.

One of the things I found out early on is that they no longer do any surgeries at Bumrungrad Hospital. They now do all surgeries at Bangkok Nursing Home (BNH) Hospital. I guess I could've figured that out had I done a bit more research into people who've had their SRS recently -- this fact is quite clear from Heather's Guide and Jan Gabrielson's page, or any of the other personal experiences catalogued at Anne Lawrence's excellent site. But in any case, I found out a bit late and had to rethink hotel plans for myself and my dad (see below).

In general, my correspondence with Ms. Morakot was great. She answered most of my questions very clearly. Her English is excellent, but not perfect, and she either missed or just didn't answer a couple of my questions. There were also several things she didn't tell me which I think she should've. For example, she said she'd arrange a driver to meet me at the airport, but she didn't say that the guy would ask me for 700 Baht (about US$20 or so). I had assumed it would be free. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

I also ran around trying to get letters from my doctors. The problem is, my doctors are Taiwanese and the surgeons they usually deal with are also Taiwanese, so they didn't have much experience writing English referral letters. This was a big problem, because if I wrote to Dr. Preecha's clinic asking how to phrase the letters, it would surely seem like I was trying to fake them. Well, after trying to guess a dozen different ways to write the letters, I finally just asked Ms. Morakot how to phrase the letters, and she told me that my doctors could actually just write Chinese. I kind of wished I had asked earlier.

Another thing to take care of was my dad. He volunteered to come and stay with me during my trip. Since neither he nor my mom are rich, it was pretty heartwarming to hear. I had to coordinate his schedule with mine, and tell the clinic how to pick him up from the airport. There was never any problem with him staying in the hospital with me, though, which was very nice. At least for a couple days after surgery, I needed someone else in the room with me, if only for psychological comfort.

For a time, another friend looked set to go with me, too. She was looking for somewhere to go for a vacation, mostly because a friend of hers had just cancelled on her, ruining plans to take a grand tour of China. She was heartbroken when she couldn't go to China, so naturally I offered coming with me to Thailand. She accepted immediately. After a couple weeks of trying to pin down details, we got a general plan set out. She would come to Thailand about the time my dad was going to leave. This would've been immensely helpful to me -- having someone else to help me to the airport, walking around to do more sightseeing, etc. However, about a week before I was set to leave, she told me she couldn't go. She had been planning all along to go home to Canada once she was done in Thailand, and she had now heard that her grandmother was going to her house in Canada. The only way for her to see her grandmother was to go back to Canada ASAP. That meant cancelling her plans to go to Thailand.

I'm still not sure how I feel about that. She has cancelled on important plans with me before, and I now feel like I can't trust her, at least not with big, important things. Should I forgive her? Probably. Will I? Well, I've got a couple months before she gets back from Canada. Time will tell.

Finally, I got my tickets. Once I had the flight numbers, I gave them to Ms. Morakot, and she derived a surgery date from that: October 24, 2002. It was a bit weird realizing the actual date had now been set, when just a year ago I wondered if I would ever get SRS at all. Things were moving forward.

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Going There

Finally, my vacation started. I had two days before I needed to depart. I ran around trying to get my doctors' letters, buying travellers' cheques, paying the phone bill, etc. Finally, though, the fateful day arrived. I turned off all the lights, and left. I wondered if everything would be okay when I got back. Would everything be stolen? Would my apartment be a burned-out pile of cinders? Now it seems clear that I was projecting, but at the time, it felt like a real worry.

I took a cab to the Taipei bus station, where I got a bus to the airport. Taipei's international airport is actually pretty far away. Finally, I got to the airport and checked in.

Checking in is always a problem. My passport still has my old name as well as that little "m," both of which are annoying. But this time I was lucky; they went with my present appearance rather than the annoying indicators of my passport. After an hour of waiting, I got on the plane.

The flight was KLM, so I saw taller and blonder European women than I'd seen in a long time. After living in Taiwan so long, it was good to 'get out of the house', so to speak.

The airport in Thailand was very smooth. I hadn't checked any bags, and I found the exit quite easily. There was a 60-something man holding a sign saying "Miss Rachel Kronick." I went with him to the car. The fact that Thais drive on the left hadn't quite hit me, so for an embarrassing moment I tried to sit in the driver's seat. I had wanted to sit in the front passenger seat rather than the rear seats. I didn't want to appear regal or classist. Oh, well, so much for that!

The drive from the airport was long but interesting. I had no idea where we were going, since I wasn't very familiar with Bangkok's layout. Driving on the left also disoriented me. After a while, I asked the driver, "Thanon Silom (Silom Road)?" pointing down to indicate the road we were on. He answered, "Mai chai (no, it's not)," and then the name of the road. Heyboparee bop, my first Thai conversation!

Finally, we got the hospital. The driver said, in English, "You pay me see hundred baht." I thought he was saying "three hundred," so I was a bit surprised when he gave me three hundred as change for my 1000 baht bill. I was surprised that I was being asked for money at all. I hadn't known that the drive in from the airport was going to cost me money. Lucky that I had changed some money at the airport!

He took my bags into the hospital. It was 11 pm or so, so the hospital was almost deserted. The poor clerk at the front desk, not knowing much English, was a bit flustered trying to check me in. However, after a few minutes, he got everything straightened out and the very cute attendant helped me up to my room. He reminded me not to eat anything after midnight and left me to my devices.

Being alone in a hospital room is always strange. I was nervous about the procedures to come the next day, worried about all the myriad things that might go wrong and a little angry, still, about the driver asking me for money. I fell asleep eventually.

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The Day Of Surgery

The next day was kind of a flurry of events. I don't remember what order things happened in. But at some point, Mai, an assistant in Dr. Preecha's office, came in. She's a very beautiful young Thai woman who speaks excellent English. She led me up to the seventh floor of the hospital, which is Dr. Preecha's office. Actually, it's called the Preecha Aesthetic Institute.

	The Preecha Aesthetic Institute, from the elevators
	The PAI front desk, from the hallway

I waited for a little while and then went in to see Dr. Preecha. He asked me if I had any questions. At the time, I couldn't think of any. I knew what kind of procedures he uses, so I couldn't think of anything off the top of my head. Also, I figured they'd be telling me all the little things, like how to dilate, how to clean myself, what kinds of side effects I should expect, etc. They did end up telling me most of this, but there were a few important pieces of information that went missing. In retrospect, I kind of wish I had asked more questions. Some of the questions I should've asked are listed below.

After that, I returned to my room. Actually, they moved me to another room. I had slept the night on the 4th floor, but they moved me to the 5th. I assume this was because the night clerk didn't know that Dr. Preecha's patients are supposed to stay on the 5th floor, but I'm not sure. My new room was just as nice as the old one -- a TV, full handicapped-equipped bathroom, long couch, window onto Bangkok and of course a huge hospital bed.

	My first BNH room -- the bed.
	My first BNH room -- the entryway, closet and TV.

Again, the next sequence of events is something of a blur. They inserted an IV, which was unpleasant. I still have a scar from the IV, right in the middle of my left hand. (By the way, if they give you a choice, make sure you get your IV in your less-useful hand. If I had had an IV in my right hand, I don't know what I would've done.) They also shaved my crotch, which was extremely embarrassing, even though the nurse was a total professional. Actually, I tried to do it myself, but when she saw how I had done, she quickly disapproved and took matters into her own hands. At some point, they also drew some blood for tests and did an EKG and X-ray. I had forgotten to get blood tests here in Taiwan, but it didn't seem to be a problem.

Somewhere in there, they also took my money. A guy from a bank came to my room, and I signed over the money. There was a brief misunderstanding about how much it was going to cost me, though. I had seen the price US$6000 quoted on their website. I had also asked Ms. Morakot via e-mail if I could get a discount, since I had already had orchiectomy. She agreed, reducing the price to US$5000. However, I then saw on Dr. Preecha's website that they were running a sale of sorts, reducing the price to US$4500. I asked Ms. Morakot if I could get this price instead, and she agreed. But now, in the hospital room with Mai and the bank guy, there was a brief misunderstanding. Mai went upstairs to check, and came back. US$4500 was the right figure. I was relieved, though a little concerned that they hadn't recorded the right price in whatever source Mai was using.

Later, I got my enema. If you haven't had one, try not to get one. I felt like my intestines were going to explode. But then I was able to relieve myself, and all was right with the world.

Pretty soon, I was ready for surgery. They wheeled me into the surgery room. Actually, the last thing I remember before surgery was the anaesthetist introducing herself to me. Pretty good job, huh?

I noted to myself, somewhere in there, that they had never asked for my referral letters. That made me a bit nervous -- it made the PAI seem like a fly-by-night outfit or something. Maybe because I had asked Ms. Morakot so much about how the letters should look, she assumed I had them. Maybe they just plain forgot. In any case, it turns out that my running around trying to get the letters written was a lot of trouble for nothing.

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Recovering

If the day of surgery is unclear, the day after is a total blur. I woke up and fell asleep again several times after the surgery. Actually, I was kind of half-awake, half-asleep for a large part of the time, because I couldn't get comfortable. With a huge wad of bandages and packing between my legs, no position seemed to work, at least not for more than a few hours at a time. Also, I had two catheter bags, one for blood and one for urine, to either side of me. I put the pillows under my legs, between my legs, next to me as I lay on my side, every position I could imagine. None of them worked very long. I felt like a zombie.

The nurses came in occasionally to give me pills, take my blood pressure, take my temperature or feed me. I didn't really feel like eating for a couple days after surgery, because my insides felt disgusting. Also, I had forgotten to explain how picky I am about food to the hospital staff. Lucky I had an IV.

I have to note that the nurses were probably the best part of my whole experience. They were so friendly and kind. Their constant cheer gave me energy and hope. I especially liked Ms. Nuntida. She's a little mischievous, but incredibly friendly. Once she saw that I had learned a few simple phrases in Thai, she tried to teach me some more, though I quickly forgot everything she taught me. She always made little jokes that helped me feel at home, and comfortable. I'm very grateful to her.

Also, there was a nurse named Claire working there. She's British, and was an amazingly nice person. She later said that her husband was doing some kind of work in Bangkok, and she had joined the hospital as something of an English liaison. She consoled me about my worries, and let me know what was going on with my continued fever. I wish I could've talked to her more. She seemed horrendously busy, though. I didn't even get to give her my e-mail address.

About two days after surgery, my dad arrived. It felt pretty weird, me in my disgusting post-surgical state. Also, I hadn't seen him for about two years. It was very reassuring, though. His presence made me feel a lot calmer.

He gave me a small bundle of letters from my family back home. I got letters of support from my mom, my sister, my grandmother and my aunt. It felt really good to have their support in such a nerve-wracking time. Of course, my sister did mis-spell "momentous." :)

We talked a bit, about how I was feeling (bleah), how things were back in Minneapolis, and whatever, but mostly, I just kind of zoned out. He had a lot of work to do, actually, so he ended up going to an internet cafe. He also slept in his hotel, rather than my hospital room. I kind of wish he had been able to be in the room with me more, but I can hardly begrudge him the need to make money. Also, if he had stayed in the room with me, what could he have really done? Listen to me grunt and groan?

My dad, working in the hospital room.

The next few days were, again, kind of a blur. My dad appeared and disappeared, checking in on me and then going back to his work. I kind of faded in and out between consciousness and attempts at sleep. I picked at my food, and made feeble attempts to walk around. I ordered a Thai curry from the hospital's extensive menu one time, though, and specified no meat. It was great, one of the best dishes of Thai food I've ever had, actually. At one point, the hospital nutritionist came in and asked me about my eating habits because I kept picking at things and not finishing them. I told her how picky I am -- no meat save beef and a little pork, no mushrooms, no large chunks of meat, no onions, etc. etc. She dutifully took down my "requirements" and from then on, the food was much better. I also continued to recover more and more.

At some point in there, I saw from CNN that Paul Wellstone had died. That is one of the biggest reasons I have to be sad now. Paul Wellstone was such a good man, such a principled politician. He made me proud to be from Minnesota. Without him, I think the country will be a much worse place. Now I've heard that the Republicans have a majority in the House and Senate. I feel incredibly depressed just thinking about it. The Supreme Court has already refused to admit that post-op transsexuals are the sex they've worked so hard to become; what will a Supreme Court hand-picked by Bush do? I really may need to move to Sweden or at least Canada or New Zealand. My dad was pretty shocked when I told him. I also have little doubt that Wellstone's death has made my recovery harder, because of all the stress it has given me.

The nurses were great. They smiled encouragingly as they came in to give me my pills or take my temperature or whatever. I kept running a fever, though I never knew why. They gave me sponge baths regularly, which made me feel vaguely human again. My hair was an impossible mess, though. I almost thought I should've had it cut short before coming to Thailand so I wouldn't feel like a warm, wet rat's nest was perched on my shoulders all the time.

Other people visited me, too. Ms. Morakot, Dr. Preecha's head nurse, came in and checked on me. She was also very nice and considerate, though much more businesslike and proper than the nurses. I think it was at this point that she gave me my bag of goodies: dilators, Betadyne, rubber doucher, etc.

Ms. Morakot, the head nurse at PAI.

One day, one of Dr. Preecha's assistants, actually a full doctor in his own right, came and removed my bandages, packing and catheters. Every part of the experience was disgusting. Getting the packing removed felt like someone was pulling a wad of feathers through my intestines -- ticklish and painful all at the same time. Removing the catheter made me feel an excruciating need to go to the bathroom for a few seconds. None of it was fun, but it was a huge relief when I was done with it.

One of the nurses, Tip, helped me take a shower. God, it felt good. My hair came out in wads, and my privates felt totally bloated and swollen, but at least I could make my body clean. I never could've done it without Tip's help, though. I'm very grateful to her for her kind, calm, easygoing manner.

I also took my first pee, which was messy but not so much as I had expected.

On my dad's advice, I tried to hobble around a bit more. We walked into the courtyard of BNH. The courtyard was very nice, but being blasted by the Bangkok air -- hot, humid, noisy -- was a bit of a shock, especially to my still-recovering body.

I planned to try to take it easy and stay in the hospital for another day or two. One of the nurses told me that the cashier's office had heard that I could urinate and they had therefore made up my bill. I took this to mean that I could leave the hospital at any time. I took another nap while my dad kept working.

I got a call from the cashier's office. They said basically that I should check out right now. I guess the earlier message hadn't meant "when you're ready" but rather "when we think you're ready." Seemingly, the ability to urinate was their deciding factor, and they had deemed me releasable. I didn't really feel like it, but didn't have much choice.

With my dad, I gathered up my stuff and headed out to the hotel. I hardly had to sign anything once the cashier's office had decided to be rid of me, just a couple forms. Fortunately, though, my additional costs were minimal -- just an extra meal or two my dad had ordered. Although the cashier's office is a little bit over-insistent about checking out, the cost for surgery really is pretty much all-inclusive. Meals, the room, my dad sleeping on the sofa for a couple nights, my picky eating habits -- it was all included in the flat fee.

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Out and About

My dad had been staying at a pretty nice little hotel just up the street from the BNH called the Swiss Lodge. (In my original correspondence with Ms. Morakot, she had called it the Sweet Lodge, which made me very confused trying to figure out if what my dad was staying in was the same place she had recommended.) It was only a few hundred meters north of the BNH, on the little road called Thanon Convent. Thanon in Thai means "road," so it's also simply called Convent Road.

Convent Road and environs.

Walking the short distance to the Swiss Lodge wasn't excruciating, but it was dreadfully slow and there were several little shocks of pain along the way. If my dad hadn't been there, I could've coped but I would've been in a lot of pain. Also, I think the hotel's close proximity to the hospital made up for the hotel's relatively expensive rate, which was 2550 Baht (about US$60) per night. If had had to take a cab or whatever to get from the hospital to the hotel, I would've been in a lot of pain.

We passed things that would've been completely at home in Taipei: street vendors' stalls selling fruit juices, cutesy office supplies for high school girls and all kinds of Thai food; sidewalks full of holes, sidewalk tiles missing or upended and incredibly steep inclines down to the street; walled compounds; and stores of various sorts, like beauty salons (one was called "Charming Beauty" in English), massage parlours and dentists' offices. My dad had a hard time dealing with all the obnoxious smells and noises. I was more able to accept it, though the sidewalks were playing hell with my still-frail body.

My dad first asked at the front counter if they had any rooms with two beds (they didn't), then asked if they could just put a an extra bed in his room, rather than the two of us having separate rooms. They said this would be no problem. Also, as it turns out, the extra bed only cost 500 Baht (about US$12) extra per day. Cheap!

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Thursday

The next day, I had to get up early for an appointment with Dr. Preecha. I eventually had about five or six appointments with him or his staff. He seemed, at least in my case, to need a lot of check-ups. I guess it's good, right? He's just trying to keep track of how everything is healing. Anyway, I got up about 9 am (horrendously early for me), showered and dressed, and went to breakfast with my dad.

The Swiss Lodge has a very nice breakfast layout: fruit, cheeses, breads, cereals, various noodle dishes, meats, eggs, etc. I don't know why, but I made a beeline for the cornflakes. Cornflakes with milk felt somehow luxurious. Maybe because, the way it was served, I never had to eat that ground-up cereal powder that accumulates at the bottom of the box. I had cornflakes every day I had breakfast there. A couple days, I had scrambled eggs with tomatoes and lots of pepper in addition to the cornflakes. Mm-mm!

Then I was off to Dr. Preecha's office. I hobbled the distance back to the hospital, my dad alongside me, carrying the bag of stuff Ms. Morakot had given me earlier. We were on time or even early -- the appointment was for 10 am. When we got to the 7th floor, Mai (I think it was) showed me and my dad to a waiting room, where we sat for a long time. Eventually, I became a little concerned that they even knew we were there -- it had been 45 minutes without a peep from Dr. Preecha. I went out to the front desk to remind them that we were there. It seemed at the time that they may have forgotten, but I'm not sure. In any case, Ms. Morakot asked me into the examination room a few minutes later.

She asked me to take off my underwear and sit on the examination table. I had never put my feet up in stirrups like that. I waited in that strange position for a few minutes. Finally, Dr. Preecha came in and gave me a check-over. Everything seemed fine. Ms. Morakot looked through the bag of loot they'd given me and asked if I knew how to use the various things in it. I kind of wished I had thought to demonstrate for her. It would've made it crystal clear if I was doing things right or not. Plus, the instructions they had given me were a little unclear and written in slightly poor English. But anyway, I was soon done.

After that, me and my dad went back to the hotel room. We both took a nap. There's nothing like napping when you're really tired. I've been taking a lot of naps, ever since surgery. It's probably for the best.

After the nap, me and my dad went to see Jim Thompson's house. Actually, the cab driver first thought we wanted to go to the Jim Thompson company, which sells silk. But eventually, we got to the right place.

Jim Thompson was an American who lived in Thailand for a long time. He was one of the people responsible for the reputation of Thai silk in the West. Also, apparently, before he moved to Thailand, he was in the CIA or OSS or something. He eventually disappeared, without a trace, leaving a mystery and a really cool house. He bought parts of houses from many places in Thailand and assembled them into one beautiful architectural amalgam. The place is called Jim Thompson's house, but it's actually a compound with about half a dozen houses in it, including the main house, servants' quarters, guest houses, etc. First, me and my dad looked around in the gift shop, which has some excellent silk articles (clothes, scarves, stuffed animals, etc.). Then we took the tour of the house.

The house was, like I said, an eclectic amalgam of different styles: Carrera marble from Italy, European chandeliers and various kinds of Thai architecture. The sculptures, floors, furniture, paintings, railings, etc. were all pretty amazing. My dad pointed out to me some parts of the floor which were made flat entirely with adzes, not saws, which is incredibly labor-intensive.

	One of Jim Thompson's houses.
	The entrance to the main house. Notice the marble floor and labor-intensive woodwork.
	A standing Buddha sculpture on the grounds.
	A Buddha bas relief and sacrificial cow sculpture.
	My dad, standing next to a shrine on the grounds at Jim Thompson's house.
	My dad, holding a seedpod he found on the grounds of Jim Thompson's house.

The tour was pretty interesting, although the woman who was leading us around didn't know very much about the house. My dad is an architectural history scholar, and he kept wanting to ask her questions that she simply couldn't answer -- either her English or her architectural history wasn't up to it.

After the tour, we went back to the hotel. Our cab driver was pretty much insane. He said he was a Vietnam war vet, and wore an incredibly dirty shirt with a US flag patch on it. He mumbled about various things -- I think he was saying some anti-semitic stuff about some "Israelis" that he saw. I didn't point out what I thought he was saying to my dad, though, because I didn't want to make him angry.

This may have been the point at which my dad and I went into one of the malls on Silom Road. I bought some supplies at Watson's (more pads), and we got some fruit drinks of some sort. Afterwards, we went into an A&W in the mall. I had a burger, fries and a rootbeer float. There are lots of Western chains in Taiwan that aren't in Thailand -- Subway, TGI Friday's, Chili's -- but no A&W. The hamburger was terrible and the fries were bland, but the float was pretty good. My dad got something from the Dunkin' Donuts across the hall. I was too bleah to eat any donuts myself, but I resolved to get something there later.

Memory fails me, but I think it was at this point that my dad and I decided to go to Chinatown. Dad wanted to find some gongbao jiding (kung-pao/princess chicken), and I thought it'd be interesting to see if there was any Hunan food. We got ourselves dropped off in Chinatown and started looking for a restaurant.

Chinatown in Bangkok seems to be mostly jewelry shops and street stalls. Me and my dad walked for probably what was far too long (I was panting and very out of breath after only a short while). We saw a couple Chinese restaurants, but they were all sharks-fin-and-swallows-nest joints. We couldn't find any 'normal' Chinese restaurants. We even went into a little mall, but there weren't any real restaurants in there, just a small cocktail lounge on the 10th floor or something. We ended up just sitting in the half-closed mall for a while, then heading back in the direction of the hotel.

A side note here: malls in Thailand are even more unusual than malls in Taiwan. The mix of things in a mall is a little weird, for one thing. For example, I saw a laundromat/dry cleaner off one of the rotundas in, I think, the same mall with a Bookazine. Also, shops in the malls there have really inconsistent hours. I went into one on a Sunday and about half the stores were closed. It makes the malls seem very unsuccessful, which I'm sure is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Another side note: I thought China Town was, in general, spooky. It wasn't abandoned or anything, but all the people were on the street. Most of the shops were closed, with street stalls in front of them. The architecture was also kind of old and funky. The biggest reason I thought it was spooky, though, was because I kept thinking about something I read in my Lonely Planet guide, I think it was. The guide had an article about prostitution, which said that most of the really nasty, disturbing prostitution -- no, strike that, slavery -- happened in Chinatown. As me and my dad were walking around Chinatown, I kept picturing poor underage women, sold into slavery and chained to their beds, behind the darkened windows of the buildings on distant alleys. That's one of the reasons I still feel so conflicted about my trip to Thailand.

We had earlier talked about going to see a drag show. My dad seemed a little uncomfortable with the idea, mostly because he didn't know what to expect, I think. I had thought today would be the day, but I was just too tired. We agreed to try again tomorrow.

Eventually, we got back to the hotel. We were both hungry, so we went to a restaurant right across the alley from the Swiss Lodge. It's called Pola Pola Pizza. On the map above, it's in the little strip of restaurants north of the hotel. Actually, there are about three restaurants in a row here, with a 7-11 somewhere in there. All the restaurants are pretty good, so if you're going to stay in the Swiss Lodge, it's worth checking out that little strip.

As it happened, the day we went to Pola Pola was Halloween, so the place was all decorated with jack-o-lanterns and orange and black. Neither me nor my dad were in much of a Halloween mood, though. I hadn't even realized it was Halloween until we walked into the restaurant. The pizza was a bit limp, but very good. The bench/couch that I was sitting on was too wide, though, and meant that I wasn't able to use my back for load-bearing. Instead, I had to use my thighs and butt, which was not very comfortable.

After dinner, we were both pretty wiped out, so we went to sleep. I think it was somewhere in here that I noticed in the hotel's book of services that it's actually run by scientologists. They had a page devoted to the "management philosophy of L. Ron Hubbard." Scary! It made me suspicious of them the rest of the time I stayed there. I guess I'm paranoid. However, if you take a strong disliking to scientologists, avoid this hotel. Take note, Kate Bornstein!

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Friday

The next day, we decided to go to the Grand Palace and national museum and the various important wats (temples) in that area. We got up pretty early again. I think I got up at about 9:30 am, ridiculously early compared to my normal schedule. For my dad, though, it was unspeakable late -- he usually gets up at 6 or 7 am. He was itching to get out the door by the time I was ready, but it was hard to do anything faster.

We went to breakfast. I think it was at this point that I noticed that throughout our conversations over the past few days, he had been talking a lot about himself, and we'd been saying little about me. I kind of accused him of not asking enough about my life. He pointed out that, with my webpage and our frequent e-mails and phone calls, he knew a lot about my life already. I still feel a little hurt that he wasn't more curious about the things he didn't know, though. Even though I couldn't put my finger on any particular thing that he should've asked me about, I still wish he would've tried.

Anyway, we finished breakfast and headed off in the direction of the Grand Palace. We decided to walk down Silom Road (Thanon Silom) and then take a boat up the Chao Phraya river to the Grand Palace. I felt well enough to walk down Thanon Silom, so we did.

Map of Bangkok.

It was interesting to see Silom Road like that. I saw the Patpong sex district for the first time, though only from a distance. We also passed the malls on Silom. There are several malls close to Thanon Convent on Silom. Especially important about is that most of the malls have a Watson's in them. If you're getting SRS in Bangkok and staying in the area I did, you'll probably need to go to Watson's. It's a general toiletries-and-drug store, kinda like Walgreen's in the US. (Did that help? I don't know if Walgreen's is very common where you're from.) Anyway, if you need to buy feminine pads, disposable underwear, condoms or any other fun stuff like that, Watson's is the place.

Actually, now that I think of it, on the map of the Silom/Convent area I put above, there are two malls. One is anchored by the Central department store, and the other is anchored by the Robinson department store, but I completely don't remember which is which. In any case, both malls have Watson's in them, so don't worry.

So, me and my dad walked down Silom Road. It was pretty slow going, and tiring, too. We kept stopping at various places to take advantage of their air conditioning or get a drink. We also passed a really cool Hindu temple, but I have no pictures because I didn't feel comfortable taking any. People were worshipping, and I didn't want to be a completely obnoxious tourist.

We saw a lot of things on that walk -- tacky bronze sculptures for sale, hotels in the middle of nowhere (or effectively so, I thought), a Chinese cemetary... I'm glad I'm writing this now while I still remember some of it.

Entrance to a Chinese tomb. According to the small script at the right, it was erected in 1919.

I was starting to get really exhausted, but I thought the walk would do me some good. I need to lose weight, anyway. Finally, we got to where Thanon Silom ended. Finding the dock to Chao Phraya river boat took a long time, but with a little help from a trio of Europeans, we found the dock. As it turns out, it was the Oriental Hotel dock. We had passed the hotel on the way to the dock. We also passed a Chinese restaurant which was more general than the ones in Chinatown, but still not what we wanted. It was actually a yumcha/dim sum place.

Oh, another thing I have to note. On the way down Silom Road, me and my dad got targeted by two different con artists. One was a woman who said she was a nurse at some hospital, then that she had the day off, then got close to suggesting that me and my dad let her be our tour guide before we cut her off and went the other direction. The other con artist was actually kind of nice -- he gave us directions to the boat dock -- but also was working into his schpiel when me and my dad took off.

So, anyway, finally we were at the dock. We weren't very sure which exact dock to wait at -- there were two -- but we ended up getting help from a really nice Sikh guy. I never got his name, which was a bit unfortunate. He told us which stop to get off at, how much the fare was and (when me and my dad couldn't find our change fast enough) actually paid our fares.

My dad with the nice Sikh guy we met.

I was slightly worried that he was going to turn out to be a con artist, but that was just paranoia. That's the problem with paranoia -- the seeds are easily planted, the plant grows rapidly and it's damn hard to uproot. It really makes me wonder, now, if the woman who said she was a nurse actually was a nurse, maybe.

The ride up the Chao Phraya was pretty beautiful. The river stunk a little, but the breeze was cool and fresh, and the sights were really cool.

	A distant pagoda and pseudo-neo-classical skyscraper (with a domed top).
	A ferry, like the one I was riding on.
	Wat Phra Kaew, I think.

The nice (and cute, now that I think of it) Sikh guy got off a stop before we did, but not before he told us that the next stop was ours. What a nice guy.

Finally, it was our stop. We got off the boat. There was a little tourist trap-type series of shops along the way from the dock to the Palace itself. We filed down this and into a little square, surrounded by more shops, and across the street from the Palace.

The thing was, by the time we got off the boat and into that little square, I was really tired. Me and my dad decided to sit on a little unused fountain. People were sitting all around the square on plastic lawn chairs. Eventually, a couple of the plastic chairs opened up and we went to sit in the shade.

It was an interesting little place. In front of us, a bunch of tuk-tuk drivers were telling jokes, eating noodles and generally just being themselves. A pretty steady stream of foreigners and Thai folks kept coming from the dock, off to our right. A little off to the left, where the street and the Palace were, there was a tout/con-guy making the rounds with the foreigners. It seemed at a couple points that someone was going to actually fall for whatever he was saying, probably the old "The Palace is closed today, sorry. Would you like me to give you a tour instead?" bit. I felt like going over to them and telling them or yelling "Don't fall for it!" They didn't go for it, though, luckily.

It was interesting, just sitting there, watching the tourists come in and the cabbies chatting. At one point, my dad went to get us drinks, and on his way back, a Chinese lion dance troupe started practicing noisily. It was kinda interesting from where I was sitting, but he had to walk right past them on his way back to our chairs, and it must have been pretty annoying. Behind us, under some more trees, there was a transgender woman giving a few other women beauty advice and trimming their eyebrows.

This seems like a good point to note Thai people's attitudes towards transgender people. They seemed very nonchalant about it, in general. The women getting advice, for example, seemed to be of the opinion that a transgender woman would have the best knowledge of beauty, so why not? Of course, I don't speak Thai, so I have no idea if that was their real attitude, but their body language seemed like it. Also, as my later experiences showed, Thai people do have a bit of a pigeon-holing attitude towards transgender people. Beauty queen, beautician, prostitute -- those professions are fine, but heaven forbid a transgender person try to be a marketing manager or a stock analyst. But then, I didn't exactly spend a lot of time in marketing companies or stock brokerages.

I was really tired, sitting there. Me and my dad ended up just sitting there for an hour and then going back to the hotel. I was just too tired to go on the Palace tour. I felt pretty shitty for doing that, and I still think maybe I shouldn't have agreed to walk down Silom. That was what exhausted me.

After we got up and resolved to head back, a con guy marked us as targets. I don't remember if it was the same guy who was doing most of the conning. Anyway, me and my dad found it pretty funny that he would try to get us, since we had been sitting there watching the scams for an hour. We kind of played along, and then started playing the joke back on him. He originally said 50 baht for the "tour"; we bargained him down to 10 (a ludicrously low price, making the kickbacks he gets from shop owners blatantly obvious). Then, we went further, suggesting that he pay us for the tour. Plus extra for mileage. Understandably, he didn't go for it.

We picked a metered cab. Always take metered cabs. The drivers are occasionally insane, but you might get that with an unmetered cab or tuk-tuk anyway. The fares are also really low, so much so that you wonder how the guys could ever make any money. The trip from the Palace back to the hotel only took about 90 baht or so, if I remember right -- about US$2.50 for a several-kilometer journey.

Back at the hotel, we decided to do what we usually did at this point -- nap. Me just post-op, him an aging man. Our plan was to go get dinner and then go to Calypso, the most famous drag cabaret in Bangkok, after the nap.

Once we got up, we went to one of the restaurants in the little strip of Convent Road north of the Swiss Lodge. I think we went to one called Bua, which served great Thai food for very cheap prices. Or at least I, as an American who knows very little about Thai food and makes far more than most Thais do, thought it was great and cheap. I forgot what my dad had -- something very simple and not very spicy, because his stomach was giving him a hard time. I had what I think was beef with holy basil. In Minneapolis, there's a Thai restaurant that serves a dish called "beef with holy basil," a slightly silly name for one of the best dishes in the world. It's got such an excellent mix of spices and spiciness. Lots of tiny peppers, lemongrass, some vinegar I think... Mm-mm. Anyway, what I ordered at Bua seemed to be the same thing, almost as good, for about 1/6th the price.

Then it was off to the drag show. Although, for a moment after dinner, we were unsure. We were both still pretty tired, but this was going to be my dad's last night in Bangkok, and I really wanted to go with him. I'm not sure exactly why -- I could've gone by myself later, and in fact I did. I guess it was a bit of the social stigma of going to shows alone, as well as a desire to show him one of the most glamorous and famous aspects of transgender life.

We took a cab -- they are really just amazingly cheap in Bangkok -- to the Asia hotel, home of the Calypso Cabaret. We got there pretty early for the 9:45 pm show. I think we were about 30 minutes early. We paid for our tickets (800 baht a piece, I think it was) and then just waited. It was really interesting seeing the crowds there. Lots of fat older northern Europeans, and tons of Japanese people of all sorts. I got a few interesting glances from people around us, and I think my dad was nervous being with me.

At 9:45 pm or so, they opened the velvet rope and started letting people in. There were ushers to show us to our seats, and servers who took everyone's orders for drinks. Everyone started getting settled. Me and my dad ended up sitting next to a family which seemed Malay or maybe Indonesian to me. There was a kid who I could tell wanted to fidget, but didn't. Me and my dad didn't order drinks -- his stomach was giving him problems, and my bladder was doing the same to me.

At 10:00 pm, the show started. First, the MC came out and introduced a couple of appetizer acts. The two girls seemed to be the current stars of the show, because they came up, one after another, and lip-synched all by themselves. Before each one, and at several other intervals throughout the show, the MC announced who they were. I couldn't understand for the life of me what he said their names were -- his diction seemed really poor, and of course my ear for Thai is terrible.

What am I doing? Describing a drag show in words? Pictures are clearly better...

	The other MC, a quite beautiful woman. She didn't get nearly as much stage time as the other one, though.
	The first real 'act' was several girls in Las Vegas-style outfits dancing. It was very beautiful, but not too meaningful -- a bit of fun to start.
Unfortunately, I don't remember the exact sequence of the acts, so some of these pictures are probably out of order. However, it seems that the next one was this big, beautiful, astonishingly choreographed number, done to a Chinese song I only know as Quxiang. Quxiang means "taking incense," and is a euphemism for sex, maybe extramarital sex. In the sequence, a woman comes out in something like a Chinese wedding dress. A man follows & they get married. Everything is fine until another woman shows up and distracts the man's attentions. He follows her, and his wife starts to go crazy. More women come to compete for his attention. His wife goes through bouts of suicidal thoughts, murderous rage and competing for him by dressing sexily herself. The whole sequence is amazingly choreographed, like a Hong Kong action movie's beautiful sweeping circular movements. And the bride is lipsynching to the song the entire time. When she lifted a pistol to her head, deep in depression, I was really pretty moved. Of course, I was also reading it as the course of a transgender woman's lovelife, forever doomed to look to fickle men for love.
	The bride. The gold decoration in the background is the famous Chinese "double happiness" (shuangxi) character, always a symbol of marriage.
	They get married.
	The other woman appears.
	She finds her own dalliances.
	She moves the pistol to her temple.
When the sequence ended, I was close to tears. It was so beautifully choreographed, the meaning of the story was so heart-wrenching and I was so envious, maybe jealous, of the dancers. I can't remember what the next act was. Really, only two acts -- the Quxiang one and the "Amazing Thailand" one, later -- stood out in my mind. Remembering the order they appeared in is too hard for my already brittle memory.
	According to the Calypso website, the next act was a bit of comic relief, called "Margarita Pracatan." It was silly, but funny.
	The next act was a bunch of Marilyn Monroe, Tina Turner and Michael Jackson impersonators, all on stage at the same time. It was a little weird.
	Next was a Hawaiian act. They played some kind of cheesy 50's pseudo-Hawaiian music while the girls danced in grass skirts. I was already starting to feel intense envy of these girls, and also compassion or pity for the hard lives they must live.
Another comic interlude followed, this time Japanese. The same woman did this one, the Margarita Pracatan one and the later "I, who have nothing" one. She got laughed at, and she wasn't too feminine, but she must make fairly good money. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of this act. Next was my favorite act, called (as the MC announced it) "Amazing Thailand". It was really cool. It featured three dancers in what I assumed at the time were traditional Thai dance costumes, battling in stylized combat with three dancers in white costumes. I still am not sure exactly what the dancers and the fighting signified, but they might be the forces of Thai tradition fighting the forces of modernity, or maybe Thai culture fighting the West, or possibly Thai culture fighting Chinese culture. The music for this piece was amazing -- some kind of traditional Thai music overlaid with a trance-like set of tracks. The choreography here was again really superb.
	The Thai (?) dancers enter.
	The dancers begin their stylized fight.
	The symbolic battle continues.
	What do they symbolize?
	Finally, an overwhelming force (another dancer) comes and resolves the battle. She's the one entering from backstage, wearing a copper-colored dress.
This piece, along with the Quxiang one, really affected me. It's hard to describe how, exactly, though. It made me wish I could've started my transition much younger, and angry at my parents and the therapists I saw as a child. Why hadn't they known better? It made me worry for the girls on the stage -- were they getting regular liver function tests? Had they used silicone or saline breast implants? Were they able to have normal lives outside the cabaret, or were they locked in rehersals by a demonic manager? Did they enjoy their work, or were they forced into it by a society that's all too willing to pigeonhole transgender people? Did they see more smiles or smirks from the audience? Did they use condoms when they had sex? Did they feel satisfaction in their artistry? Did they have happy lives? It made me intensely jealous. Why were they able to be so beautiful, when I'm stuck in this dumpy body with this ugly, old pockmarked face? (Of course, the answer is partially obvious -- they dance three hours a day, while I rarely get any decent exercise at all. But still.) It made me wonder what if... What if I had been born in Thailand? What if I had run away from home at an early age and gotten into the drag scene? What if I had become a sex worker? What if I gave up everything right now and tried to join the troupe? Seeing them also made me feel an intense need to help them, or to help transgender people at large, or to help transgender people in Taiwan, or somewhere. I don't know if this need is from some kind of twisted jealousy, or guilt, or compassion, or simple megalomania, but I still feel it. I thought of going to Thailand to teach English to katoey women for free, or trying to find work with some kind of Thai sex workers' association. Maybe I could help them emigrate to other countries, or at least just give them more information. I felt like I needed to do something. I was on the verge of tears, but the show continued on. After this act, my memory fails me quite thoroughly. Also, it's getting further and further into the past, so I need to get this page finished! I'm relying on the Calypso website for the order of the acts to follow... Next up was an act called New York, New York. Unfortunately, I now have no memory of this act at all, and I didn't get any pictures of it, so I can't give you a description.
	The next act was a basic dance act, with an incredibly beautiful lead woman dancer. This picture is obviously very poor. Sorry.
	Next was a traditional Korean dance called Arirang. It was very beautiful. When I later saw it again, I was sitting next to a group of Koreans and they seemed to think it was great.
	The next act was called All That Jazz. It was silly but entertaining.
	The lead dancer was really, really beautiful. She looked a little like she had African ancestry.
	After that was a brief Spice Girls act.
	Next was a Japanese song. Again, an incredibly beautiful act. These women also gave me pangs of envy.
	There were several performers in this piece, and they were all beautiful.
	Next-to-last was a classic song, I, Who Have Nothing, done as a comedy piece. It was pretty funny, but it made me a little uneasy, because it encouraged the audience to laugh at drag artists. It left me ambivalent.
	Then was the finale.
	All the dancers came out in progressive waves. They were all astonishingly beautiful.
	It was an amazing show.

Once the show was done, the performers proceeded to stand in a gallery along the way to the exit of the theater. As with many drag acts in Thailand, the performers stand there after the show. They wait while the audience members file out. If they want, audience members can give the performers some money in exchange for a picture with them.

I saw several people taking pictures, but I stayed back. I was in awe, jealous, envious, moved and worried for the beautiful women there. I decided to give them all money. Anything I could do to increase their income, and maybe their wellbeing, was worth it. I gave out a bit of money, about 100 baht each to about 10 of the girls, and ran out of change. I asked my dad for change, then the other girls and then had to run around the hotel. I ended up running upstairs to the hotel's main desk to get enough change. I came back down and gave the remaining 20 or so their 100 baht. Then I asked them for pictures. Unfortunately, my camera ran out of memory or power (I don't remember which) and I was only able to take two pictures. I'm not going to put them up here, because I look too ghastly in them.

The girls had to leave -- back to rehearsals, or maybe bed, I don't know -- and me and my dad were pretty tired. We slogged up to the street and found a cab. We briefly thought about going to the other side of the street. The direction we were facing was away from the Swiss Lodge, so getting a cab from this direction would've meant a longer trip. However, we were both so tired, and cab fare so cheap, that we just took the first cab we could find.

On the way back, I told my dad about my feelings. I cried a little, too. I'm not sure if I communicated what I was feeling. I wasn't even sure myself.

Finally, we got back to the hotel. We discussed my dad's flight plans. He had a flight at about 6:00 am on Saturday morning, so he'd have to leave the hotel around 4:00. I wanted to see him off, so we agreed that he would get his bags packed and then wake me up to see him off. I slept very fitfully, and only for a few hours.

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Saturday

At about four, or maybe it was three-thirty, my dad woke me up. He was basically ready to go. We chatted for a bit about when we'd write e-mail to each other, what I was going to do later that day, etc. Then, it was time for him to go.

He politely, and considerately, suggested that I just stay in the hotel room. He could see himself off, and I was tired and had another appointment with Dr. Preecha later that day. I wanted to see him to the cab, at least, though. I didn't know when I was going to see him again, and I wanted to prolong the departure as long as possible. I wasn't entirely missing him. I was missing all he symbolized -- Minneapolis, my family, the US, Taco Bell -- as well as him.

Suddenly, as we were talking about whether I would go downstairs with him or not, I had a huge bladder attack. I had to rush into the bathroom. I think, in the moment, that he thought I was rushing him out the door. He left as I was running to the toilet. I felt terrible -- I had wanted to say goodbye, to hug him, to see him to the cab at least, and I had forced him out the door.

When I was done with the complicated little regimen of post-SRS urination, I cried myself back to sleep. My dad had left, and I was all alone in Thailand. I hadn't had a chance to say goodbye to him as I would've liked. And all the negative thoughts I usually have came rushing in -- will I ever find a boyfriend? Will transgender people around the world ever get respect? Were those women from Calypso all healthy and happy? Why am I so ugly? All the ugly little thoughts that I have when depressed were whirling around inside my head as I fell asleep.

I had the hotel give me a wake-up call at 9:00 am. My appointment with Dr. Preecha was at 10:00 am, just like all the other appointments. I think this was the day I skipped breakfast and slept in a bit.

I ended up seeing Dr. Preecha at about the same time anyway. He usually keeps his patients waiting. He should really keep real appointments, with each patients allotted 30 minutes or something like that, but then I suppose he never knows how long each patient is going to take.

I don't remember what we talked about that day. I think Ms. Morakot told me about dilation, and this may have been the day I asked about using my clitoris. Dr. Preecha just kind of brushed it with his finger and said it was okay to use it now. I'm still skeptical, though. I have since written back and forth with a woman who had her SRS done with Dr. Preecha. She said that her clitoris basically scabbed up and fell off after surgery. I am now quite paranoid about this possibility. I definitely don't want to go poking around down there if I can avoid it. Dr. Preecha also gave me my reference letters for passport changes, etc. I carefully placed them in my bag. They're still there.

The rest of the day, I just kind of hung around the hotel. I was feeling pretty sad, and didn't want to go out. I think I had lunch of some kind by room service. The room service was very reasonable, even cheap. It was also quite delicious. The people on the other end of the phone when I called always called me "sir," though, which was very annoying. It added to my bout of depression.

I had dinner at Bua again, I think. I also shopped a bit at the Silom night market. I bought four beautiful sarongs while I was in Bangkok. They were quite cheap -- about 400 baht each. I've been wearing them a lot since I came back.

Finally, at the end of the day, I had the idea of locating Utopia. Utopia is one of the best general Asian LGBT websites out there. According to my Lonely Planet guide, they also had a physical HQ of sorts in Bangkok. I hopped in a cab and asked the guy to take me there. He took me to the soi (alley) that Utopia was supposed to be on. We went up and down the soi several times. I couldn't find the place, and I could see that the cabbie was getting impatient. I decided to get out and look around for myself.

I walked past a soi full of nothing but beer bars. Beer bars are open-air bars. Many, many prostitutes were sitting there. A few asked me to join them as I walked past, but I smiled and declined.

I ended up walking all the way to the end of the soi. One way of reading the address would've meant Utopia was way away at the end of the soi. Actually, that address was inside a university. I was pretty sure they weren't inside the university, even though I asked the gate guard. A passing cab full of middle-class Thais who spoke great English couldn't help me either. I couldn't figure out where Utopia was. It should've been quite obvious -- Lonely Planet said it was an entire building full of GLBT stuff. In the end, I went into a film developing place that also had computers set up. I found the Utopia website and tried to get their address from that. The woman sitting at the computer next to me was a little freaked out, I think, by the LGBT sites I was looking at. The computer was about as slow as any I've used since college. Finally, though, I realized that Utopia no longer had a physical presence. Well, they had a tour agency in some hotel somewhere, but they no longer had a building all to themselves. I was very disappointed. I had wanted to find some GLBT compatriots to maybe console me. It was yet another reason that the Lonely Planet guides are far from perfect. (My first major reason is that their guide to Thai beaches includes a bit about how to recognize a transsexual woman vs. a natal woman. This is clearly genderphobic and hateful. Lonely Planet is the best there is, though, so they can write pretty much whatever they want to.) I caught a cab back to the hotel.

By the time I got back to the hotel, I was depressed and very tired. I cried myself to sleep, I think.

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Sunday

It's now early December as I sit here writing this. I need to get this page finished. What little memory I originally had is fading. Please forgive me if the descriptions of the next few days become more condensed and less detailed. Actually, that's probably a good thing.

Sunday, I didn't have any appointments with Dr. Preecha. I slept in quite late. Well, late for my recent schedule. In Taiwan, I often sleep past noon, at least on weekdays. Today, I slept till before noon.

I don't remember where I ate. I think I probably ate in the hotel. They had some really great food there, both in the restaurant and on the room service menu.

I also went to a mall. I was trying to find a copy of Satree Lex (Iron Ladies), the famous Thai film about a group of katoeys who form a volleyball team. The movie gives a very compassionate portrayal of katoey. I've rented it in Taiwan. I cried when I watched it. However, I cry when I watch a lot of movies.

In Bangkok, I wanted to buy the movie, since I couldn't find a copy to buy in Taiwan. I went into a Raku Raku ("Happy happy," in Japanese) store and asked a clerk if they had the movie. He said they didn't. I also asked him if they had any CD's or movies by or about katoey, and he was only able to find two. One was Hedwig and the Angry Inch, a movie I had been looking for in Taiwan but couldn't find. Hedwig is a musical, about a transsexual woman who is also a rock star. I bought it. Having watched it, I can say that it was good but not great. It's a little too short, and while it has some really interesting ideas, it doesn't do very much with them. The other thing the store had was a CD performed by some katoey. It looked a bit exploitative and I didn't buy it.

This may have been the day that I finally went to Dunkin' Donuts myself. I had a plain donut with chocolate and crushed peanuts on it. It was very good. Taiwan has all sorts of Western food, but I've never found a decent donut here.

I wandered around the mall. I also finally went into the Bookazine. I had seen it earlier with my dad. He went into it when I was still in the hospital. When I saw it with him, he told me that it didn't have much inside, just magazines. I decided to check it out myself.

I'm glad I did. Like, I remembered, the Bookazines in Hong Kong, the Bookazine I went to was an excellent little British bookstore crammed into a tiny space. Books were piled several deep on shelves, and the back of the store was a mess of various fiction books. I found a book I'd been looking for, Iain Banks' Look to Windward. I naturally bought it. I also looked around at the other books in the store. They had quite a nice little travel section. Also, maybe in deference to the store's proximity to the Patpong district, there were several books related to sex: gay travel guides. several books about prostitution, a couple photo collections. There were several men there, though, looking at the same section, and I was a little embarrassed to look at the titles there. I ended up leaving, resolved to go back another day.

Finally, after dinner, I decided to go check out a katoey bar. After the debacle Saturday night, I needed to find contact with someone GLBT. I had read, again in Lonely Planet, about a soi that was nothing but sex shops. Nana Plaza, it's called. One of the bars in it is called Casanova. It's pretty famous as a pick-up bar where all the hostesses are katoey. I felt like maybe a bit of camaraderie. I also felt like trying to do a little good. I was mostly just trying to deal with the pangs of guilt/envy/compassion/whatever from seeing the Calypso show.

Around 9:30 or so, I got into a cab. It was kind of scary how the cabbie knew exactly where I was going. Nana Plaza is pretty famous. It must weigh on a cabbie's mind, knowing that the fare is going in search of prostitutes. Of course, maybe they just don't care.

The Nana plaza is a pretty amazing place. It's like an open-air sex mall. Neon lights everywhere made it hard to see the floor. Casanova took some hunting to find. Most of the bars had huge neon signs that you could see from the entrance to the complex. Casanova didn't. I eventually had to ask someone where it was. It was tucked down on the far left, I think. Maybe it was so famous that it didn't need a neon sign. Maybe it was too obscure to deserve one.

So I went in. It was, I think, probably a lot like a lot of other go-go bars. There were several couch/booths along one wall, and a bar along the other. Atop the bar were four poles for pole-dancing. There were women dancing on the bar and sitting at the bar, and there were women sitting in the booths. A couple Western men were in a couple of the booths, being petted and pampered by the workers there.

I went to an empty booth. Two women came and sat down with me. Unfortunately, I've now forgotten their names. We chatted a bit. They naturally asked if I'm TS and I said yes, and that I'd just gotten surgery. We talked about prices and doctors a bit. I asked them a few questions about working there. I complimented them on their beauty and their excellent English. They made relative clauses with little problem, and had pretty good pronunciation. One of them told me that there were at least two women in the bar who had bachelor's degrees. That made me wonder. Was she playing on my compassion? Probably not, though. She seemed very honest to me.

	The two women who sat with me.
	Me and the mamasan at Casanova.

I also got out some money and asked them to give a bit to all the workers. I felt strange giving them money, just like at Calypso. It made me feel good, but also guilty. I didn't want to make them jealous of my money. I just wanted to make their lives a little better.

The women (or should I say girls?) in Casanova were quite beautiful. Many had clearly had cosmetic surgery. Several had extremely large, probably uncomfortably large, breasts. One was wearing a black corset, sunglasses and black, leather-looking pasties. She had extremely large breasts; it made her look quite exotic. All were dressed in very sexy clothing. I felt a bit jealous of them.

After giving out the money, the mamasan came over and sat with me. She seemed very much like TG hostesses I remember meeting before. She was a bit greedy, rather brash, definitely concerned with money, but very nice in many ways. She asked me about my breasts. Had I had implants or not? She also asked to feel my breasts, and complimented me. She asked me repeatedly for more money. A couple times it was for her; she deserved more money because she's the mamasan. She also asked me to give money to girls who had showed up late for work. It was interesting to be seen as such a source of money. I gently refused to give them money through her. I asked the other two women sitting with me to give money to the girls who had just come in. Eventually, I ran out of money. I kind of wished I could tell them that I'm actually quite poor, but that would just be further self-indulgence, I thought.

I also looked around. Western men sat in the other booths, surrounded by katoey women. It was interesting. They were clearly there for sex. They seemed slightly embarrassed to make eye contact with me. I also felt like maybe, by sitting there, I was making life difficult for the workers. I asked a couple times if it was okay for me to sit there, but they reassured me it was.

As women walked past, several kind of tipped their heads in thanks to me. I was a bit embarrassed, but mouthed "You're welcome." The two women who I was talking to had to go off and dance, although one came back later. She was the one who I'd talked to more. Finally, I gave her my e-mail address and made my goodbyes. She hasn't written back to me yet, but I still hope she will.

I left feeling a bit better than when I left Calypso. I felt like I had really helped them a bit. I was also worried about them, though. I'm sure that many of them were regularly subjected to a choice between unsafe sex and going hungry. I also wondered if they liked the work. It made me wonder about sex workers. Did they have terrible lives?

I left Casanova and took a cab back to the hotel. I wondered the whole way about those girls in Casanova. I fell asleep thinking about their lives.

By this point, the sleeping conditions were starting to get to me. The bed was nice and big, but the sheets were lightly starched. Bangkok is incredibly humid, even more humid than Taibei. The starch in the sheets made it feel like I was sleeping on gum or taffy or something. Also, there were mosquitoes in the room. I tried to use the pillows to make a mosquito net-arrangement with the sheets, but it didn't help much. Sleeping was difficult. It was even more difficult because I had to start dilating. I wasn't doing it very long -- twice a day for half an hour each time -- but it definitely wasn't comfortable.

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Monday

I think I had another appointment with Dr. Preecha Monday morning. All the appointments have started to blur together. I do remember that I met an American guy in the waiting room, though. He was from LA. He was there to get some kind of nose job. I think he was also getting some kind of problem with his septum fixed. I didn't think he needed any kind of cosmetic surgery, but it's his face. We chatted a little about Thailand and Bangkok. He had just gotten there, and didn't know much about the place, so I told him what I knew. I wonder if he knew what kind of surgery I had gotten?

After the appointment, I went back to the hotel, but then decided to go out again. I put away whatever goodies Dr. Preecha's staff had given me, and headed out again. As I was on my way out, I saw an American family checking into the hotel. They asked the clerk about changing money, but the woman didn't really understand. I mentioned the money-changing booths I'd seen on Silom Road to the family. I didn't tell them that the hotel also offered money-changing services, but I don't remember why.

Again, I went to a mall. I wandered around a bit, poking into different stores. I started to look for gifts for a friend of mine in Taibei. I saw some really cute stuffed silk elephants in a couple stores, and decided to buy him one. When he comes over to my house, he often likes to hold my stuffed bear Albert, so I thought he might enjoy a stuffed animal of his own. I didn't buy one at this point, though. I wanted to comparison-shop a bit first.

I went back to the Bookazine, too. I poked around in the GLBT section. They had a copy of the 2001 Spartacus guide on sale. I bought it for my friend (he's gay). I bought a pictorial book about katoey. It has tons of pictures of the women in the drag shows, all beautiful. I also looked at the books about prostitution. Many were written with what seemed to me to be little sympathy for the sex workers. However, I saw one called Patpong Sisters, by Cleo Odzer. It looked like a non-sexist view of the sex industry. I picked it up immediately. Although it wasn't concerned with transgender/katoey sex workers, it was about sex workers. It also looked like the only compassionate portrayal of sex workers on the shelves.

I had been reading Look to Windward. I quickly switched to Patpong Sisters, though. I ended up finishing the book within a week. That's an incredibly fast time for me. I finished it shortly after I got back to Taiwan. It's a really great book. Odzer raises some really important questions. Maybe the most important, for my purposes, is: do prostitutes have happy lives? Odzer makes some really good points about this question. She points out that many, even most, of the prostitutes in Bangkok (and Pattaya, too, at least) are supporting their families with their incomes. They make far more money, live in far more luxury and have far more experiences than they could have without working in the sex industry. They go from being meek country girls (and guys) to being self-assured, skilled and in many ways rich. Many of the women dream of marrying Western men, but when they do, the marriages almost always fail because the women want to keep their self-determination. Many marriages end in divorce. The women go back to the sex trade. Many in Thailand look down on them, but it seems that their families don't. At least, their families are unable to express any opposition, because the women are supporting them and the families are often responsible for them getting into prostitution in the first place. The prostitutes become adept liars and manipulators. In her relationship with one man, Jek, Odzer becomes quite paranoid, never knowing if Jek is telling the truth or covering something up. It seems like there is a lot of dishonesty in Thai-Western relationships. However, both parties get something: the Thai person gets wealth and power, and in many ways respect and fulfillment, while the Western person gets sex and, often, a feeling of rescuing the prostitue. Reading the book still makes me wonder about those girls in Casanova, and about the Calypso performers.

My idea of teaching English to sex workers for free was not original. Odzer mentions a group called Empower who do exactly that. I'm not sure if they help katoey women, or men sex workers. It's a great organization regardless.

Since reading Patpong Sisters, I've checked out some of the sites on the net about Thai prostitutes. It's amazing how dead-on Odzer's descriptions of Western prostitute-patrons are, even after seven years. (The book was published in 1995.) Men far outnumber women. Most of them see themselves as saviors of the poor prostitutes, and as upright, honest, decent sorts who just want to have fun, every night, with a different girl. Men who, it seems, often think that it's okay to hit a woman when she lies to you. Reading a few of the websites out there, it's really amazing what these guys think. Prostitution may give the women a lot of power, but it creates some very warped situations: women have to lie to get what they need, and men become paranoid megalomaniacs. Of course, there are actually a lot of well-adjusted people out there. I'm sure that there are men who really are lonely, or really are attracted to Thai women, or whatever. However, they seem to be a silent majority, or a minority.

After poking around in the mall, I went to dinner. I think I may have gone to Bua again. The food was soooo good. The server there was getting to recognize me. I kept having the same dish, the "beef with holy basil" dish that I described above. Mmm, it makes my mouth water just thinking about it. I asked the woman how to say the dish in Thai. She said it's called gepao neualaat khao (please pardon my poor transliteration). That's surprisingly close to the name in Mandarin, dapao niurou fan. It's possible to get that kind of food in Taiwan or the States, but it's tailored for non-Thai tastes. Taiwanese people don't use lemongrass, for example. I've been having a lot of dapao niurou fan since I got back from Thailand, but I still miss the real thing.

After dinner, I decided to go to Calypso again. I wanted to give the girls there a way to communicate with me, so back in the hotel, I made up little slips on paper with my website address and e-mail address on them. I also made sure that my camera had good batteries and lots of spare memory. I was getting a little low on money. I exchanged a bit at a 24-hour exchange service on Silom Road. It looked like an ATM booth, but it also had an exchange machine. Strange. I thought that family said they couldn't find any exchange services on Silom Road. I think they didn't look far enough. I also told them there were lots of them, when in fact I only saw one on that little stretch of road. Also, while I was getting my money, there was a guy sitting outside, eating some food from a bento box. He looked suspiciously ready to rob me, so I took a long route when I left the booth. I wanted to tell him, "Hey, dude, you shouldn't sit there eating outside an ATM booth," but I didn't want to risk anything. Also, I assume he didn't speak English. Nothing happened in the end -- just more paranoia.

Once that was done, I got into a cab and took off for Calypso. Yet another crazy driver. This one claimed that the intersection I was asking for didn't exist. I told him every way I could think of, but I must've been saying the names of the roads wrong. He also didn't know the hotel. I finally got dropped off somewhere on Phayathai Road, well short of the Asia Hotel. I walked a ways, thinking maybe I could find another cab to take me to the hotel. Instead, I happened by a BTS (Bangkok Traffic System?) stop. It looked basically like the MRT lines in Taibei, so I checked it out. Before I could buy a ticket, I had to know which stop to get off at. I tried to guess which stop, but couldn't figure it out. I asked a woman at the service booth. She spoke surprisingly good English. She also told me exactly which stop to get off at.

As it turns out, the stop was not just close to the Asia Hotel, but directly adjoined it. There was an entrance from the BTS stop directly into the interior of the hotel! The hotel was right on the BTS lines. Me and my dad could've saved a bit, going from the Swiss Lodge directly by BTS. Oh, well, live and learn. (Or, as my dad says, "You learn something every day, no matter how hard you try.")

I arrived at the hotel well before showtime. It was somewhere around 9:15 pm. First, I bought my ticket. Cool, I got a much better seat than last time -- right on the center aisle, towards the back. Then I poked around the hotel. First, I looked at the bookstore. They had all kinds of stuff, but nothing really good. After I look in a store for a few minutes, I often feel a little obligated to buy something. That's especially true when it's a small shop, and the owner is standing there behind the counter. It's even more true when they look like they're about to close. However, I couldn't find anything worth buying. It was really all touristy crap, nothing of much use. In the end, I just walked out. As I left, the old woman behind the counter said, "You not buy anything?" I meekly apologized as I left.

Then I went to the lobby. There was another touristy store there. The store sold all sorts of handicrafts: sheets of cloth, bags, pillows, a few baskets, etc. I saw some quite cute pillows shaped like elephants and decided to buy one for my Taiwanese friend. The woman there, again I'm sure the owner, looked tired and I commented on this. We chatted for a bit about her excellent English and how tiring it is to run a concession like hers.

Finally, the audience was seated. I sat next to four Koreans. They seemed nice enough. After surgery, my bladder had been feeling quite yucky, and I couldn't drink much unless I was eating at the same time. Now, though, I felt like I was pretty much recovered, at least in that way. When the servers took orders for drinks this time, I ordered a Coke.

Then the show started. It was great. In some ways, it was better than the first time. I had a better seat, that's for sure. The show had the same acts as before. I was a little disappointed. I thought maybe they'd have different acts for different days. I don't blame them, though. Doing one show is hard enough.

I won't re-describe the show. See my description of the show on Friday. It was great, though. I got much better photos this time. The Koreans next to me were really impressed by the Arirang act. Again I was moved almost to tears by the "Quxiang" and "Amazing Thailand" pieces. "Quxiang" was even better because I was viewing it from the front rather than off to the side.

After the show, I again stayed around. The first night, very few people were taking pictures with the performers, so I went right up and talked to them. Tonight, though, there were lots of people taking pictures. While I was waiting, I went to talk to a man I had seen the previous time. He was caucasian, standing by the middle aisle, at the back. He was quite tall, looked about 50, with a bulky build and ruddy skin. He looked a little like Helmut Kohl. He was also wearing a suit, so he was obviously associated with the show.

I asked him if he was a bouncer or manager or something. He replied with a heavy accent that he was the artistic director of the show. Oops! We talked for a bit. I asked him if he was German. He accent seemed German to me. He replied he's South African. I asked him what the "Amazing Thailand" piece meant. He replied that they like to keep interpretation for the viewer. There's no one answer to what the dancers represent. Maybe the conflict between modernity and traditional, maybe the conflict between Thai and Western culture, maybe a lot of different things. Actually, he pointed out that the dances they do aren't Thai. They're actually Khmer dancing. I'm not sure why they don't do traditional Thai dances. He may have explained it to me. I don't remember.

I also asked him how life is for the dancers. He told me that many people come to see the show expecting bizarre drag queens and freaks, and instead find themselves amazed by the beauty and skill of the dancers. He views the show as a way of getting more respect for katoey. I wondered if the show really has that effect, and whether he wasn't just telling me what he thought I wanted to hear. I would've liked to talk to him more, but the dancers were already unoccupied.

I again gave them money, the same amount as last time. I also distributed the little slips with my e-mail address and web site address on them. I still haven't gotten any e-mail from any of them, but I hold out hope. Finally, I got my picture taken with them. Good, my camera was working.

	The girls of Calypso. Ignore that big ugly black blob in the center.
	More of the performers. Dang, that photographic flaw just keeps re-occurring.

Since I was taking pictures with my digital camera, I showed them the pictures immediately. They seemed pleased; they chatted a bit with each other about how they looked. (I presume -- they were speaking Thai.)

I would've stayed and talked to them more, but an announcement on the PA in Thai sent them scurrying backstage. I wondered if it was the artistic director yelling at them to get back to rehearsals. Or maybe it was someone just saying "I'm going to yell really gruffly so you don't have to feel guilty for getting away from that annoying farang!" Whatever the yelling person was saying, it was time to go. I felt much better than the last time. I still wanted to talk to them more though. I wanted to find out more about their lives. I definitely felt more satisfied than last time, though.

Then I went home. I took the BTS the whole way. I had to change trains at the Siam stop, as shown on the map above. It was surprisingly easy to get back, and it only cost about 25 baht. The only confusing thing was how to change trains, but it turned out I just needed to cross the platform. I'm glad it worked out, because there was a train waiting just as I got into the Siam station. If it had been the wrong train, of course, I could've just gotten off and switched. That's the nice thing about MRT systems -- if you get on the wrong train, you can just get off and go the opposite direction until you figure out where you made the mistake.

After the show, I walked around the Silom night market a bit more. I asked pirated VCD vendors if they had Satree Lex, but they didn't.

Back at the hotel, I dilated for a while, watching Thai TV, then went to bed.

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Tuesday

One day left in Thailand. What was I going to do? Well, I couldn't really do very much. I didn't have enough money. I slept a bit late (no appointments today). I think I even took an afternoon nap.

I went to Bua one last time, for lunch I think it was. Same thing as always. This time, I used Thai to order.

Later, I went wandering around the Silom market. There was all kinds of stuff for sale: guitars, baskets, designer knockoff shoes, tons of pirated VCD's, skirts, a million different cannabis innuendo T-shirts, bamboo backscratchers, etc. etc. I didn't buy anything. I went into another bookstore, this time a local Thai one. I saw a few interesting travel guides, and some things that looked like they might be as interesting as Patpong Sisters. On closer examination, they weren't. I also went into a Blockbuster to ask if they had Satree Lex. They didn't.

I went into the Haagen Dazs on Silom. For some reason, I went there about three times while I was in Bangkok. I had my usual -- one scoop of coffee ice cream. Three clearly gay guys came in just after me. I heard them speaking Cantonese. In combination with their fashion sense (good, but conservative), this likely meant they were from Hong Kong. On a lark, I asked them if they were. They said yes, two of them were, but one was Thai. After we all got our ice cream, they invited me to sit with them. We chatted a bit about me, and about them. The gay scene in HK, what they were doing here, who was who's lover (the Thai guy was the shorter, cuter HK guy's lover), my Mandarin, etc. I tried to figure out what HK people call Mandarin -- putonghua, guoyu, what? I couldn't seem to phrase the question right, though. It was a nice little chat. Like my earlier trip to Beijing, I think my trip to Bangkok has made me more brave about talking to strangers.

For dinner, I decided to try a Mexican restaurant I had seen on Silom Road. The restaurant's called Cafe Fiesta. It was terrible. The food was quite expensive (something like 500 baht for a couple burritos), and it was very low quality. They used shredded beef rather than ground, which I think is disgusting. The sauces also tasted too much like ketchup for my tastes. However, it was a good learning experience. It made me appreciate the Mexican food in Taibei more. Taibei has at least three pretty good Mexican restaurants. No Taco Bell yet (Pepsi, get your butt in gear!), but good sit-down food.

After dinner, I headed back to the hotel. I needed to dilate. The condoms Dr. Preecha's office had given me had already run out. I went into a 7-11 on Silom Road. I heard two guys speaking Taiwanese Mandarin behind me in line, so I asked them if they were from Taiwan. Naturally, they were. They said the standard stuff -- "Oh, your Mandarin is so good!" -- but it didn't go any further. They half-heartedly invited me to go with them to the clubs, but I knew and they knew it wasn't a serious offer. I think they were also a little freaked out. They didn't come to Bangkok to be recognized as Taiwanese. They went there for anonymity -- to engage in pure hedonism, without worrying about the grandparents hounding them to get married and have lots of kids. I politely declined and went back to the hotel.

As I walked back, I passed Bua one last time. A waiter was sweeping up the front steps as I walked past. He recognized me and said "hi." He gave me one of those incredibly friendly Thai smiles, too. I almost thought he was flirting with me. He was certainly cute.

Back in the hotel, I spent the rest of the night dilating, packing my bags and watching TV. I think I was watching Six Feet Under on HBO. I also switched around a bit, though, looking at Thai TV. Thai TV is about as vacuous as Taiwanese TV, which is slightly more vacuous than US TV. I occasionally saw shows that featured katoey, though. Sometime during my trip, I don't remember when, I saw some kind of soap opera that featured katoey as the main actors. (Remember, I don't like the word "actress" -- someone who acts is an actor. Someone who writes is a writer; we don't need to specify gender. Why should we specify gender for actors?) It looked pretty sympathetic, too.

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Wednesday

I had one last appointment with Dr. Preecha. Again, I saw Ms. Morakot more than Dr. Preecha, and again they kept me waiting for quite a while. I saw the guy from LA again in the waiting room, but really just said "hi." Ms. Morakot gave me my final selection of goodies -- a few more dilators, some more Betadine, maybe some other stuff. I took a couple final pictures. I also happened to meet someone who was some kind of rector or something in the hospital. His English was native-ability. I asked him what he does. I wasn't very clear on it, but I thought he said some kind of patient advocacy. It kind of made me wonder where he was when I was needing help communicating with the nurses, or via e-mail. But he was a very nice guy.

I was getting to be in something of a rush. I needed to go back and finish packing, and then head off to the airport. They were taking a while, so I asked Mai if I could see Ms. Morakot or Dr. Preecha a little sooner. It was no problem. When I was done, Ms. Morakot offered to arrange another airport ride for me. I asked if it would cost money again. She said that it would. I declined. I said I'd call them when I got back to Taiwan, and left.

Back in the hotel, I packed my bags the rest of the way. I also took care of a few last-minute details. Dilating is a very messy business. It produces lots of garbage and occasionally funky towels. I felt quite guilty leaving the maids with the burden of cleaning up my mess. I left a tip for the maid who cleaned up my room, as well as a small note. However, as I was leaving my room, I saw a maid and asked her if she was the woman who had cleaned up my room. She said she was, so I gave the tip directly to her and said "kop koon kha" about three times.

I paid my remaining bill -- very little because my dad had paid most of it, and I'd budgeted carefully for the rest. The counter help at the hotel volunteered to call me a limo, but that would cost money. I asked for a simple metered cab. Then I was out the door. I felt a little sad, leaving the hotel. I also felt sad leaving the hospital, and leaving Bangkok as a whole.

It turns out the cabbie who took me to the airport was the same guy who had taken my dad and I to Jim Thompson's house. He was a kind of nice, and we chatted for a few sentences about my trip to Bangkok. I didn't really feel like talking, though. When we got to the toll booth for the freeway, he said "You pay." I felt very suspicious, but paid in the end. The fare was so low, it made sense that the passenger would need to pay. How could these cabbies be making any money?

Then I was at the airport. I checked in with little trouble. I went to the departure lounge. I had some kind of chocolate cake, dusted with cocoa powder, in the cafe there. I went to a duty-free store. I bought some chocolates for everyone back at work.

Then I was off again. KLM back home to Taibei. I remember they played Bad Company, with Anthony Hopkins and Chris Rock, on the way back. They served some kind of chicken dish on the way back.

And then I was 'home' in Taibei.

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Practical Tips

Here are some practical tips if you're planning on going to Thailand, or to Dr. Preecha especially, for SRS.

Do your homework about Thailand. Thailand is a very different place from what you're probably used to if you've lived in a Western country for a long time. I knew pretty much what to expect, having lived in Taiwan for six years, but you may not. Even though they have some genderphobic statements in them, I recommend the Lonely Planet series. I used the Bangkok guide, which got me through quite well. If you're planning on getting around the country more, though, you might want the full Thailand guide.
Try to learn a little of the language. It will help you feel at ease, and make you less the conquering colonial than a visiting friend. Learn a few words before you go; I used the Learning Thai website, which has a nice variety of phrases and has sound clips so you can actually hear how to say them.
Make sure you don't go by yourself. Having my dad with me was invaluable. I actually didn't need his help all that often, but being alone for such major surgery in a foreign country could've been emotionally destructive if my dad hadn't been there. He also helped remind me of things to ask the nurses and doctors, and helped carry my luggage during the move to the hotel. He wasn't actually physically present with me for much of the time -- he had to keep popping out to work on proposals -- but knowing that he was there was a lot of help.
Make sure that before you go you get all your blood tests and letters. You may not need them, but it's best to have them available if needed.
Ask questions. Dr. Preecha and his staff don't seem to volunteer information very much, so you should ask a lot of questions yourself. Here are some questions to ask, in no particular order:
- How long do I need to dilate for? A month? Two months? What? Exactly how many times should I dilate each day, and how long each time? How many weeks will it take before I should switch to a bigger dilator? Will you provide me with more dilators, or only two? How do I make bigger ones, if not?
- How long should I take the pills you're giving me? Do I need to get more when they run out?
- When exactly am I going to be discharged? Does the bill include a minimum number of days in the hospital, or is my release date dependent on something else?
- How much bleeding is normal? How do I know when I'm bleeding too much?
- I've read the instructions you've given me on cleaning myself. Can I give you a demonstration to make sure I'm doing it right?
- How long before I can have sex? How long before I can start using my clitoris?
- Will the driver from the airport cost me? How much?
- What form of money will you take -- travellers' cheque, cash, credit card, personal check, money order, what?
- Exactly what will I need to buy myself, and what will you provide me with?
- When will I need to check out of the hospital? What time of day?
- Can you introduce me to the other women who are getting SRS here?
- What things will be extra on my hospital bill, and what will be included?
- When I'm constipated, how much effort will be necessary to poop? What can I do if I'm really constipated?
- When should I make an appointment with a gynecologist for a checkup?
- Could you show me pictures of women's vulvas at various stages after surgery (two weeks, a month, two months, etc.), so I know what to expect?
Bring what you need, leave what you don't. Heavy lifting is something you don't want to be doing after surgery. If you've got a friend with you who can heft things for you, that's good, but you don't want to impose on them too much, either.
Do your research about SRS. If you haven't read everything at Anne Lawrence's site and Andrea James' site, you're not ready.

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