Always a Bridesmaid

It only took a bottle and a half of Burmese Pinot noir, but by the time Kate and Wills were en route to Buckingham Palace, I had become engaged to a garlic farmer and The Brazilian had joined the dancing gong band really jamming on the village main street.

Given Myanmar used to be a part of the British empire, I figured these people will definitely be interested in the pauper princess - a real rags to riches story. Finally, someone who represents the interests of the impoverished! The struggle of the dirt farmer class!

Turns out little Katie is no Ronaldo, Michael Jackson or even Ido (Burma's Justin Beiber). Nobody had heard of her.

I guess when you farm 12 hours a day to earn a dollar, you don't care about CNN's riveting debate on whether Kate's dress is an understated yet elegant reflection of today's modern woman, or a simple but regal nod to princesses past (it was clearly the former, Anderson Cooper, you disappoint me).

It wasn't easy to find electricity, a TV, or a TV without Burmese-only state television. After some begging, the owner of Mr. Thumb - the only bar in 'town' - agreed to tap the satellite dish and turn off the soccer game, effectively boring every local to death, but making the North and South American princesses very giddy.

BP and I were the only foreigners at Mr. Thumb's. We were the only women. We were also the only ones who brought not one, but two bottles of our own wine for the occasion.

The young men who came to drown their worries in cheap Burmese whiskey didn't seem to mind. We looked - in theory - like the sexy western girls tugging off their tops on beer posters covering every wall, though we had just spent three days hiking in the humidity and hadn't touched a bar of soap or changed our clothes. Still, the farmer and his friends called us beautiful. That's love.

My new life partner proposed, blurry-eyed from whiskey and water, from the table behind us. Well, it's unofficial.

'Where's my ring?' I'd ask.

'My heart! You take!' He'd yell, moving his hands over his chest and pretending to throw.

'Dude, what the effy eff? I can't take you seriously without a ring!'

'My heart! Taking you, heart, princess!' More throwing charades.

And so it went.

Eventually I gave up and joined the gong band, too, leaving my future/former fiancee pouting. He wouldn't stop pointing to CNN's endless replay of Willy and Kate making out, then pointing to his cheek.

I shook my head gravely. I'm a heart breaker.

Even a ring of garlic would have done, but in the end it wasn't meant to be.

Hot for Crimson

Sunny, our affable hiking guide, told the Brazilian Princess and me we had two options: spend the first trek night in a local villager's home, or sleepover in a Buddhist monastery.

Immediately visions started popping into my head of spunky young novice monks waking us with gentle Burmese chanting in a bright, sunlit building domed with flowers and bells gently ringing in the breezy courtyard under frangipani trees.

Elders would meditate with us, peacefully emancipating our attached western minds and inviting us into an enlightened state of nirvana - all before breakfast!

And very fit 20-somethings, wavering on their faith to this monastic lifestyle and all the silly celibacy it requires, would sagely ask us for our worldly guidance, in the privacy of our sleeping quarters, obviously.

The Brazilian Princess is not actual royalty, but she has princess, er, tendencies. After a month of traveling through Southeast Asia together, I counted on her to demand only the best bungalows (with a discount, damnit) and send back imperfect Tom Kha Gai even from street vendors.

BP is something else, but we bonded over our common commitment to support local people as much as possible. And you know, hot monks need help, too.

Without even a sideways glance, we both shouted to Sunny, 'We'll take the monastery!'

We were on a three-day hike through the hilly farmlands of Myanmar, trekking from Inle Lake to a Kalaw in Shan State, one of the country’s few areas open to foreigners.

It’s not the easiest country to travel in. Fly Myanmar Airways, and you might as well give your stash of freshly printed US dollars directly to the rather unfriendly military regime. Buy a train ticket, and you hate Aung San Suu Kyi.

But travel by foot? Support local people!

Tourists don’t really come to Myanmar – about 300,000 did last year, and only four percent of those were American. “Am I the only Brazilian to ever travel here?” BP asked when we turned in our visa applications in Bangkok, spooked by her own trendsetting.

Mostly Thais, French and Chinese tourists come here, usually on organized tours that support government-run transportation, hotels and entertainment.

Locals hate tour groups. But supporting the government in some ways is unavoidable – even privately-owned hostels and eateries have to pay a 12 percent tax to Uncle Junta.

By coming independently, BP and I could spend our kyat the way we wanted. And that way was village by village, with the promise of a little interfaith fling with brown-eyed, bald men of the crimson cloth just over the muddy hills.

We climbed.

Six long, highly anticipated hours later, we arrived, sweaty but ready to mingle. One elderly monk, head hanging in the ennui of religious servitude, was there to soberly greet us. Sunny neglected to mention this monastery had been neglected and only three monks lived in residence. None of them were under age 75.

It was the darkest monastery ever on earth, ever, in every sense. Teak wood blackened by cooking smoke suffocated the lodge-y space, dotted with apathetic Buddhas and an endless wall of bald, cotton-swathed monks unsmiling and emaciated in Polaroids documenting what appeared to be the most depressing days of their lives. Even the candles kept dimming on their own accord, embarrassed they had to shed light on such gloom.

The Head of Monks was a silent blob of skin and bones morosely hanging out in the darkest corner of the monastery with a single, flickering candle moodlighting his grump. His black-rimmed spectacles were peeking from beneath a pile of plush polyester blankets that featured smiling orange kittens in a field of pink roses.

He only moved to pass gas - loudly and with the unapologetic flourish unique to old men. When we said hello, he farted and groaned in reply.

It was like spending the night in the palliative care unit of a haunted geriatric home, but less fun.

Clearly, this was not the hot monk orgy I'd had in mind.

In Myanmar, the big vice is chewing kun-ya, a cocktail of betel leaves, areca nuts, something dodgy called ‘slaked lime’, something even more questionable called ‘cutch’, and – don’t quote me on this – I swear I saw the kun-ya hawkers in Rangoon smear in Elmer’s glue.

Anyway, chewing this blob gives you this wildly charming bleeding-from-my-gums look that I normally associate with meth addicts.

Men chew it. Monks chew it. I chewed it and promptly spit it out, which is what you’re supposed to do. It was hard to tell if the red soil was enriched with iron, or leached with loogies.

Turns out the Head of Monks is a big kun-ya chewer. I don’t know if it’s related, but he started complaining to Sunny that he was being tortured by bad spirits on his left arm. I suspected living in one of the nine layers of hell might've had something to do with it, but I'm sure Dante is banned in Myanmar, so I kept my mouth shut.

The old man was in luck, though. Sunny happened to be moonlighting as a black magic exorcist that month. You know, when he's not hiking two princesses through Myanmar's lake district... He is a man of many hats!

Sunny performed a 30-minute exorcism that closely resembled a Swedish massage. Then bam! It worked. Almost like magic. The Head of Monks was this close to forming a wrinkly smile as he hobbled away, grumbling in Burmese and hawking up more holy red phlegm to be deposited by our flip-flops.

With monastic intrigue going way over our heads, BP and I voted to spend the next night in the village with garlic farmers. There was more betel spitting, but less flatulence.

The Ping Pong Show

There were just so many questions.

Like, if lungs are fundamentally necessary to smoke cigarettes, was the upside down naked lady technically 'smoking' that Marlboro Light with her reproductive organ?

Should she be worried about cervical cancer?

And how did she propel those glow-in-the dark ping pong balls so far across the room that one nearly hit my travel mate, a girl I call the Brazilian Princess, on the forehead before she absently batted it away?

'I need to go wash my hands now,' she said, leaving me alone to marvel at the skill required to shoot darts from the confines of one's vaginal cavity. What accuracy!

'The Pussy Show' is indeed disgusting and degrading. And it is also as ubiquitous in Bangkok as fried noodles and corrupt pink cab drivers, with more giggling.

We were in the Thai capitol for 9 days waiting on our visas to Burma to be approved. It was Thai New Year time – Happy 2554! Thais celebrate with a three-day water festival that involves squirt gun fights with local kids and everyone else on the streets, including the good-natured cops.

By the third day, we were looking for something a little less wholesome to do.

We found it.

The Brazilian and I covertly shopped around Patpong, the red light/fake watch district, looking for a show. It was around 8 p.m. when we started getting approached by greeters who presented laminated menus of that night’s special.

Most of the ‘specials’ were the same – darts, horn instruments, painting.

‘Maybe we should just have a look inside and see what looks, you know, the least disturbing,’ Princess suggested.

The Super Pussy had a nice neon sign, but the girls had that depressing 'I've-just-been-trafficked-in-from-Laos' vibe going on, so we left.

Queen's was empty, apart from an old white guy chatting up a chubby go-go dancer in the corner. What really killed it was AC/DC. 'Thunderstruck' is mood music for monster truck shows, not housing goldfish in your reproductive organs.

Finally, on our third try I was sold - the DJ was jamming some Snoop Dogg and the vaginal gymnasts were chirpy and smiling, not all strung out on heroin or oppressed by their station in life.

What a breath of fresh air!

We were the only patrons until a curious couple came in, followed by Creepy Indian Guy, who was alone and not nearly as enthusiastic about the novelty of it all as the rest of us. He didn't even applaud when she squirted a whole hot dog OR played taps on the kazoo. I guess there's no accounting for some people's taste...

We wondered if the girls would come up with something for the New Year festival, but I guess opening a bottle of soda water with your pelvis is anatomically easier than pulling the trigger on squirt gun. Go figure.

The fun ended when the mamasans realized we were giggling more than spending and called the Brazilian over for the bill.

'Three thousand baht each?'

The equivalent of $100, I'm not saying the performance wasn't worth that much - anyone who can write a love letter with a Sharpie in your privates deserves some serious cash - but we didn't have it.

So we went for the door, which was promptly blocked by three Thai mob bosses, all women, all built like linebackers, all effectively annoyed. The negotiations started and in less than 60 seconds, the price dropped to $7, a real bargain in my view. And like that, we'd been kicked out of Club NoPhoto.

Lots of Thais I met are pretty ashamed of this style of Bangkok entertainment, including our cab driver that night who offered to drive us straight to the temple to cleanse our sins.

But be encouraged, people of Thailand! A 4' picture of the king hung over the stage, just above the Vaseline-lined ping pong balls.

If that's not patriotism, I don't know what is.

South Beach (Bum) Diet

The Diplomat always told me I was a special person and have many talents in varying disciplines.

It's true. My skill set looks like this:

Fair: reading maps; identifying constellations; emptying the dishwasher

Good: shuffling cards; navigating airports; walking without purpose

Needs improvement: wanderlust

She recently asked me would that wanderlust ever be satiated and will I ever just settle down in one place, please?

Well, mom, I have good news.

It takes a special person willing to sit in the sunshine on a white Thai beach, watching the hours pass with virtually no thought running through the head besides, 'Where has that fire-dancing cabana boy gone with my caipirinha?'

Great: beach bum

Finally! A marketable skill!

Seriously guys, it's true. When you find something you love, you never work another day in your life.

Around the end of the second week in my new calling, I realized it was my life's work. And I loved my new job, I challenged myself to do nothing on the beach for 30 days, committing by way of new sun cream, new sunnies and a new book for the tough work days ahead. (I can hear some of you arguing that a book is technically 'doing' something, but I can assure you my second-hand Harper 'Modern Classic' is the antithesis of serious thought).

I was happily blobbing along in the azure tropics, when one day clouds rolled in and it didn't stop raining for six days. Maybe you heard about it? Hundreds rescued by the Thai navy, villagers swept away in mudslides, trains cancelled, airports closed...

It was at this exciting time that all the SPF went to my head and i came down with what I self-diagnosed as strep throat. It was just me, the mosquitoes and the amoxicilin in the bungalow watching it pour on paradise.

My hut mate, a fancy lady I will call The Brazilian Princess, would periodically walk in, survey my sickness, announce, 'I don't think it's fatal. But it's too damp in here, that's why you're sick. This isn't what we're paying for, Julie. I'll just let the owner know...'

The owner was not unhappy to see us leave after we changed bungalows three times, The Princess letting Paolo know the drainage inefficiencies of each waterlogged thatched roof. Also, could he do something about the banana leaves that kept falling into our outdoor bathroom? They're clogging the drain. Grazie.

When I met The BP, she was complaining. We were on the same boat in the Galapagos and she was going on to the captain that she'd been promised her own cabin. 'I can't sleep in a room with a snorer... That's not what I paid for,' and she'd look disparagingly at her bespectacled, chubby English roommate who did, in fact, breathe like a chainsaw. Even at breakfast.

It was my single cabin The Princess was after and there was no way I was giving it up to room with old snore-eyes.

A stare-off ensued and in the end I respected her gumption and she found in me a kindred princess, 'though you like to hide it by eating granola, but I know...'

It was easy to convince The BP to join me beachside. Being a lazy bum is a prerequisite to royalty the world over. As my new, esteemed colleague, I believed her reading-in-the-hammock skills were world class.

I don't know if it was the complete lack of exercise or the overdose on mango and sticky rice dishes that kept us going, but we were inspired enough to island hop in the non-flooded isles of Thailand's Andaman Sea for three solid weeks. But in the end I couldn't complete the 30-day beach diet because, well, I got bored.

That's another of my special talents.

Allah Up in my Room

It was Mohamed's birthday last month (happy belated, Mo!) and the big marble-floored mosque down the dirt road was pumping out the holy jams for the celebration.

Having never been in a Muslim country before, I hadn't realized mosques have badass sound systems, nor that said systems could project prayers into my bed at 5 a.m. More bass, less treble, please, Allah!

The big, fancy mosque, presiding high above the lean-tos and shacks the locals lived in, was having an all-out hi-fi praise-off with the smaller, modest mosque a mile away that made up for its homeliness thanks to the alliterative pizazz of its prayer leader, the Kasey Kasum of Indonesia.

Calls to prayer start at sunrise, then go on throughout the day, but on Mohamed's bday the real FUN starts at dusk when religious chanting has that fervency unique to a 1,441st birthday party.

I can imagine how Muslims may feel between October and December, when they must endure the cacophony of sleigh bell carols that is Christmas every time they go out for toilet paper or milk for that other guy's birthday. The music may be secular now, but Manheim Steamroller wouldn't exist without the Reason for the Season!

Jesus H. Christ. It was loud. It was religious. It was completely foreign and totally cool.

I decided I should make every effort I could think of (which wasn't much) to fit into the world's most populous Muslim country:

I went all Mormon missionary - long skirt, short sleeves, open, forgiving expression, ready to convo about celestial kingdoms. I even wore my name badge that said, 'Ask me about your FREE post-mortem baptism today!' (nobody did).

I wore a long scarf to cover my head at a moment's notice, but the moment never came. It just made me sweat more in the 95 degree, 100 percent humidity, but I was prepared to blend.

I changed my gait to be less Western (with purpose?) and more godly (without purpose?). I floated along the sweaty, polluted, noisy Jakarta streets like I walked alongside the Prophet himself. 'Watch out for that rotting durian in the acid rain puddle!' I'd shout, and he'd sidestep with the ginger grace of god.

In the end, I became completely self-conscious about being a godless westerner for no reason at all. Maybe it was just my experience, but Indonesian Muslims are the nicest people on earth, always greeting me with a big smile and informing me President Obama is not only Indonesian, but a Muslim too!

'Well, of course he is!' I'd reply, with my most understated, JC Loves You eyes.

Where were all the men refusing to make eye contact with a woman? Why wasn't anybody asking where my husband or father were (or both?) Where were all the women in black glaring at the slut waltzing around with her elbows out?

And, most curiously, where did I get the idea this was how it would be?

Eduardes

It seemed I was meeting Eduardes at the pinnacle of his possession.

Earlier in the day I had come across Vermont Lew, an affable carpenter trying to cope with the dissolution of his 25-year-marriage by traveling through the most remote villages of Indonesia and waving at every passerby and shouting, 'I'm Misterrr Lew! From Am-er-i-ka!'

Lew is a very proud Jew who picked Indonesia after the Israeli ambulance charity, to which he contributes annually, ignored his requests for two months of ride-alongs.

Lew was nonplussed and for the last two weeks, he has been driving around Flores, a lush island east of Bali, with Eduardes, a slight, 50-something Indonesian with dark skin and light eyes.

Eyes cursed by the devil, actually. No, literally, by demons, or at least this is Eduardes' self-diagnosis brought on by symptoms common to all possessed people:

1. inability to sleep
2. inability to eat
3. constant cough that could easily be mistaken for The Devil's own voice

To combat these problems, Eduardes took to obsessive Bible reading late at night, with the book 3 inches from his tired, evil eyes.

'See, it started out great the first few days, but then he just got weirder and weirder,' Lew said, his unkempt white mustache waggling from side to side while his eyes bulged from behind thickly prescribed glasses. 'I kept having to wake him up and watch the road! Kids! Dogs! Golly, he just stopped paying attention sometimes, and it was just the weirdest thing.'

I nodded, as if having a devil-gripped Indonesian insomniac operate a moving vehicle for 14 consecutive days in a hazy shade of Lucifer is totally normal. I couldn't really disagree, having no experience with possession myself.

After dinner, Lew invited our random group of German, French and Americans a ride into town to visit the Internet cafe. What's a girl to do when presented with an opportunity to ride with the devil?

I was the first to jump into the car. Eduardes ambled in, apparently perturbed Misterrr Lew had interrupted his meditation on speaking in tongues. It was dark at 9 p.m. and Eduardes peeled out onto the road and took us through a scenic tour of the ditch before we righted the wheel and he brought us back to the left side of the road.

Eduardes was coughing and hacking every few seconds now, making little retches and filling the car with the burpy air of would-be vomit, if there was anything in his stomach to regurgitate. Halfway to town, he became distressed for no apparent reason and started chanting.

'Jesus. Jesus. Jesus...'

All under his breath and between hacks, but it was loud enough. If anybody needs Jesus in this world, it's this guy. Being the seasoned traveler, the epitome of cultural respect and communication, all I could do was giggle. Luckily, he ignored me.

After some wrong turns, we ended up at the cafe, where Eduardes proceeded to pace for an hour before announcing to the group we would have to leave, he needed to do some *reading*.

The next morning, I heard him promise Misterrr Lew he'd seek a doctor and a priest to help exorcise his demons, or at least give him some cough drops.

I hope the devil lets him rest.

Yoda sucks

'I have to pee,' was the first thing this old Balinese man said to me, standing from his bamboo mat with great effort.

I had been waiting two hours to see this guy and now I was listening to him urinate on the other side if his ornately carved teak and marble wall. It was an inauspicious way to start things off.

He wobbled back and said, 'Where are you from? Oh, I have a lot of friends in USA! You have lips like sugar... Did you read my book?'

He pulled out a brown, sweaty hardcover of 'Eat, Pray, Love' and said 'I not understand this. Can you explain?'

He made me read the paragraph describing him out loud. 'It says you look like Yoda - do you know Star Wars?'

He gave me a glaucoma-glazed stare and I realized that was a stupid question. 'Ok, um, it says you're small, it says you're old, it says you don't have any teeth. But it's not true because I can see you have one tooth left!' I gave him my brightest, most enthusiastic American smile.

Blankness.

'That no make sense,' and he pulled out a letter. 'Please, you American, please. Tell me what this mean.'

It was a letter from Elizabeth Gilbert that basically said: Dear toothless small man, I heard you were sick but now you're better, that's nice. Thanks for teaching me about love (and making me an effing millionaire!!!). Love, Liz

'Um, she loves you and she is thanking you for being her spiritual master? Like, you know, a professor of love? Heh.'

'No no, she no love me! I married!'

I sighed. Now I had to pee. 'Do you know about Google Translator?'

Finally, he started in on my fortune telling. (Hey, if everybody is already comparing me to Julia Roberts, I should embrace my inner cliche and just ride my bicycle through the damn rice paddy already!)

'You very smart. You very pretty! You impatient. You very quick!'

My palm also told him I'd live to 100, have one husband, two children and no divorce.

'Well, what about a job? I'll need a new one eventually.'

'What job you have now?'

'I don't. I quit.'

'You no worry. You have one husband, two children, no divorce. Also, when you in night bed with husband, you make sex three times daily, very good.'

Um...

'I'm sorry, could you repeat that?'

He grinned with that one, yellowed canine hanging, suicidal, from black gums.

'Um, ok, but I don't really want kids... Can you see anything else? Like, I don't know, some sort of purpose?'

Because I have lotus flowers on my scapula, Yoda says I'm fertile and will have children.

'Come on, you make me happy! You meet handsome boy and marry for no divorce and two kids.'

Jesus. I was starting to understand why Liz Gilbert's book frustrated me so much - her guru is a one-trick pony, the trick being he tells me the inevitable life purpose he thinks every woman should have and I give him $25 to annoy me.

I should really stick to reading my aura, at least there are pretty colors involved.

Twenty minutes later, I watched the next girl in line spring up to see Kutut Liyer, spiritual master of staying on message.

'Where you from? Oh, I have a lot of friends in Canada! You have lips like sugar... You read my book?'