The Girl with the Ironic Tattoo

The thing that really caught my eye was this English lady's bum.

Not only was she wearing her denim shorts in a high-waisted homage to all things geriatric, but her bottom seemed to be fleeing from the severity of the actual cut-off, a style designed to both encourage permanent wedgies and recurring yeast infections in equal measure.

On her left cheek, she had tattooed an angel drinking a pint of beer.

Eat your heart out, Portland!

London hipsters are bringing new levels of charm and class to your movement, so throw away your tapered acid wash jeans and buy some assless chaps already!

But don't quit your knitting gypsy band...

I was privileged enough to do an ethnographic study of London's hipsters during the Lovebox music festival this month. It was Robbie's idea - he is musically cooler than me, though we were mostly there for Gay Sunday's electropop-off between Kelis, Robyn and Blondie (Kelis won). Otherwise, it was a line-up of bands way too cool for me to have ever heard of.

Beardyman? I'd call that a five-o-clock shadow, sir.

Architecture in Helsinki? I really liked them until I found out they were Australian... I guess 'Architecture in Hobart' doesn't sell ringtones.

To be fair, I'm ignorant about most bands. The last time I paid attention to music was 1994 when my bestie Nina and I went to see Bush, Korn and the Presidents of the United States of America. Even then, I was only a fair-weather fan.

But I wrote Kurt Cobain a haiku when he died. At 14, I didn't have any real problems. However, in my poem to Kurt I so totally related to his, in 5-7-5 syllable stanzas, as taught by our junior high school English teacher.

To make myself even less cool, The Diplomat escorted me to his memorial in downtown Seattle. I placed my hand-written prose next to the shrines of burning candles while forlorn people in short-sleeved lumberjack shirts woefully strummed 'The Man Who Sold the World' on their ukuleles.

'Ok, let's go, honey - we're going to be late for Swan Lake.'

More excited for the tutus, I bounced all the way to the ballet hall. Well, you know, bouncing with angst.

So it wasn't a big surprise to find myself lost with the London cool kids. I did what The Diplomat encourages in all situations of self-doubt - I went shopping. At the festival vintage market. To replace my very un-ironic sneakers with something everyone else was wearing: leather boots.

'You look like a lesbian cowgirl, but in a very obvious, American sort of way.' Robbie is very encouraging. 'But you wouldn't fit in in Shoreditch - sorry darling. Try to act like you don't really want to be here.'

But I did!

And secretly, so did everyone else including Unfortunate Wedgie Girl, who was trying to dance to Metronomy in a very awkward sashay intended, I think, to ease the denim burden on her beer-swilling angel.

The question is, was it PBR?

A Symbol of Fertility

The midsummer pole is not actually the straight, plain log I had in mind.

'It's a symbol of fertility,' explained Elsa, the retired schoolteacher I met backpacking in Java months ago.

She and her husband graciously invited me to join their extended family for the Midsummer Solstice Festival, Sweden's cool pagan schnapps party.

'We want you to experience a real Swedish cultural event!' Per beamed.

So IKEA's twice-yearly sale doesn't count?

I didn't know real Swedish culture featured a 15-foot wooden phallus on the grass.

My kind of lawn ornament!

The Midsummer lunch was a smörgåsbord of meatballs, quiche, cheese, smoked herring, raw herring, herring cake, herring pie, green salad (with herring), and lots and lots of schnapps.

'Toot tooot!'

Per played his bugle to signal the start of the drinking games and raised his glass for a short group sing-a-long.

We took a sip or swig of Absolut. Five minutes later we did it again - we sang about nature. And again - cue the socialist ditty. The bugle intervals pared down to 30 seconds until we were summoned, tipsy, to decorate the pole.

By decorate, I mean Elsa's son cut down a real alder tree, stripped its branches and handed them to me with some twine. Because tradition dictates any phallic symbol with Midsummer's ovaries flopping in the breeze should look realistic...

Well, the significance of the two circular wreaths dangling from the pole's arms is really up for debate:

Opinion one - woodsy ovums, giving the pole that jolly hermaphroditic crucifix flavor.

Opinion two - dangling scrotum sacks blowing seed to the wind, allowing the perpendicular pole to theoretically get it on with mother earth.

Bow-chicka-wow-wow!

Suddenly, this is reading like The Smutty Traveler.

When we finished camouflaging the pole, we stood in awe. Forty four relatives of Per and Elsa, slick with schnapps or chocolate cake (or both) crowned with wildflowers, frolicking hand-in-hand around this Scandinavian sex symbol, topped with the Swedish flag.

That's when the singing started. Some tunes were like a public service announcement:

The bear is sleeping, the bear is sleeping
In it's calm den
He's not dangerous as long as you're cautious
But you can never trust him!

This lesson must have been learned the hard way. I liked the one with choreography:

Little froggies, little froggies
It's very jolly to watch them!
(hold your neighbors hand and skip to the right)
No ears, no ears they have
(ear cupping motion)
No tails, no tails they have
(tail pointing)
Oh, quack quack quack!
(hop in a circle)

Little piggies, little piggies
It's very jolly to watch them!
(now, skip to the left)
Both ears and tails they have
(more ear and tail pointing)
Oh, poink poink poink!
(more hopping)

Ancient Swedes apparently found frogs very disturbing creatures, pointing out their audial inferiority to swine and confusing their natural call with ducks.

It happens. Well, it happens in real Sweden.

The Great Lawn Ranger

One Father's Day dad wanted all of us to help fix up our yard while he supervised with a toasted cheese sandwich, a root beer float, and a pack of Lucky Strikes.

My pimply brother, Walkman jamming Too $hort (that's still how he rolls), was busy making long, crooked lines over two acres of browning grass freckled with molehills. My sister was on back-breaking weed-pulling duty in The Diplomat's 'naturalist' style rhody garden.

Being nearly a decade younger than my siblings, dad told me my contribution would involve a really fun game.

'It's called 'Pick Up Sticks'

'Pick up what?'

'You see all these sticks laying around the yard here honey? Well, your brother can't mow this part of the lawn because there's too many sticks in the way...'

A wailing screech of rocks grinding against the metal blade of the John Deere interrupted his sale of the 'game', followed by a puff of dirt blowing over our heads as my brother ran over yet another rocky molehill, chuckling with destructive teenage glee.

'Godammit son, don't break the goddamned thing! Gawd!' He sighed, rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to me.

'But I want to ride the lawn mower,' I whined, accustomed to getting my way as the youngest, cutest, daddy's girl.

'You're 9 - you have to wait until you're a double-digit to operate industrial machinery. Just do it. It's going to be fun!'

Coming from dad, master of sarcasm, purveyor of pessimism, I suspected this false bit of cheer right away.

'Is this a real game?'

For the record, no, Pick Up Sticks is not a real game. It's more like a lesson on the diabolical nature of, um... nature.

With every stick I was enslaved to drag to dad's pyro-tastic bonfire, the alder above watched its former self pile as a collection of shattered, dead limbs - a symbol of the lack of strength (and lets face it - willpower) the tree had to retain its own branches against an enemy as pithy as wind.

'You're pathetic, tree.'

An early retiree, dad spent the majority of my growing up years covered in wood chips and grass stains with the dog lapping close behind. The Buddha is to enlightenment what dad was to the weed whacker.

The last Father's Day card I bought him read, 'Happy Fathers Day to the Great Lawn Ranger'. Heh.

I meant to give it to him 5 years ago, but decades of Lucky Strikes wouldn't allow him the extra week for another Father's Day. One extra week and we could have cussed out the tree playing the game.

I miss you so much, dad.

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.