Pinoy Travel Moments: From an Embarrassing Moment in "the John" in Thailand to a Hilarious experience of Ordering Food in Beijing

At Ban Phe, Rayong, Thailand .........

                  On our way to Ban Phe , Thailand there were only three passengers on the bus,me, my friend Anna and a local guy.When we reached Ban Phe I had to use the toilet at their bus terminal and shortly after I entered the toilet my companion Anna followed suit . While I was doing my thing, I heard Anna calling me.It turned out that she was occupying the cubicle next to mine . She asked  for the roll of toilet paper so I tossed it into the next cubicle to my left. After I tossed the toilet paper into the next cubicle Anna exclaimed “go” which was supposed to signal me to toss it in (but I already did!). It was only then that I realized that she was occupying the other  cubicle to my right . While Anna was begging for that roll of toilet paper, the person in the left cubicle tossed it back to me and guess who’s in the left cubicle------- the guy who was with us on the same bus to Ban Phe. Each one of us came out from our respective cubicles quietly.

At Angkor Wat, Cambodia .........

             When we were done exploring Angkor Wat we went back to Bana our tuktuk driver. On our way out we passed by a group of small stupas. At that time I didn't know what they were. We asked a local guy and he tried so hard to explain to us the use of the stupas. He was groping for words as he was explaining. It sounded like he didn't know the word "person" or "man". The poor guy ended up saying " If ah...ah... ( while pointing at me) die...dies...If a tourist die ( Oh no ! Does it have to be a tourist? ) we burn and put inside (pointing to the stupa ). That scared the wimp out of me.What he was trying to say was that if someone dies (not necessarily a tourist ) the body will be cremated and the ashes will be placed inside the stupa.

In Beijing ...........

             One afternoon when I got back to Beijing from the Great Wall, I looked for a place to eat. I ended up at a small hole-in-the wall. I checked out the menu and I couldn't understand anything written on it. Unfortunately, they didn't have an English menu. I was too hungry to look for another place so I just thought of randomly ordering an item from the menu. However, when I looked around I saw one customer eating in the corner and I did the not-so-polite thing of pointing at the bowl of noodles with scrambled eggs and vegetables that the local guy was eating. " I want something like that", I demanded. The customer who was a bit stunned said "10 yuan". I liked what I ordered so the following day I went back to the same place but this time there was no customer eating that bowl of noodles. Of course , I couldn't ask the owner if she remembered me and what I had ordered the day before since she didn't speak English and I didn't know any Mandarin either. I remembered though that I had taken a photo of the dish so I showed the picture of it from my camera and the owner prepared a bowl of that noodles for me. On my third day in Beijing I was still craving for it so I went back again to the same place. This time though I had already taken so many photos and it took so long for me to find the picture of that bowl of noodles from my camera. The owner got impatient so she dragged me to their kitchen (maybe she remembered what I'd been ordering) and showed me the ingredients of the noodles one by one.She showed me an egg, tomato and a pack of noodles. Relieved that she remembered what I had been ordering I simply nodded.

At the Bayon Temple, Cambodia .........            

                 

                Inside the Bayon  temple one of the old Korean- (or maybe Japanese , how could I tell)looking tourist was examining a metal box. He was touching the box, maybe wondering how it had gotten in there. On the box was a sign that says " Warning Do not Touch". Obviously, he didn't understand the sign.I tried to stop him but he didn't get all the hand gestures I made. I was even thinking of giving out an Academy-Award-winning-acting just to make him understand that what he's doing was dangerous but I figured it would be to no avail as the old man seemed so amused. I decided to leave him alone.