Taster Spoon

On Taking Things Literally

We went out for dinner after run club as usual last night, and as we were standing in line to order at the counter of the pasta place upon which the crowd had agreed, Rad mentioned that he was in the middle of the "Cabbage Poop Diet," and therefore could only have a salad.

That sucked.  I asked when he had started, and he said "Tuesday."

"Doesn't that mean you're on the baked potato with butter day?"

We scanned the menu, but, as it was a pasta place, there were no potatoes.  He was a champ to resist my trying to push my gnocchi on him (what? they're potatoey), and never said a word of complaint.

Late last night, he sent this picture.

Ayutthaya

We woke up bright and early on Sunday morning, stashed our luggage with the Grande Sathorn front desk, and took our overnight bags on the Skytrain to the Victory Monument where I managed to find a bathroom (5 baht), and a minibus to Ayutthaya was miraculously waiting outside.

The bus ride was about two hours, but we knew nothing about the city and looked like little lambs lost in the hot, sweaty suburbs when the driver motioned us to get out.  A tuk-tuk driver descended upon us with post cards of the sights he promised to take us to.  I was in kind of a bad mood and felt like we were being 'taken,' but we really had no idea where we were or where to go next - and the tuk-tuk promised efficiency if nothing else. 

He gave us three hours and took us to about six different ruins. 

Ayutthaya, as you will read on the Internet, was once the capital city of Thailand. 

Temples and whatnot; gold covered stupas as far as the eye could see.  Apparently it was quite breathtaking.  The ruins that remain are pretty breathtaking.

Then the Burmese sacked Ayutthaya, prying off precious materials and burning buildings to melt off the gold coverings. 

There are hundreds and hundreds of headless Buddhas. 

It is unclear to me whether the heads were knocked off by the Burmese as an act of vandalism, or whether (as I've read more recently)some of the heads were stolen by robbers, because they are prized by collectors.  Either is heartbreaking. 

I wonder, in retrospect, whether it was the heat, the feeling victimized by our guide, the time of the month, or this pervasive sense of the meanness of human beings that threw me into a terrible mood that evening.  Also, my feet were killing me, for cereal.

Toes!

We thought the Buddhas with eyes were a little spooky.

Ace was partial to the chubby Buddhas.

Eventually the tuk tuk driver took us to a guest house that was made of teak.  It wasn't exactly the sanctuary I'd been envisioning, but it did supposedly have air-conditioning.  After being dropped off on the roadside, we walked into a walled garden (scratching chickens and a gurgling rooster), where foreigners were sitting on a porch reading novels.  The proprietress was incredibly friendly, delighted to learn that Ace was an engineer, then apologetic that she was full for the night.  She managed to find us a small room with a twin bed and a fan, with a bathroom down the hall.  I don't know what we thought we were looking for, but we decided to continue on.

But where?  Ayutthaya was impenetrable to us.  Guide books are severely lacking in maps or useful directions.  We learned later that Roy (the groom) had worked on the Let's Go guides in college - if only we had known!  The kind lady called around, and found a place for us to stay that promised air conditioning (we're not usually so demanding - but like I said, I was having a crummy day) - and that place sent a car to pick us up!

Here is where we stayed.

   

See?  We're not totally unreasonable!  It was ten dollars a night, located inside of a parking garage.  For an extra three dollars they would have turned on the air conditioning, but I was being contrary and frugal and refused.  Ace moved the bed away from the wall so the trail of bugs streaming down the wall wouldn't walk onto his face as he slept.

We showered off the grime, went for $2 dinners at the Chill Out Cafe, returned and the driver took us to a place where we each got Thai massages.  And then we each got reflexology (foot) massages.  We were side by side the whole time.  The very best part was at the beginning, when our ladies washed our feet.  There was something indescribably blissful about soapy fingers between my toes.  We were freshly clean, but they gave us clean, well-worn, soft, cotton pajamas to change into for the massage, and it was a nice touch.  And tea at the end.  I felt like a new person.

The 60 minute massage was $10, the 30 minute reflexology was $5.

Can you believe?  Those are the only massages we got the whole trip.  The rest of the time we were running around like chickens, doing things.

The next day we rented bicycles, and saw sights by bike, which I liked much better.  Something about the autonomy of it suited me better than the "herded sheep" effect of the tuk tuk.  We ate breakfast at a street stall that was (again) delicious, looked at elephants, and eventually made our way back to our guesthouse. 

We had already checked out, so when we asked to use the facilities before we left, we realized quickly that we were being invited to use the managers' own home - a room in the same parking garage.  And our $10 room, with a sagging bed and bugs on the wall and no natural light, with an en suite bathroom that wasn't quite separated from the bedroom by a wall that didn't go to the ceiling and was plagued with mosquitoes, and which contained a weak shower spray that sprayed the entire "bathroom" because there was no bath other than a drain in the floor - we learned that our room might as well have been the Presidential suite.

I haven't talked much about the mind-blowing contrast between rich and poor in Thailand, because I really don't know what to say.  We have a big gap here, obviously, but I'm inclined to think that our minimum standards are way, way better than theirs, just maybe our superrich are that much more eye-popping.  I don't know.  It does seem that you can live (though not comfortably) on far less, making that subterranean level of poverty sustainable.  I don't know, I'm not trying to make a point. 

By another miracle, a bus (this time, a full-sized coach) to Bangkok was a block away.

The Bangkok bus station was rather out of town; we took a local bus to the Chatuchak BTS station, returned to our hotel, had a (delicious) meal, went for a suit fitting, then got our things and took a taxi to the hotel where we'd stay for the wedding.  Only a couple of miles from the Grande Sathorn, the trip took us about an hour in Bangkok traffic. 

The Peninsula is one of the finest hotel experiences I've had.  One pulls up to the front doors, and vases of orchids 15 feet high greet you.  Sounds are muffled by thick carpets; flowers are everywhere; multilingual reception clerks speak softly and respectfully and kindly. 

I was floored. 

Our room. 

I can't even begin. 

I'll probably go on more about the hotel when I talk about the wedding.  But let me just say that staying at that place in Ayutthaya the night before made the subsequent luxury all the sweeter and we appreciated, savored, and WALLOWED IN every single moment.

On the Egregious Violation of New Year's Resolutions

On the outskirts of Bangkok in Chatuchak is the famous Weekend Market.  As I explained to Ace, it makes the DeAnza Flea Market look like somebody's yard sale.

The market is a cinch to get to; it's at the Northernmost end of the Skytrain, and you can see the overlapping corrugated roofs of the stalls stretching for 35 acres right out the port-side window before you arrive at the Chatuchak (Jatujak) Station.

The market is both days, but I'd read a thing that recommended going on Saturday because that's when the 'new stuff' was in.  Whatever.  There was no chance of anything selling out.

Chatuchak is difficult to describe.  It's a beehive of stalls, with a semblance of organization, selling everything you can imagine, from housewares and china and yard implements to touristy things like pins and t-shirts and wood carvings, to work clothes and linens, to high priced artwork and low-priced chopsticks, to fabric by the yard and spices by the kilo, to kittens and puppies by the litter.  Yeah, they had loads and loads of little pets - lizards and mice and bunnies and kittens and puppies and birds, there for the petting and playing with.  The sadness of it doesn't bear thinking about, and I found it hard to focus on the cute.  So you just get a bird picture.

Oops, I guess some bunnies sneaked in there on the bottom.

Ace and I worked the aisles and the rows, sometimes separating as I spent forty five minutes to buy jewelry, sometimes tightly holding hands to avoid getting swept away by the mob.  It was an overcast day, but still hot and dry.  We'd packed water, but that only made our bags heavy and me have to pee (5 baht).  We broke out into a clearing to regroup, where we found a cheeseburger.

Wait, what?

The cheeseburger was really friendly, and I was happy until I noticed he was heading over to where a tent where there was an entire menu!  A fishwich!  Hash browns!  They were all gearing up for something, but the cup of McCoffee still came over to say hi.

He's either saying "thumbs up" or "F you."  What was sweet was how he scrunched down to make his legs disappear.  A true professional.

Make no mistake about it, the market is cheap.  But here's the thing.  You start working in Baht, and your sense of dollars slips away.  Moreover, your sense of perspective/big picture slips away.  So you start haggling with the vendor over 25 cents - and walking away...and when you get home from your trip, you kick yourself because you could have had a silk scarf for four dollars if only you hadn't been so morally outraged that you couldn't get it for $3.50. 

In any event, we spent a brutally long day - maybe 6 or 7 hours - on tired feet without a meal break; Ace was a champion shopper.  And we really ended up getting lovely things for extremely satisfactory prices.  What did we get?  Some pretty brooches and necklaces that I really will wear, some beautiful woven silk, a couple of amusing cotton sarongs, a white linen top-and-trousers (Ace's Vacation Gigolo Outfit), a nice assortment of Party Shirts for Ace, a very cool Chinese brocade jacket for work for me, fresh chopsticks for dinner parties, two Chinese cleavers, and an assortment of dried spices and herbs for making Thai curry.

We met a guy on the train who lived in Berkeley, who'd spent the day buying up boxes full of sundresses and things made out of coconut for his shop on Maui.

As tired as we were, we stopped in at a tailor that had good reviews on the internet, Narry.com.  (It is a store name AND a website!)  It seemed promising that he had (or appeared to have) an international clientele of repeat customers.   (Petitioning my parents for first hand accounts and references, I got a few negative reviews - of other shops, I mean - that I'll pass along to you if you e-mail me for them.)   Narry's is located off a road, Sukhumvit Rd., along which there are hundreds of tailors. 

A friend opined (probably rightly) that really, all of these purported tailors are actually brokers, who take your order and outsource, just like all the others, to area sweatshops.  Ace and I spent at least an hour agonizing over suit "packages," varieties of materials and so forth.  Finally he decided on a tuxedo and some shirts, and me a suit for work. 

A tip for those of you considering getting something custom made when you go to Bangkok:

I think most of these tailors do best with men's suits.  I think they have a few basic patterns they know how to do (and do do) well.  Ace came away looking pretty sharp, and he can't say enough good things about the custom fitting shirts.  (I agree.)

But I had a bad experience.  I think they don't do as much female business, and maybe women's shapes are just that much more sensitive to a waist that's too high or a dart that's in the wrong spot or a jacket that falls at exactly the wrong point.  My suit just didn't look good; it didn't look like the suit in the picture we'd agreed on (their catalogue, I might add), and more to the point it didn't flatter me.  I suggested numerous changes, but we were limited by what had already been done.  Looking now at my half-finished picture, I wonder whether my suggested changes were even improvements.  I came away from the experience very disappointed - a custom suit was a very expensive gamble when I have store-bought (cheaper) suits that flatter me much better. 

One of the guys at the Harriers mentioned that if you're a normal size, custom fitting isn't all that crucial to look good in clothes - because you can buy things off the rack and they look okay.  His opinion was that custom suits are aimed at people who wanted to, you know, disguise weight gain or that kind of thing.  An interesting point.

Finally, I think selecting the "high quality" suit material - a fairly thick wool - was the wrong choice for a woman's suit, because it hangs rather bulkily, rather than skimming the body like a thinner material might do.  Just a thought.  Long story short I look like a pinstriped sack of potatoes.

Anyway, we wrapped it up with the tailor, grabbed a quick meal at a greasy spoon (which turned out to be, like every other meal we had in Bangkok, delicious), and went to look at the Thai boxing at Lumpini Stadium.

After a crazed tuk tuk ride there, we were astonished to learn that tickets to the bouts were more than $50 with just half an hour left till the finish!  And I was drooping and irritable.  We hightailed it back to the Sathorn and hit the sack.

How do you know when you've made it?

When they write an article about you in the NYT! 

This is the couple whose wedding we attended at the beginning of the month.  (I think the free link expires at the end of the week unless you subscribe to NYT Online.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/24/fashion/weddings/24vows.html?_r=1&ref=weddings&oref=slogin

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/24/fashion/weddings/24vowssidebar.html

If nothing else, this reminds me I need to get back to my trip recap.

Squirming

In other liberal guilt news, I'm deciding among this:

http://whatcom.wsu.edu/ag/compost/Easywormbin.htm

this:

http://www.sccgov.org/portal/site/iwm/print?contentId=46cadc18dfb34010VgnVCMP230004adc4a92____

and this:

http://naturemill.com/plus.html

Which would you choose, and why?

Debbie Downer

So I knew about the beef recall and I shook my head and tsk tsked and grumbled that my tax dollars are paying for industries that I want nothing to do with and a largely effed up lunch program, but it wasn't till yesterday that I saw the videos that started it all over at the Humane Society website. 

Made me super sad - I'm totally face-ist, but cows really do have sweet faces, unlike, say, fish and chickens, which made their treatment like dumb objects particularly wrenching.  So my position against factory farming has hardened from a preference to stance.  I really should go vegetarian, and that wouldn't be a big deal, because I've been vegetarian before.  But if it's a question of principle, even that would just be a half measure, because what do we suppose happens to all those dairy cows when they're all squeezed out?  And it's not like laying hens are having such a great time.  So really I should go vegan. 

Giving up milk wouldn't be a problem; I had none while we were in Asia for two weeks (except for a tablespoon in my coffee) and didn't miss it.  Giving up cheese, though, wow.  But it would be doable - Ace encouraged me to give up cheese for the four weeks before the trip when I was trying to lose 5 lbs for bikini purposes and it was only hard the first few days.

Giving up eggs, though, that would be a problem.  Not because I eat them solo so much, but because they're so amazing in cooking and I love cooking.  Veganism just seems like a bunch of chopping and stirring and heating.  Cooking with eggs and dairy, though, that's alchemy.

I'm still wrestling with my conscience on this one, but I've determined that I won't be lured by anything factory farmed, anything originating with "big dairy", or any chickeny items that aren't free range and all that jazz.  I know it's not much, but at least it's a line I can be firm about drawing, even if it does mean I'm paying $10 per cubic inch of melty deliciousness.

Stupid people.

Go Banana Slugs!

I had to take a break from the recapping; it's been a busy weekend. 

Among the endurance athletes with whom Ace associates (triathletes, mostly Ironman types), there had apparently been considerable smack talking re who could run the fastest mile.  Not mile as part of a marathon after a 100 mile bike ride, just the fastest all-out mile.

So Dave had the brilliant idea to organize "the MILE smackdown" on Saturday.  Every weekend during the winter, Los Gatos High School hosts an all-comers track meet - $5 to compete, $2 to spectate.  I'd never heard of it before, but it's brilliant, and a lot of fun.  Since Heather needed to spend the morning riding long (she's training for IM Coeur d'Alene), they asked me to keep an eye on Kevin while Dave warmed up.

So I got there early, just as things were getting started at the meet (they were calling out the pole vault!), and was amazed to see athletes of all ages (from children to middle aged women to older gentlemen) making their way to the track.

I squeezed in a morning run along the Los Gatos Creek Trail - it was a perfect day, sunny and cool, with cherry and plum trees just bursting into bloom - there were hundreds of people out on the trail.  And when I got back to the school, the track meet was well under way.

The boys ran their mile (photos are here - and Dave's writeup, with video, is here), and then Ace and I hung around to watch.  The two-mile race was a wide range of everything from muscle-bound college athletes honing their skills and determination to ten year old girls scampering all around the lanes, and chatting the whole time - Ace and I made a bet of how quickly they would get lapped - he won with "one and a half laps."

I attempted to show Ace what I had learned that morning from the infomercial for Hip Hop Abs, and a pack of high school kids watching from afar broke into applause at our moves.

We were packing up to leave as they called out the 4x400, my favorite race to watch in high school, because it's adrenaline packed because it's an all out sprint, but it's still long enough that big exciting gaps can add up or places can get traded back and forth.  The announcer said that one pair of guys needed another pair to make a team, and Ace shrugged and jogged over.  He motioned me over, so I joined them.  It was two club athletes from UC Santa Cruz (apparently UCSC is not known for its athletics so they just have a club).

I agreed to take 3rd position, and Ace 4th.  Man - those guys were FAST - our team was in first place when I received the baton - three machinelike dudes passed me like I was standing still (swerving around me because I wasn't about to give up the inside lane, suckahs!), and then Ace just held on to fourth place for our finish in 4:19.75.  Yes, you heard me - a mile in 4:19.  I contributed like 73 or 78 seconds to that.

I don't know why we thought we could hang with college athletes, and I felt bad for 'losing it' for them, but Ace rationalized that if we hadn't joined them, they wouldn't have run at all.  And at least by going first and taking such a big lead in the first two laps, they knew they were the best runners out there.

Sunday was the prologue for the Tour of California in Palo Alto.  I put on my Team USA jumpsuit to be supportive of the home team, but for a T-shirt wore a red shirt with a big white Swiss cross, both because it color coordinated, but also because I wanted to cheer for Fabian Cancellara because he is super cute.   Although I was self conscious each time I walked past the med tent.

I had signed up to volunteer, but by the time I arrived at check in, most of the necessary jobs had been handed out.  "Here," said the organizer, handing me a T-shirt, "wear this and go over to the [I forget] tent - you can do economic impact or Health Fair [or whatever she said]."

So I went to this booth where the lady gave me a bag of noisemaker clapper thingies, and a stack of sweepstakes entry forms.  Instructions were to give clappers only to people willing to fill out sweepstakes entries.  ("Make sure they're over 18.")  While there were actual sweepstakes prizes, the purpose of the entry forms was to capture personal information so they (Herballife?  I'm not sure) could market to people.  I raised my eyebrow.  "If they really insist on protecting their personal information, you can show them this."  The lady turned over the form to a section in fine print with a check box - the completely non-obvious opt out section.

I was pretty grumpy.  I've done my share of surveys and stuff in high school and college, but those were paid jobs, or at least internships with ad agencies.  To ask a volunteer to be party to that made me pretty irritated.  I ran into a couple of other people in the same shirts, with the same giveaways and stacks of forms, and we commiserated on how this was totally not what we had signed up for. 

So I changed back to my original shirt (go Cancellara! you're so cute!), filled out forms for me and Ace (checking the box), and handed out all the clappers to the only people who wanted them - little kids. 

I cheered on a street corner on Palm Drive, saw some friends and eventually met up with Ace who was trying, as usual, to get on TV (pictures to come), and then we went our separate ways again.  Oh!  I also forgot!  I got Tyler Hamilton's autograph.  (He's so cute!)

Ace and Claudette.

Ace holding up traffic (but not getting on TV, dammit!)

Yesterday was a bunch of cooking, and buying my lesson book for the Japanese classes I'm starting, and running 15 miles.  That took, like, all day.

Po, Palace, Pancakes, Posies and Pipes

On Friday we were surprised to wake early.  So we snagged ourselves a couple of Skytrain passes, bought a couple of Tourist Boat passes and headed up the Chao Praya River to see the sights.  (You don't need a Tourist Boat pass - the regular ferry fare is substantially cheaper and you get more local color - but the Tourist Boat came quicker and the ticket entitled us to rides all day long on any boat or ferry, and we didn't have a real plan for the day, so we forked over the $4.)

First we visited Wat Po - a huuuuge temple about which I'm sure the internet could tell you a lot more than I can remember.  In 2001 I studied for several weeks at the Wat Po Medical School (yeah, Scooter, I heard you the first time), learning Thai massage.  They offer walk-in massages at Wat Po, though we did not partake.

We saw the largest reclining Buddha in the (country? world?  it was larger than we expected.)

We also visited the Grand Palace, and saw the Emerald Buddha, which was one of our favorite sights.  The Buddha was not large, but gorgeous.   He has three seasonal outfits (summer/winter/rainy), and was wearing his winter one, a beautiful gold coat.

All those mosaics you see?  Are created of individual mirrored tiles.  We saw a couple of ladies repairing a section and they were literally taking little pieces of mirror, snipping them to fit, and pressing them into place.

Doors behind us made of inlaid mother of pearl.  If you thought the TILING was laborious...

It's okay if you laugh at my sunglasses.  Ace thinks they're hot.

We also noticed, about town, dramatic black swags of fabric on street corners and public buildings such as post offices.  We learned that a member of the royal family had died and the country was in mourning.  We saw hundreds of people (mostly ladies of a certain age) wearing black, and were shooed from one area near the palace, though Thai people were welcomed.  We assumed it had something to do with paying respects. 

You read this everywhere, but it seemed to be true - Thai people seem terribly into their monarchy.  I was amused to see people all over town wearing yellow LiveStrong bracelets, and asked someone whether the Thai were actually interested in cycling (if you saw the traffic, you'd understand my skepticism).  I was mistaken - the bracelets were in support of the King - yellow is the royal color.

The day waned after a lot of walking, so we caught a tuktuk to Khao San Road, where all the westerners go.  Seems like a dumb place to visit, but in my brief experience in 2001, that was a good place to get cheapie tickets for excursions (I got an air ticket to and from Siem Reap to see Angkor Wat for less than a hundred bucks), and also a reliable source of banana pancakes, these ridiculously greasy layered crepelike pastries with a banana in the middle - a total rip at $1, but somehow also worth it.  We didn't find ANYTHING like the fly-by-night travel agencies I'd remembered, but I did get a banana pancake, and Ace got green curry chicken at a sit down place. 

We wended our way homeward, stopping at a flower market that blew my socks off.  I can't believe I didn't take a single picture, but the bounty was unreal.  To get there we walked through a wet market that put our farmer's market to shame - piles of greens, twice as high as a man, flanking us, truckloads of pineapples.  It killed me to walk by.  But the flower market - just a few streets, but each shop or outdoor stall had bowers of sweet-smelling jasmine, carnations, exotic Birds of Paradise and especially marigolds.  I was so tempted to buy a bunch of 40 roses for a dollar - just because I could.

We headed home, popped on our running shoes, and took the train to one station away, to drop in on the Bangkok Full Moon Hash House Harriers.  What a friendly group they were!  If you've never done a Hash run (which I never had - I didn't know what to expect), I highly recommend you find one in your town - they're everywhere.  For an hour or so (in our case, more like two, we got desperately lost), you follow a scavenger hunt of sorts, following chalk or paper arrows laid down by a member several hours before.  Ace and I saw back alleys and stray dogs and evening meals and even enjoyed a ten cent ferry ride under the stars as part of the adventure.  As we dashed ab0ut town, I noticed some surprised Thai nudge each other, then nod at us knowingly:  "Amazing Race."

The run was also a birthday celebration for the gentleman who laid down the trail.  To celebrate his Scottish Heritage (and also Burns Night), we all wore something plaid (Ace and I were given ribbons); some even broke out the kilts, and two bagpipes played several tunes afterwards, causing all kinds of heads to turn.  The run was also followed by copious chugging of beers, awarded for various achievements such as: arriving late, being new, visiting from out of town, saying something funny, being Scottish, not being Scottish, wearing a great costume, not wearing a shirt...you get the picture...all accompanied by a beer chugging song by the crowd ("downdowndowndowndowndowndowndown...").  This portion of the event lasted twice as long as the run.  Then the guest of honor hosted dinner for everyone, and Ace and I were welcomed as if we'd been members all our lives.  It was one of the most special evenings of the trip for me.  Also, the food (at Noriega's, if you go) was really good.  We did not have a bad meal anywhere in Bangkok. 

After all the On-Ons and Down-Downs, we were Done-Done, and staggered off to bed.

Steel yourself for tomorrow: a day at the Chatuchak Weekend Market.

A Grande Day Out

We arrived at BKK at 2 in the morning, and took a cab to our hotel.  (There are tips on a message board if you google "how to catch a cab from Bankok airport" that we found very helpful.)

Arranging a car pickup from the hotel was on the order of $30-plus; I understood a taxi to be somewhat less.  We went through the taxi desk outside by the taxi queue; they wrote out our destination in Thai for the driver.  Though even the desk, not clearly in cahoots with the drivers, urged us to pay a flat rate of 450 Baht ($12), I insisted on using the meter and the total fare for the 40 minute ride ended up being more like $7.  We used the freeway (B100 worth of tolls), but it was hardly necessary at 2 a.m.

We stayed at the Unico Grande Sathorn, which we selected for its location central to a variety of things we wanted to do, and, more significantly, a five minute walk from the Skytrain.  I recommend it.  The employees were very gracious, spoke English, and there was a kitchenette and a real bathtub.  The included breakfast buffet was delicious and served both Asian and Western selections, from miso soup or congee with all the fixin's to pancakes and an omelette bar.  The rooms have wifi, and Ace discovered the free internet computers in the lobby, where he apparently updated his Facebook profile almost daily.  I wouldn't know.  I checked my e-mail once, about ten days into the  trip.  We booked, the week before, through LateStays.com for what I felt was a reasonable deal.

That was our Thursday.  Two whole days vanished in travel.

I prefer the Little Twin Stars

I neglected to mention, but Sanrio stuff in general, but Hello Kitty in particular, was huge in Japan.  Huger than it was when I was a girl and really interested in Sanrio and also living in Japan.  And when I say it was huge in Japan, I mean there were entire sections of the gift shops (as exiles from the Red Carpet lounge we had a lot of time to kill) with Hello Kitty themes, and numerous souvenirs, including food, crafted into Hello Kitty likenesses. 

When we finally boarded for Bangkok, I claimed the window seat, and looked out to see: