a peek inside the fishbowl

We are finally home from Thailand! The youngest and I have had a wonderful adventure but I’m happy to be sleeping in my own bed again. I have more photos and travel posts coming, but first, naps and laundry. I’m also trying to get back to routines so I’m starting with a new weekend roundup. :)

Thailand was great but there’s no place like home. :) pic.twitter.com/uxI5ULBb0V

— andrea tomkins (@missfish) July 19, 2019

• Notre-Dame came far closer to collapsing than people knew. This is how it was saved, nytimes.com
• Whole 60, longreads.com
• How Spotify and other apps trick you into doing free labour, fastcompany.com
• Fifty years ago we went to the moon. So why can’t we solve climate change, theglobeandmail.com
• An Epidemic of Disbelief, theatlantic.com

On the nightstand, the Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris.

(Click for part one and two.)

After our pit stop, we wandered along the Seine and around the shops and restaurants and charming alleyways of Paris.

After a couple of hours we were hot, tired, and overwhelmed so we decided to call it a day. We were also worried. If the RER train took us overly long to get here, could there be similar delays on the route back? We assured ourselves that there couldn’t possibly be another issue with unattended baggage. It’ll be fine, right? Er, wrong.

We boarded the train (once again my daughter’s ticket didn’t work and a random citizen had to help us out) and we were three or four stations away from the airport when the train stopped (again!) and a message came over the loudspeaker. Of course, we didn’t understand what was being said, so we ignored it. We continued to stare out the window and sweat to death in our seats in a state of anxiety. We didn’t notice that everyone else had gotten off the train and we were the only ones left sitting there, along with one other young fellow who was equally oblivious and non-French speaking. Thankfully, a fellow passenger who’d already left the train (!) backtracked, stuck his head in the door, and explained, in broken English, that if we wanted to get to the airport we had to get on another train. I still don’t know why, because it wasn’t the end of the line. Sigh.

We eventually made it back to the airport. The youngest was feeling ill at this point and we asked to bypass one of the check-in lines, which they let us do, thankfully. She ended up throwing up in a garbage bin en route to our waiting area. (According to her, she had made a tactical error mixing melatonin with a glass of wine on the flight but I’m certain the heat and exhaustion didn’t help matters.) Thankfully she felt better after, er, the purge. I was worried whether she’d be ok for our 12-hour flight to Bangkok and the flight to Phuket after that. But that was about it for our travel troubles.

We found our gate and admired the deluxe waiting areas, snacks, and window shopping. Was our outing worth all the trouble? I am unsure, but I do know that if we hadn’t made the effort to try to see Paris during our layover we would have been disappointed in ourselves. In hindsight, I can’t say I regret our decision but I do know it would have been a pleasure to kill eight hours in that gorgeous airport. I also know that I would really like to return to Paris some day and I will need a lot more time to absorb it fully. Maybe in the spring or the fall, when the weather is cooler and our stomachs aren’t in knots about late trains and connecting flights.

(Part one of our layover in Paris is right here.)

Nature called. The youngest went first. The way it worked in this particular cafe was that one had to ask the manager for a token, go downstairs to the WC, pop the coin in the lock mechanism, and do your business. She came back to our table and reported on the coin mechanism and a big flush button instead of the usual handle to flush. My turn. I got my coin from the manager at the same time another female customer was heading to the loo. I turned to him. “Are there two places down there, to, you know…” I know this was a vague question but what I was trying to say was: ARE THERE TWO TOILETS IN THE LADIES’ LOO. He paused for a moment and answered in the affirmative. His pause gave ME pause and this pause is what I thought about as I descended the stairs behind this other lady. What did he mean by it? Was there a second washroom down there or not?

She went in one door and I didn’t immediately spot another women’s WC, only men’s. Ok. I shall go. I pulled open the door. There was a urinal on one side (whatev) and a token-operated door on the other. I had a bit of trouble pushing the token through the slot but I persevered. I swung open the door and looked down. Instead of a toilet on the other side – surprise! – there was a squat toilet. I had actually done some reading about the variety of toilets that were awaiting us in Thailand but I wasn’t prepared to find one in one of the busiest tourist regions of Paris. Squat toilets, in case you don’t know, are the original latrine. (Need me to paint you a picture? You essentially go over a hole in the ground.) Fortunately, this one had running water and a working flush, and a roll of toilet paper at the right level. Unfortunately, I was wearing a flowy ankle-length dress and had my phone in my pocket. Then my glasses fell off my face. My catching reflex HAS NEVER BEEN FASTER and I managed to snatch them out of the air before they hit the ground. Oh, and someone was knocking on the door and jiggling the handle, upping the pressure considerably.

“OCCUPIED, er, occupée!” I yelled, surprised at the sudden high pitch of my voice (no doubt infused by mild panic). I broke into a sweat.

Two questions sprang to mind in that moment: (a) Why did my daughter not warn me about the squat toilet and (b) was I really going to do this?

I will skip over the details but I will confirm that I survived the ordeal AND nothing terrible happened.

I opened the door and there was a man standing at the urinal and another one waiting. I flew out of there like a bird out of a cage. When I got back to our table, my daughter confirmed there were indeed two toilets in the ladies room.