Lonely Girl Travels

I knew I’d been in Asia awhile when I passed a herd of European tourists—flushed from the heat, sun-twinged limbs gleaming in sweat, tall and robust and covered in what suddenly seemed like an ungodly amount of body hair—and thought, “White people: how uncouth.”

Just me? Maybe. But the longer I’m here, the more absurd white people in Asia become. We’re a delicate race and we really don’t belong anywhere that sees more than 3 months of sunshine a year. Put us in the Americas, in Africa, put a crapton of us in Australia, and it’s just kinda sad: sweating everywhere, dehydrated and sun-burnt, leathery necks and sun-spotted arms.

In Asia we stand out for other reasons too: we’re large, we’ve got facial hair (I’ve got more of a ‘stache than most of the men I see), our eyes are comparatively the size of dinner plates and our noses like some real-life Pinocchio shit.

Those of you who’ve spent time Asia might be familiar with the term “chang bizi.” It’s Chinese slang for white people and literally means “long nose.” (Check this forum discussion of long noses: “so long, it frightened me.”) And while I haven’t heard this term in my travels in other Asian countries, I have had people comment on the length and geometrical pointiness of my nose. I mean, my nose is pointy by Western standards; coupled with my round checks and Irish tendency towards redness, I look something like an ostrich. But good lord, get this thing out here, combine it with my blue eyes, curly hair and 177 cm of PURE WOMAN and I’m a show-stopper, really.

I mean, dang!

So you know, you get some looks out in this part of the world. (Not aided, as mentioned in the last post, when you go jogging in Spandex with visible tattoos.) You start to feel the offensiveness of your own body—your sweaty, ginormous, hair-and-sun-spot-covered body, of which the pointy nose is the icing on the cake.

In seemingly unrelated news, my contact lens debacle has continued: after the cleaner threw out my lenses and after I discovered I couldn’t get my particular lenses replaced in Vietnam, I contacted a couple clinics in Bangkok, where I’m headed next month for a wee holiday. The response: toric lenses are available in Thailand! Yay! Buuuut… not at the strength of my prescription. To get the lenses I require, they’d need to order them from overseas. “The cost will be between 20,000-30,000 Baht.” (Do the conversion, it’s not pretty.)

So. Glasses it is. It’s been a long time since I’ve solely worn my glasses. Because it’s inconvenient for exercise, meaning that I have to jog semi-blind (NOT advantageous with all the dangling wires and low-hanging tree branches in these parts). But secretly because I look really fly in a pair of big plastic sunglasses (byproduct of having come of age in the post-Kurt-Cobain era).

But if Asia thinks it’s got me beat, if it thinks my genetic inferiority with conspire with a lack of foreign products to take me down a notch in the realm of 90s-era style, I say NAY.

Long nose to the rescue!

Now you might not be able to tell in this picture that I’m actually wearing TWO pieces of eyewear: my 6-year-old eye glasses and my snazzy red shades from Malaysia. And the reason you might not be able to tell is that they both sit so comfortably on my nose. And with so much extra nose to spare.

Technically speaking, I’ve got room for another pair on there. I might just go buy some, solely to prove the supremacy of my pointy schnoz.

Would your average Asian nose wouldn’t be up to the challenge of two pairs of eyewear on one nose? I think not. Does this compensate for the fact that I can’t get contact lenses, can’t buy clothes that fit me, that I look like the fucking attack of the 50′ woman walking around this city? Not really.

But does it make me feel a wee better? Does it give me reason to walk around humming amended version of Smiths’ songs (two points for anyone who gets the reference)? Does it give me further reason to amend canonized poetry to fit my own particular circumstances and sense of personal triumph? (“From the ash I will rise with my long nose”—three points!)

Why yes, yes it does.