I’m sat once again in the free wif-fi section of Incheon aiport having done another visa run to Malaysia. This time I went via Bangkok and enjoyed an uneventful weekend in the heart of the nightclub district.
Uneventful because instead of rounding up a troupe of ladyboys and a sack of cocaine as planned I found a banjo for sale in a music shop and spent both nights in my room trying to play it: just as well most people in Bangkok hotels on a weekend don’t plan on sleeping.
As usual, the Russian embassy in KL was as unpredictable as ever, charging me less than I thought they would and turning my visa around in a day rather than the 3 days it is supposed to take. I’m wondering if Russian embassies are a franchise where the Kremlin sets the products and does the marketing and the local consul sets the prices within certain boundaries, a bit like MacDonalds. That would explain why I got a free toy and a coupon for next time.
On the way back through my wife gave me the usual instructions, based on some dubious story or other about how she’d only just lost something whilst I’d been away, to buy cosmetics in the duty free. My experience of buying cosmetics prior to about a year ago consisted in its entirety of buying underarm deodorant and shaving foam. Even my after shave gets given to me as presents, no doubt by people who would prefer I’d bought soap while I was at it. Now I am fast realising that buying cosmetics is like procuring machinery parts: all grades, numbers, and suffixes. An example:
Guerlain PARURE – Compact Foundation, with Crystal Pearls, SPF20, PA++, nb. 12
Tell me that wasn’t dreamed up by a SAP technician! The only differences being machinery parts are considerably cheaper than cosmetics, at least by weight, and the costs can be passed onto the end user.
Oh dear. I was so busy blogging I missed my flight. Dammit. I’ll have to take tomorrow’s.