Author: Sarah Northway

Right to left: Pete… some people…
Sarah… David… some girl… top of
Rachael’s head… some other girl…
Leah (in pink).Last we left you we’d just come back from Samui sans laptop and camera accessories and the wind had finally picked up for kiteboarding, when we heard that Colin’s cousin Pete would be in the area, as it were, in just a few days. We wouldn’t have suggested Bangkok as the best place to spend four days in Thailand – from all accounts it was to be avoided – but it was already booked and besides, Bangkok might have such civilized things as stores that sell portable computers. Imagine that!

So Pete was travelling on business – sort of. He and his s.o Leah, her folks, her bro and his s.o were stopping by the Big Kok for a few days on their way to a wedding; clients or partners or such of the family business. Not just some old wedding though: a five day multimilliondollar Indian wedding , with thousands of guests, a host of events in two cities and tailored clothing. And probably choreographed dance routines they’ll have to learn.

La grande Coq (river view)So in preparation for the decadence to come, la famille was going to do Bangkok in style, too. They stayed at the beautiful Shangri-la hotel (we were down the street at the still fancy-lala but cheaper Bossotel – no ‘H’). They had guided tours and dinner reservations all lined up and were incredibly generous and kind to take us along on their adventures.

The adventures, in short:

Shangri-la: great breakfast buffet; ridiculous beer prices. Bossotel: nice bathrooms; bad free coffee. Golden Buddha: shiny. Reclining Buddha: nice feet. Emerald Buddha: not actually made of emerald. Grand Palace: glitzy. Ayuthaya Ruins: brick-ey.

They build ’em shiny in ThailandAs you can tell they weren’t really my cup of tea but Colin had a blast and a half and took a lot of pictures with his new camera lenses (yes he got them!). The guides were actually pretty cool and informative, and didn’t mind our sometimes uncomfortable questions regarding Thai politics. I almost choked when Colin asked our first guide, Tee, “Can you tell us how the last King of Thailand died?”.

But it wasn’t all fun-and-Buddhas; we got out to the busy Chatuchak market, shopped at a sweet huge tech mall (Panthip Plaza), and took a few walks on the street when we couldn’t stand the fresh air of the hotels and aircon malls anymore. I thought I had come down with a cold after the first day and kept blowing mysterious chunks of black gunk out of my nose, but it was just the air there. No kidding the tuk-tuk drivers wear face masks.

Panthip Plaza: five
floors of sweet sweet techBangkok has a for-serious transportation problem. Between four and seven every evening traffic stops dead in most of the city. Taxis flat-out refuse to take you where you want to go, or will charge five times the usual fare. The city is crisscrossed with raised toll expressways; designed with three lanes and a narrow shoulder but used as four lanes (seven, if you count motorbikes who drive between lanes). There is a skytrain system half the size (in terms of both coverage and actual size) of Vancouver’s that begs to be expanded. And so many SUVs – crazy Bankokians!

So, not a Sarah-friendly city to say the least. I had to look up “carless cities” as soon as we got home to regain a little hope for the future.

I haven’t gotten to the worst part yet – and no it wasn’t the girly bars, we avoided those with good taste. It was the goddamn taxis. Every single time we got into a taxi or a tuk-tuk, we were taken for a ride. Err, in the way that also means “fucked up the arse”. They had us in every possible way:


Taxi: bane of our existance

1. “Metered” taxis who refused to go by the meter (not surprising, but they’re supposedly only licenced to go by the meter in BK)
2. Being driven into an alley away from the main streets then told the fare just doubled because the driver wasn’t clear about where we were going (twice)
3. Being taken to “a friend’s shop” for “just five minutes, then I take you to train station” (they tried this almost every time; we gave in once out of curiosity/exhaustion)
4. Being “accidentally” taken to the completely wrong restaurant five km in the wrong direction during rush hour (a common occurance; the driver would have gotten a commission there and actually had the nerve to offer to drive us back for the same rate; we were an hour and a half late meeting Leah’s parents when we finally arrived in a different cab)
5. Driver who covered his taxi licence with a picture of the king so we couldn’t report him (the Shangri-la gave out receipts with the taxi driver’s licence number when you got in, but we didn’t get one this time and guess what? we got fucked again)
6. Friendly dude who “worked at the embassy” and “knew just where we should go, we like seafood right?” and got us a convieninetly low tuk-tuk fare, then directed us to the most godawful expensive restaurant in the entire city
7. Taxis who refused to take us from our hotel to the train station because it was after 2pm on a Saturday

Colin giddy over the
new wide-angle lensIn the end, we gave up and started paying double to avoid the hassle. We’d say – Train station, 100 baht. They’d say – Yes, 100 baht, get in. We’d say – 100 baht, train station, no stops. They’d say – Okay, 200 baht.

We did get there eventually, and after an enlightening bus ride to Surat Thani (we do NOT recommend the overnight bus – sleeper trains are worth the extra ten bucks) we made our way back to our happy quiet little island.

But this time we accomplished all of our missions: we had a great time with Pete and the gang (all wonderful folks); we saw some really old buildings and really enormous buddhas; we aquired both a laptop and a crapload of camera accessories; we visited the exeedingly huge weekend market where you can reportedly buy anything (we bought t-shirts); and we experienced enough of the “there’s a farang – get his money!” culture to be able to say what everyone has been telling us about Bangkok:

Visit once to say you’ve been there, then get the hell out and don’t look back.

We are finally home again.

There is a ton to write about. I don’t have the energy to do it now. I can’t believe it’s christmas eve right now. It doesn’t feel like christmas at all and thus we have no gesture of good-will prepared. We’ll have to come up with something. At least we’re a day ahead.

Bangkok: I swing back and forth but I’m pretty sure I hate Bangkok. Never-the-less hanging out with Leah and Pete and Leah’s family made it very fun.

It is really good to be home on the island where people are friendly, you can see the ocean, and you can breath the air.

More to come. Mit Pictures.

Haha! I got a kite up! -does a little dance-

Finally the wind is up! It was up two days ago and I called Pascal (my kiteboarding contact) and he was on the mainland buying kites! Wha! Such unluck!

So yesterday I’m up at dawn like usual and the wind is up again. But this time I finally get the call I’ve been waiting almost 2 months for. It is on!

Pascal called me at 9:30 but we weren’t going to meet until 1:30 so I got to bounce around the house for a while waiting for the time to come. Couldn’t wait the full time as it turns out and I headed out 1/2 hour early.

The ride was really fun. Nature put on a good show yesterday. Dark clouds dominated the sky and the wind was whipping at the jungle. The island was in a rainless storm. It was very cool. The colours were great. (note I have no pictures of the entire day because I was affraid to leave the camera unatended on the beach). It became pretty obvious on the way out to Mae Haad (the place with the island connected only by a stretch of sand) that it was REALLY windy.

I got to Mae Haad without letting the excitement make my driving too reckless and walk-jogged out to the head of the sandbar where the kiteboarders meet. There was Pascal, in a sweater. In the water was Frankie leaping huge distances into the air, landing perfectly and firing on.

Quick intro, sans pictures unfortunately. Pascal owns the kiteboarding shop/school on the island. He is shorter than I am, about the same build, but much more fit. That means he’s pretty small. Frankie is much taller than I am, of a bigger build, and also very fit. That means he’s fairly large. They are both really fun to be around. And since they are kiteboarders on Koh Phangan they are both french (if you’re a restraunteur you’r english and it your a diver you’re scandanavian).

I’ve gotten to hang out with them a bit before. I talk to Pascal on the phone and by email occasianally about the wind and I let him know when I’m not going to be in town. Frankie taught me and a couple of luckless americans the rigging about a week ago on a windless day. We also spent an afternoon drinking beer at Mae Haad waiting for wind that never came.

So I walk up to Pascal (they are clearly much more than 1/2 hour early) with what I’m sure is a huge grin. He tells me that there is too much wind today! Too much! And that he isn’t even going to get one of the new kites up today because of the wind. Grah! Frah! Anyway he says we can wait and see if the wind goes down a little. Time to hit the bar again.

The ride up was a good show. But Mae Haad was fantastic. I really should have brought the camera. The tide was over the sand-spit and big waves from both bays where breaking over it in opposite directions at the same time: smash! It looked great, I wondered if there was anyone stranded on Koh Ma. This was actually another reason we were waiting. They use the spit alot for teaching so we had to wait for the tide to come down and things to settle down a little.

Anyway Frankie got exhausted before long and pretty soon I was surrounded by 1/2 dozen happy french kiteboarders. It was fun. Most of the conversations where in french uneless I managed to start something with Pascal or Frankie. But nature was putting on a good show to fill in the gaps and it was fun trying to comprehend some of the conversation.

So anyway eventually the tide went down a little and the waves started breaking way back at the entrance to the bays, leaving the water relatively calm. I guess the wind went down a little but I didn’t notice it. At any rate. It was finally time to play.

I didn’t get a board yesterday. It was mostly learning to control the kite (which I have a head-start on) and getting used to the pull and some of the theory.

The highlight was body drags. We would walk out onto the spit, thigh deep in churning, mad water. Then walk out into the bay into waist, and then chest, and then Frankie dragging me – deep water. Then we give the kite some power and tack back and forth into the beach (well you can’t tack without a keel but you get the idea). This was much fun, although the treck out was arduous. Especially trying to keep up with the big Frencheman.

We did some take-offs and landings, I did one solo trip out to the spit and back and that was the day. It was so much fun and I am so eagre to be out there again.

The wind looks good again today and it will probably stay high for the next little while. Of course I have the cousin with the WORST TIMING EVER PETE! So Sarah and I are off to Bangkok today. Which should generate some fodder for the journal, alot of fodder for the flickr account, as well as a laptop and some new lenses.

Yes yesterday was a good day!

Wicked future-from-the-80s book artSo, they’re making a six hour miniseries of one of my favorite childhood books, The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub. But they’re going to ruin it! The guy writing the screenplay also wrote Reindeer Games, The Brothers Grimm, and the US clones of The Ring and The Ring 2. Yuck. Yuck! The first two were terrible movies from directors with previously great track records, and the latter almost word-for-word translations.

Spielberg is producing; does that mean it’s going to have the entire budget poured into effects? One of the two leads will either be CGI or a guy in a big hairy suit. Or a muppet I guess, best-case. Stephen King will probably have his paws in it though, and we know what that means for screen adaptations of his books. True to the material with somewhat of a disregard for the art of filmmaking.

Awesome fanart by edved
on TheDarkTower.netHmm, I didn’t know they wrote a sequel to The Talisman. Somehow I just want everyone to leave the story alone so it can stay precious.. though I am kind of excited to find references to it in the Dark Tower series I’m finally reading the end of.

I’m on Wolves of the Calla now, and reading it on the DS because I couldn’t find a real copy (I have the next one ready in paperback). He wasn’t kidding about this being his masterpiece; it ties all these different books together with little references and characters. TheDarkTower.net has a thrillingly obsessive collection of these connections, complete with diagrams, and sweet fanart. The webmaster seems to share my apprehensions surrounding the Talisman miniseries – coming in 2008!

Yeah, I guess we’ll see…

But certainly not a complete waste of time. We had three missions:

1. Get 30-day visa extensions
2. Buy a laptop for Colin
3. Buy a lens for the new camera

The plan was to get in and out in one afternoon. On that we failed. Well, actually we failed at everything but the visa extension because the shopping on Samui consists solely of:

1. Wooden knick-knacks
2. Replicas of brand name watches
3. “Armani” suit tailors
4. Silk pillow covers
5. Copies of DVD movies
6. Shoulder bags
7. Beachwear Thais wouldn’t be caught dead in
8. Camera… film
9. Copies of music CDs

We started in the capitol town of Nathon then took a sonthaew to the resort side of the island. We walked all afternoon, amazed at the phenomenon: at every 10th store the pattern starts over again with wooden knick-knacks. The Armani tailors were particularly striking. Each store had slick looking young men in suits outside who would shamelessly badger every person who walked by to come in and be fitted for a suit. We passed maybe a dozen of these places, and every one was named “Armani” something and had these guys out front. Two jackets, two shirts, two pants, two ties, all made to order, $149 USD. Armani

We also tried the “big tech mall” which turned out to be ten cellphone stores and the Thai equivalent of a Walmart (no, we haven’t seen any actual Walmarts).

Exhausted, and having missed our ferry, we booked in to a cheap room across the street from the $4000 Baht resorts on Chaweng beach, then went out in search of food. Here, we were finally successful! We found the most unassuming place with the most glorious food: the Chilli restaurant. By unassuming I don’t mean down a little alley and populated by Thais; I mean it looked like crappy tourist fare: on the busy street, well lit, bad decor, menu out front boasting five wildly different food genres beside a half oil drum filled with ice and raw seafood.

Thumbs up for sushi at
Chilli’s on Chaweng BeachBut the prices were better than most on schmancy Chaweng beach, and we were right starving. And one of the five genres was Japanese – sushi! Now… we’d been burned by sushi back in Chiang Mai; drawn in by the incredible decor and Japaneseness of the place, when we should have been looking at how far Chiang Mai actually is from the ocean. It had been expensive and not very fresh, so needless to say we were wary.

But, the waitress had suggestions for what we should order, and as you can see from my thumbs-up here it was as good as it looked. So good in fact that we had seconds, and thirds, then ice cream and espresso. The staff were great and the sushi was amazing. Huge chunks of crab and the most delicious fresh wasabi I’ve ever had. Some fish that were new to us too; new and tasty.

The next day of course we were back to failing our missions; we waited for a computer store that didn’t open, then missed our ferry due to some miscommunication with a travel agent and ended up bumming around Nathon town for five hours taking pictures.

We’ve decided, screw this island stuff; if you want to buy something in Thailand, you go to the place that has it all: Bangkok.

We’ll let you know how it goes. ;)