Just a note that because of the earthquake in Vietnam broke a bunch of our inter-tubes.

This seems to have cut us off from random swaths of internet. LiveJournal is fine, flickr is faster than ever but we can’t get google or gmail. Thats why christmas emails are going unanswered. Sorry!

This was actually back from the day Colin finally got out kiteboarding. (A note on that – we ran into instructor Pascal today who had bad news: next chance probably won’t be until the 2nd!)

For the first time, Momma came by with all three pups in the middle of the day. I gave them some leftover rice and chow with fish sauce (god knows how good it is for them but they yum it up), then we romped around the beach a bit.

I took 2/3 of the pictures with the ISO cranked to 1600 because I was too lazy to check all the settings. The pictures look alright unless you crop them or zoom in too far, but next time I will take the time to check the ISO (or stick to the auto modes).

This is Brave here sitting between my legs on the deck and getting a belly rub. Someone had tried to confuse things by removing Rope’s rope and putting one around Brave’s neck instead, but I could tell the difference. ;)

We let Momma in to the living room yesterday and it made her sooo happy to sit by our feet near the couch. Then Brave came scampering in, tripped over the power cord and in his panic to get untangled almost yanked the laptop off the desk. I am so getting an extension cord and moving that power bar tomorrow.

Puppies is so cute with them gangly puppy legs!

Go read Sarah’s first.

Bangkok is not like the rest of Thailand. It is very different. Very different forces have driven its population, politics and business.

I really like Thailand. I don’t like Bangkok. But our time in Bangkok was good. Thanks entirely to Pete, Leah, and Leah’s family.

They were fun and happy and let us travel around in their well chauffered cocoon. The cocoon was full of history, amazing architecture, and even a very few people. Who I liked.

The buddihst architecture was really great. It was intricate and filled with non-stop gold. I didn’t get any pictures that expressed the kind of non-stop oppulence involved. At one point Tee (our great travel guide) pointed to a stupa 100% covered in little gold tiles.

He said the plan was to get tiles from Italy but they were too expensive so they just did it in gold. Everything was pretty much either outlandish or gold. Actually most things where just both. So that was amazing to see.

The other thing I liked alot was the old capital of Ayuthaya. It had an old, vastish buddhist temple complex. Most of it was rubble but alot of the stupas were still standing. Back in the glory days everything was all goldy and impressive but now it’s just all raw bricks. I like old things that look old and the ruins definitely oblige.

One of the less picture worthy parts of the ruins was the old royal palace. Which simply no longer exists. Apparently the Thais are still pissed at the Burmese for that one.

The destruction wreacked on the old capital was visited all over the Siamese world. As our guide put it so memorably: “Everything to be burned. Everyone to be killed”. In fact the burmese swept aside three simese kingdoms who had been fighting for dominance since the Siam ascendency hundreds of years earlier. After the destruction of the old kingdoms however the beloved king Taksin raised an army and built the new kingdom of Siam over the ashes. The new captial was built in Bangkok (well close to bangkok) to take better advantage of booming international trade.

Seems like everywhere you go there is an ‘old capitol’ of Thailand. This is because now Thai people identify themselves with all the old ethnic Thai Kingdoms. So at a few points in history there were 3 or 4 ‘old capitals’ at once.

Mabey it’s because I’ve read some Thai history that I found the sights more interesting than Sarah.

Anyway all in all it really wasn’t _that_ bad.

offtopic ps: Is google down there too? It’s been down all day. Now gmail is down too. Isn’t this one of the signs of the appocalypse?

and is altavista a .com or .org? Am I even spelling it right?

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.