More family adventures

It's going to take me awhile to catch up on everything that happened while my family was here. We had a lot of fun but their troubles didn't stop with flight times. I did my best to keep them out of trouble but I did have to work a lot during their trip so I'd plan things for them to do during the day while I wasn't around.

The first day I told them to go shopping at the MBK and Siam center. There are tons of shops all close by and really great prices. But they found a nice old women who offered them advice on some tailors and gem stores. She even negotiated a cheap price with a tuk tuk driver to take them there. The tuk tuk took them to both where they bought some things and then were driven around the city for awhile for 30 baht (less than a dollar). They didn't realize they had been ripped off until I explained the details of the scam to them and how they all get kickbacks. Luckily they didn't get too much and it wasn't that big of a deal.

The next day I told them how to go to the Grand Palace and specifically warned them not to talk to any Thai people outside the Grand Palace. But they did and fell for the "Grand Palace is closed scam." So they believed it really was closed and were driven to a temple in the middle of nowhere and again to a Tailor shop and a gem store. Nothing was purchased this time though and they did end up making it back to the Grand Palace before it really did close.

Now the next day I decided that I was going to tighten up the plans a bit to make sure they kept away from the scams. So Natalie gave me the number of a driver she knew that would take them to the floating markets and some other places nearby. The driver took them to possibly the most expensive boat ride I've ever heard of here in Thailand and then not only to the Tailor and the gem store again. But to the same exact ones as the first day! My family said they knew they weren't going to buy anything and only did it because they felt bad for the driver who kept insisting he take them their for the free gas he gets for bringing them. So at least nothing was purchased but I was disappointed they had their time wasted like that.

That's it for the scams but more family stories to come...

Time zones are tough, but not this tough

Today I went to the airport very early this morning to pick up my mom, her husband, and my little sister. I was glad I'd be able to go get them, take them back to my place, and then still have time to get to work at a reasonable time. Now I've messed up with scheduling things because of time zones many times making people wait for me or I'd miss them by an hour because of daylight savings time etc. However, my mom told me she'd be arriving Wednesday the 18th in Bangkok. She wasn't leaving until Wednesday the 18th from LA and thought that since she was leaving the 18th she'd be here the 18th. I searched the airport for them for about an hour and was really worried. Finally I called my mom's cell in desperation and she answered and told me she hadn't left yet. Their flight comes in Friday. Two days later than she said!

I guess genetics are an explanation for a lot of my travel stories.

Phuket Marathon

Last week some friends of mine invited me to go with them to Phuket for the weekend. There was a run going on and a lot of them were doing the 10k, half, or full marathon. I really had no interest in running anything in the Thai heat but I hadn't been to any beach here yet, it was an hour's flight for under $100, and it just sounded like more fun than another weekend in Bangkok. So I figured I'd go and hang out with the non-runners and enjoy some drinks by the beach. Well when I got there the marathon sounded like a good idea so I signed up. I can't explain the logic behind this. Running a marathon requires months of training. I did the Cincinnati marathon over two years ago and can count the times I've run since then on one hand. At least you'd think I'd have had worn in running shoes. But since the choice was between flip flops and a brand new pair I could buy at the sign up, I went with the second choice.

So I woke up at 3 am and was pretty out of it until I started running at 4. The magnitude of my mistake came to me slowly. The first few kilometers were great. There was no sun and it actually felt pretty good running. Plus they gave out these great ice cold sponges that kept me pretty cool. Then at about 10k I started realizing my legs were far less strong than they needed to be to handle the rolling hills of Phuket. But I still mostly felt ok so I kept going and figured even if I only do a half marathon that's still pretty good all things considered.

Then around two hours and 22km in to it I was feeling mixed about my situation. On one hand I made it half way through a marathon but on the other hand I felt near death and realized I was in the middle of nowhere making my quiting option less feasible than I first thought.

So I ran a few more kilometers and then started half running half fast walking for the next 10km or so. I asked someone what time it was and they gave me a time I found out later was completely wrong and made me think I wasn't going to finish before the course closed. But since I didn't know this I started only running again.

At this point I was about 3/4's of the way done. I started realizing the wet sponges they gave me weren't so great. Between the sweat and the water from the sponges, the ibuprofen in my pocket dissolved and my feet were soaked. Wet unseasoned feet in brand new shoes is a very bad thing and having that bad of blisters made running pretty tough.

But despite all of this I did manage to finish in about 5 hours and my goal of getting in before the course closed after 6 hours was well completed. The rest of the day was spent limping around the beach and laying by the pool. While I really had a great time and running around an island is actually a lot of fun, I'd strongly suggest a few practice runs first. :)

Songkran water fights

I can't resist writing a little something about Songkran here in Thailand. It's Thailand's New Year, but they celebrate it in a fairly different way. They decide to have a country wide water fight that lasts for the better part of a week. This may sound so innocent you may wonder how a few hundred people were killed this year like every other year. ( http://enews.mcot.net/view.php?id=3858 )

Well this isn't a normal water fight. It's basically a water fight on the streets. So you have drunken people on the street throwing buckets of ice water at drunken people hanging off of pickup trucks and at motorbikes speeding by. Now make no mistake, I'm not complaining about any of this. It was probably the most fun I've had acting like a 5 year old since I was 5. (Plus I'm pretty sure hundreds of people are killed on motorbikes every week in Thailand anyway).

Since I had a few days off of work I decided to take advantage of it and go to the north of Thailand with some people I met through work. Natalie actually got this set up and then ditched out so I got to go on the road trip with all the Thai women on my own. It was about an 8 hour drive in which I received a tour of the ancient capital of Thailand, some much needed sleep, and many hours of free Thai lessons. The reason we headed to the north was to go to the city of Chaing Mai, the best and craziest place to go to enjoy the Songkran water fights. We also toured a few other cities but the highlight was for a whole day I did nothing but take buckets of water from the canal and throw them at people in pickups. The other great part was wherever we went we kept buckets of water and filled water guns in hand. Nobody ever suspected a van. So when I'd spring open the window to surprise the unsuspecting with a bucket of water in the face they were truly shocked.

Hunting with water in the van

Aftermath of the sneak attack

Songkran 2008 Crew

Back to the blog

I'm officially going to fill this out regularly again. Ever since i've been back from China I've been more than a little busy with finishing up the semester and with work. But I actually do miss writing this regularly. The other reason I haven't been is that I've lost my camera. But I have a few pictures from Natalie's camera and some from some friends. Plus i'm just going to go buy one from Tesco tomorrow because not having one is making me crazy!

I have so much to write about I really don't know where to start. It's been a crazy few months, but in a lot of ways things have started to settle. I'm not living in a hotel anymore for one. Instead I'm living in a two bedroom condo in the center of sukhumvit (the big expat area). It's a two bedroom place so if anyone finds themselves in Thailand needing a place to crash let me know. It's actually a really nice place that's convenient to everything and has a roof top gym and pool. I've also made some friends here, started taking Thai language lessons, and started learning muay thai at a gym in town. But I'll get to that over time. For now I'll show all of you the pool and a picture of Natalie and me with a local. I also need to catch you all up on the songkran water fight road trip and the madness that was my China MBA trip. So I won't be running out of things to tell you about for at least a few weeks.

The roof top pool

Ladyboys aren't always hard to spot

I can't be exposed to my thoughts

I just realized I can post to my blog, but not view my own blog while in China. All blogs have to be resistered in China so I'm very surprized they're letting me post at all. So could someone shoot me an email and let me know if this is going through?

Thanks!

The office men's room

While in a stall in the rest room the second week I was in Thailand I suddenly started hearing all women's voices. Knowing the way I am, I immediately feared the worst and decided to wait until they left so I could leave the women's bathroom without having to deal with the combination of the language barrier and an incredibly awkward situation. Well I waited then left and was glad to find out I'm still somewhat sane and was in the men's room after all. But what I couldn't figure out was why I heard women's voices so loudly. This stayed a mystery for the next week or so until one day at a urinal a woman walked right in. Given my circumstance I was sure she was the wrong one, not me, until she began washing the sinks. So mystery solved.

I'm BACK!!!

Sorry for the brief break in posting. I had a crazy week with work and preparing to go to China. Well I'm in China here and despite this blog's name, many Chinese stories will be shared. This is the first time I've had a chance to get online and we have to be up at 4:45. So I just wanted to let you all know I'm still alive and write a few quick stories from back in Thailand.

The Great Wall

My revenge

Since Natalie tried to kill me I'm going to let you know something I learned about Natalie. She decided to get her fortune told by this old man on the street. After close examination of her palm by candle light, a numerical analysis of her birthday, and consulting several ancient books he determined Natalie has had many boyfriends. I don't know if Natalie got her money's worth, but I thought it was hilarious.

Summoning the Powers of the Universe

Natalie tried to kill me

Natalie and I were eating dinner at Sudo, or as I like to call it, the expat cafeteria, when I decided to eat something I thought was a green bean. She asked if I was really going to eat that, I said yes, and put two beans in my mouth. They weren't beans; They were chillies. It was possibly the hottest thing I've ever eaten. I was out of water so I tried to order some more while Natalie laughed at me. Well when you pay $8 for a meal for two you're not paying much for service so you don't get a lot. Eventually I asked the guy sitting next to me if I could have some ice. He was nice enough to give me some but then he talked with us for about 20 minutes. Usually the fact that I couldn't speak would put a damper on conversation, but since he was an old man enjoying nothing but a bottle of wiskey, two bottles of tonic water, and a small bucket of ice, he didn't need much input from either of us. I blame Natalie for all of this.

The Expat Cafeteria

The man's got talent

I wish I would have caught more of this on video. I was thoroughly impressed with his spinning while pouring. At least this gives you some idea of this man's pouring talent.

Parking

Believe it or not, this is not a road, it's a parking lot. How do the cars get out, you might ask. Well apparently people feel free to block someone else in if they leave their car in neutral. When the blocked person needs to get out they simply push the car (usually cars) away. I"m very impressed with this system and its overall acceptance.

The parking lot of the Chatuchak market

Better Street Elephant Picture

Natalie wanted a better street elephant picture. We see them everyday now.

First farang to play

Many of you may remember my brief entrance in to the world of competitive rock, paper, scissors competition. And many of you may have believed the skills I gained through that training were wasting away never to be used again. Well you would be wrong. Today my talents and finely honed strategy came in to play as I was a dominating factor in an office "look over your shoulder" game.

A whole group a people came in to the office today to promote some sort of fitness campaign. I suppose they figured the best way to promote fitness was to give away posters and stickers and have some fierce competition. They took two groups of four volunteers and somehow I became one of them. One person from each team would stand back to back and on the count of three look over one shoulder. One person's goal was to face the other person the other's was to not end up face to face. The losing person would be eliminated and another team member of the loser's team would have to face the winner. This would continue until one team was gone. I was the first person up for my team. On the count of three I looked left to see the shame of defeat in my opponent's eyes and hear the cheers of the office. That's when my training set in. I used the classic RPS strategy of "your opponent will assume you'll change," but this being a more simple game, the strategy boiled down to not changing where you look. So I kept looking to the left, eliminating the next two opponents. Now with one person left standing between me and a free shirt, I choked and broke right. Luckily my remaining teammates finished off the last person. I thought the free shirt was now mine! But they were running low and forced us to turn on our own team mates for one last round. I couldn't bring myself to battle whole-heartedly with someone once on my side and I lost. As I walked back to my desk defeated yet somewhat glad to know I at least helped, the team of promotional people caught up with me. They said I was the first farang (foreigner) to play the game and gave me the green Tesco polo I was working for and we took a picture that's going up on the Tesco website. I'll add the picture when I have it. All in all not a bad break from work in the middle of the day and I will be proudly wearing my trophy tomorrow.

Strange food

While most of the food here I've seen before (since most of the food here is rice and thai noodles that isn't saying much) , there have been a few new things. I just thought I'd share two I tried since I've been here. (Don't worry Anne Marie, elephant isn't either of them)

The first is the dried squid. I've seen people eat little dried fish before but this was pretty new to me. Natalie really likes them and I don't think they're too bad, I just can't eat more than a few in one sitting. I'm also upset with myself for leaving them in my desk drawer since monday. Surprisingly it doesn't take long for fish to stink up your desk drawer along with everything in your desk drawer.

Tiny Dried Squid

I don't know what the mystery roll tasting cake thing is but it tasted nothing like what I thought it should. I thought it'd be more sweet and cake like but it tasted more like a dinner roll. The mystery part is what's on top. I decided they were small worms. Stuart and Natalie could neither confirm nor deny my theory. However, that may be because Stuart said he could not continue an adult conversation as to whether or not he was eating worms any longer.

The Mystery Roll Tasting Cake Thing

My new mildly fun games

Today sitting at dinner with Natalie and Stu I realized what my favorite way to pass the time while I'm on the streets of Bangkok. The first mildly fun game is to try and spot a ladyboy. Normally it doesn't take too long and it's pretty fun to try to figure out if that girl is a guy and why. However, this isn't nearly as fun as watching the couples and playing "Is the girl being paid?" There are tons of creepy western guys here and many of them will be sitting with Thai girls decades younger than them. They also usually won't be talking to each other at all. Instead the just sit there with drinks or food in front of them. Hopefully I'll get some pictures soon but I"m a little concerned about being too obvious about taking some of either. I also need to figure out a way to get a voting system on here so all of you back in the US can join in on some of the fun. Anybody know if there's a way to do that?

First day at Tesco

So today was my first day of actual work. Although to be fair I"m not sure how much I can count the meetings I was in today as work. The office is much nicer than I was expecting and Natalie and I have our own little space in the corner of the marketing depatment. I didn't get any photos of that yet, but I did take some while visiting the attached Tesco Hypermart. For the most part it has a normal large store feel but there are a few differences from what I'm used to (besides not being able to read the signs). For one, it's part of a mall that Tesco set up. The other more different part is the fresh section. It has much more of a market feel with everything laying out on ice and being sold in loose quantities.

Small stands in the Tesco mall

Inside the Tesco Hypermarket

The fresh fish section

After this first day's commute I can see why people complain about the traffic. We had a driver pick us up today and it took well over an hour to get in. Driving around here efficiently seems to be a real art. You can get places quickly but you really have to know what you're doing and because of how hard it is to get to the other side of the street, which side of the street you have to get to can make a bigger difference than how far you have to go. I don't think our driver has all of this mastered yet. We got caught in quite a few stand-stills on the way in and on the way back we found a lot of dead end streets before we found our hotel.

Street Elephants

So the elephant I saw on the street last night wasn't so unusual after all. Tonight we saw one again with a few people trying to get money from the tourists to feed him.

I made it!!!

After nearly 20 hours in the air, 10 hours in airports, and a cab ride in to the city I finally made it to Bangkok yesterday. I have to admit it's a lot like what people decribed to me. The streets are full of people, the roads are full of cars, and the air is hot and filled with car exhaust.

Between the sky train and the road on Sukhumvit Road

The sidewalk of Sukhumvit

However, I think I'm going to like it here. Everything is so different and the heat is a welcomed break from how freezing Cincinnati was when I left. I've also started seeing some of the things I've heard so much about. For example, when walking with Natalie last night we saw plenty of old men with young Thai girls and I think I spotted a few ladyboys. I didn't have my camera with me but I'll have to get some pictures. We also saw some things I really wasn't expecting. Like I had no idea my dinner at a street side restaurant would be interupted by a baby elephant.