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.