The End?

This blog has now run it's course. I'm back in the U.S. and I am starting another blog.

I will return to this blog when I return to Thailand, hopefully next year. So Until then, Chok Dee.

The Last Days

I'm always stressed out the last few days of someting. Whether it's the last few days of a job, last day at an apartment, last day of whatever.

Now I'm stressing out over the last few days here. Granted the laundry machine is busted (again) so we're going to handwash and bag a lot of clothes unexpectedly. That doesn't help.

But it seems that this stress always comes from nowhere. We are already done packing most everything, save what we need to train in the next few days. So really there isn't much to do. Which somehow just makes it all seem worse.

Both Danielle and I have gotten some good sleep the past few nights and I'd like that to stay, but I just feel stressed the hell out.

Top Ten (because ten is a good marketing number.)

Danielle and I leave the Kingdom in seven days. More like six since we leave so early in the morning. As we have spent the last four months in Thailand, we have come to feel as if this is a home for us. We will miss many things, however, we are also looking forward to not having to deal with a few things as well.

So I present to you my top ten things that I will miss, and won't miss about Thailand.

I will miss:
1. Training and living at the same place. It rocks to able able to wake up and just go train whenever you feel like it. This is what I came here for and probably what I will miss the most.
2. Food. Thais cook great food both Thai and Western. It seems that they take a bit more pride in this than the average American eatery.
3. Cheap prices. I'm going to have sticker shock when I get back home. I'm used to $9 buying a great meal for two here.
4. Not having a job. It's great I love vacations.
5. Pervasive public transportation. You don't need to own anything to get anywhere in this city. Even buses will take you from city to city in Thailand and there's bound to be taxis of some sort there. Most of the time you can just walk to the nearest street and hail a cab like it's nothing.
6. Being very obviously different. For the first time in my life I am surrounded by people who can take one look at me and know that I'm not from around here. It's been a great learning experience and a wonderful change in perspective.
7. The abundance of healthy looking people. Sure there's a sickly one and a fat one here and there, but it's here and there. For the most part the Thai people seem to eat well and stay fit somehow. The most unhealthy looking people I've seen have all been old fat white men. Overall it's so much easier on my eyes here.
8. Great people and friendly locals. I'm supposed to be in one of the worst areas to find Thai hospitality and it's still wonderful.
9. Connecting with fighters from around the world. Every place has their own little ways of doing things. The boys from Crete like to follow through everything, and the Aussie has a different teep kick. The amount of new subtle techniques one can learn here is amazing.
10. Last but not least, all the great friends I've made here. I will especially miss ChaiPoom, the various trainers, and the brothers Boyd and Bird.

I will not be missing:
1. The pollution. I spent most of my time around Bangkok and I'll be glad not to breathe air like this for a while.
2. The communication gap. Although everyone pretty much understands each other now, new Thai people thrown into the mix make for those awfully awkward moments of "what tone was that?".
3. Farang tax. Even with the Thai people charging me extra as I am foreign, stuff is dirt cheap. But that's not the point, I know I'm being ripped off because of my skin color. Screw that I'd rather pay the expensive American price and not give you any of my money. Hence my lack of buying too much stuff here.
4. The Music. Everything here is pop music. Western pop is imported, along with J-Pop and K-Pop. All the hip-hop and metal are the popular variants. I hate pop music back home and I hate it here. Unfortunately here there seems to be no real underground scene. Just bands claiming to be different and sounding just like Bodyslam and other Thai Pop acts. It will be nice to go back home and get a real Death Metal show under my belt again.
5. Weird fish in the food. I hate ordering incorrectly as some of the seafood here is quite strange. No more, thanks.
6. Getting sick. I'm not used to the variants found here and my body is already taxed from training. Needless to say I will not miss the occasional undercooked food either.
7. Poor water piping. I can't count how many times our shower has randomly shot rust for a few seconds and then gone back to normal.
8. Lack of dryers. My clothes feel only half clean when air dried.
9. The weight machines being broken. I can't gain weight if I can't lift, and these machines snap their rusty cables after about 50 kilo. Thus I'm looking forward to finally putting some meat back on my bones after all this endurance training and sickness taking my weight down quite a ways.
10. Mosquitoes. I hate these things now. I rarely got bit compared to Danielle but they still made things hell for the both of us. Mosquito genocide sounds like a great idea, screw the fragile ecosystem.

Danielle is also doing this on her blog. Some things may overlap as we are writing at the same time and not cribbing off of each other.

Ayutthaya

Sunday we went to Ayutthaya, it's a stones throw away from Bangkok (Actually the city surrounding Aytthaya has merged with BKK and Bang Pa In). We stopped at a place called Bang Pa In first and saw some royal city-type-memorial, weird-cool-stuff that I don't really know what I was looking at. But it was cool, and there was something about a queen who drowned because it was illegal to touch royalty back in the day and no one helped her. Here are some pictures we took at Bang Pa In.


A royal temple in the middle of the lake.


This was a dog hanging around a deck that people used to feed fish and turtles in the lake. There was a vendor selling bread for the fish, I later saw this dog march off with two pieces of bread in it's mouth. Later when we came back it was sitting right back where it was to begin with. It wasn't eating the bread it had in it's mouth which makes me wonder where it went.


Danielle, Me, and ChaiPoom at the sculpted bushes in the garden.


The observatory where the King of Thailand discovered a new star. It has a great view but in order to keep this blog short I'll just leave those photos on my Flickr account.

After that we stopped at some temple along the way and got a free vegetarian meal. I guess it's vegetarian week or something. Kind of like Buddhist Lent, no meat, no sex, no alcohol, etc.

The food was good, then we ate Lotus seeds in the ChaiPoom's truck, and we finally got to our main destination of Ayutthaya. For some reason I love old ruins and ancient cityscape. This was the old capitol city of Siam until the Burmese came in and torched and destroyed everything. I guess a lot of the rumors of gold buried beneath the temples proved to be true as the Burmese seemed intent on looting what they could. A few restorations have come and gone but otherwise the old city remains in it's destroyed state, however still living as some of these photos will show.


Welcome to Ayutthaya.


These trees are awesome, this one seemed to guard a Buddhas head. Not surprising this is one of the few heads we actually saw. Many heads from Ayutthaya have been stolen, and the originals of some have been repaired or replaced.


An example of the torched Buddhas. Notice how the neck of the large complete Buddha is not scorched as it is new concrete holding the head in place.


I really liked this wall for some reason.


Rows of Buddhas.


An example of most of the walls around here.


Gravestones?


As you can see some parts are still in use. This is in the middle chedi.


The outside of the chedi.


Courtyard view from the main stage of the chedi.


An odd kitten hanging around this place alone.


At first I turned my head thinking someone had dropped their cellphone nearby. I kept looking and all of the sudden this bird moves and makes the noise again! This thing has some strange calls, and more than one. ChaiPoom told us that if you keep one as a pet you can teach it to talk like a parrot.

Ayutthaya has to be one of my favorite places that we have visited so far. I could spend days wandering around and looking at all the little intricacies of the place. But it was overcast and about to rain so we headed back home. On the way back all of us fell asleep except for ChaiPoom who was driving.

More photos from this trip and all of Thailand are here.

The Duplicity of the Thai Visa

When I obtained my Thai Visa from the consulate in Denver I was told that it was a 90 day Visa that I could extend for another 30 days. "No problem" I thought. I planned my vacation accordingly and I had tickets leaving the country a day or two in advance of 120 days.

However, this is not the case when you arrive in the country. The first Visa I got was for 90 days rounded down to the end of the nearest month. Making it effectively 87 days. The extension I just got was similar and I was overdue so it became 29 days (See Cambodian posts below). This shorts me 4 days total and I'm adjusting my flight back home, which is another pain in the ass that I will explain later. Phone lines around here are duplicitous as well.

Has any traveler or expat had the same thing happen to them? Is this to be expected? This is my first time outside of my home country, but to be honest I get the impression that the Thais on one end or the other don't know their own system. Like I said it's my first time traveling away from home so maybe it's just that I'm new to the whole thing.

Thai Food Terrorists!

THIS is absolutely hilarious.

And I've had that paste on Koh Chang it beats the hell out of the Jungle Curry. The link gives a short recipe but I hear that one should ferment the peppers in the oil for a few weeks before cooking it to get the real deal.

Back in the BKK

We woke up at 3:30am this morning, got ready, and took a taxi to the bus station. We arrived at the station at 4:45 and the bus showed up as we were arriving. This was to be an indicator of our entire trip.

The bus ride to the Cambodian border was actually pretty nice. I don't know what most people complain about, and it's only four hours each way. We scored an air conditioned bus for 200 baht round trip. Apparently many Thais make this trip to gamble in the border city of Poi Pet. So this bus route is pretty well known.

Our guide, Instructor Boyd, may or may not have talked his way into getting us some perks, but he did hook us up with a Thai buisness woman who was transferring some goods from Bangkok to the Thai side of the border. We were offered free meal tickets to a casino in Cambodian territory which we took full advantage of later on.

Upon arriving I noticed that this city was pretty run down. We took a side trip before crossing the border to the many side stalls that were jam packed with all kinds of clothing. A lot of this was being transported on rickshaws that were overloaded and looked like some demented animal. I'm used to people staring at me in Bangkok, and I don't even notice it anymore. However, here they STARE at foreigners, I even heard "AYE FALAHNG!" shouted in surprise as I walked by one stall. I guess we aren't that common in those areas, most foreigners I saw here were staying near the border entry and then high-tailing it to their next destination.

The stalls were the usual depot of stolen goods, knock offs, or sweat shop defects. I find these knock offs to be quite entertaining. Especially when you run into names like adadas, adides, pama, pema, and so on. I almost bought a pair of "Adides" sandals that had the Puma logo on the sole of the shoe, just for the irony.

Hanging out by these shops was actually getting annoying, so we crossed the border. We had to pay a small fine for one days worth of overstaying our visa. The person doing all of our paperwork seemed to be getting a little sideline advice from our instructor but I have no idea what was being said.

After crossing the border we were immediately bombarded by children barely dressed saying "lo" over and over, and holding out their hands. I ignored most of them as they are usually forced into this work by their parents, but I gave one my empty water bottle because I didn't want to carry it anymore and he seemed oddly pleased with that. These kids are good with this game though, most of them aren't skinny or injured, and they seem happy and playful until they see a mark (aka a foreigner).

However that was only the children beggars, there was a few adult ones with missing limbs, torched faces, blind, and hobbling along the streets leaning on the rickshaws to stay up. They did not seem happy, or too enthusiastic about begging.

From here we caught a taxi to the casino that we had meal coupons for. This town is a gambling town, It's like a ghetto(er) Vegas. Apparently many Thais own casinos here just across the border. It was nothing but casino after casino.

Upon entering we had our bags and person scanned and went straight for the food. After that we had a few hours to kill until our bus left so we wandered around the casino. Everything was computerized and casino computers are the last thing I trust so we didn't gamble. Boyd layed down 100 baht at a Baccarat machine and he kept it going for an hour until handing the reins to me. We pretty much killed out time with this machine to the amazement of some Thais around us. Not to mention a smoking hot, obviously rich, Thai woman who was alone. I think this is the first Thai woman I have found attractive enough to comment on.

At about 3pm we took a taxi to the border. By now my stress was pretty much lifted as we had gotten across so getting back would be easy. The taxi driver wanted 1000 baht for the short trip but Boyd told us to get out so we stiffed the scamming bastard and left. We waited in a short line to get re-entry stamps, and when we got there another chat with the police and Boyd ensued. He ended up leaving his passport with the officers and took us out of the building and back a ways.

We forgot to get the Cambodian Visa for re-entry. This sucked. This sucked hardcore. Our bus was due to leave in an hour and we had to wait to get our Visa. At the office we slipped the guy a few undisclosed baht to hurry the process up. At 3:30 we had our Visas and we went back to the main office.

This time the lines were packed, especially with foreign backpackers who were holding up the lines with their problems. Most of them stank like hell too, I'm sure I'm no rose-smelling bastard in the Cambodian heat but some of these guys were wretched.

Another talk ensued with the police and as soon as the words "Muay Thai" were dropped from Boyd everyone was smiles and the stamps were flying. We got out of the office at 3:45 and booked it in our fastest "Thai-style (slow)" walk.

The bus ride back was much the same as before and we arrived back at our home at about 8pm. I wrote this, and I'm very tired. We have another 29 days in the Kingdom.

It's a Holiday in Cambodia! (not really)

We went to the Immigration Office in Bangkok today to renew our Visas for the last month. As it turns out the Denver consulate gave us the wrong Visas. We can get a seven day extension at the office, and that's about it. This is of no help to us as our trip back to the U.S. is a month away, and our Visas expire today.

We have another option however.

So, pretty soon, Danielle and I are getting on a bus and riding four hours to the Cambodia border. We will cross the border, and then return back later on. This will give us another month on a tourist Visa.

This is called a Visa run, and honestly it is a bit shady. I read up on this before visiting Thailand and the government has been passing laws restricting and unrestricting this activity so many times that it's really a big mess. However most foreigners seem to have no problem with this, and a few boxers at the institute have done it before as well.

Wish us luck, I'll post when I'm back in Bangkok.

Laughing at the Trendy People

My handy little Internet news ticker told me recently that Apple through a firmware update just bricked all the modded iPhones and deleted third party software on others. Many, many people are not happy about this.

Their response to complaints "go buy a new one, YOU broke the terms and conditions of the product".

And the thing is, Apple is completely correct.

So for all of those people who blew $400-$600 USD on an iPhone only to have it bricked I have only one thing to say... SUCKERS!

What the hell is wrong with you people? First of all the whole iPod thing is a joke. It's an mp3 player with some fancy bells and whistles. But no all the Mac die-hards claim it to be soooo different. Not only that but it's locked in to the Apple iTune standard and other Apple only shenanigans. Sure you can use it with Windows OS but that was a marketing decision made to reach a larger sales demographic.

So it's no surprise that the iPhone is exactly the same. Like everything else bearing the prefix of "i" this oh-so-new gadget is just a reinvention of what's been out there (smart phones) with some added bells and whistles. Same stuff different package, BUT also locked in to Apple's way of doing things. Again this has been the double edged sword of Apple since the beginning. They close off their systems at the expense of losing customers, but in return they have more reliable systems. Somehow the company managed to market the i prefix gadgets into a trendy fad.

And that is where all these suckers come in. Many of Apple's customers already had smart phones, mp3 players, and a subscription to download music. Somehow, just somehow, they all got conned into this "new" trend surfacing from good ol' Apple. Now everyone lives in iWorld.

I may get a lot of flack from die-hard Mac users but honestly this is where all of their products come into play. Most of the Mac buzz is from an anti-Windows stance, which is somewhat understandable (I still use XP though). However, just like in American politics, people can't seem to count past two and realize that they have more options when they are dissatisfied, if only they would stop worrying about what "other people" are going to do.

/Rant... Suckers

Thai Politics

I try not to get involved but everyone keeps talking about this stuff.

What makes it worse is that I'm clueless. I don't know what to think. I don't know why there was a coup exactly. I don't know the history of Thailand enough to "get" the way things are done here. To put it simply my answer to every political question regarding Thailand is "I dunno".

Why do people want my opinion anyways? I am not Thai, and therefore I can't vote. Like some farang who just wants to fight is a good source on anything. Nobody asks for my credentials, and if they did a B.S. in Psychology and a general interest in obscure crazy topics is nothing to brag about.

I hear buzzwords like corruption, democracy, and so on to the point they lose their meaning and just become fading emotional tones. Drifting off slowly until they mean exactly what their being used for, nothing. Leaving me only with the taste of cynicism and apathy in their departure.

Mud is thrown in every direction, every political party is supported by the King (or is it vice versa?), and to top everything off, the same ideas trade sides as if they were baseball cards.

You know, this wouldn't bug me if it wasn't so similar to... American politics.

In a way I'm kind of glad that I don't yet understand enough of the Thai language to hear the political speak in it's native tongue. I can just follow the lead of the Thais around me and I'm just fine. I may have stood and clapped for completely opposing sides depending on where I was but I didn't, and still don't, know who is who.