Sex on the Beach

I swear that title sounds more exciting than this entry actually is, though, to my credit, I probably just increased the traffic to this blog tenfold since now it might show up accidentally in Google searches for porn. Anyway, once again, I’m behind in my chronicle. I spend most of this week still recovering from my body’s angry reaction to the anti-Malaria drugs I was on. It wasn’t the drug themselves so much as the fact that the doctor at Rochester decided to omit the fact that one needs to take them with food, draink a whole glass of water, and not take them right before bed, blah, blah, blah. Turns out I was pretty much doing the exact opposite of everything you’re supposed to do when you take these drugs, and I paid the price for my ignorance. My system seems to have recovered completely though, since I was able to consume green curry again without any pain (at least, without more pain than is usually incurred by the consumption of green curry).

But this entry isn’t about green curry. No, it’s about Pattaya, our port of call after our stop at the Sriracha tiger zoo. We didn’t really have any concrete plans for things to do in Pattaya, and we didn’t really need them. This was some of the greatest people watching on the planet, since Pattaya is home to one of Thialand’s most infamous red-light districts, right on the shores of the Indian Ocean. Wandering up and down the beach in the afternoon, one encounters in abundance members of a distinct demographic, not found in the west. I am, of course, referring to the “Sexpat”. This is a white guy who is probably old enough to qualify for a free hash brown at IHOP on senior discount Saturdays with his hairy, wrinkled, tattooed, sunburn of an arm wrapped around a Thai girl less than half his age wearing more makeup than “Clown-Face Barbie”. These guys are hilarious, since they’re probably among the most obviously sleazy guys on the planet, at it’s pretty clear that they know it. We kept trying to snap photos, but it was hard to do so without looking equally shady.

After dinner, we bought tickets to a show. No, not that kind of show. Come on, my Mom reads this blog…This was your standard wholesome Vegas style cabaret, complete with lavish sets, plush red upholstered seats, and absurdly dressed showgirls. “Alcazar” had one unique difference: the showgirls in Vegas didn’t used to have weeners. Thailand is famous for it’s “Ladyboys” and rightfully so, since if I didn’t know better there would have been absolutely no way to distinguish these women from your average tall Asian supermodel. The show itself was great, but by far the best number was when a guy started “singing” (the whole thing was lip synced, for reasons that became clear after the show) with the curtain covering half his body. Soon, he disappeared and a woman popped out doing the same thing. Fairly soon, it became apparent that the man and the women were, in fact, the same person, with clothes and makeup similar to Two-Face from Batman. It’s times like this that I wish Blogger would still let me post pictures, because this was really a remarkable act.

Following the show, come of the performers milled around the parking lot for photo-ops. Joey and I quickly obliged, and we walked up to the first showgirl we could find and handed over our 40 baht. She was dressed in a white gown, and looked a lot like the ninja girl from Crouching Tiger. However, when she thanked us , I couldn’t help but notice the similarities between her voice, oh, and that of, say, Walter Cronkite. Immediately, I understood why the lip syncing was necessary.

Post-photoshoot we decided to venture into the belly of the beast, and take a walk down the Pattaya strip. This reminded me a lot of Bourbon Street in New Orleans, but with more cheerleader/schoolgirl/nurse outfits, and substantially less sanity. Being clearly American, we became targets for pretty much everyone, and I made a lot instant “friends” who wanted to sell me stuff/take me places/rob me. I do have to say, that walking around in Pattaya does make you feel very popular, since, when even the scrawny white guy walks past the bar, he is showered with shouts of, “Hey sexy man, come over here!”.

For me, though, the highlight of this adventure was the snack food. Lesson #1: let your scorpions cool before you try and eat them. I made this mistake and had a nasty tongue burn. I’m not sure what possessed me to do this, but, come on, when am I gonna be able buy this stuff again? Maybe I’ll see if the giant Pittsford Wegmans has any in back. Lesson #2: If you are going to eat a scorpion, bring dental floss. I also made this mistake, and, when I brushed my teeth later that night, I was still finding legs in the sink (not making this up). All in all, I don’t know if I’d recommend them to everyone, but I’d probaly eat them again. They taste like a really thick soggy barbecue potato chip. They taste…exoskeletony.

In the end, I had a great time in Pattaya. Maybe now I’ll finally be able to talk about events that happened THIS week. Next up, Ayuttaya: fewer prostitutes, more monks, just as interesting. Stay tuned.

Crocodiles, Tigers, and Infectious Diseases

Oh my. I’ve never been a huge fan of zoos, mostly because I feel like they’re a little too voyeuristic of my taste. Still, most of the institutions of animal observation that I’ve been to in the states are pretty high quality, with expansive recreations of natural habitats (though always with a heavy does of Disneyfication). With that the Sriracha Tiger Zoo contrasted almost as strongly as it smelled.

According the Wikipedia, Sriracha is known for a recent outbreak of a notorious Asian disease a few years ago. Now, I don’t want to alarm anyone, so I won’t get into the details, but I’ll give you a hint: it starts with an “a” and ends with a “vian influenza”. Walking through the gates, it’s not all that surprising. Sriracha is not an especially clean attraction, and you can smell it from the parking lot. Still, there were certainly some attractions worth seeing. First, a stop at the crocodile show. Walking in, I was reminded of a ramshackle version of a sea world set (“The Pirates of Pinniped,” this production was not).

Soon enough, it became clear that “The Underpaid Workers Pissing Off Large Reptiles Show” would’ve been a far more appropriate title than “Crocodile Show”. Seriously, I can’t describe it any more clearly than that. These two performers enter the enclosure and prod, whack, or otherwise irritate the crocs, who, predictably, try and bite back as the “trainers” back out of the way just in time. Geez, if people will pay for this, maybe I can score a quick buck charging admission to let people watch me poke at my cat Duncan.

We also attended the “Amazing Circus”, which I will not describe herein, mostly because, it was more of the same, except the animals were primarily land-based rather than aquatic. There was also a nice helping of the cliché “flaming hoop” material. Far more interesting was the elephant show. Not because the elephants did anything remarkable, oh no, human suffering is way funnier. Also funnier, because it didn’t happen to me. It almost did, though, as I nearly raised my hand to break the awkward silence when they asked for a volunteer. However, right as I was placing my camera back in my pocket, Joey beat me to it and promptly made his way to the front. There but for the grace of Joey go I.

The guy in charge had Joe lay down face up on a mat, while the other (female) volunteer did the same, face down, about 20 feet away. Then, out came Jumbo*, trunk held high, who walked over to the other volunteer and used his stocky foot to give her a “massage”, which mostly consisted of him just stepping on her butt. Needless to say, we were all a little worried about Joe, and we wondered if he should roll over for his own well being. Turns out that the request for a male volunteer was purposeful, and so was having him lay on his back, since the elephant promptly walked over and gave Joey a solid kick in the jumbos. Watching this spectacle (that is the only word that describes it), I felt a lot like the President who watches the secret service agent leap in front of a big gray bullet. Joe seems to have survived unscathed, at least physically. I cannot necessarily say the same for his dignity. As for me, I got some great pictures.


*names changed to protect the innocent

Gastric Defeat

The title of this entry is the flip side of the “gastric triumph” entry from a little while ago. I’ll get into that shortly, but first I must apologize for the lateness of this update. Looking back, I think I’m running about a week behind (for myriad reasons soon to become clear). I think the best course of action in this case is to divide up the last week/weekend into manageable bites instead of trying to write a massive War and Peace style entry.

To reveal the main reason that I’ve been slow to the posting (besides the bad internet connection, which does have one redeeming quality in that it makes a great scapegoat), I direct your attention once more, dear reader, to the title of this post. Following the attack of the questionable pork products from a few weeks ago, I’m right back where I started with another more virulent case of “Bangkok Belly”. Locals and traveler-types alike use this term to refer to a lot of diseases, from indigestion to amoebic dysentery. Thankfully, though, I’m pretty sure that I do not have amoebic dysentery. I think one becomes immune to it after dying from it enough times playing “Oregon Trail”. I have no regrets though; I’d still rather take my changes on the long way to Fort Laramie before paying the Indian $5 to help me ford the river.

Kickass 90s computer games aside, I’m still not feeling great. However, after a little charades this afternoon with Nai, I managed to gesture my way through the concept of heartburn (wish I had pictures of this one) enough that he figured out to take me to a drugstore. The only way this pharmacy could possibly have been more shady is if it were sewn into the lining of someone’s trenchcoat, maybe while he says something to the tune of, “Hey buddy, lookin’ for a good time?” The woman at the desk, who reminded me of a combination of Master Yoda and the Wise Trash Heap from Fraggle Rock, kept passing me boxes with instructions entirely in Thai. I had no idea what any of these products did, and I learned in 6th grade health class that you should be very careful when old women offer you mysterious pills. My solution? Buy the first box with English on it and look it up online.

Score one for dumb luck. With my less than three dollars I managed to get the Thai version of Prilosec. It seems to be helping, since I managed to eat my way through an entire bag of bugles, one bugle at a time. It took me about an hour and a half, and I must say that it was rather unsatisfying, since “one bugle at a time” isn’t especially conducive to the “put the bugles on your fingers and pretend you’re a witch” game. Ah woe, ah me.

Now, with today’s festivities adequately documented, I can get back to last week. Look for the recap across the next few days. Hopefully, I’ll remember all the good stuff; somewhere between the scorpions and the transsexuals things have started to get lost. Speaking of Lost, I think that’s an appropriate way to close this entry, with a CLIFFHANGER ENDING….

(to be continued…via flashback)

Hog Wild

For a trip to really be considered an adventure, one needs that brief moment of pure abject terror. For me, nothing personified this idea better than the roads of Ko Samet, via motorcycle. I have never ridden a motorcycle before. However, I am an American college age male, which, according to most car insurance companies, qualifies me as a “risk-taker”. No wanting to disappoint, I accepted the challenge. We arrived on the island on Saturday afternoon for a brief overnight stay. Upon landing at the dock, we stopped at the first motorcycle rental place and picked up our sweet sweet rides. Mine was red, with a shiny decal number 22 on the front (nickname: “The Double Deuce”). After giving me the standard “here’s how to make it go” series of gestures, the attendant suggested that I ride to the end of the block and back, to make sure everything was in working order. The breeze was whipping through my buzzcut and I felt the call of the open road, so I leaned forward, adjusted my sunglasses, revved the engine, and…drove about 20 feet at a top speed lower than that of a Fisher Price Power Wheels product.

My old lady like driving aside, I did manage to make it back without falling down or killing anyone. Maybe this could be ok. It seemed like fun. Problem is, Ko Samet is not, shall we say, the most developed of vacation spots, and the 20 feet of road that I had just torn up probably accounted for about eighty percent of the total pavement on the island. Off we went, as I tentatively crept along and tried to avoid falling off my newly acquired hog. Once we hit the mud, though, life certainly became more interesting. You may recall that June is the heart of the monsoon season in Southeast Asia. You may also recall that I am not an especially large person, certainly not one with enough mass to properly weigh down a vehicle that weighs substantially more than I do. These factors combined to make circumstances, well, rather slippery.

I only really wiped out once, but I decided to make it count and land in a puddle. I also did nearly crash into a tree, but managed to activate the brakes at the last second. We drove up and down the whole island, winding through the jungle on our speeder bikes, eventually arriving at the imperial base that controls the deflector shield for the death star so we could deactivate it and Lando could use the Millenium Falcon to destroy the Empire’s ultimate weapon once and for all (at least, that’s what I was doing, I don’t know about the rest of the group).

For as white as my knuckles were whenever we stopped, I think I did a fairly respectable job and remained, for the most part, intact. The same could not be said for Joey, who ate pavement (the other twenty percent) while we were riding back from dinner. He and I were the last two of our little convoy, and between the two of us we couldn’t get his bike to restart. This is how I wound up riding through the jungle, at night, through the mud, in the rain, by myself. Needless to say, the journey probably took me longer than most, since I was concentrating very hard on having my life continue beyond the next five minutes. I survived, though, and so did Joey, though we both agreed that we felt much better once we’d gotten back to the hotel and obtained beer.

Speaking of the accommodations, I’d like to reiterate the lack of development on Ko Samet. Our room reflected this, and I believe in Thai one might refer to such a dwelling as a “sheea twhoal” Despite the Spartan room, we enjoyed the rest of the trip, That said, we did have more fun than anyone else since our room a.) did not smell like a port-a-john and b.) did not have a roof which allowed the weather outside to become the weather inside. The next morning required another motorcycle ride back to the pier. It stands to reason that I’d only manage to really get the hang of it about five minutes before returning it. Go figure.

Gastric Triumph

I have done it. I have consumed the only Asian food that Andrew Zimmern could not bring himself to stomach: the durian. For those still living in desolation without cable TV (my parents included, I only watch at school), Andrew Zimmern hosts one of my favorite shows on the Travel Channel, creatively titled Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern. In this hour-long gustatory extravaganza, Zimmern circles the globe consuming whatever fare is served to him, from eyeballs to arthropods. All, that is, except durian: the king of the fruits, which on two occasions he has been forced to spit out, declaring something along the lines of, “that is the most foul thing I have ever eaten”.

Gotta try it.

The fruit itself looks like a cross between a porcupine and a football, with spines so pointy that it’s very painful to handle it without picking it up by the stem (I know, I tried this too). After the helpful fruit man with the large machete opens it, one finds a series of pale yellow segments with a strong odor. Zimmern compares it to smelly socks and/or rotting meat. This smell can be so strong that in most of Southeast Asia, hotels will have you escorted from the premises if you try to bring one in. For all the build-up, I couldn’t tell what all the fuss was about. Sure, it didn’t smell like daisies at the perfume convention, but it didn’t smell like socks either.

Ok, go time. Biting into it didn’t taste especially terrible, but texturally, the durian has no equivalent, except for possibly really rotten peaches. For lack of a better word, it “gooifies” when you bite it. Still, I think Mr. Zimmern certainly overreacted. The durian does not deserve the gag-inducing stigma that western palates have placed on it. I might even eat it again if the mood strikes. That said, my buddy Andy still has me beat in the consumption of strange organ meats department. But who knows, I still have a lot of Thailand left.

PS: If I ever form a rock band, I'm pretty sure we'll be called “Gastric Triumph”.

The Week in Review: Round Sorng

Sorng means two; I finally learned how to count and I’m gonna show it off every chance I get. I need to update now, because if I don’t then I’ll forget and all the excitingness that was this week will be lost forever in the bowels of my memory. Speaking of bowels, I realized I left some critical information off of the last post. Let’s backtrack to last weekend, when we stopped briefly at an exhibition of photos taken by the king (His Majesty has a lot of interesting hobbies, including photography and jazz composition, leading my roommate to declare, “The King seems like a cool dude”). As I wandered through the show, a series of picturesque landscapes struck me. The composition and the artistry wasn’t what I was interested in so much as the context in which the shots were taken: at the royal winter palace in Phu Ping province. Let us also take a moment to recall that in the Thai language, the letter “H” is silent. Utter hilarity.

Anyway, back to this week, in which I have three interesting stories to relay. First, I finished building my device. I have yet to hook it up to anything, so right now it looks like an overbuilt paperweight, but I’m hoping to see some signs of life sometime next week. Further bulletins as events warrant.

To complete this machine, I needed to obtain some parts, which leads me to my second story: visiting the shady Thai electronics market. My grad student (and immediate source of advice/Thai profanity) Nai volunteered to take me on Tuesday morning. I asked how we would get there and about how long it would take. He replied, “We take bus, about 20 minutes”. Turns out the term “bus” can be interpreted rather loosely around here, as we climbed into the back of a pickup truck with some benches welded to the sides. I think this would’ve been more frightening had the powerful dose of automotive fumes not kept my senses in check. After a short ride, we disembarked at a random street corner, only to board another bus soon after. This vehicle looked much more like what I picture as a bus, though it didn’t have any doors and the driver seemed to be using a large piece of pipe instead of a gear shift handle. Either way, we were back on the road. Turns out though, that the 20 minute estimate seems a little inaccurate, as we rolled into downtown Bangkok about an hour later.

If they’d had these markets in the US when I was in high school, I’d be a lot poorer now. This place was really cool, if your definition of cool involves boxes upon boxes of random mechanical parts (which mine does). Another salient feature of Ban Mo (the official Thai name) is the prevalence of sidewalk TV and appliance repair pushcarts. Instead of walking down the street to the aroma of grilled meat, we get the complex musk that is lead-core solder. I love the smell of engineering in the morning. We found the gears I needed (sort of, I spent a few hours modifying them once we got back), and boarded another doorless wonder bus for the trip home.

Lastly, this week was also notable in that I, for the first time in my life, was presented with the honor of participating in a venerable ancient Asian tradition: Karaoke! This experience completely contradicted my existing concept of Japanese businessmen cheering each other on in a crowded bar. Instead, we (the six of us plus a cadre of grad students) were led to a small dark private room with a TV/Microphone setup. It took a little while for the rocking to commence, but rock we did. My personal favorite song of the night? “Sexy, Naughty, Bitchy” (Actual lyrics: “Sexy sexy sexy, naughty naughty naughty, bitchy bitchy bitchy, yeah!”) Compared to these profound words, Britney Spears sounds like Lord Byron.

As for this weekend, I’m off to Ko Samet, an island hotspot about 3 hours south of the city, followed by another hour on a ferry. Farang pay about 10 times as much as native Thais, but I think Aeng, our guide, is going to try to sneak us in. Should be an interesting trip, to be documented in full upon my return, assuming we don’t all get busted and wind up in Thai prison. Not that we will, but I have to say things like that to keep Mom on her toes.

Wats Aplenty

Once again, here we are on Thursday and I have yet to post about the events of last weekend. I could use the excuse that I’ve been working a lot, but last night I went out Karaokeing (more on this in future posting), so the work thing doesn’t really jive. I’m going to chalk it up to my rediscovery of Super Mario, which is a great way to consume your evening when you’re not karaokeing. I already have 91 power stars. Yay me.

Anyway, last Saturday took us to three of Bangkok’s most famous temples, as well as the two major residences of the royal family. We started our day at Wat Arun, the Temple of Dawn, which resembles a concrete Eiffel Tour, albeit with a Khmer twist. The coolest part about Wat Arun is that it’s decorated completely with broken shards of Chinese porcelain arranged artistically, like this. (Note: a picture was supposed to go here. The internet hates me).

After taking a ferry back across the Chao Praya river, we visited Wat Pho, pronounced “Poe” (like Edgar Allen, or the red teletubbie if you prefer). This is the site of the famous reclining Buddha, a massive gold-plated bronze statue depicting the Buddha’s final moments in his earthly state. Let me first say that this monument is on the official list of “Locations to Which Pictures Do Not Do Justice”. This thing is big. Really big. If I were a better writer I’d paint a nuanced picture of its majesty with the English language, but I’m not, so I guess we’ll just have to go with “really big”. Although pictures really don’t capture it, I tried my best to get one (they encourage photography, don’t worry). I did, however, have to fight my way through the entire Indian subcontinent that decided to visit the same day we did. I think I managed to snap a couple decent ones.

Next we took a short ride over to Wat Phra Kaeo and the Grand Palace. This is the “National Temple” of sorts, which is connected to the royal residence. Not much to discuss here, except that the palace guards are under the same no talking/laughing/emotion/movement restriction as the guards at Buckingham palace, making a photoshoot a no-brainer. This never gets old.

On Sunday, we headed to Jatujak Market (known as simply JJ market to the in-crowd), the largest open air market in the world. This is not an evcnt for the claustrophobic, or anyone with olfactory inhibitions. Walking around, I felt like a rat lost in a giant smelly maze, a maze with Folex watches and elephants made out of coconuts. Again, there’s not much else I can say beyond that, except that I bought lots of cool stuff and just tried not to get lost. It didn’t help that I was still recovering from the night before, when I’d purchased a bag of mysterious pork products from a nice lady on a street corner. I ate said pork, which soon after tried to eat its way back out. I survived, and I’m just now getting back to gastric equilibrium. After JJ, it was back to work. So far, the work week has been more interesting than most, but that will have to wait for next post.

Dinner, a Show, and Racquet Sports

Backtrack to yesterday: I’m starting to get the sense that the grad students like to goof off fairly regularly. Case in point: every Tuesday and Thursday they all leave at 4 to go play badminton. They’ve been asking me to come with them for a while, but yesterday was the first time I’ve actually been able to go. We piled in cars and drove to the local badminton complex, a series of poorly lit courts inside an even darker warehouse style building. It didn’t take long to figure out that this was not going to be the badminton experience I’ve been used to based on my past history with the sport in HWRHS gym class (motto: “Anything’s better than the weight room”).

Let’s take a moment to reinforce some stereotypes. I’m just going to come right out and say it: Asians are ridiculous at badminton. REALLY ridiculous. The 10 or so of us took turns playing round robin style, but with the stifling heat in the building and my lack of any substantial physical activity beyond vocal percussion in recent memory, everyone else went around a lot more than I did. I feel like I managed to hold my own fairly well, though I’m also fairly confident that at least some of the players were taking it easy on me.

Immediately after, I booked it back to my room for the fastest total wardrobe change I’ve been involved in since changing into a full white tux in about 30 seconds during my 9th grade performance of “Honk!”, and then ran back out to the car that had been waiting for me. We all went to the mall to grab some dinner at this Japanese place. One thing I really like about many Bangkok establishments is that the menus are filled with pictures of the dish, so even if you have no idea what it’s called, you at least have a sense of what you’re getting. Still, somehow, the actual contents of my meal managed to elude me, and I wound up with substantially more raw fish eggs than I had planned on (I.E: More than none).

After dinner, the grad students we were with asked if we wanted to see a movie. When we replied in the affirmative, they said, “good, we’ve already bought the tickets”. Observations about Thai cinema:

1.) WAY more previews (over half an hour total. I know, because I timed it).
2.) Before the movie can (finally) start, the whole theater rises for the national anthem and a tribute to the King. I’ve decided that Thailand, like Australia and South Africa, has a great national anthem.
3.) I still want to be Indiana Jones when I grow up
4.) Harrison Ford looks exactly like Lauren’s dad.

Tonight, I’ve been taking it easy, since we’ve got a busy weekend ahead. As far as I know, we’ll be going to the Grand Palance, Thailand’s largest temple, and the world’s largest outdoor market (Jatujak), among other places. We wandered around trying to find a place to eat dinner, and wound up back at the BKK Grill, a restaurant we’ve been frequenting, mostly because they have English menus (in contrast to most places nearby, which don’t have any menus).

Wandering around tonight I noticed that Bangkok has a lot of smells, many of which combine to remind me of, oddly enough, Boy Scout camp. Between the charcoal grills, body odor, mustiness of dirt roads in humid places, and a slight touch of feces, it brings back lots of memories. Add all that to a nice healthy dose of loosely regulated auto emissions, and you’ve got Eau de Bangkok.

The Week in Review

Sorry for the delay between posts. I was struck by a perfect storm of bad internet connectivity and the final stages of jet lag. I think I’ve got the latter straightened out (finally), but I have no control over the former. At any rate, my first full week of work has had its ups and downs. I started off with some difficulty, since I needed to find an appropriate motor and encoder set to start designing my device. These sort of parts are everywhere in the US, and you can pick them up online everywhere. However, in Thailand, this is apparently not the case. Online dealers still exist, but with a limited selection. Even so, finding what you’re looking for, at least for a farang like me, is nigh impossible, since everything’s in Thai. The grad students in my lab, who seem to accumulate technical junk by the boxful, kept pushing parts on me that they thought might work. After about two days of tedious searching, and wandering around to panhandle for parts at other labs, I eventually found what I was looking for.

With parts in hand, I could actually start designing. But first, a short digression..

WARNING: NERD CONTENT AHEAD!

I don’t remember if I mentioned it before, and I’m pretty sure I don’t have the internet to check right now (I’m typing this in word), but I don’t think I ever actually explained what it is I’m trying to make. In short, I’m building a one degree of freedom haptic interface. In long, this is basically a little sliding piece that moves back and forth as one pushes on it. The slider is connected to a DC motor via a belt, and an encoder is in turn connected to the motor to record the rotational position, which can be read by a computer. The goal is that the slider will be able to slide up to a predetermined point (programmed in the computer), and then the motor will not be allowed to turn. This allows the user to “push” on an invisible virtual obstacle as if it were really there. I don’t know if that made any sense, but I’ll press onward

Anyway, once I had parts, I could start designing. I spent the next few days drawing a 3D model using Solidworks design software. Not much to report on this. Sat still a lot, mouse hand got sore, butt fell asleep. Once that was completed, the junk hording grad student pulled out a printer carcass he had lying around, and it was immediately clear that it would be way easier for me to modify this old printer than to try and fabricate everything from scratch. About 20 minutes of tinkering later, I had the skeleton for my device done.

That’s a short summary of my actual job for the week, but the week was by no means limited to the events described herein. The rest of the time gets its own post, which I’ll put together right now, though no promises when it’ll get posted. Please address all complaint letters to the KMUTT IT people.

Touristering (or "I got crabs and then went to a brothel")

(Editor's note: bad internet connection makes posting pictures hard, will try again soon)
I've noticed that all the events I've chronicled thus far have only gotten me through to about last wednesday or so. In an effort to stay current and not have everything run together in my memory before I can commit it to the internet, I've decided to cut my losses and give up on the rest of the week, since nothing especially remarkable happened anyway. Instead, I'll skip ahead to friday night. Just think, friday afternoon, work for the week is over, you're ready to get out on the town and have some fun. Where do you go? That's right....Crab Festival!

This wasn't just any crab festival, mind you, perish the thought. This crab festival was international. Located in the "big open area" outside the giant shopping center where we've had dinner a few times, this event seemed to be suspiciously similar to a standard Thai seafood market, but a little cleaner and populated by younger people. As for why it was billed as "international", I have absolutely no idea. Maybe because there were a couple of obvious Americans walking around sticking out like a bunch of thumbs who had just finished visiting the large hammer convention.

What does one do at a crab festival? I asked the same question, and got the pointed response, "Crab. Is good." I correctly guessed that this meant eating crab. Turns out I was partially correct; we did eat crab, lots of it in fact. However, we also ate about every other kind of sea creature that the vendors were able to immobilize and boil. They also had some mammals on the menu as well, which also looked good.



The next day we drove about an hour south of the city to the floating market at Damnoen Saduak. My Thailand guidebook explained that this was one of the few remaining floating markets that was not organized purely for tourist purposes. Oh how wrong they were. We were squirreled into rickety looking canoe-like vessels that were powered by what appeared to be old engines lifted straight out of old cars. Riding around, I kept waiting for Kevin Costner to swim under the boat and set it on fire, since it looked and sounded just like the evil jetskis in the timeless 90s classic Waterworld. This boat proceeded to drive us through a series of fetid canals, which were lined with vendors hawking the same set of hats, toys, and Buddhas. This would have been unpleasant, but I think the cloud of carbon emissions surrounding everything killed enough brain cells to make me complacent.

Next, we went to see a Thai cultural show at a nearby hotel complex. The phrase, "Cultural Show" reeks of underpaid locals dancing around and mugging for western photo ops. This one contained a certain amount of that, but it was entertaining, and the production value was high enough that it looked like the performers were actually enjoying themselves. They even set up a miniature boxing ring so we could all witness an intense, albeit obviously choreographed, Muai Thai boxing match. The grand finale was the best though, as all the performers unfurled small flags of the world, while the traditional Thai percussion ensemble struck up a rousing chorus of "It's a Small World". I believe it is still playing on endless loop inside my head today.

To conclude our saturday activities, we drove to a large public park featuring a giant statue of the Walking Buddha. This was much more my style, and I think I got some great pictures. I may not have reached nirvana, but the quiet did help with my "It's a Small World" problem a little bit.

Today was spent riding around on the world's crappiest bike at the "Ancient City", a replica of...pretty much everything. If it's a landmark in Thailand, you can pay to see it here, reproduced in concrete and plywood. There's not much to say about it, except that I did make a point to have my picture taken in the little model brothel in the little model village, just so I can show Mom.


She must be so proud.