One man in Bangkok

I was in a shopping centre in Silom - the main business/hooker/gay area of town - recently when I came across (figuratively speaking, of course) this wonderful little thing outside a seafood noodle restaurant. I don’t think it’s going too far to say that those little guys, especially the crab, look waaaaaaay too happy to be food!

This is my friend Tabo.

Handsome in a rugged and manly way wouldn’t you say? He’s just left Thailand to go back to South Korea. I first met Tabo in Korea and together with a great group of friends, we had some wild nights out in Seoul. It’s mainly down to him that I’m with Mina now; they’re good friends from school and she was visiting him when I first met her. So thanks for that ‘Bo.

Here’s a few more pictures of the young and eligible bachelor. Drunk with Mina

Dancing in the rain outside Carne Station in Seoul with our good friend Saejin (miss you SJ).

Finally a picture of Tabo, our friend Onn and me at Doi Suthep in Chiang Mai. The pagoda behind us is actually covered in gold.

Safe trip ‘Bo hope to hear from you soon na.

My friend Spevs sent me this picture from when we were on a school trip to Germany. I think I was about 13 at the time. I think you’ll all agree that I was already quite a dashing fellow. If you look closely enough, in the top right corner, you can see the shady reflection of Spevs taking this picture on his phone from a old real photo (the type that used to exist in the past and were made from special paper - aaah, you probably don’t remember them).

As you can see from this picture of me last year at the Dunn’s river waterfall in Jamaica (which I climbed - one of the greatest experiences of my life!), nothing much has really changed since those days except for the fact that I now make a “V” with the other hand.

I’m having my Thai exam tomorrow. I wish I was having a mai Thai exam instead - in fact I’d probably prefer a muay Thai exam. Wish me luck!

I haven’t had much time to post over the last few days because I’m supposed to be studying. I have a test on Saturday from the first book of my Thai class that I want to ace. I’ve also got a short kind of thesis to write for my other course. The other day I took a break from (*cough*) studying and went to The Mall Bang Kapi to see the parrots. There’s a little island in the middle of the shopping centre with parrots living on it. The big blue one on the middle right often makes grumpy noises, but none of them ever try to fly away.

In the water around the big birds are some enormous fish. Masive, massive, massive fish. I like them.

I can still steal internet, but only intermittently. Anyone who has proper broadband and is/was a Star Wars fan should check out youtube and search for Chad Vader for a funny spoof. Also, football fans (as in the proper football - where the players use their feet, not the hand ball, egg chasing played in North America) should search for Rio Ferdinad singing.

My fan is growling at me - should I be scared?

I had nothing to do today, so I was thinking about spending an afternoon by the pool catching up on the adventures of Mr. Frodo and friends (I’m currently reading Lord of the Rings for something like the tenth time). Alas though, hunger and boredom drove me out of the apartment before I got the chance to do that. So, some time late this afternoon I found myself outside Lumpini Park in the central business district of Bangkok. Limpini Park is one of my favourite places to relax in Bankok, just like Regents Park is in London. Right outside the gates to the park there’s a statue of one of the great Thai kings from history, in English his name is King Rama V. He’s the king portrayed in those rubbish stories with names like Anna and the King, Anna and the King of Siam, The King and I, etc etc.

The inside of the park is massive and at times so peaceful that you’d never think you’re in the centre of one of the busiest cities in Asia. It’s also one of the best places to see the unique Bangkok skyline. In the centre of this picture you might be able to see the top of the Roue de Paris big wheel that I posted a picture of a few weeks ago. No? Well I can!

I think this cloud formation looks a little bit like the sillhouette of a man pointing at something menacingly.

There are loads of places to just sit, relax, do nothing and watch the world go by. One of my favourite things to do is watch the men play takraw, a Thai game that’s a kind of cross between football and volleyball. Seriously this is one of the most fun amateur level games you can watch, it’s so skillful. When I see guys play this game I’m shocked that Thailand has such a rubbish football team. Most of the guys I saw playing today have ball control skills that would put a lot of professional English players to shame. I was watching one game for so long today that one of the players invited me to join. Now I’ve never played this game before, and judging from my abysmal footie skills, I don’t think I’d make much of an impact in a game of takraw. The idea of showcasing my (lack of) skills against these guys was strangely unappealing so I made the best Thai excuse that I could (’Mai dai’ - I can not) and swiftly exited. (Thanks to this site for the cool takraw image - my ones are crap!)

Another thing I like to do is just walk around and look at some of the architecture there. This may well be another sala, like the one in the Loy Kratong post, I’m not sure really - I’m going to call it a gazebo anyway.

One thing I love about Lumpini park in the evenings is the aerobics. After work it seems like most of the CBD workers head down to the park to sweat out the days’ toils with their colleagues. Seriously there are little aerobics groups all over the park. The music can be annoying, but it’s fun to watch the fat businessmen sweating buckets. These were the two biggest groups today.

So Sunday was a big festival in the Thai calendar - that’s right Bonfire Night is also celebrated in Thailand. Actually by a coincidence of the lunar calendar, Loy Kratong in Thailand fell on the same day as Bonfire night in England this year. Loy Kratong is a cool cultual festival that was explained in the show that I saw when my parents were here. Unfortunately, the only thing I can remember of it is that a pretty girl was dancing in the centre of a flower.

So anyway, yesterday started out with a trip to the weekend market in Jatujak (JJ). This place would possibly be my favourite place in Bangkok, if it wasn’t so hot and full of people. I love to go there, but I can’t stay there for that long without eating plenty of ice cream. JJ is probably the best place to get bargains in the whole of Bangkok, which is a pretty strong statement if you know anything about shopping here. I love to see stuff like this going for a pittance.

There’s usually a load of streetside entertainment there too. This is a clever dog who can pick cards up in his mouth and not chew them. He might be performing complicated mathematical equations as well, I don’t know. His owner was speaking Thai; he’s quite famous apparantly.

This next fella was dressed as what I can only guess is some kind of hideous ladyboy clown. He was singing something or other but I couldn’t understand that either. Beside him is a board explaining that he’s actually collecting money for the many flood victims around Thailand. When I found this out much later on, I felt quite bad for only giving him a few baht to take this photo, but then the thought that the guy after me gave him a bag of crisps make me feel a bit better. I mean, the crisps will get all soggy in the floods, won’t they? This guy is quite famous too, he’s been in the papers and everything.

Another thing that caught my eye was a puppet show where one of the puppets (the one on the right) was playing the same instrument that I bought when I went to the Thai cultural show.

Continuing with an ongoing theme, we also had some brilliant food in a little side terrace. The food was simple, but tasty. The presentation was great because everything came in terracotta dishes. We splashed out and ordered a bottle of water between us to drink and the waitress brought it with two coconut shells full of ice! Simple words cannot convey how cool this was, eating out of plant pots and drinking from ice filled coconuts.

In between all of these delights there was lots of shopping and some ice creams, if Mina ever updated her blog, no doubt you’d be able to read about that on there. As it is, she doesn’t, so you’ll just have to imagine that we bought a lot. Next up was a department store and wonderful air con. There’s nothing quite like a nice cold shopping centre after the heat and sweat of a good JJ fest. Mina bought me some trousers and a shirt so that I look pretty at her cousin’s wedding later this week.

After that we headed in a taxi to Khao Sarn Road - another of my favourite places in Bangkok. When I first moved here, I was a bit of a Khao Sarn hater as it’s full of smelly drunken people. However, once you see through the dreadlocks and smell through the sweat, it’s a very cool place. There’s lots of individual, unique shops and bars and you can always find something new in the area if you look. The bad side is that I’ve been told that lots of big businesses have seen the opportunities there and over the past few years have been moving in at an alarming rate. Many people who’ve been in Bangkok longer than me say that the place has lost it’s charm and I guess I’ll probably end up feeling that way too if too many more chains move in, which is sad.

Khao Sarn was unusually busy because of the aforementioned Loy Krathong. Basically lots of people were on the streets selling kratong, which is the Thai for “little rafts made from banana wood with a candle and three incense sticks, covered with folded banana leaves, orchids, lotuses (loti?) and crysanthemums” I think. We’re supposed to put nine baht (a lucky number) into the kratong, light all the bits that need to be lit and then make a wish and float it on the water. This was my kratong.

We went to the river and were planning on doing the same as we did last year, finding a old man with a special kind of stick and paying him some money to float it for us from the safety of the river bank. Whilst on the way to doing this, we accidentally took a wrong turn and ended up on the boat pier. This was an unbelievable stroke of luck as we found put that we could take the boat to the middle of the river, by one of the most recognisable landmarks in the city - the bridge of King Rama VIII, and float our kratong from there! Now I like boats almost as much as I like monkeys, so this was a real treat. This is me and my lit kratong on the boat. Handsome devil aren’t I?

From the middle of the river, the views were awesome. Sorry about the quality of the next few pictures, but I use my camera phone to take all the pictures on this blog, and it’s just not that good at taking night photos! This is the view of the bridge though (another apology for showing a bit of the boat in this pic, but this was as far as I dared lean over the edge to take it, the water was dark and moving quickly).

This is the area that we floated our kratong last year. It’s on the right side of the river as you look at the bridge and it’s called a sala, which I can only assume is Thai for ‘wicked looking roof-but-no-walls structure’.

After the floating fun, we went to a little cake shop that Mina knew about called Saffron that’s conveniently located on the walk back to Khao Sarn. I had a fantastic white chocolate mousse cake. Mina was hungry so she ate a plate of noodles, which tasted great too (not as good as my cake though). Here is the display you see as you walk into Saffron, I’m not sure why one row is missing though, maybe it was that Polish couple sitting beside us who ate them.

Then there was just enough time to go back to Khao Sarn, eat some more street food, have a walk around and then take three taxis home because none of the drivers knew where we live, only they forgot to tell us that when we first got in. Oh yeah, one more thing. Anybody who’s been following the chicken ass issue that’s been going on in Shelly and Rachel Lynn’s blogs (surely I’m not the only one) will find this picture of Mina eating ass on a stick interesting or revolting - up to you.

So I was looking through some old photo CDs to make a compilation so that I have a few cheap Christmas presents for my family, when I came accross this unusual set. I have absolutely no idea when I took them, where I took them or even why I took them. In fact I can’t even be sure if it was actually me that took them or not. I also found some great photos of my trip to Jamaica last year for my mum’s wedding, but I think I’ll save them for a slow news day (today is not a slow news day at all, I promise).

Look at the camera.

Look left.

Look right.

Now look nowhere.

Enough of that rubbish now (I like it at least and it’s my blog, so ner ner). Today Mina and I went to Suan LumNight Bazaar (see previous picture of big wheel and old type replica building) for some food and a foot massage. Mina was late so I had to sit watching the weekend’s football highlights with a beer. The weather was fine and I was sitting outside, drinking beer, watching football, waiting food and massage - it’s really is a dreadful life isn’t it? For Rachel Lynn, the food was great, semi dried (kinda half jerkied I guess) fried pork and some chicken green curry fried rice washed down with a few bottles of Tiger beer.

Going back in time a little bit Marty McFly style, only without the crazy haired old man, I’ve got a couple more picture of Hua Hin to show. For all you monkey lovers out there. Dead jellyfish lovers will have to wait a little while longer to get their fix I’m afraid. A cute little monkey.

A not so cute old monkey relaxing in the shade and showing off his enormous balls.

A teaser of the Jamaica pictures I promised earlier, here’s me in a waistcoat with a man who’s sign is clearly confused.

My parents have returned safely to the motherland, sunny old England and I’m stuck here in boring, grey Thailand – or have I made a mistake there? Anyway, we had a great time in Hua Hin, a place I would say is probably the Thai equivalent of Cleethorpes or Bridlington in England. The hotel we stayed in looked fantastic; the atmosphere was so relaxed, it felt like everybody was about a second away from sleep. Also I came back a little bit less white than I was when I went there, which is nice. Somebody even told me I looked tanned today - but only after I told her I’d been on holiday.

The best thing we did was visit the monastery/monkey colonies on Chopstick Mountain (Khao Takiap). Everything I read about Hua Hin called this place a mountain, but in reality it’s little more than a slightly oversized speed bump. The monkeys were amazing though. I love monkeys anyway, they’re just like children but with more hair. It was the first time I’ve ever seen them face to face, instead of them in a cage or me in a car.

There were three colonies on the mountain, the one at the top was the biggest and most like drunken English people – always fighting and making lots of noise. It was whilst feeding these monkeys that provided one of the best moments of the holiday. The person wearing a monkey hat in the next photo is my mum. At the time, she was holding a box of bananas and this guy just jumped on her head and tried to steal them. She was shitting herself and all my step-dad Mick and I could do is piss ourselves laughing and take photos - funny even tho I couldn’t get a good pic of her horrified face.

Another cool thing about the holiday was the number of jellyfish that were washed up on the beach. Now, usually I’m a bit of an animal lover and would hate to see animals dehydrating and dying on the beach like that. I’m not sure why, but I just couldn’t get my heart around to thinking about helping the jellyfish though. When you think about it though, what the fuck is a jellyfish? I mean it’s just a cheap childrens’ dessert with tentacles. I can see the point of jelly, I can see the point of fish, but jellyfish just baffle me. They look minging and are very dangerous. These ones were big too. Mina claimed that they couldn’t sting because they don’t have tentacles, but I’m pretty sure that the one on the left hasn’t got fingers, and they certainly aren’t translucent cigars.

I’m not sure if this guy made it back into the sea or not, or if he ended up doomed like his cousins, but it was quite fun to watch him flap his little jellyfish fronds about everytime a wave crashed in.

Other than that, nothing else much happened last week. I sat on a beach, I sat by a pool, I drank and I ate - a LOT. There was no reason to wait this long to update either, but I can be a bit lazy from time to time. Look at the pretty flowers.

The season’s changing, so hopefully after this week there won’t be any floods in Bangkok. This is good news. The only problem is that every time the seasons change in Asia, I seem to get sick. I had a class yesterday and most of the students were sick and now today I seem to have it too. Right now I’m sat in bed feeling rubbish. I made it to my Thai class though. Mina suggested I go for a foot massage afterwards, so I did. I went to the Bangkok night market because it’s next to the subway station near my school. I felt quite a lot better afterwards, but I’m back at home feeling sorry for myself now. Hopefully I’ll be feeling better tomorrow though coz I’m off to Hua Hin on holiday - exciting.

I did manage to take a couple of pictures at the night market though. There’s one of a bunch of bamboo puppet men/water wheel/water feature/it really would be easier if you just came to look at it type thing.

Also there’s a picture of what is supposedly the world’s largest transportable big wheel, La Roue De Paris, behind a replica of part of the massive Angkor Wat temple city in Cambodia. Strangely enough, La Roue De Paris was in Birmingham when I was in my final year of university there.

I found this thing on Shelly in Korea’s blog. You can do it yourself here.

According to this then, it’s theoretically possible to be andy thailandy; somebody whose endless laughter could signify your death.

Forgive me Blogfather for I have sinned; many revolutions of the earth have passed since my last update. In my defence though, my parents are in town and instead of typing stuff for the whole world to read on the internet, I’ve been letting them take me out for expensive meals. In the last few days, I’ve eaten, drank and seen a show and that’s about it (there was a little bit of work in there too somewhere).

The show we went to see was great, a Thai culture show that was all cultural and stuff. Unfortunately cameras were banned inside the actualy show, so you’ll just have to come to Thailand and go and watch it if you want to know what it looks like. Luckily we could take photos outside the show, and there was a lot going on out there too.

The funniest of these things was a guy who was sitting painting when we met him. He had loads of hand made buffalo leather shadow puppets on a wall beside him (you can see two big ones on the wall behind him, but most of the smaller ones were on the right hand side). He couldn’t really speak English, so my incredibly useful girlfriend Mina had to translate for us. Then he gave us an little demonstration with some of the puppets, only the puppet could speak and make jokes in English. Weird!

I believe these guys were the inspiration for an Abba song.

An elephant made from traditional Thai fairy lights with what I think are dancing viruses.

Also, carrying on with the ethnic instruments theme that my friend from uni Metul started when he bought me a didgeridoo, I bought a set of traritional bamboo pipes, similar to the ones this guy is playing. They come from the northeast of Thailand (just like a few of my favourite Thai foods) and are incredibly difficult to play. You often see old men from that region playing them on the streets of Bangkok, busking for a few baht. They are usually fantastic and I love to listen to them. Also note the virus mask behind him (it’s actually used to scare off bad spirits).