Travels in Thailand

Hello!  It is Wednesday here in Bangkok and we have had two straight days of sunshine after a lot of gray and rainy weather. I should not complain we are, after all, in the rainy season. But the sunshine is a treat.

On the way home from work I picked up some fried chicken from one of the street vendors on Soi 33. I was ravenously hungry and everything on the street was looking tasty – but I thought my safest choice was the fried chicken and 50 Baht bought me two plump, delicious pieces.  In order to balance out my meal I will eat a Granny Smith apple (the ones here are grown in New Zealand).

For various reasons I have lost about 25 pounds since I have been in the BKK. I think there are a couple reasons. First, I eat a lot of local Thai food and it is not very fattening, second I don’t keep snacks in my apartment so after dinner I have no more caloric intake. Another thing is that the portions of Thai food in restaurants are smaller than in the US.

On a final note, I have less than two months left here in Bangkok. I have some excursions planned and hope to make the best of the time I have left in SEA. This weekend, I believe I will be visiting a coconut farm and floating market with Tuk and friends. The following weekend it will be back to Hua Hin and then around mid-August I hope to make a trek to Laos. At work, I start the next six week programmer bootcamp, so that should keep me busy as well.

 

Well let’s see...

I went to an Anglican church service here in Bangkok today (Sunday July 18th) – Christ Church is the name and it resides on Convent Road in the Silom district. It was very nice and the service would be very familiar to any Episcopalian. The vicar is from England (not surprisingly) and I think the Queen of England actually visited the church a decade or two ago.  I might try and go back next week.

On another note, a week ago as I was wandering the streets of Bangkok I saw a Buddhist monk walk up to a street food vendor pull a cigarette out of his robe and ask for a light.  If I had been a little more alert I would have asked if he wanted to go get a beer.  I must admit though, while I have seen quite a few monks since I have been here I have never seen one drinking alcohol. Smoking among monks is actually a topic of some discussion:
The Smoking Monk.

And finally, a while back I mentioned that the students will sometimes wear slippers in the classroom. Just for fun I have included some photos. Just so you know, they do maintain a sense of decorum and put their normal shoes on when walking about the office. Evidently slipper-wearing occurs at many Bangkok offices, here's another farang blog post on the same topic.

On the way home from work today I decided to take some pictures of my street (Soi 33 / Sukhumvit) to give you a taste of my little world.  It’s hard for me not to sing Mr. Rogers’s “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” as I pass the sights, sounds, and smells of Soi 33. Now that I think of it, maybe I should  walk up to one of the prostitutes and ask “Won’t you be my neighbor?”

Inevitably, my daily walk home takes me past my favorite watering hole in the whole world – Coyote’s. Usually, I can count on someone from the office already being there. And, today was no exception as I saw Jon, Lisa, and Wayne in the bar. Of course, I stopped in for a cold one. We spent about 30 minutes planning our trip to Laos in August (more on that in a future post) and then I headed home.

I needed to eat and have found a new, tasty, and cheap place. Basically, it's a street vendor who sells Pad Thai for about 40 Baht a plate ($1.30). I started taking pictures but given my slightly inebriated state (thanks to Coyote’s) the quality is not all that good. Nonetheless, I tried to get the essence of what I see every day.

 Ok, on a serious note, one of the pictures you may find slightly disturbing – but please NO JUDGEMENT – people have to make a living. Plus, the really strange stuff does not come out till after dark.

So, I've captioned the pictures. If you have any questions about my home neighborhood feel free to ask. If I can answer them without any repercussions, I will be happy to do so.

On Monday I went with the Thai crew went to a Chinese restaurant to eat dim sum. I am not sure exactly how to translate dim sum but it really is a variety of small servings of food. Our lunch included servings of beef, pork, chicken, shrimp, duck, fried tofu, dumplings of various kinds, bread roll thingys stuffed with BBQ – I can’t remember what else. But for dessert we had mango pudding which was actually more like a mango custard – quite tasty. Overall the dim sum was very good and the Thai love duck so that was especially popular.

I should have learned my lesson by now but never ask what something is just prior to popping it in your mouth. I looked at what I thought was some sort of meat dish and thought I would try it. In retrospect it’s claw like appearance should have been my first clue. I bit into it- then stopped.

Yes, it was chicken feet (picture at left).  I know there are people in the US who eat it but I have never seen it eaten. It was the only dish I decided not to finish.

After lunch we were delayed by a very heavy rain storm which flooded Soi 33 (where I live and where the restaurant resides). We decided to take a taxi back to the office even though it is a 2 minute walk normally. But given the calf deep water I think it was worth the taxi fare.  We're now in the rainy season and this part of Bangkok (Sukhumvit) is known for its floods.

The American Chamber of Commerce and U.S. Embassy held a 4th of July celebration at the KIS International School yesterday. All U.S citizens and their guests were invited. Most of the ex-pats from our office went.

To get there I had to take the MRT which is the subway system here in Bangkok (as opposed to the skytrain or BTS). I got on at Sukhumvit station and got off at Huai Khwang about 4 stops away where shuttle vans took us to the school.

The school is a large private English language school and was situated in a very upscale neighborhood – lots of large posh houses nearby. It took about an hour to get from my apartment to the school where the festivities were being held.

Most of the activities were held outdoors, but they set up big tents which is where I found the DST/Bangkok ex-pats sitting. Jon, Lisa, Wayne, and Bee were at one of the tents so I pulled a chair and settled in.  I think there must have been around 200 people there – mostly Americans as you would expect.

There was plenty of American food, including BBQ, fried chicken, ice cream, etc. The heavy duty beer drinkers in our group were delighted to find Coors Light. They drank a lot of it. I was on my better behavior and only had two beers, but did eat delicious fried chicken and some excellent apple pie.

There were games including an egg toss but we mostly sat and ate. All in all it was a very nice time. Afterwards we hailed a cab and went back to the MRT station and then back home.