Travels in Thailand

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.

Bangkok is hot but our office can be cold due to strong air conditioning. Almost all the staff have jackets that they wear only in the office. I have noticed that many of them wear the jackets backwards (arms in the sleeves but back of jacket in front).  I assume this keeps them a little warmer.

Also, some of the staff have slippers they wear at their desks. Some of them are non-descript but I have seen furry animal slippers occaisionally. The bunny rabbit slippers are pretty cute.

 

A trip to Chonburi to see Tuk's house and the beach. It's about a ninety minute trip from Bangkok.

I can’t, so here goes – I now live in a thriving red light district. My new hotel is on Soi 33 off of Sukhumvit. There are at least a dozen bars nearby where you can buy more than beer and whiskey. The working girls sit outside in front of the bars and call out to all passing men. Typically what you hear is “Sah Wah Dee Kha” which means “hello sailor.” Ok, really it just means “hello” but it is also an invitation.

The funny thing the women at each bar all seem to have a distinct “uniform” – generally they are silk dresses of the same color. So each bar has a color theme for its women. They are actually quite nicely dressed.

Despite my wife’s fears my trip to Cambodia was a lot of fun. I took the trip with two British Guys – Tim from England and Andy from Scotland plus Jon from Omaha. We left Bangkok in a rented van around 1:00 PM Saturday and arrived at the border crossing around 5:00 PM.

We had no major problems getting into Cambodia mainly because we were willing to pay the price that the border guards preferred. Officially, the cost of the visa to enter Cambodia is about $25.00, but in order to actually get into the country I ended up paying about $50.00. The thing that stood out was that each border guard we ran into also wanted a “fee” for his service.

We did have one hitch though. Poipet is really just a gambling town but the casinos are located inside the border zone. We crossed through the zone and into Poipet itself and had a beer. When we went back to the Casinos we were stopped by Cambodian border guards who took our passports. They said that we had to leave the passports with them and they would give us photocopies in order to check into the hotel in the casino/border zone.

Tim and Andy are used to dealing with the border guards and refused to give up their passports. However, the guards were insistent. After a while Tim asked how much money it would take to fix the problem. Suprisingly, the guards said no money that this was a new rule.

At this point I was beginning to imagine being stuck in Cambodia without my passport. But, Tim stuck it out and came up with a compromise. We would keep our passports, but come back in the morning so they could process our passports once again. The guards relented and we headed for the hotel.

We weren’t quite out of the woods though. When we got to hotel we found out it was fully booked. So we went to another hotel and found it was booked as well. A trip to a third hotel was not successful either. Tim became a little suspicious and decided to lead us back to the first hotel. He asked if a more “expensive” room was available and sure enough it was. Tim, Andy, and I decided to split the cost of the room and that was that. The hotel room itself was quite nice clean, spacious, and modern.

After dinner we started our night of gambling. We spent most of time at the baccarat tables. I actually had a lot of fun and while I did lose a little money it was only about $30.00. We continued playing till around 3:00 AM before heading back for the room.

As far Poipet itself I will let the pictures so the talking. But I will say it was not as bad as I had read.

 Click on a picture to open the slideshow and see the captions.

As I mentioned in my previous blog entry some of the ex-pats and Thai staff decided to escape Bangkok for the weekend and went to the beach at Hua Hin. Some went down on Friday and others, including me, went on Saturday. The group was split between two resorts, both of which were very nice.

Our hotel had a lot of German and other European guests. I know this is a little cheeky coming from an American, but many of the Europeans were quite large and they all seemed to be wearing speedos. In a way you have to admire them. It takes courage to say “I don’t care how fat I am - I’m going to wear a thong”.

I spent some time with Lisa, Vera, and Sonia at the swim up bar drinking delicious margaritas. Afterwards everyone piled into taxis and headed for a seafood restaurant (This was when we saw the “motor cycle gang”). As usual, the food was delicious.

We met up with some friends of Sonia (who is a friend of Lisa’s) and after dinner headed for the night market, It was hot and crowded. But, we found an interesting street side bar. It looked like someone bought a used stand, went to the liquor store, and then set up shop on the streets Hua Hin. Nonetheless, they made an excellent Mai Tai.

Our next stop was a bar near the Hilton and we got there by motorcycle Taxis and by Tuk Tuk. I decided to switch to drinking water, but two of Sonia’s friends were pilots and pilots love Jaegermeister, which they made everyone drink. Next came barefoot dancing, pilot stories, and more Jaegermeister.

Finally, we called it quits and took the last Tuk Tuk for the hotel. All in all it was a lot of fun.