Halloween in Bangkok 2007

Well it's Halloween in Bangkok, and I was caught woefully unprepared. First I didn't even realize it was actually Halloween until about mid-day. Traffic was ridiculous coming home from Thong Lor, I asked about 6 taxis if they'd bring be home, all refused.  Finally got a taxi to take me to the BTS (skytrain), rode that to the station close to my condo, and then caught a taxi the rest of the way home. Traffic was crazy even on my soi, and what should have taken about 3 minutes ended up taking 20 minutes to get home from the BTS. 

Now, as I'm pulling up I see a bunch of kids dressed up as witches and such exiting my building.  Uh oh, I had no candy. Quick dash up to my floor reveals more kids waiting at my door. Argh, feel terrible as I literally have nothing to give. So, after a quick change into some shorts and a t-shirt I dash back out to 7-11 to pick up some candy. Back home and then I'm the one making the rounds to my neighbors with kids doors dishing out some home delivered treats. Ahh, my conscience relieved.

Bangkok, never one to let pass a reason to party gets pretty wild on Halloween.  Parties everywhere and people dressing up. The biggest celebration is on Khao San Road, the famous backpacker area (although now it's more of a trendy area).

I'm sure there will be lots or pics up in the coming days, so check out Flickr for Bangkok Halloween pics.

Addicted to the Internet

 

Dilbert just seems to say it all.

Dinner and Karaoke in Udomsuk - Bangkok

Last night, after our usual Wednesday company meeting, it was decided to go out for a pre-holiday season treat, hit a nice dinner place and then go looking for some trouble to get into. Our company founder took us all the way out near where he lives, Udomsuk (which is like Sukhumvit 103 or nearabouts). Actually, it really isn't that far, not even really considered the suburbs, but for someone who lives right in the middle of the city, it's a hike!

Unfortunately, I completely forgot to take any pictures, but we had a huge seafood feast at a Thai style outdoor restaurant. Crabs, shrimp, mussels, grilled fresh fish, plus a liter of beer and a bottle of whiskey. Total price came to around 3500 baht for 6 people.

Well after the beer and whiskey was imbibed in copious amounts, we discussed the next agenda point for the nights activities. There we basically two options within walking distance of the restaurant; a karaoke place and a pub. We checked out the pub but it was pretty dead (Wednesday night), so settled on the Karaoke place.

Now, to explain this certain style of Thai karaoke establishment. If you spend some time in Thailand, and wander a bit off the beaten track, you'll surely come across these karaoke style establishments. Usually they are on the side of the street, have some lights to draw attention, and a bevy of pretty girls sitting out in front.

This picture isn't so great, but it's the only one I could find. Note, this is not a picture of the place I'm writing about here. The draw is to go in, select a girl and then have a bit of fun drinking, eating, and "flirting". There are all different types of Thai karaoke businesses, from high end to very small dingy hole in the walls, to fronts for prostitution. Understand also there are similar types of establishments for females, with all male staff. I had a friend who lived right across the street from a female oriented karaoke place. There would be groups or really hot young girls hitting that place for a night of fun, so understand this style of entertainment is widely accepted and appeals to everyone. Now as the alcohol starts to flow, inevitably the guy acquires some roaming hands and attempts to get away with as much as the girl will allow. The karaoke girl, as a tradeoff, tries to get that guy to buy her as many drinks as possible, of which she will receive a cut. Keep it all in perspective and it can be fun, especially when with a group of people looking to cut loose a bit and enjoy the experience. I know Americans usually cringe at the thought of karaoke, and I certainly was a "cringer" before coming here to Thailand, but after experiencing it for myself and really having fun, I'm a convert.

I digress, anyway the place we visited would probably be considered mid-range. I didn't make any attempt at finding out if any "extra" services were offered, and I doubt it for this place unless a private arrangement with a girl was agreed upon. Anyway, I believe we ended up being at this place for about 3 hours. Keeping in mind the huge dinner we had with whiskey and beer, the cost for the karaoke adventure for the 6 guys came out to be about 20,000 baht. Wow, definitely have to pay attention and keep track of those drinks ordered next time. Nonetheless, it was a good time, and good opportunity to unwind.

Dinner in Singapore

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Originally uploaded by davoli_bkk

It was a nice little getaway, but I didn't take nearly as many pictures as I would have liked in Singapore. The first thing I noticed after arriving at the airport were the abundance of machine gun toting security. Not quite sure what that is all about, but I suppose Singapore really wants to show how serious they are about order and security.

Adri and Z met me at the airport and we immediately headed for some food. The pic is what we had for dinner :) Really good stuff, crabs in a delicious butter sauce, crabs in a noodle soup that was quite superb, chicken, bbq chicken wings, and this other seafood cube thing (you see it on the orange plate) that was also quite delicious.

Singapore is very nice. Lots of high-rise apartment/condos (the outside of the buildings all look quite similar, at least in the suburbs). People actually use their turn signals (as opposed to BKK). The air was clean. I'll definitely be back.

Weekender to Singapore

This weekend I'm off to Singapore for a quick jaunt. Flying on Air Asia which I've flown on several times with no major complaints. However, they do have this policy with pricing. I receive their deals and promotions via email, and the prices are always pretty awesome. Fly to Singapore, or Macau for $10 or something like this. And once you log into the website, the prices presented are very low. The problem happens after selecting the flights and proceeding to credit card details. Suddenly prices double or triple due to taxes, airport fees and all this other nonsense. I really wish that Air Asia would present these charges upfront, so that it wasn't such a shock when getting the final price on the final page of checkout. I would have to imagine this does more damage to people dropping out and looking for other deals than if they just were upfront with the costs.

Apart from the cost of the flight, I'm sure my credit card is going to have a bit more damage after possibly picking myself up a few other electronic goodies. Hmmm, is it time to get that Macbook?? The new Leopard OS is being released just 1 week too late for me. Hmm, but maybe an Apple TV? Or SonyPSP? Or Xbox360? Nokia N810? HTC Shift? Oh my poor poor bank account.

One more thing I would like to share, not Thailand related, is this spectacular video of some Chinese dancers performing the Thousand-Hand Bodhisattva dance. Really cool stuff:

Rainy Season on Thailand Extended

Historically, September is supposed to be the wettest month in Thailand, and the rainy season is supposed to tail off from there and move right into the cool season in mid-November. However, this year, it seemed that September was not so rainy. That's all being made up for this October. Everyday we've had some really wicked downpours, horizontal wind-blow rain, huge booming thunderclaps and ferocious lightning. The storms have put on quite a show. Luckly, I've not been caught out yet, and have managed to travel in between cloud openings.

Also this month, the annual Thai/Chinese Vegetarian Festival. I believe it's supposed to end around the 19th. It's pretty strict, more like vegan since during the festival one cannot eat eggs or drink milk. I'm not participating, but do go along and eat veggie food when out with friends who are participating.

I've been slacking a bit in the blogging department, have 2 Bangkok restaurant reveiw write-ups to do, plus lots more stuff to discuss. I will try and catch up a bit this week. I'll have to, because this coming weekend I'm planning a quick jaunt to Singapore, so will have plenty more to write about then too.

Bangkok is not green, but has a lot of trees.

In a study published in Reader's Digest, Bangkok was rated the 5th worst city in the world in terms of being green and livable. Now, sure there's a lot of traffic, it's dirty, and the air quality really isn't that good. Plus, last year a friend of mine got hit with a bucket of Klong water during Songkran, and it wiped him out with some nasty bug for about a week. However, on the good side, have you (if you live/visited here) ever noticed how many trees there are, on all the roads, everywhere?

Recording Industry Dying as we know it

I'm a web nerd, so I first saw the story that Nine Inch Nails is cutting loose from any recording company on Techcrunch. This of course comes on the heels of Radiohead bypassing their recording company contract and releasing their newest work In Rainbows direct to consumers for a price chosen by the consumer. With digital music distribution spreading like wildfire, record companies simply add no value whatsoever. Artists can cut deals with AmazonUnboxed or Itunes or any number of services that I'm sure will be popping up to distribute their music. This doesn't even even consider direct distribution through an artist's own website, or Myspace. Now, if only Amazon Unboxed was offered to those outside the US (good thing I have a US credit card and some good web proxies!).

So RIAA go ahead fritter away cash by ridiculous lawsuits. In a few years (hopefully) you won't exist anymore.

Kinokunya Books in Siam Paragon

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Originally uploaded by davoli_bkk

So during the week, I took a trip to Kinokuniya Books at Siam Paragon Mall to restock. I've finished all the books I current have so a new batch was needed. This is my favorite book store, as you can see it's pretty large with a very good selection of English language books. Also, they have a pretty cool site where you can search for book in inventory.

My plan was to get 3 books, a classic, Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse and two of the latest by Wiliam Gibson. I went to the Kinokuniya website to make sure they were in stock and reserve them. They were, no problems, so headed over to the book store to pick them up. Well, as I arrived I was told they just ran out of stock of one of the Gibson books and never had the other. So, I just wandered around a bit and picked up a couple other books (WEB Griffin). By the way, if you're on Facebook and read books, sign up for the Iread application and we can compare books, reviews, etc.

Came back home, called up another Kinokuniya branch, at the Emporium, and was told that they had one of the Gibson books I wanted and Paragon had the other. Grrrr....so I just asked Emporium branch to get the one from Paragon sent over, and I'll go pick up both at the Emporium later in the week. Not a big deal, as I have 3 books now to read and the Gibson books are in the queue. Kinokuniya at Paragon is still my favorite though, because it still has a very nice selection.

Free Burma!

I am a bit jaded about online causes, but this one is worth it.


Bloggers uniting to make a most and raise awareness about this movement. Click on the banner above to find out more and support he movement.

Eating out or eating at home

Apart from the numerous excellent and affordable restaurants all over Bangkok, it's really nice living with a pretty good cook as well.

The dish on the left is Geang Fak Tong Gai and the dish on the right Pad Krapow Gai (this one was just a tad bit spicy for me though). Btw, Gai is chicken in Thai, so both dishes had chicken. Another great advantage to living in Bangkok:

Fresh squeezed orange juice available every morning via street vendors (usually within a couple hundred meters of my condo) for less than $1.

Travails of Acquiring High Speed Internet in Bangkok

When I first moved into my current condo, about 8 months ago, there was already a phone line installed. The line was working, and we had a phone number. One of my first tasks was to call and get high-speed internet set-up. In Bangkok, there are basically two companies that provide wired telephone lines, TOT and True. My line was a TOT line, so there are a variety of ISPs that offer ADSL that can service my line. Usually, if you have a True line you generally get True ADSL service. I've always had True in every other place I've lived in Bangkok.

Well, I called several ISPs (CSLoxinfo, Samart, etc.) and was told that they couldn't set up ADSL on my line as it was "full." What the heck? Full? No joy there, so I tried to call True to get a True line installed and True ADSL service. No luck there either, all the True CSU (access points) in my building were used up by other people, and I'd have to wait for someone to shut down their service to get a True line. Uh oh! Fear and panic starts to set in as I'm starting to see that I might not be able to get high-speed internet (a NECESSITY!) for quite some time.

So ok, back to TOT. After a multitude of phone calls back to TOT, we finally discover that the customer who had the phone line before (the current line activated in my condo), had left without paying the bill sometime ago. Well, this is why there was a block on the line and no ADSL company would service it. It would have been a lot easier if they were able to tell me that rather than the building was full and no more ADSL can be supplied. Another odd thing, why was the line still active for several years after the previous customer had left without paying the bill?

Anyway, got a new TOT line and setup TOT ADSL service (which is spotty at best). I really should have probably gotten another ADSL company, such as CS Loxinfo, but I was so happy that I could just get service, I signed up for TOT immediately.

Well this brings me back to the point of writing this entry, TOT service was cut pretty much all day on Sunday. It's funny how something that didn't exist in my life a little over 10 years ago has become such a neccessity. I have internet access set-up on my phone, I have a wifi account for Starbucks and True, and have my home ADSL account. If I ever go traveling anywhere, one of the first things to make sure, does the hotel have high-speed. I am a certifiable net addict!