Thailand

Bangkok 2008

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Last Saturday (your Friday) I flew to Bangkok…carrying on a nice conversation with a Malaysian man sitting next to me. He says Thaksin did help the rural farmers…but the system takes time to change. And he says Thaksin began to feel like he owned the country…like Suharto in Indonesia. Thaksin’s web site says he plans to return to Thailand in two days. Will be interesting to see if there is a reaction from the Bangkok educated elites who hate him for his corrupt business dealings.

The weather is warm here but not uncomfortably so…yet.

I stayed the first night at the new Hi Sukhumvit hostel on Sukhumvit soi 38 where I had stayed before. But this time the single rooms were full. The mixed dorm I was put in was miserable…in…out…in…out…zippers unzipped…zippers zipped…light on…lights out…in…out…door slams…guys snoring…guy listening to music…lights on…door slams…and plastic bags should be outlawed after 10pm! Finally I hear slurp slurp and realize that the one other girl had crawled into bed with one of the guys. That did it. I went to the roof lounge to sleep. But woke up with little red spots all over my legs and arms…accosted by what I don’t know.

The next morning a Canadian guy took me around the corner to the Rex Hotel…an old Bangkok landmark. I get Fox and BBC on satellite TV. Today I explored the neighborhood and found the American Women’s Club, an expat group of women, down a sub soy off Suk 38.

Tonight I am in the Bourbon St. Bar and Restaurant owned by an American near Sukhumvit 22 using their free WiFi and listening to the NY Philharmonic playing in North Korea on the TV. A couple of older overweight French guys are spell-bound.

Tomorrow I go to Bumrungrad Hospital to make some appointments and my first dental appointment is tuesday. My body is beginning to feel like it is residing in Thailand and not China.

Visit From Son Doug

Posted on by Laughingnomad

My son Doug arrived in Salem from Thailand on Friday November 9th and hit the ground running…cleaning up the farm for the sale and tying up his loose ends in the area before he goes back to his wife on Koh Samui…all with the help of his personal assistant, of course…me! So I’ve been off the radar for awhile. I can tell. I am getting email from friends again asking me where I am now! Nice to have supporters trying to keep track of me!

For his part, Doug says he is mourning the sale of the farm. After all, his childhood was spent there…helping grampa feed the cows and eating grandmas fried chicken, fry bread and apple pies.

I’m getting a break this weekend. Doug flew down to Las Vegas yesterday to have brother time with Greg. We left Salem at 4:30pm and after nearly three hours in bumper to bumper traffic finally arrived at the airport at 7:25 for a 7:30 flight. Upside of flight delays. He surprisingly made it on the plane in time. But the packed freeways in the valley were a big surprise for me after being out of the country for the better part of the last six years!

Contemplating Leaving

Posted on by Laughingnomad

My one year visa in Mexico expires August 8. After visiting my son Greg in Las Vegas I should be back in Oregon by the middle of August…driving from Oaxaca to Queretaro to pick up my friend Patty who will be my traveling companion along the way. I have mixed feelings of course. Returning to my home country will be the measure of things great and small. In the fall I will return to Asia to visit son Josh and his wife Amy in Beijing and son Doug and his wife Luk in Thailand.

In the meantime I am reading my irreverent, indepensible, if tattered, “The World’s Most Dangerous Places” by the consummate journalist Robert Young Pelton. After Asia, maybe a visit to Syria? Or…? Then maybe a return to Oaxaca to get that language down after all.

A regular columnist for National Geographic Adventure, Pelton produces and hosts a TV series for Discovery and the Travel Channel and appears frequently as an expert on current affairs and travel safety on CNN, FOX and other networks.

“The United States has a very comprehensive system of travel warnings,” says Pelton, “but conveniently overlooks the dangers within its own borders. Danger cannot be measured, only prepared against. The most dangerous thing in the world,” he says, “is ignorance.”

Welcome to Dangerous Places…”no walls, no barriers, no bull” it says in the preface. “With all the talk about survival and fascination with danger, why is it that people never admit that life is like watching a great movie and–pooof–the power goes off before we see the ending? It’s no big deal. Death doesn’t really wear a smelly cloak and carry a scythe…it’s more likely the attractive girl who makes you forget to look right before you cross that busy intersection in London…

It helps to look at the big picture when understanding just what might kill you and what won’t. It is the baby boomers’ slow descent into gray hair, brand-name drugs, reading glasses, and a general sense of not quite being as fast as they used to be that drives the survival thing. Relax: You’re gonna die. Enjoy life, don’t fear it.

To some, life is the single most precious thing they are given and it’s only natural that they would invest every ounce of their being into making sure that every moment is glorious, productive, and safe. So does “living” mean sitting strapped into our Barca Lounger, medic at hand, 911 autodialer at the ready, carefully watching for low-flying planes? Or should you live like those folks who are into extreme, mean, ultimate adventure stuff…sorry that stuff may be fun to talk about at cocktail parties, but not really dangerous…not even half as dangerous as riding in a cab on the graveyard shift in Karachi.

[A big part of] living is about adventure and adventure is about elegantly surfing the tenuous space between lobotomized serenity and splattered-bug terror and still being in enough pieces to share the lessons learned with your grandkids. Adventure is about using your brain, body and intellect to weave a few bright colors in the world’s dull, gray fabric…

The purpose of DP is to get your head screwed on straight, your sphincter unpuckered and your nose pointed in the right direction.”

I love it.

Family In Thailand

Posted on by Laughingnomad

My sons and daughters-in-law, Luk, Doug, Josh and Amy on Koh Samui in Thailand for a week. Bob, their dad, took the picture. Doug and Luk live on Koh Samui. Greg, in Las Vegas, and I, of course, missed out. Amy flew back to her job teaching history in an international school in Beijing after a week. Josh had dental work in Bangkok (much cheaper than Beijing) and is staying a few days with Bob at his house in Johmtien which is south of Pattaya on the east side of the Gulf of Thailand before flying back to his job as Chef de Cuisine at the One East On Third restaurant in the Hilton Hotel in Beijing.

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International Driving

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Don’t know if it’s just Oaxaca or maybe it’s the whole of Mexico. However, my dentist says that drivers in Oaxaca are worse than in Mexico City! But in Xalapa they were ever so polite…big fines meted out if they are not.

But you are taking your life in your hands in Oaxaca. The taxis and buses are the worst…speeding, honoring no lanes…forcing you over. No stop signs, lights, when there are lights and when they are working, are suggestions only. And then there are the “topes” or speed bumps everywhere. Never know when one is coming up unless you watch the cars ahead and hope they slow down…however, one, with drivers from Veracruz, didn’t slow down until they got to the tope. Then they stopped. Bam. Their little car could do it. My big Toyota Land Cruiser couldn’t. So I slammed right into the back of their car. Good thing no one was hurt. Good thing for insurance.

Actually I expected this…but thought I’d get side-swiped by a bus. Now I know why Mexican immigrants in the north get into so much trouble! A couple years ago in my home town in Oregon I was T-boned by an immigrant going through a red light at about 60 miles an hour…she had no insurance. No one has insurance here except the expats.

There are rules here…just not the posted ones. And heaven help you if you don’t obey them! Boils down to buses and taxis and very small cars do what they want…and that includes just about everyone. Except the gringa with the Toyota with a US license plate. Yes, I know I should have put more space between me and car in front. You get conditioned to keep close…cars, buses and taxis will try to edge into even a sliver of space forcing you over. If you leave a lot of room…say a couple car lengths you never get to where you are going because the whole city will move in front of you.

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Thailand is no better. Was rear-ended by a motorcycle there once. Today got an email from Bob who is living in Thailand: “Now if I could only learn to control my mini-rage reactions at Thai drivers,” he says.

“Earlier this week I was driving in a line of autos and a bus tried to pass the whole line of 5-6 cars. He encountered oncoming traffic and cut in front of me–not really in front more like forced me onto the shoulder.

I offered selected auditory and visual feedback. (Had to laugh because the same thing happens here in Mexico!)

But the curious cultural phenomena is that I was the heavy in that I lost my cool. But driving is very unsafe here–most trips (even to the market) produce an anxiety or at least an edge of apprehension. And the Thais cannot park. It is humerous to watch them attempt a parallel park, most often most of the car is left somewhere out on the street. And I have two significant dings being clipped me while I was parked. Oh well…..” 

I think I detect a note of Thai-speak in that syntax.

A Dongle?

Posted on by Laughingnomad

New Luxury tax on internet usage in Thailand

All internet accounts to be taxed with 970 Baht/month. ($235)
Hardware dongle required for internet use

BANGKOK: — The government has announced heavy investment to upgrade Thailand’s international bandwidth, but has introduced an internet tax to help fund investment, and control usage.

The internet tax will be based on bandwidth and would be applied on a graduated scale according to the speed of a users internet connection. The internet luxury tax will be 970 Baht/month for most users.

Foreigners without a work permit and retirees will be required to pay the monthly tax at a higher rate, 1,490 Baht/month. ($361)

Sombat Merou-Ruang, director of the Alien Internet Control Division at CAT headquarters in Bangkok says “foreigners that do not have work in Thailand only hang out on internet forums, visit pornographic sites and other website lamock, different from Thai citizens who mostly use the internet for banking, ecommerce, and furthering their education.” (Right…and I have a bridge in Oaxaca to sell you! Now the bar girls will have to pay more for writing to their johns in Germany or the US of A begging money for their grandmothers’ operation before she dies!}

In addition to the bandwidth tax, an extra usage tax of 490 Baht will be levied on those using Bittorrents and surfing foreign language internet forums.
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Dual Pricing

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Found a hilarious travel article on Bootnall today about the luxury tax…or dual pricing for foreigners as it is called:

The Luxury Tax – Asia, Europe, South America
By: Adam Jeffries Schwartz
The following is a guide to how the luxury tax is levied, worldwide.

ASIA
China has the highest tax in the region! Charging a hundred times the regular price is typical. If you negotiate at all, they will stand two inches in front of your face, and scream You PAY, you PAY NOW.

Note: Exactly!!!
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Bob, Josh and Luk In Bangkok

Posted on by Laughingnomad

My son Josh is Chef de Cuisine of “One East On Third” in the Hilton Hotel in Beijing. He was sent by the Executive Chef to Bangkok last week to check out some restaurants there. Luk, a delightful Thai girl who is married to our son Doug, had been visiting Bob at his rental house south of Pattaya so Bob, took Luk with him to Bangkok to join Josh. (Doug is currently in Oregon and will return to Thailand in a couple weeks.) This was the first time Josh met his sister-in-law, Luk.

This is Bob’s description of the visit…made me salivate reading about the Thai food!

“Josh missed his scheduled flight to BKK so arrived one day late. I extended my stay to allow for an overlap. He had hotel and culinary related meetings but we shared a few meals and today roamed around Chatuchak Market which he seemed to enjoy.

Josh let me choose the restaurants. I was the tour guide. (Although Josh has been to Bangkok many times!) He ate his evening meals with the Hilton folks first night and his second night at the Four Seasons. I think they had steaks at the Hilton as Josh’s hierarchy wants him to offer more steaks at the restaurant. Steak apparently is in demand in Beijing.

When we went out I gave him the option of streetside or upscale. We settled on Jim Thompson’s restaurant on Soi Saladang (we ate there before.) Had pomolo salad, gai with lemongrass , shrimp in a coconut curry, a fish souffle and morning glory in oyster sauce. All quite arroy (delicious) except the chicken. Second day we ate at a sit down restaurant at Chatuchak Market. Had a spicy Thai salad, fresh spring roles and sticky rice with mango and coconut milk. Josh enjoyed the cuisine.

At Chatuchak he purchased many items of Thai motif as his restaurant is going to do some things with a Thai theme. He would buy one item and then plans on having it reproduced in China. I think he wanted to buy more but was limited by what he was capable of carrying.

He appears to be doing well. Both he and Amy, (his wife did not make this trip) are apparently adapting better to cultural deviation. He says that Amy’s sudden unemployment left gaps that have resolved with her new job teaching history in an international school. They will return to Thailand in May to spend time in BKK again and then venture down to Samui where Doug and Luk live.

Luk was traveling with this huge suitcase (with wheels fortunately) that she could not lift. When going to BKK she insisted on high heels that were the stilletto variety with a single small strap across the forefoot. If you can recall BKK’s sidewalks and then picture her trying to get on and off skytrains and navigating all on the cobblestones and drains etc. Also I ended up with the suitcase as well as booking her hotel room. She remains pleasant company and generates many laughs.

Josh and Luk

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Following Trouble?

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Good grief! Either I am following trouble around the world or trouble is following me! First a violent demonstration on a university campus in Istanbul…then the tsunami in Thailand…then the coup in Thailand…then the subway strike in New York City…then the teacher strike in Oaxaca and now this just as I am planning on returning this fall. Or maybe it’s just that there is always trouble all over the world!

Security in Bangkok To Be Tightened
Bangkok Post 2007-02-21
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Body Snatchers In Bangkok

Posted on by Laughingnomad

2006-08-26
International Herald Tribune

Por Tek Tung – The Body Snatchers
Fighting for a Gory Prize – A Race to the Death in Thailand

They are not rewarded with money, but Karma – as many volunteers believe the work is good for their soul

BANGKOK: — Sidestepping stains of blood and car fluid on the road, Niroot Sampi crunched across broken windshield glass to survey the crumpled and steaming wrecks of two cars.

“It’s not really that bad,” Mr. Niroot said. “Nobody died.”

That’s how it goes in the world of Por Tek Tung, Thailand’s premier group of professional body snatchers.
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