The Noodle Curtain

Hot season back for re-run in already sultry Bangkok

Right now in Bangkok it is 36 C that, when humidity is factored in, feels like 47!

That’s what meteorologists at the old Don Meuang airport were reporting around 4 pm.
 
I have never experienced a 47 degree humidex. That is until having just returned from a restaurant outing on Sukhumvit  soi 23 -- in the height of the day’s heat.

So, that’s 47! Wow! So that's why my cigarette spontaneously lit itself! It definitely feels hotter in the round-the-year oven that is the City of Angels.

Back home, newspapers would be filled with stories of, not just extreme weather, but just everyday weather, such as “it’s going to be a hot one this summer” or “get out yer long johns early -- this going to be a cold one”. Here, it’s hardly worth publishing: it’s either hot, hotter or hot and wet -- unless there’s a drought (bad for rice) or floods (bad for rice).

Yesterday, around 4 o’clock, it was 36 and felt like 45, according to the Weather Underground web site, which uses the  forecasts and current conditions reports from two airports and a third weather station.

Expat and Thai friends are exclaiming surprise at the recent heat. This is supposed to be the rainy season, which I have never experienced before. It’s my first rainy season in Thailand or anywhere else.

Well, the monsoon period seemed to have arrived months earlier (some surprising downpours at the end of February), then petered out (as hot season commenced for March, April and some of May), came back last month and now, looking at this weeks’ forecast, seems to be on hiatus again.

The rainy or monsoon season usually brings extremely high humidity but slightly lower temperatures. And it’s always a bit cooler after a rain, as evidenced last weekend after some evening and afternoon downpours.

As I write this, now around 7 pm local time, the temp has plunged to 43 humidex (33.9). Woohoo!

If you don’t believe it can get that hot, check out the hottie Thai university student fanning herself while waiting for the Ratchadapisek Road bus heading north in the top picture. In the middle picture,  motorcycle couriers always wear jackets, even in the 40-plus heat. In the picture below, uni students wait either for the delights of the third-class open-windowed city bus or maybe  for the slightly more expensive air-con city bus because they seem to be ignoring the a/c meter taxi.

Fans and air con are going full tilt everywhere. Last month my electricity bill soared to over 1600 baht ($50 Canadian), when the previous month of May it was only 600 baht (about $20). And I don’t use air con during the morning and most of the afternoon!

I have got used to using a fan. It’s quite adequate as for cooling, I think, as long as your body acclimatizes to tropical temperatures. Which doesn’t mean you’re immune to sweating! On the contrary, I’ve recently bought “wife beaters” for wearing under my dress and casual shirts. They’re quite effective for preventing those embarrassing wet spots across your chest and underarms, which most definitely mark you as a wimpy foreigner.

Chilly Canadian spring a shock to my Bangkok blood

The sun has reappeared in central Canada! This is news to this home returnee because for the first 18 days of my visit, I saw the sun once!

We’ve had virtually nothing but straight days of cloud, overcast and rain. And it was cold, most  nights dipping to low single digits Celsius. Daytime highs were barely in the teens, running mostly 10 to 12 -- a good 4 to 5 degrees off the 2010 temperatures.

I wore four layers of clothing -- every day. I had to borrow an insulated vest and never gave it back during the first 3 weeks.  The three short-sleeve dress shirts and three hot weather pull-on shirts never left my suitcase. I wore my heavy rainproof shoes everyday. Fortunately, I had the foresight to bring  my Bangkok umbrella, mostly because I had been using it as the rains started early in Thailand, really early.

When I arrived in mid-April, I stepped out into the damp, cold of the airport and was struck by snowflakes. Snow!?!?!? Argh! I was freezing. It was only 2 or 3 degrees. I just came from Bangkok where it was 34C and three days previous, from eight days in Phnom Penh where  it was 35-37 degrees (photo: steamy Phnom Penh street where even the moto rider has sun awning). I've gotten used to the heat, or at least my blood has. I wore a jacket when BKK temps fell to 17 overnight.

People are saying it’s been the worst Toronto spring in memory. Most here believe we’ll just go straight from winter to summer! That may be true.

This weekend -- I’m writing this on Sunday -- it’s been sunny all day both days. You don’t realize how much that means to body and mind until you step out onto the deck of your friend’s family home, with coffee and cigs in hand and feel those truly warm beams that (finally) reach below the skin surface. From there the comforting signals go to the brain and make everything all right.

In April 2010, the mean daytime maximum temperature was 16.2 and mean overnight low was 10.5. This year those numbers were: 11.8 and 6.9 -- 4.4 degree and 3.6 degree differences respectively. The mean daily temperature for April 2010 was 10.5C, this year 6.9C -- an almost 4 degree difference over the 30-day month.

Back in Bangkok, temps are roughly in the low 30s, some days hitting mid-30s as this is the hot season.

The early part of the winter was actually quite cool, relatively speaking, with daytime temps hovering in the 28-30 range occasionally. Sometimes, the overnight lows dipped to 18 or so. We got some really hot days, 35-37, but there have been few of those.

However, the rainy season seems to be intruding early. I can remember some heavy rains in late February. March occasionally would bring rain showers. I see now for April and May forecasts of thunder showers.

But I miss the heat and yes, even the humidity.  I’ll be back in the warm womb of Bangkok in a week. 

Grinch endures signs of Christmas in Thailand

The weird and crazy world of Thailand is tilted even more  by Christmas, yes, that western Judeo-Christian “celebration”.

I thought I’d escape that mass marketer’s dream but the season with all the trimmings can be found throughout Southeast Asia.

I was disabused of the notion that I could live in blissful ignorance of the season that’s so in your face in the west from October to January when I lived here in the City of Angels in 2008-09.

Sorry, but I have had enough. However, I’m standing knee deep in the Red Green Season in most un-Christmas-like temperatures hovering in the low 30s -- that's Celsius.  I couldn’t resist that crack at you who are knee deep in snow.

Below are a few photographic examples of Christmas themes in Bangkok and Pattaya, but with a Thai twist.

PICTURE DESCRIPTIONS:

Top: Already 20% discount on ladies' Christmas caps and ladies sexy seasonal wear at this shop near my apartment. Of course, you will see these clothing items mostly adorning bar girls all over town. My home which is located off Ratchadapisek Road, is in one of several areas noteworthy for having a lot of cheap apartments occupied by the many bar girls in the city.

The "next month" being November, the beginning of the high season. Since the sign is in the men's/women's/bar girls' toilet, you can't say you were not warned. Of course, this just adds to the continuing theme of rising prices in Thailand.

This sign along the MRT subway exit corridor at Pahon Yothin gave me a bit of a shiver, seeing a snowman, Thai style. But it would soon be warm as I walked toward the escalator, which leads up into the 33+ C day in Bangkok.

 

 A bakery shop on South Pattaya Road in Pattaya goes all Red Green in its attempt to catch the eye of passing foreigners.

 

 The students are out of school for the season now and ready to party, filling the entry stairs to the Londoner last Wednesday night. It was 2-for-1 night. Concidence? (Poor iPhone photo -- again! Hoping to get iPhone 4 next month!)

The Cosmos bar in Patpong 2 was swinging on a Friday night, namely Christmas Eve. One of its pleasant oddities is the lip-synch karaoke style musical entertainment that will break out at any moment. Done by bar staff. Thai-owned and run (easy-going owner is there every night and a real gentleman) is an old style bar with small square bar, surrounded by banquettes each holding about four foreigners or six to eight Thai girls. Love the place.

 

 Also love the coyote dance bar Mojo's on soi 33 Sukhumvit. It's not to some people's taste, but the dancing to OK to very good live bands and CD music is well choreographed and adds lots of visual stimulation to the evening. Kind of pricey too but hey, the dancers can dance and are hot on and off stage.

 

Went to all of these venues on Christmas week. Kind of beats the cold plunge into the car and road rage drive to Yorkdale Mall and the seasonal shopping frenzy.

A day in the life of my Bangkok

Life in the city or  life in the country? Which would you choose? That’s the decision I will test later this year when I alight in Thailand for a long stay. Really long stay.

For long stretches of time, sometimes decades, cities can be fairly stagnant. I could throw the adjective “sleepy” at many places, including my current home base, Toronto and it would stick. Not anymore, it seems. Developers have been beating paths to city hall in Toronto for a couple of decades now and the pace seems to be rising. I can’t look anywhere out my condo windows and not see tower cranes. Doesn’t matter where you are in the city.

Bangkok has been under development siege for a couple of decades, too. Someone told me that at one point, the largest percentage of construction cranes in the entire world were located in the City of Angels. Or maybe it was only second to Dubai, that now festering  pool of financial instability. Of course, Bangkok is studded with the corpses of abandoned tower and highway projects.

Those hyper-develpment conditions make downtown life a challenge, shall we say. At 7 a.m. (earlier in BKK), dump truck tailgates slam to loosen the last of a load, hydraulic shovels send shivers through the earth and foundation drills clang against gear sets to clean the bit and dive back into the muck. Give me some relief!

Thailand’s not exactly quiet as a church on Friday night. What with motor scooters, tuk tuks, garbage tucks, municipal repairs (cooler to work at night), fruit and vegetable pickups with loud speakers, drunken tourists, etc., it’s a challenge there too to find some peace.

Since I’ve spent little amounts of time in the Thai countryside, Isaan or northeastern Thailand, to be exact, I will only have tentative thoughts on country living. I’m not talking about village life, here. I’ve only passed through some villages. Mainly, I’ve bused/flown to big cities and towns, such as Chiang Mai, Pitsanoluk, Tak, Sukothai, Nakhon Ratchasima, Udon Thani,   Khon Kaen,  Surin, Buriram, Sisakhet, Ubon Ratchathani, Mukdahan and Nakhon Phanom. The first four are not in Isaan, actually, more northern than eastern.

Citywise, I’ve spent many months Bangkok at a time. This city is chaos in the extreme (although some Indian cities are even more screwed up apparently). This is why I like the place.   Bangkok is a release from the burden of being forced to do the right thing, even when doing the wrong thing will not hurt a flea.

(Digression Alert! You are freed from the Big Brother shackles that punish someone for  briefly blocking an empty bicycle lane to drop a friend off ; punishing a third taxi in a two-car streetside taxi stand that bothers no one; punishing second lane of cars turning northbound on a major street that used to be allowed but, you guessed it, interferes with  no one; fining a bar $1,000 for allowing someone immediately outside the door to have a smoke; banning smoking on an outdoor patio if it has a roof but with all sides open;  almost killing with fees and regulations a new initiative (that’s pretty much dead) to allow vendors to sell different kinds of food on an outdoor cart (before, the regs were so restrictive, you could only sell hotdogs) -- the list goes on. Digression ends . . .)

Bangkok, how I love thee. A typical day (in two parts):

1. The day dawns bright and sunny -- you knew that was coming -- although I’ll have to take the weather report’s word for that because me and dawn broke up a long time ago. Let’s say it’s 9 o’clock. It's 28 degrees Celsius. No hangover. Now begins the first of probably four showers. Warning! One only wants to open the fully light-blocking curtain a crack. The sun is brighter than bright. Believe me, flinging the curtain wide open will instantly fry your brain and send you spasm’ing to the floor. It hurts even when sober. The combined toilet and shower rooms are huge in Thailand. You could swing a cat in one and only mark one wall.

2. Okay, coffee  and cigs beckon. But so does the shaded balcony. Love my balcony, as long as it’s not in direct sunlight.  It’s about this time too that you might turn the a/c off and just have the floor fan running and sliding balcony doors open. First, check the air on the balcony. I don’t mind the heat, except in March and April and May. In my second apartment in Bangkok, on soi 22, Sukumvit, I had loads of choice for good coffee within 2 to 3 minutes’ walk. So I’d go either to the Thai vendor or foreigner-oriented cafe, with its nice shaded outdoor terrace. However, the Thai vendor’s espresso is 20 baht for a stiff single, the Parrot’s 110 baht for a double. There’s an hour or so covered.

3. Time to go back to the apartment with a takeout espresso and write or research. Then think about the day. No thinking allowed while drinking first couple of espressos, sometimes joining  my friend Franki, a 70-year-old Italian (who looks fit and 55, see top photo) married to a 25-year-old northeastern Thai girl who sometimes visits the City of Angels to get away from the village. Eat? What? Where? When? In Thailand this is as complicated as life gets. (Okay, later I’ll introduce you to the other Thai life  complication: Drink when? Where? What?)

4. Time to think about getting a nice, energizing noodle soup. I struck out on soups on the upper end of soi 22, which is at Sukhumvit Road, a favourite of tourists, and sometimes ended up going up to Washington Square (see Google map) where there’s a selection of good food restaurants -- see Google map, the square just to the right of soi 22 at Sukhumvit) for western brekkie at foreigner owned restos there, usually the Silver Dollar. I really miss my soi 36 Sukhumvit apartment, with a grand choice of soup vendors, especially the alleyway leading to the Lady Gunn Apartments.

5. There’s a good Irish owned cafe/bar not 1 minute from my soi 22 serviced apartment.  Franki, who I met in my last 10 days there, suggested it. I’d seen it before but the two small tables outside were often occupied by several blokes who seemed a little too weathered for my tastes. The place turned out to have a good variety of western and Thai food. I had a tasty chicken fried rice. Well, time for another espresso and back down to the little corner Thai coffee vendor. It’s perched right on the tip of a narrow little soi (side street, Sai Nam Thip) alongside a 7-11 and motorcycle taxi stand. Comfortable table and chairs (one set), nice young Thai couple run it and it’s a great people (ahem!) watching spot.  Can I be blamed if 8 out of 10 pedestrians are girls?!?! Even had a few sit with us for a juice. Thais are not coffee drinkers, per se.

6. Back to the apartment for a shower, No. 2 and change of clothes. And check of blog and messages. Between noon to 2 p.m., the occasional SMS arrives and phone call. Darn, didn’t know it was getting close to decision time. What to do tonight and when and where. Some bar names being bandied about, with maybe an early start.  OMG! 4 p.m.! That’s only two hours away! Better get some stuff done.

Okay, that’s long enough to be boring people. More in part 2.

Thailand tourism posters cause stress

I see this Thailand tourism poster nearly every day. A beautiful girl running toward an impossibly beautiful beach, into impossibly beautiful green waters, toward an impossibly beautiful oceanside geographic feature. Argh! Think I’m going to sue the Tourism Authority of Thailand for mental distress. Or maybe draw a moustache  on her butt!

The website noted in the poster sure is a good come-on. “ThailandSuperDeal”. Woohoo! When I visited the site, Firefox reacted badly. Warning notes came up, the kind I’ve never seen before -- I am a careful surfer, only visiting genuine and trustworthy sites.  It said an authenticity certificate was missing, or far out of date. It warned the site was going to redirect me. It basically said www.thailandsuperdeal.com was a very bad site because nothing was right about it. The site was acting like -- I don’t know the term -- one that was set up to fool people and cause very bad problems for the visitor. Firefox asked me questions about whether I knew what I was doing and whether I really, really wanted to bypass its detection systems and visit anyway. 

I quickly noted the site redirects you to tourismthailand.org. So I felt it was okay so when I got there it had hotel and tour discounts by the dozen. Yawn! Didn’t go too deeply into it. Up to you, dear reader.

I just want those toes in the sand to be mine!

LINK:

Tourism Authority of Thailand website is a good source of information on places to see and festivities to enjoy  in every province. Has maps, hotel and guesthouse lists, restaurant guides and more. Seems up to date, too, which is amazing in itself.

Vientiane a peaceful retreat from chaos of Bangkok

This is the riverside road, a high-traffic, high-tourist thoroughfare in Vientiane. The riverbank along the Vientiane section of the Mekong River (to the right of the trees) is being dug up and reinforced to prevent further erosion. Can't find any confirmation of hearsay that the project entails making a nice walkway along the bank top. In the background to the south along the river is the Don Chan Palace hotel.

Yesterday, which was Thursday in Laos and Thailand, was a stupid day, full of forgetfulness, empty-headedness, inattention and frustration. I could pin most of the problems down to a brain fried by the previous night’s escapades.

Scene: Vientiane, the small national capital of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic. I love this town. It has a sunny disposition. First, it’s quiet, despite the ranks of tuk tuks that ply the streets night and day. It’s still peaceful. Visually, it's pleasing, thanks to the Lao, Chinese and French influences of the last several centuries. There are very few tall modern buildings, the hotel Don Chan Palace on the Mekong river front being the biggest at about 14 stories -- I was twice in that elevator heading to the third-floor disco but there’s no way I can remember the top button, but its website says 14. But it's far removed from the core. There are numerous important Buddhist temples, giving the streets a tranquil cast. There are few giant advertising hoardings such as in Bangkok, which has a jarring, unsightly, ugly, look. The air is empty of intercontinental passenger jets and commercial and military helicopters.

The sun beams down warmly and comfortably in winter, with daytime highs of 28 or so, and lows in the mid-teens. Humidity high, relatively speaking. There are occasional breezes along the Mekong. 

There are quite a few trees; some really easy-going, comfortable cafes (for an extreme opposite, visit  Bangkok); not that much traffic, on the outer streets and side streets; there are some truly good restaurants and food; hotels ($20 US to 50-plus a night) and guesthouses ($8 to $18 a night) are reasonably priced (although room fees have been inflated since the SEA games last year, previous visitors and resident expats told me); prices of food and drinks and cigs are very cheap; there are some pretty expensive SUVs on the road and some really, really hot cars (Audi R8, Mazda RX-7 tuned to the teeth, Mercedes-Benzes, BMW Z3, for example); you are rarely reminded of the communist-capital nature of the country (I never saw soldiers or military trucks, and only saw a few police officers).

 

Looking down the river, southward, at the Don Chan Palace Hotel, the highest building in the capital and home to the city's only disco, it seems.

   

There is more construction underway as the country is attracting investors from Europe, China and other Southeast Asian nations, so the capital is getting a bit noisy for that reason. There is a massive project on the Mekong river bank. It is said they are shoring up banks to erect a wall and walkways along it, as Phnom Penh has done on its part of the Mekong (which I haven’t seen but others say it’s been extremely well done) and Toronto is promising to do (this is actually underway). The excavation, which is all I can call it for now,  is on a beautiful elbow inlet of the main river flow. If it gets done properly, that will be one beautiful, roughly 1 km long stretch to the Don Chan Palace hotel, which is where the dig appears to end because you can see the trees and tall grass still standing near there. The Mekong channel just happens to be called the Hat Don Chan. Hmmm . . .

It’s a small capital with only 464,000 people within a 180 square kilometre capital district, according to the website of the embassy of the Lao PDR to the U.S. (The country only occupies 237,000 square km, about 3.5 times bigger than New Brunswick.) The actual city is said to have less than half that. So hardly a city of  dense Bangkok proportions. BTW, I’ve seen the capital’s name spelled different ways in English: Vientiane, the French name that gets Frenchmen around a hard “chan” pronunciation of the correct name, Viang Chan or Viangchan, an English transliteration.)

  My first night in Vientiane I met a bunch of Ernst & Young accountants. English, American and French. They love Vientiane. One English tax specialist on Southeast Asia, went to Vientiane to work and stayed, he said. I love it, too, after visiting twice in the last three years.

They were in stage one of a typical night on the town. A typical pattern goes like this:

Beerlao or other drinks at the Khop Jai Deu, a  lovely patio and bar, as well as restaurant, that is an expat fave. I love the shady, comfortable location. A touch pricier than other places but the better than average food is worth it. In all, good value.

The rooftop bar of Bor Pen Nyang on the riverside of the Mekong in Vientiane. Beer, food, pool and entertainment. But it closes at midnight, as do most bars in the capital. There are alternatives.

Now you can go in one of two directions this night: Three minutes’ walk away is the Jazzy Brick, an upscale cocktail and whisky bar with jazz some nights that attracts the high-so Lao and expat crowd, or the Bor Pen Nyang rooftop bar on the riverfront. From the third-floor (rooftop) side tables you can watch the sun go down over the Mekong or look to the other side at the action at the pool tables, pool not being the raison d’etre of the setup. It’s a meeting place. Do I have to spell it out? Okay, the girls dress really nicely. Food there, by the way, is not so good.

Third stage, if you spin out at the Bor Pen Nyang, you can go to the Samlo bar back toward where you came. It’s sleezy and smoky and frequently has lots of ladyboys. The option is the Don Chan hotel for the third-floor disco.  Bars close early in Vientiane, midnight usually, but the disco is open till 3 a.m. Drinks are double the usual price: small Beerlao 20,000 kip (less than $2.50 Canadian) and vodka and soda, 35,000 kip ($4.25).

If you want to go drown your lame-assed self some more, some of the all-night street-side fooderies might supply you with beer. Seem to be quite a few in what I call Chinatown, on the north side of town, which is to say, not at all far.

So all of the above made my day tough Thursday. Went to the bus station the day before to check on the Vientiane-Udon Thani, Thailand bus service. Six departures a day. Told my Danish friend so the next day we went early and realized in the lineup that people had their passports open. Doh!!! You can’t get on the bus without a visa departure card. Neither can you come the other way without a fresh Lao visa, with arrival and departure cards. More to the point, they won’t sell you a ticket without proof.

Back to the hotel to pack and check out. Then immediately back to the terminal because we needed to be on that 2 o’clock bus to catch a 5:40 p.m. Air Asia flight out of Udon Thani to Bangkok.  3.5 hours should be more than enough. It’s 17 km to the border, then you go through Lao departure, get back on the same bus, cross the Japanese Friendship Bridge over the Mekong and go through Thailand arrival. It’s only 53 km to Udon.

The Morning Market Mall where we cooled our heels while waiting for the Thai-Lao Bus to Udon Thani, about 70 km away. The bus terminal is directly behind the mall.

Ticket bought but we had to cool our heels at the Talat Sao Mall (Morning Market Mall) for nearly two hours.   So much for the leisurely cafe visit.  It’s “three floors of the same thing,” as my friend said. Once you’ve seen your ninth pirate video stall or 14th gold shop or 37th girls’ clothing boutique, it gets old fast.

I’m glad we hung out there because it kind of changed my mind about Lao girls. In my first visit, I failed to see very many pretty girls on the beauty scale and volume of Thailand.  As we sat there for almost two hours, there was a string of them.  Thai girls, aside from having beautiful lustrous black hair, various shades of golden brown skin and beaming smiles,  they know how to carry themselves. They often show a sense of fashion style that’s even evident in the simplest clothes, jeans and top. Some of the  Lao girls I saw  shared some of the other traits of their beauty rivals: straight backs and long legs. Even in the commonly worn Lao traditional skirt, some of them were knockouts. Cool. I’d given up hope after my Tha Khek karaoke experience. But, and there’s always a but, Thai girls still rule. There’s just so many of them fitting this description, in every nook and cranny of the country.

  

While at the Morning Market Mall, Air Asia put on a promo for its new Udon to Phuket air service. And the requisite pretty girl parade consisted of some long-legged beauties. The one on the right is wearing a traditional skirt design, albeit a bit rich, that you'd find many Lao girls wearing to the office, school or government service.

More to come. Decided to cut this long tale into two, maybe three, because I'm starting to get antsy here in Bangkok, where I just arrived last night. Been in the chair for 4-5 hours so it's time to relax.

Ubon Ratchathani very pleasant city on first glance

Waiting for the train to leave at Bangkok's Hua Lamphong station. The air carries a diesel stench. Below is interior of car No. 9, second-class sleeper.

Took the overnight rain from Bangkok, leaving Saturday mid-evening. First 4.5 hours in my second-class sleeper car (741 baht one-way) was a rocky experience, no doubt due to poor tracks. From roughly 1 am to 2 am it got worse as you felt every jolt of the rail joints. Then at some point, must have fallen asleep. Because I next woke up around 6 am as we entered Surin. I'm guessing the tracks improved from Korat, about two hours or so before Surin, and were fairly smooth all the way to Ubon this morning, arriving about 20 minutes late. We fairly sailed.

Sat in the restaurant car for the final 1.5 hours as the sun came up and lighted the vast rice fields, mostly brown now. When you arrive by train in most Thai cities and towns, you usually see a lot of dilapidated houses and shops. Ubon was quite different. Most things looked quite trim and neat, and the grounds seemed quite clean. Very promising.

Folks here seem extremely polite, a great contrast with Bangkok. Worth probing some more. 

       
Photos from left: good morning breakfast (question: which is worst poison: non-dairy milk, instant coffee, white sugar or cigarettes?); sunrise over Surin; interior of restaurant-bar car (worn out and barely functional); traffic in Surin waiting to cross (yay!); quick view of Sisaket (about an hour past Surin)


Will file some photos later as I'm waiting in the hotel cafe for my room to be cleaned. Have to unpack to get my camera-computer cable. Speaking of room, I was offered an immediate 30% discount on the room rate. Deluxe is usually 1100 baht and got it for 770. I count that as a score! Only room class with a large bed, compared with the twin beds offered in the economy and standard rooms. Staying at the Hotel Ratchathani, near the Moon (Mun?) River, which rolls through the downtown.

And last, it's cooler here. Yes! About 22-23 after 9 am. Bangkok right now is 27.

[Update: photos added.]

Bad airline food and jet lag take toll

I’ve been hit hard by jet lag and haven’t had the strength to think, never mind post. The 24-25 hour  endurance that is the trip from Toronto to Bangkok is usually painful. This time I was quite comfortable on the Air Canada flight to Hong Kong. Service was exceptionally good, I have to say. 
The food, on the other hand, was mostly detestable. First hour or so you get snack food, which is corn chip and seed thingies in a plastic packet and a drink. Soon afterward, we got chicken pasta. No other choice because they ran out of beef before they got to my seat in row 40. That pasta was appalling. The pasta itself was gooey, sticky, as if it hadn’t been drained properly. The “tomato” sauce’s appearance had that colour and consistency of  off-brand canned sauce. Let’s call it red stuff. What it had to do with tomato sauce is beyond me. It was totally flavourless as was the “chicken.”  It had that pulverized look and texture, and chicken-less taste, the kind you get from a major international burger franchise that starts up with “M”.

More than six hours later, the Air Canada kitchens came up with the usual Nissin noodle cup (it’s fine for a snack) a disgusting beef on white bun. It was just a bare, white bun, a bit of some sort of white gloop whitewashing  the bun surface. No vegetable or seasoning whatsoever. The beef looked  like it came from one of those boil-in-a-bag thingies you get at another international franchise whose name starts with a number, North American edition. (The Thai 7s offer good quick food. Not kidding.) I pointed out to an attendant how horrible the food was and that others must have known and ordered the beef. “Not much better,” she offered.

Almost seven hours later, about an hour before landing at HK, they offered beef, mashed potatoes and bit of veg (see image above). At least it was hot. All in all, the food was atrocious. AirCan had better stop cheaping out on the food. It’s something I noticed before and that was another reason that led me to take Cathay Pacific, whose menu is a stunning contrast to Air Canada’s with an actual menu brochure listing the entire flight’s meals, with two or three entrees and accompanying hors d’oeuvres, plus sweets and drinks.

Good food makes a painful flight somewhat  more bearable. Air Canada, which is usually in dire financial straits, needs to do that better and maybe attract more business. Customers are stuck on Air Canada because they’ve started their air mile accumulations with the airline. And that’s my problem. I should have a free flight next time. The last.

Today, my fourth day in Thailand, I’m feeling more human and thus decided to post something. There were times during the last  couple of nights when I almost fell dead asleep in a chair. And it’s not because of the beer intake. I guess my time was up. Jet lag, which usually doesn’t hit me on this side of the planet, slammed me. The feeling of tiredness is so overwhelming that you hardly have any motor skills left. And can’t stop insulting your friends as you yawn wide-mouthed during conversation.

One good thing: I embrace the heat here in Southeast Asia. So that just about makes up for all the trip pain and previous months of cold back in Canada. I can think of other things that tip the balance, but more of that later.

[Update: adds images.]

My get-up-and-go has got up and gone

Some of you may be familiar with the term "no replacement." Now some of you retirees will have to reach far back in your mind to the day when company revenue was squeezed (say, the recession of 1991) and you had to get your job done and another guy's when he was on vacation. Yeah, you remember now! Long hours and no extra pay, except the promise that you can take a day off in lieu. Right. You have about as much chance of getting that day off as marrying a beautiful/handsome  national lottery winner or getting the entire winter off. 

These days, corporate revenue is being squeezed even more and yours truly has had to get along with "no replacement" in our three-man team.  It used to be that we'd get in a fourth or even a fifth in the heady days of fat profits and no end of premiums and bonuses.   All that extra cash is gone and we're having to do more work when "fully" staffed and even more work when down a guy.

So now you know how I feel as I've been shirking my blog work. Just too tired to spark a match inside the cranium. When I get home, all I can think about is dinner and a nap. That takes me to 9 o'clock or so and all I want to do is read other people's blogs as long as they're not too engaging, or put another way, burn up my last few brain cells. And I've hardly even done that, preferring instead to sit front of the boob tube -- watching a good movie; no matter how desperate, I cannot bring myself to watch vacuous sit-coms and I'd have to throw myself of my balcony before I'd watch an unreality show.

I did find the time and energy to take a one-day photography course this past weekend. I nearly split a cranium with information.  I learned so much and filled in some  dreadful gaps in my knowledge. I had a great teacher, a 30-year-old Scot who's been living and working in Canada for the last few years. Very talented he is. And passionate. In a way, that may have been the best part. His intensity and knowledge lit a fire in my heart. 

And yes, the point of signing up for the intense one-day cram session was to become brave enough to get a real camera, with real lenses and take some real photos. Nothing wrong with a point-and-shoot, but I am knocked out at how much better photographs are and how much more coverage I can get with a Real Camera (tm) [said camera being a Canon Rebel T1i, which can shoot high-def movies, with Sigma 18-200mm  zoom and 35mm fixed lens, the latter one having tremendous low-light and short-range capability]. I hope to be able to raise my game in terms of blog photos.

It's been nearly two weeks since I last posted. I do have lots to write about (I keep saying that but, well, nobody believes me now, I imagine) but I do miss my time in Bangkok when I could shoot out two and sometimes three posts in a day, never mind a week. And my work conditions won't improve until mid- to late September.

Ah, good old September. Here in the north lands, that month usually has the absolute best weather. The sun is a little farther down the horizon as the earth tilts away, it's warm, breezy and the streets are teeming with life. School and university students are walking to class in their fresh fall clothes, stores and markets are loaded with goods and garden fruits and vegetables, people have returned from vacation and are revived from the past winter gulag (which, it just so happens, seems to have stuck around till July this year, which makes me really optimistic about the fall because the August weather has been hot and a bit steamy and reminiscent of LOS); the bars and restaurants and patios fill up, the weekend events are packed.It's all good.

Instead, I got another month's worth of heavy slogging before I can ratchet down to plain old slogging and watch  my vacation dates come into view.  This season I won't return until mid-December. I usually return in November. I spent six months off work last season as I was on leave. Well, I finished work on a Friday evening and was on the jet Sunday morning. I arrived in Bangkok in late September and almost kissed the Swampy floor (being careful not to stray in duty-free shops!!!). I returned to Canada in April. I can't believe that I SKIPPED WINTER. Never did that before and I, well, could get used to it. A friend suggested that this season I go later in the year and miss some of the cold and snow. So yeah, I'm into that.

Once you've experienced the thrill of six months of sun, warmth and mai penh rai, and for six glorious months did not experience ice, sleet, snow, slush, rain, boot-swallowing mud puddles, late transit services and impassable sidewalks and roads, there's no replacement.

Images: bars and other features in Surin, Thailand, Part 2

Back in Surin, but this time my photos show the streets and other features of the small city. Most of the photos were taken in March this year, during the hot season. Whoa! 38, 39, 40 C every day.

I stayed at the Thong Tarin for two weeks and just wandered around, relaxing mostly, going for espresso at a shop closer to the bus station, owned by a Lao-speaking  lady and her sister, and one on the other side of the station, owned by Canadian Brian from Vancouver. Then it was brekkie at the Farang Connection or  N & N's on soi Kola. That got me to 1 in the afternoon, then it was back to the hotel to cool off for a while and a nap.

Then I was back out around 4 or 5 for a beer, then my second and last meal of the day.  Then a break at the hotel for shower and bit of TV watching. Then it was out to the bars on Sirirat and Kola till the wee hours. Sometimes, I had a noodle soup or other meat and rice dish in front of the 7-11 on Sirirat  very early in the morning. Good food. And just sat there watching the arrivals and departures of the local female population on their motorcycles. Strange but most of the travellers were girls.

Couple of curious Bangkok buddies came up for a few days to see what Surin was all about. I don't think they were impressed but were happy to check it out anyway. Or at least that was what they told me. After two weeks, I was ready to pack it in because touring in the heat of the day was just too harsh, as my friends found out one day when we walked the city. I was going to go on to Sisaket and Ubon Ratchathani, toward the Lao border.  But I'm keeping those visits till this coming winter when the daytime temps are under 35.

So here we go (by the way, all pix were taken by my trusty Canon point and shoot, namely SD850is):

 

Brian and partner, shown, at their espresso shop, which drew a lot of Thai businessmen and ladies. It faces the Majestic Hotel and bus station. It's also a 10-minute walk to the train station, behind this building.

Walk away from the bus station to the rail station along this soi and turn right.

       

 

Hmmm, came across this on a tour of town.

     

Left to right, the Surin Mall that looks like a KFC (pix 1 & 2); a Chinese temple near a night market; and the sign of an elephant, the city being famous for its annual (November) elephant roundup.

  

Came across this spectacular dinner setting  being readied  for the evening. Don't know what the celebration was for. Anyone read Thai?

   

Must transportation in Thailand, motos are used for everything and anything, this one being modified for hauling whatever.

 

I came across this "temple," still under construction. Don't know what it is for as there was no English on the signs. I asked several residents and they could not tell me -- or they didn't understand me, which is the more likely. Anyone know?

   

   

That's it for now from Surin.

I leave you with a bit of "elephantics". I had a barside view of our be-trunked friend eyeing our beer on our table at The Oasis in Surin. And, no, that's not his scooter. Photos taken with iPhone so not so great.