Mikes Rides

Christmas Letter

2010-12-10T04:43:00.000-08:00

Thanks to all who visit my site. Please have a look at our Christmas Letter

mike

Fairy Orchid - Caladenia latifolia

2010-09-01T04:25:00.000-07:00

September 1 is the first day of Spring here and I went on a little walk to mark the day. My reward was a small grove of these orchids that I found in the Banksia Garden. Once again, like the Greenhoods, these ground orchids are less spectacular than the tree orchids that most of us are used to, but they are pretty and well worth a long look.

You may find "pink" fairy orchids that look more white than pink, but ours are distinctly in the red family and may even be considered purple by some. In any case, they are typical of our terrestrial orchids being perched atop a slender stem and in the case of this species with multiple flowers on the same stem.

oVo

Qualup Bell - Pimelea physodes

2010-08-25T01:00:00.000-07:00

From qualup bell

Some things that we love about our park are not at all "of" our park. Such is the Qualup Bell which naturally grows on the south coast of Western Australia and really struggles in hotter and especially in more humid climates. But it is such a beautiful plant and so unusual, that backyard botanists and the genuine versions have both pursued, and largely succeeded in grafting the Qualup Bell to root stock that can tolerate a wider range of climates. That's how we get them to grow in the park and other areas have also succeeded.

This is one of the plants that will just stop you in your tracks when it blooms, but it is not the bloom that you notice. The large bells start out about the color of a green apple and gradually turn to the plum colors that you see here. But the bells are NOT the flower. They are made of bracts which are modified leaves that protect the actual flower inside. Just another case of Australian flora being completely unwilling to follow any generally accepted rules of conduct.

oVo

Conostephium pendulum

2010-08-12T23:50:00.000-07:00

From Conostephium pendulum

Sources: Perth Plants pg 74
Florabase
Australian Journal of Botany

I love this little flower. It looks to all the world like a weed until it bursts into bloom usually from March to October. Even after it displays it's tiny purple tipped white flowers it is easy to overlook because it grows low to the ground and is far from spectacular. Still, it is tiny and pretty and unusual in color and form. Maybe that's why I like it. It's easy to overlook, but rewarding to remember.

This plant can only be pollinated by bees because the pollen is released internally by the anthers and must be shaken out by the buzzing of the bees. If you see a bee on this flower, look closely because it is likely to be a native (stingless) bee and also because it is rare to see a pollinator visit. The flower has no nectar, just pollen so the bee has to visit other plants to acquire nectar.

We are right in the middle of its endemic region which extends from just South of Geraldton down to the Cape. You will find it all along the Law Walk these days. Usually on the escarpment side of the track. It is also all over the bushland area so walk slowly and enjoy our park.

oVo

Nematolepis phebalioides

2010-08-10T01:08:00.000-07:00

Sources: Australian National Botanical Gardens

From Nematolepis phebalioides

This flower catches my attention every time I walk through the park. It can be found in several places, but is most easily found (with a sign to confirm its name) on the dirt path above the Acacia Steps.

I have been watching these flowers and every time I saw them I'd vainly try to remember their names. Normally when I have trouble with a plant name I just revert to the common name and call it even, but the Nematolepis has no common name so I was stuck. The entire genus is made up of this single species and it grows nowhere else in the world besides Western Australia. It's endemic region is a small area of the South Coast, East of Albany to Israelite Bay, but we are lucky to have them in the park.

It grows to about 3 ft high and produces 5 petaled flowers that merge into a tiny elongated bell with a green tip that is bird pollinated.

oVo

Everlastings

2010-08-10T00:28:00.000-07:00

From Everlastings

White and pink, both with a yellow center are the most common colors for these beautiful blooms. They erupt in spring anywhere that they grew the year before or were sewn. The blossoms atop a long slender stem attract bees and make a wonderful display of color. The flowers can be dried for use in arrangements indoors and the plant itself is water friendly and happy in our poor Perth soil, but they can be grown pretty much anywhere.

P. Wilshaw tells us that the yellow center turns dark after the flower has been pollinated thus saving the bees extra work.

oVo

Pterostylis sp. (Greenhoods)

2010-08-04T21:34:00.000-07:00

From Orchids

Source: Orchids of Western Australia; Brown, Dundas, Dixon & Hoppper
Photos: M. Taylor

As orchids go, these seem pretty bland, at least as they compare to the beautiful orchids in Asia and even some of the other ground orchids here in Australia. Yep, GROUND ORCHIDS. Last year during spring I kept seeing some beautiful flowers growing on long slender stems from the ground. They looked a lot like orchids to me, but orchids growing from the ground instead of nesting in a tree like they were supposed to? It turns out that all the orchids here in AU are ground orchids and most are much more spectacular than greenhoods, but greenhoods are blooming now so here they are.

There are 300 species of Pterostylis, most of which are in Australia, with a few in New Zealand, New Guinea, and New Caledonia. Eighty-two species are endemic to Western Australia and two in particular are common. The genus is divided up into sections for the greenhoods, shell orchids & snail orchids.

The Banded Greenhood (P. vittata) has an all green flower on which the dorsal sepal and petal are joined together to form a hood overtop the column. The Dark Banded Greenhood (P. sanguinea) is similar except for darker petals.

Both of these and the other greenhoods have a sensitive "door" formed by the lower sepals that slams shut when a gnat or mosquito lands on it. The door traps the insect up against the stigma where pollen is collected. After about a half hour, the door opens again and if the bug has not found an escape it is released to continue about its business and hopefully pollinate another flower.

I tried unsuccessfully to trip the door with a grass leaf, but while I tried one of the flowers opened and a gnat flew out. I guess it works.

Both of these orchids are common to the bush area of Kings Park in Perth and they prefer to grow beneath our sheok trees (Casurinaceae)

oVo

Calectasia - Blue Tinsel Lily/Star of Bethlehem

2010-07-30T21:07:00.000-07:00

From Calectasia

Sources: Perth Plants, Barrett & Tay, pg 190

Florabase

Australian Wild Plant

Location: Serventy Path just North of the Broadwalk crossing

I was introduced to this little plant as the Blue Tinsel Lily aka Calectasia grandiflora when we found it growing on the Serventy Path just before it crosses the BroadWalk (see "Bushland Tracks" pamphelt.) But there is another species of Calectasia that also grows in our park commonly referred to as the Star of Bethlehem or Calectasia narragara.

The difference between these two species is slight in that the C. grandiflora has slightly larger flowers, although neither flower can be remotely considered large being smaller than an Australian 5 cent coin. And the C. grandiflora's flower usually turns a bit brown on the edges as it ages.

It may be more likely that this is a C. narragara as Kings Park is the type location for that species while the C. grandiflora generally grows in more swampy areas.

In either case, look hard for this beauty on the East Side of the Serventy Path just north of the Broadwalk. It is a small fellow, but sure to please.

M. Taylor

Acacia pulchella - Prickly Moses

2010-07-30T00:01:00.000-07:00

From Acacia

Sources: Florabase
Perth Plants Barrett & Tay, Pg 94

UPDATE 31-JUL-2010: New photos of A. pulchella in bloom.

While not currently blooming, the Prickly Moses is making itself known in the park especially along the Law Walk but also in the bushland areas.

A. pulchella blooms in spring (May-Dec) with characteristic yellow, "puff ball" flowers. Even without blossoms, it is an easily recognizable plant with its small leaves, green buds and most importantly if you intend to handle it, the small spikes that give it its name. The name may be a variation of "Prickly Mimosa" but no matter the source, the prickles will let you know for sure what plant you have found when you grab a handful.

The fact that it is most abundant along the Law Walk reinforces verbal information I received stating that it is one of the early re-colonizers after a fire. I invite corrections or substantiation of this "fact" via the comment function below or e-mail.

It is one of very few Acacias that have true leaves rather than phyllodes or modified leaf stems.

I will add some pictures of the A. puchella after they start blooming this spring. Until then you can see the flowers at Florabase by clicking on the reference above.

M. Taylor

Grevillea and Hakea Pollination

2010-07-27T06:06:00.000-07:00

From Pollination

Sources: ANPSA

Wrigley, John W. & Fagg, Murray. (1989). Banksias, Waratahs & Grevilleas. Collins, Sydney. p.30

Grevillea/Hakea Pollination. In the unopened bud, the pollen presenter or style (female part of flower) is tucked in next to the anthers. When the flower opens the style extends out and has pollen on the stigma. This will deposit pollen on the pollinator (usually a bird or insect) as in the picture. When this pollen has gone, the style is then ready to pick up other flowers’ pollen from the subsequent pollinators.

From: Wrigley, John W. & Fagg, Murray. (1989). Banksias, Waratahs & Grevilleas. Collins, Sydney. p.30

M. Larke

Spinifex longifolius - Beach Spinifex

2010-07-24T02:27:00.000-07:00

Sources:

Perth Plants (Barrett & Tay) Pg 250

From Spinifex longifolius

Florabase

Royal Gardens Kew

Kiyanti's Blog (nice story)

Your dictionary

Photos: M. Taylor

Some of us new guides were walking along Law Walk when we came across a grass that we immediately identified as Spinifex. We just as quickly realized that it didn't look like the specimen located near the old Boab that most of us have discussed with visitors on our walks. In an instant we doubted our knowledge but just as quickly we resolved to research this plant and figure out what it is.

Beach Spinifex grows predictably, all along all the coastal areas of Western Australia and plays a major role in stabilizing the shifting sands of the coast line. It also provides a safe refuge for some of the smaller beach dwellers as well as a low wind break (about 1 meter high) in which to shelter.

The Male and Female flowers of S. longifolius are different and if you go to the photos you can see both. The male flowers make a splayed form atop the grass stem while the female flowers form in a ball which detaches ready to roll down the beach driven by the wind until it lodges into a dune and begins forming a new plant. Right now each of the S. longifolius that I have seen around the park have detached female flowers ready to populate the earth.

Spinifex is from the Latin "spina" meaning "Spine" and "facere" meaning "to make" which refers to the pointed leaves and bristly heads of the plant.

You can find S. longifolius all along Law walk as well as the hard and soft tracks uphill between Roe Gardens and the elevated walkway.

M. Taylor

Hardenbergia comptoniana

2010-07-23T01:41:00.000-07:00

From Hardenbergia comptoniana

SOURCES: Perth Plants (Russell Barrett & Eng Pin Tay) 1st Ed. pg 86

Aust Native Plant Society

Photos: P. Wilshaw, M. Taylor

Family: Fabaceae

Common names: Native wisteria

Genus: Hardenbergia - Named by English botanist George Bentham in 1837 after Franziska Countess von Hardenberg, a 19th century patroness of botany who sponsored early botanical research in Australia. The story goes that he was in love with the Countess and named the plant after her beautiful green eyes!

An evergreen, twining woody-stemmed climber, one of the few climbers in Kings Park.
Leaves: Dark green, leathery. Three or rarely 5-folioalate
Flowers: Blue-purple with a yellow-green 'eye', rarely white or pink. Flowers July-October

Pods: Narrow, cylindrical

Found: Dongara to Albany, WA. Common and widespread in bushlands of Kings Park and Bold Park. There are both broad and narrow leaved forms in the parks.

C. Carlton

Eucalyptus sweedmaniana - Sweedman's Mallee

2010-07-22T22:18:00.000-07:00

Sources: Plants & Fungi

Australian Seed (sample)

KEW Gardens
Photos: M. Taylor

From Eucalyptus sweedmaniana

Do a web search for Luke Sweedman and you won't be starved for reading material any time soon. Sweedman is Curator for the WA Seed Technology Center at our park. He is an expert in the storage of species for threatened species and some of our guides have come to call him "Sweedman the seedman." His most well known work is "Australian Seeds: a guide to their collection, identification and biology" Sweedman & Barrett.

In 2006, Sweedman was out on a seed collecting expedition with his colleague Professor Stephan Hopper, Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew when they discovered a new species of Mallee now named Eucalyptus sweedmaniana.

It is a Eucalyptus of the family Myrtaceae and order Myrtales. It is rare and poorly known, which in the Australian system of taxonomy means that there may be less than 5 known populations which are all under threat. In the case of E. sweedmaniana, there is only one known population located in the Mount Arid granitic massif, east of Esperance.

As suggested by it's "Mallee" name it grows in a low multi-stemmed shrub up to about 1 meter high, but as much as 5 meters wide. The pics here were taken from a signed specimen located in the botanical garden, Mallee section, river side of the hard path. Look for the red bloom and of course, the sign.

Luke Sweedman is only one of the many research scientists that are keeping Kings Park in Perth, Western Australia atop a very short list of internationally renowned botanic gardens.

M. Taylor

Perga dorsalis (Spitfires)

2010-07-21T02:33:00.000-07:00

From Spitfire

Sources: Australian-insects.com

PIRSA Forestry
Photos: M. Taylor

Another chance to talk about Kings Park Fauna!

These little fellows are called Spitfires because when disturbed, they emit a nasty looking yellow mucus from their mouths. They don't really spit; it's more of a drool. You can see some of this goo in the second photo below.

There are other species of crawlies that are called spitfires and some are true caterpillars that may have stinging cells on the ends of hairs that can cause a bit of pain. But not these gooey bugs; they can cause no harm to humans in either their larval or their adult phase and they are not caterpillars at all. They are wasp larvae.

From Spitfire

These guys have recently hatched, and once they have enough energy stored up they will pupate for up to 2 years before they emerge from their cocoons as Steel Blue Saw Flys.

P. dorsalis will always be seen in groups of individuals and they communicate by tapping their tail. You can tell from the first picture that they can do considerable damage to their host tree which is most often a Eucalyptus.

When the Perga dorsalis grows up it will become a wasp but it doesn't sting and it looks more like a large fly (like a horse fly.) I'll direct you to the Australian Insects website for pics of the adult wasp because I don't want to run afoul of any copyright issues and I didn't have time to wait for these fellows to grow up.

M. Taylor

Balga - Xanthorrhoea (Grass Tree)

2010-07-19T15:52:00.000-07:00

From Balga

Sources

Plant diary

Grass Trees of Australia

Monica's Site - most complete

Transplanting Grass Trees (BGPA)

Bardie Grub

Photos by P. Wilshaw and M. Taylor

Habitat - Throughout Australia, Tasmania

Balga is the aboriginal word for "Black Boy," a term that may be considered offensive to oversensitive white ears, but a term which obviously causes no consternation to our indigenous population. One aboriginal who was told that the term was offensive said "Well then what should I call it?" The term "Black Boy" probably arises from the appearance of the trunk which is exposed when fire burns away the old leaves and turns the trunk black.

Xanthorroea are very slow growing, very long lived plants. Not all species have trunks, but here in the park the X. preissii is the species that grows a trunk. It can take 10 years for the trunk to form from old leaf bases held together by resin. After that, it will be 75-100 years before the trunk is one meter tall. At the end of their life, at around 600 years they may approach 20 ft high.

In many websites you may see that there are 8 species of Xanthorrhoea, but Monica's Site lists a startling 32 species, all native to Australia, but they can be grown in similar climates world-wide with care.

Because they are so slow growing, transplanting grass trees has become an important part of preserving the ones that are removed from mine sites and residential clearings. We have several transplanted balgas in the park that you may have noticed around the new location of the bus stop. They can also be grown from seed as discussed at Monica's Site.

From Balg

Aboriginals used the plant for so many things that one of our guides refers to the grass tree as the "One Stop Shop." We all know that the grass tree exudes a dark red resin when the trunk is heated by fire. That resin was collected, heated and formed into balls for later use when it was re-heated and mixed with charcoal and kangaroo dung to make an epoxy like material to attach sharp stones to sticks making knives, hatchets and the like and to repair broken implements. This same resin was harvested by early European settlers to make varnishes and lacquers. Cans of tinned food were protected with a coating of this lacquer during WWII. The flower stalks are light weight and airy which made them ideal for fire-making by rubbing together. The flowering seed stalks are rich in nectar so they were soaked in water to make a sweet drink. If allowed to sit, this sweet drink would ferment making a slightly alcoholic drink. The seed pods are very tough and were used as a knife to cut meat. Young leaf stalks are a tasty vegetable, and the edible Bardie Grub lives in the crown of the plant. And the dead leaves, if not burned away by fire were be used as thatch and as tender for fire making.

Leaf Cross Sections Balga

In the park, we are limited to only two species, Xanthorrhoea preissii and X. brunonis. X. preissii is the "common grasstree." It grows a tall trunk and has a diamond shaped cross section in the leaf. The grasstree at the Tuart Lawn entrance to the Banksia Garden is a X. preissii and is about 200 years old. X. brunonis grows close to the ground with no trunk, has a narrow seed stalk better for using as fire sticks and a triangular cross section to the leaf.

The seed stalk, regardless of the species can grow at a rate of 2-3 cm per day and can reach lengths of 3 meters. The stalk is packed with nectar and attracts a wide variety of insect, bird and mammal polinators. P. Wilshaw got a picture of bees and a wattyl bird working the same two stalks in the park. He also got a picture of a bee flying into a seed stalk upside down. Maybe that nectar can ferment on its own? Click on any of the pictures to the right to be taken directly to the Balga section of the KPGuides photo album.

M. Taylor

Pandanus aquaticus - River Pandan

2010-07-14T07:28:00.000-07:00

From Pandanus aquaticus

Location in Park - Botanic Garden, Kimberly section, interspersed with young Boabs
Habitat- Kimberly, coastal areas, anywhere that Mangroves would grow
Sources - Florabase, Gondwananet

We have several Pandans in the park, all located in the Kimberly Section of the Botanical Garden very near one another. You will notice the first one just as you enter the Kimberly section coming from the VIC toward the Big Boab. It is trimmed higher than the rest and you can clearly see the trunk and the prop roots emerging from the ground. These roots help take up oxygen when the trunk is partially submerged in its natural habitat, and they also support the weight of the tree in the soft shifty soil where it normally grows.

Years ago, according to documents found by B. Mowe, we had one P. tectorius (Screw Pine) located in that same area, but it is no longer to be found. The fact that it used to be there has caused some confusion amongst guides, but there is a well hidden sign that dates back to at least 2007 labeling the remaining plants as P. aquaticus aka River Pandan or Water Pandan.

From Pandanus aquaticus

Two of our Pandans are fruiting and they are located across the concrete path going down hill before you get to the Spinifex, Verticordia and the Big Boab.. The fruits are very large and currently green, but they turn bright red as they ripen. While the fruit of P. tectorius and some other species are edible, the, P. aquaticus fruit is not. In the edible species, aboriginals used the fruit for food and medicine, the leaves for clothing and fishing. Bats, crabs and rats also eat the fruit.

One other plant near the main walkway in the Kimberly section of the garden has just finished flowering and you can still see the remnants of the creme colored flower fading with age.

From Pandanus aquaticus

Pandans are primitive, having Male and Female sexes in separate plants.

This article may be incomplete. Please contribute to this article by e-mailing the author if you have interesting information regarding Pandanus aquaticus.

M. Taylor

Nesting Ospreys

2010-07-14T00:05:00.000-07:00

From Osprey

While the Flora in our park is spectacular and more than sufficient to maintain our interest for decades, it always pleases me to find a bit of Fauna to discuss. Having heard a rumor last week of nesting birds near the park which were either White Bellied Eagles or Ospreys, I set out to discover where the nest might be. I found it along the Swan River, clearly visible from Law Walk in the tallest of the 6 Norfolk Island Pines which are in the first cluster of Pines down river from the old brewery. The fastest way to get there is to park at Roe Gardens and make your way down to the Law Walk, which is the lowest of the concrete paths along the escarpment. When you reach the Law Walk, turn right and head down river while looking left toward the bay. When you come upon the cluster of Pines, look at the tallest one and you will notice a dense matting of leaves, twigs, string, and maybe some plastic bags. If you are lucky, you will see both of the adults coming and going which is more than entertaining.

From Osprey

These birds are Ospreys (Fish Eagles) but they might be confused with White Bellied Eagles from afar. Both have white heads, but the Ospreys eyes are more forward pointing than the eagles, and the Osprey has a distinct black band visible behind the eye whereas the eagle is white in that area.

Clicking "Osprey" text below the images in this post will take you to more images available at my Picassa Website.

I hope you enjoy this bit of birding in our park and I further hope the guests that you guide will appreciate this bit of fauna amongst our flora.

M. Taylor

"Turner of Hearts" Verticordia grandis

2010-07-13T23:33:00.000-07:00

From Verticordia grandis

Sometimes I change my plans. Rarely I change my mind. But to change a heart is something unique and rare. Verticordia means “Changer of Hearts” in Latin and this plant is named Verticordia after the goddess Venus of whom it was said was so beautiful she could change a persons heart with a glance.

This particular flower is from Verticordia grandis which is the only Verticordia species that is blooming in the garden right now. There are several other species that are commonly referred to as “featherflower” and I’ll try to post some pics of them as they start to show off in the spring. The common name for V. grandis is “Scarlet Featherflower.”

Even without flowers, the scarlet featherflower would be a show piece. It is a shrub, normally about 4-5 ft high but can grow to 12 ft. It is endemic to a small area just north of Perth and up to Geraldton. In the wild it can be wiry, short and unimpressive, but here in the botanical garden where it is pampered it is always a point of interest.

From Verticordia grandis

The main stems are blood red when they are young and they provide support for hundreds of strangely pale green leaves attached directly without a separate leaf stem. There are two leaves at each connection and each connection is offset from its nearest neighbor by 90 degrees which gives the leaves the appearance of surrounding the stem in a continuous spiral. Each leaf is also edged by a blood red outline encircling the leaf.

Touching a leaf here is almost always surprising because what looks soft is often hard, and vice versa. These leaves are soft to the touch, not quite like velvet, but not like a normal shrub leaf either.

Despite the beauty of the stems and leaves, the flowers of the Verticordia grandis are the real attraction. It is called a featherflower because the calyx lobes are fringed. The Calyx of a flower is the group of sepals that support the petals from underneath. Normally in the US and most of the rest of the wold, the sepals are green, but here in Australia, all bets are off and in the scarlet featherflower they are the same red color as the petals. The five petals are inside the calyx and they are fused together to form a tube. Insects travel down this tube in search of nectar and they collect pollen along the way to be used to fertilize next flower they visit. On some flowers you can see a long thin red spike curving out from the calyx and that spike is the style that contains the stigma on its end.

From Verticordia grandis

The featherflowers, like all plants in WA are susceptible to fire. Many plants here require fire to multiply with their seeds laying dormant for years until the fires come. But for the featherflower seeds germinate normally without fire. When fire does come, the Verticordia regenerates by sprouting new stems from lignotubers just underground.

M. Taylor

Granite Bottlebrush (Mellaleuca elliptica)

2010-07-13T23:30:00.000-07:00

From Granite Bottlebrush

The Melaleuca elliptica is sometimes called Granite Honey Myrtle, but here in King's Park we call it Granite Bottlebrush. "Melaleuca" is a compound of latin terms “melan” meaning black and “leuca” which means white.

Several species here in Australia are named in a sort of strange way which reflects the utter confusion of the early european explorers. Fire is a predominant and necessary part of the landscape here but the europeans didn’t know that. What likely happened was that the first of the Melaleuca species to be described had been recently affected by fire which blackened the trunk on the lower regions while leaving the upper branches a white color in new growth areas. You can see an example of the white branches on the far right hand edge of this pic. White branches are more common here than you might think, but I don’t want to talk about them right now. There is a better example of that phenomenon to discuss later. Suffice it to say that the "white & black" name really isn't very descriptive of this plant.

The "flower" you see in this pic is actually more than a hundred flowers grouped together called a fluorescence. Individual flowers are made up of five very reduced petals which encircle a tight group of stamens. Grouping a hundred or so of these together gives the plant the characteristic bottlebrush look. Unlike the Verticordia that we recently discussed, the sepals of the Melaleuca do not play a part in the fluorescence display. The reduction of the petals is a strategy to help conserve water that is shared by other plants here in Australia. The normal function of the petals to attract pollinators has been taken over in large part by the colored stamens.

The plant from which I took this picture is about normal sized being a little over 6 ft high and about half as wide. It is a tall shrub and can be pruned into a hedge. It tolerates drought well after it is established. Like many of our plants it flowers a good part of the year, but its best show is during spring (Sept-Nov.)

From Granite Bottlebrush

This shrub is a type of “mallee” which means “multiple trunks” and there are so many Malees in a small region along the Southern coast of Western Australia that the region itself is referred to as the Mallee Region. Think of a crepe myrtle and you are thinking of a mallee. I’ll post a pic of the trunk of a mallee at some point so stay tuned.

The bottlebrush is pollinated by both insects and birds who love the nectar. The day I was taking the pic there was a bee on the flower the entire time. If you look closely you can pick him out. He isn’t a native bee, rather he is a common european honeybee. I am hopeful that one day I will get a pic of one of the 16 species of native stingless bees, but so far, no luck.

Notice too the small elliptical leaves and how tightly they grow to the stems. The leaves are where the “elliptica” part of the name comes from and the leaves are a dusty green color. The color is an adaptation to the intense sunlight here. Another thing I will discuss in later posts.

You can also see last season’s flower in this pic which is the spiky growth up and to the left of the flower. If the resolution on your screen is sufficient, you can zoom in on that part of the pic and see some seeds still hanging on.

M. Taylor

Kangaroo Paw (Anigozanthos)

2010-07-13T23:27:00.000-07:00

From Kangaroo Paw

The flower I should have started with is the Kangaroo Paw. I hope you enjoyed the Scarlet Featherflower sufficiently to forgive putting it ahead of the Kangaroo Paw, which is Western Australia’s state flower (they call it the state floral emblem here.) Specifically the Anigozanthos manglesii aka the Red and Green Kangaroo Paw is the state flower. The pic here is a mosaic at the entrance to the Botanic Garden that shows a representation of the Red and Green Kangaroo Paw.

For a flower to have red stems is unusual. For a flower to have green petals is very unusual. For a flower to have red stems and green flowers... well, you do the math.

From Kangaroo Paw

I mentioned before that touching leaves here is often a surprise, but touching the Kangaroo paw parts yields about what you would expect if you were here to see the plant. The stem is fuzzy with millions of tiny hairs up and down it’s length. My Pics probably don’t capture it, but just imagine a very thin version of a cat tail head and that’s about what the red stem of the red and green kangaroo paw feels like.

From Kangaroo Paw

The flower is pollinated by birds (of all things.) There are no bird pollinated plants in Europe, and the hummingbird is the only pollinating bird in the US. But here in Australia, about 17% of the plants are pollinated by birds ranging from the tiny honey eaters to the fairly large wattle bird.

The bird lands on the kangaroo paw stem and seeks nectar inside the tubular flower. When it does, the five stamens that make up the “paw” of the flower smack the bird on top of the head leaving pollen behind. When the bird visits the next flower.. well you get the picture. Interestingly, each species of Kangaroo Paw hits the bird in a slightly different place. This does not prevent cross pollination, as there are other characteristics that do that, but it does help conserve pollen by not wasting it where it cannot be utilized. These plants are pretty smart.

From Kangaroo Paw

There are at least 8 species of Anigozanthos that I know of. Here is a pic of the Yellow Kangaroo Paw (Anigozanthus pulcherrimus.) Remember you can click on any pic to get a bigger version and be directed to my Picassa site where there is no telling what you might find. But there is also my favorite Kangaroo Paw, the Black Kangaroo Paw pictured below. Once again with green flowers, but a more pale green... and this time with BLACK STEMS. Whoever heard of a black stemmed flower?

From Kangaroo Paw

The Black Kangaroo Paw is not in the same genus as the rest, which means it is really not closely related to the other types. Charles Darwin never visited Western Australia, but if he had, and if he had modern DNA testing technology, at least some of the points of his theories would have been different. Darwin, in order to support his ideas about all life stemming from a single ancestor, said that it is extremely unlikely that two separate species would ever develop similar methods of adapting to a habitat. Well, that doesn’t turn out to be true as is exemplified by the Black Kangaroo Paw which is in the genus Macropidia (Macropidia fuliginosa) instead of Anigozanthos, like the rest of the Kangaroo Paws. Can’t really hold him too responsible for the issue though because it probably does take DNA testing to figure it out.

So these are the Kangaroo Paws. You might see some similar species in the US called Cats Paws. Generally smaller than these, but similar looking.

M. Taylor

Granite Bottlebrush (Mellaleuca elliptica)

2010-06-27T20:35:00.000-07:00

From Granite Bottlebrush

The bottlebrush is pollinated by both insects and birds who love the nectar. The day I was taking the pic there was a bee on the flower the entire time. If you look closely you can pick him out. He isn’t a native bee, rather he is a common european honeybee. I am hopeful that one day I will get a pic of one of the 16 species of native stingless bees, but so far, no luck.

Notice too the small elliptical leaves and how tightly they grow to the stems. The leaves are where the “elliptica” part of the name comes from and the leaves are a dusty green color. The color is an adaptation to the intense sunlight here. Another thing I will discuss in later posts.

You can also see last season’s flower in this pic which is the spiky growth up and to the left of the flower. If the resolution on your screen is sufficient, you can zoom in on that part of the pic and see some seeds still hanging on.

oVo

Kangaroo Paw (Anigozanthos)

2010-06-26T05:36:00.000-07:00

From Kangaroo Paw

For a flower to have red stems is unusual. For a flower to have green petals is very unusual. For a flower to have red stems and green flowers... well, you do the math.

From Kangaroo Paw

So these are the Kangaroo Paws. You might see some similar species in the US called Cats Paws. Generally smaller than these, but similar looking.

Turner of Hearts

2010-06-24T04:46:00.000-07:00

From Verticordia grandis

Kings Park (Perth, Western Australia)

2010-06-23T06:19:00.000-07:00

I have recently been certified to lead guided walks through Kings Park here in Perth and one of my friends said she might be interested to see some pics of the strange plants here and maybe read a little of the presentation we make in the park. Well, here goes.

Intro

Kings Park is the largest inner city park in the world. It is just under 1000 acres with 2/3 of it preserved as "native bushland." Seventeen acres are utilized as a botanical garden and the rest is playgrounds, cafes and expansive lawns for the public to use.

Perth itself is a city of about 2 million people, but the park land was set aside back in 1872 when the population of Perth was about 9,000 and there were less than 25,000 people in all of Western Australia. WA is five times the size of Texas and it is more than 1300 miles from Perth to the nearest city of more than 1 million people. Perth is the most isolated city in the world in terms of geographic distance to anything of consequence.

The park is on a high hill overlooking the Swan River Basin and Matilda Bay. Across the basin is a clear view of the Perth Hills aka The Darling Range, named after General Ralph Darling who put together the expedition of Captain James Stirling aboard the HMS Success that established the Swan River Colony (Perth.) The hill on which Kings Park sits is named Mt. Eliza after Darling's wife. No one ever accused Perth's early settlers of being anything short of politically astute. The park is actually on the most attractive land in all the Swan River Valley... just the sort of place I would have put my house if I had been Stirling. (No one ever accused me of being in the least, politically astute.)

The land in the Swan River Valley is very poor. Australia is a continent as opposed to an island. It used to be part of the ancient super continent Gondwana until it drifted South and West to its current location. There have been no "earth creating events" here for millions of years. No earthquakes, no volcanoes, nothing. The primary geologic player has been erosion with the rain, wind and sea working year after year to leach out and erase any remnant of nutrient in our "soil" and leaving only a layer of sand atop a limestone base. Not really ideal conditions for growing plants, much less food crops. This poor soil played a huge role in checking any population growth in the area until gold was discovered in 1892. That year Perth's population doubled and it was over 130,000 two years after that.

It rains only about 3 or 4 months and all in the winter months of the year (June-August) and the rest of the time the sun streams down unimpeded by clouds. We have a mild climate, but the sun is strong, even if not hot. The poor soil and oppressive sun of our area may seem like a detriment to botanical life, but instead it has provided a perfect laboratory for life to adapt. Being so remote to the rest of the world, the plants here, like the animals, have taken a path not shared by the rest of the world and as a consequence there are more than 4000 known species of plants in the southwest corner of WA, more than in any other similar sized area in the world, and over 80% of them occur nowhere else in the world.

A year ago when I arrived here, I took a series of bushwalks into the wild. On those walks it seemed like I couldn't go 10 yards without seeing some plant that looked different than anything I had seen before and I decided to try to learn a thing or two. That led me to the botanical garden and in turn, to the guides program.

Well, enough background. Just keep in mind the notes about the soil and sun. Those features will likely be a recurring theme in my discussions as I post pictures of the plants here.

Like any tour, this will work best with comments from the folks that read this. If I have your comments, I can gauge levels of interest and adjust what I post to the things that seem interesting to you. Otherwise, you can read what I write.. or not. I hope you enjoy it though, because I do.

I'll close out this post now and maybe tomorrow I'll post a bit about a flower here that is purported to be able to "turn hearts."

Welcome to Kings Park.

Beijing, China - 2008 Olympics

2008-08-17T09:07:00.000-07:00

I’m really struggling to put together a post on our trip to the Olympics in Beijing. It would be easy and a little gratifying to lay into China for the pollution and lack of drinking water availability along with its oppressive government that electronically bugs taxi cabs and hotel rooms and censors the internet and broadcast media. But I guess that’s not really my job in this BLOG so I suppose I will stick to the Olympics and the site seeing we did.

This trip was out of character for me since I am not a spectator sport sort of person. I don’t watch pro sports in the US much, and in all my (extended) time at LSU I only went to one football game. At Tulane, I didn’t go to any sports events. But the Olympics were really a treat. The athletes were amazing to watch, even in the early rounds when world class performances were just imperfect enough to show how amazingly difficult the feats really were. Watching things like women’s gymnastics on TV sometimes gives the impression that all of these teenage girls can do everything every time, but seeing the early rounds in person reveals that mistakes do happen and sometimes they are dramatic. Watching the Olympic swimmers doing their warm up and then effortlessly lifting themselves up and onto the pool deck in a single motion two feet above the water points out that not only can normal people not swim the same speeds as these guys, we can’t even get in and out of the pool the same way.

Watching the early rounds of volleyball left me with the idea that in earlier years I could have been down there playing, but as the elimination rounds progressed and the folks that probably should never have been there were defeated, the play improved and I quickly realized that I would have been one of the ones eliminated early.

The opening ceremonies were spectacular in the truest sense of the word. They were fantastic with perfect synchronization amongst hundreds of people at a time, and display after display of similar perfection. We were in the Bird’s Nest for six hours on opening night and didn’t see a single thing that could be called a mistake. Amazing. The fireworks set a new Guinness record with over 120,000 individual rounds fired over an 8 kilometer long path in the city. From inside the stadium we could see almost none of the fireworks, but we could see what you saw on TV from the jumbotrons inside and fireworks were still going off by the time we got out of the stadium at the end of the event. Just fabulous.

The Olympic venues were also spectacular. The Bird’s nest is something to see, but my favorite was the Water Cube. A building made principally of a visqueen like plastic in which the air that fills each “plastic pillow” is a structural element of the design. Amazing.

Because of the pollution, China will never make my list of favorite places to visit. How bad was the pollution? On our first day we could not quite make out the top of a cell phone tower in the city. On our tour of the Great Wall we could see only one or two battlements in any direction and we stood wishing that the day was clear so we could really take in this amazing structure.

But walking on the Great Wall was a singular experience. Our pictures aren’t great, but the experience was memorable. Strolling though the Forbidden City with its stark, vast squares designed to intimidate even the military was startling. The Forbidden City is mostly just a big empty space devoid of monuments or structure with any purpose but to intimidate and communicate absolute power. It is stark and lonely feeling in these days when it is merely a museum to days long gone. The same goes for Tienmen Square which is just huge and only slightly softened by the small gardens and special monuments that were erected for the Olympics. You never forget that the government in this country is all powerful and that “by the people, for the people” never entered anyone’s mind when it was founded or since.

China is without the exotic beauty that we found in other places in Asia we have visited. The monuments were to men gone but not forgotten and the architecture is purposed to intimidate. With almost no religion anywhere in the country, there are no temples, not even ones to false gods and that seems to leave only political reasons to build.

The people we came into contact with were typically Asian ie. smiling, pleasant and very accommodating to our needs at every point possible.

We learned after we got home that “bald and smelly” cab drivers had been taken off the road by the government.

We learned while we were there that violation of any of the “special laws” enacted for the Olympics are punishable by prison time and heavy fines. This includes unauthorized usage of the “Olympic Lanes” on the expressways and it was obvious that this law was strictly enforced because our bus had permission to use this lane and despite 3 or 4 other lanes being backed up for miles, we sailed down our lane completely alone on most occasions. Trips that we were told would take 1 – 1 ½ hours took us less than 15 minutes in some cases.

We learned after we left the country that many people were displace from their homes in order to clear the land needed for the Olympic venues. In the places where these people were relocated, signs were erected by the government saying “I participate, I contribute, I am happy.”

Well, I guess I couldn’t stick to the site seeing after all. God Bless America.

oVo

Redwood National Forest

2008-07-19T21:20:00.000-07:00

Brenda grabbed a much deserved day off Friday and we hustled North to the edge of California where we found the Redwoods National Forest. It was a long trip for an overnighter, but we've gotten pretty good at finding the good stuff when the opportunity arises. We made the most of this trip by taking a nice back-roads drive up through the perpetually congested Napa wine region, and then up through Geyserville before rejoining Hwy 101 at the Southernmost end of the Mendocino National Forest. The roads North of Calistoga on this route are excellent motorcycle roads, but there was alot of construction near where we joined up with 101. In CA they like to just shut down a lane and let cars through from one direction for a half hour and then the other direction. We hit it pretty bad this time and had a few long waits for our turn.

Having gotten off to a late start in the morning and being blocked by construction a few times, we arrived at our motel and turn around spot in Klamath, CA at about 7 PM and had some dinner. There was still light after we ate so we ambled over to a little trail near the hotel that said "Hidden Beach" but didn't give any indication of how far it might be. The trail was nice, but it was jungle. You know how dark it can be in the woods during the day and for us the sun was barely up when we entered the trail. Brenda led us briskly down the trail for about 15 minutes and we finally started hearing surf. A few minutes later and we were rewarded with the coolest beach I have ever seen. The beach was a half moon shape with huge rocks jutting out of the surf in random places. The beach sand was charcoal grey, almost black and as fine as flour, but more dense. The surf was "angry" and it just could not have been a more interesting place. I hated to pull us away after a 15 minute visit, but I knew the forest would be even darker by now. Sure enough....

We made it back to the world just fine after taking the right turn that we knew we had to take whether we could actually see the trail or not and somehow remembering the following right hand turn where the trail wanted to go straight. No big deal and definitely one of the things that made this trip and adventure.

In the morning we got up and rode the gondola to the top of the hill across the street from our hotel. It was foggy so we couldn't see much at the top, but the ride up was still interesting to see the sequoias, firs and spruce from this squirrels eye view.

We jumped back in the car and made our way to Fern Canyon where we walked down to the beach for more angry surf, then continued our route south homeward, but not before ignoring our GPS plea to keep us off an unpaved road that we figured would be a mile or two long. Forty miles later our jostled and juggled sports car looked like it had survived a Texas dust storm. Just another adventure. I must admit that when the GPS finally gave up and started plotting our position on a completely blank screen with no roads shown, and we had to decide if the spray paint arrow on the tree trunk saying "Hoopa ------>" could be trusted, I had had enough adventure for a bit.

When we emerged from the wilderness, we found ourselves blocked by a sports car club that had commandeered the road for the day to run speed trials up a 2.5 mile section of road. We had to wait for the heat to end before we could go back down the mountain with the race cars. They offered to let us run with the next heat since we were in the right kind of car, but I found out that the fastest time for the 2.5 mile course was 2 minutes and 13 seconds. This was on a mountain road, uphill with at least 6 hair pin switchback turns. In other words, they were averaging almost 70 mph from a standing start. I wasn't sure I could go that slow (HA!) Only one guy had lost his car off the road so far that day.

After more great mountain roads Southeast through Trinity National Forest we finally joined back up with the Interstate crowd to make tracks home. Great trip.

Click on any of the pics to see the rest of them at the web album

oVo

Police Riding School

2008-06-26T19:02:00.000-07:00

Back in May I lucked into the opportunity to participate in a 40 hour riding school put on by the Texas City Police Department. I have a friend that sells Harley Davidson Motorcycles and one of his customers invited him to come to a day of classes and my friend invited me. I was able to stay all week and complete the course. I am the only civilian that Texas City has ever certified as completing this course. 'Course I can't give tickets, but I sure learned a lot.

This is one post where I really suggest that you click on one of the pictures which will take you to the web album where the rest of the pics are stored. These pics are truly worth a thousand words and this class was worth a thousand bucks to me. Don't tell Texas City though, they may send me a bill.

I've been riding since I left home at 18 years of age. I have ridden all sorts of bikes. Dirt bikes, small street bikes, exotic Moto Guzzis, metric and HD. I've always paid attention on the street and I have takes some classes that teach riding skills. I thought I was a pretty good rider but this course really showed me that I didn't know much about handling my bike at slow speed in tight quarters. I think I learned a lot though, and developed confidence that I can put my bike where I want it to be.

The course consisted of six distinct cone layouts where the object was to avoid the cones. Speed did not matter, go as slow as you want or as fast as you can, just avoid the cones. We were all on 800+ lb Harley's except for one guy on a Honda Valkrye and two guys on BMWs. The Harleys all handled the course better than the other bikes because of the HD lower center of gravity and shorter wheel base. Each of the bikes can complete the course though, but with greater difficulty on the Honda due to the wheel base and the BMW due to the clutch set-up.

The first course was a slow weave in which cones were set about 18 feet apart and we just weaved back and forth between them. We were justifiably proud to complete that course with relative ease, but it turns out that the slow weave was just a tune up for the Offset Weave.

In the Offset, the cones are not in a straight line, but are offset by about 18 feet so that you have to make a hard turn at the first cone to line up on the next cone 18 feet away and requiring a 90 degree turn. Assuming you clear the second cone there is another one 18 feet away that may be a little tougher to clear depending on how you ride. Each mistake in position, speed or direction on these courses adds up on you because the layout of the course doesn't allow much room for corrections. If you are off by a foot on the first turn, you may be off by two feet on the second and so forth. A skilled rider can make up for small mistakes, but not for big ones, and we unskilled riders couldn't even make up for small mistakes at first.

It took us two full days to get everyone through the offset cones and onto the lane change course. The object on the lane change was to simulate the need to change lanes on a highway, but to do it in about 15 feet without knocking over any cones. Keep in mind that our bikes are about 6 feet long and we all had saddle bags that stick out and the bags were low enough to strike the cones.

After the offset and lane change we moved on to the 18 foot intersection. This course is best thought of as a big "Plus sign" with each end of the sign and each segment of the sign being 18 feet wide/long. We had to enter the intersection at one end and make a hard turn at each corner driving the bikes as far into each leg of the intersection as we could. Each turn in this course required a "wheel lock" turn in which the handlebars were forced as far as possible into the turn. The only way to straighten the bike at that point was with speed. Increase speed and you straighten up. Decrease speed and you fall down. A very interesting balancing act. It took most of us two days to master this course and some of us took even longer. It was only a five day course. Time got tight.

After the Intersection we only had a high speed "Maximum Effort Stop" and the Keyhole to go. The high speed stop was interesting because we performed it first using just back brake, and then with just the front brake. Finally we stopped using both brakes together. I am glad that I have two brakes.

The Keyhole was an 18 ft diameter circle of cones with a 4ft wide X 4ft long entrance/exit. We had to enter the keyhole, perform a full circle and exit out the same hole without touching a cone. OH... and did I mention that we had to do all these courses clockwise AND counterclockwise? Well, we did.

This course was a really great time for me. It was hard on my bike, but I gained alot of skill and confidence in putting my bike exactly where it needs to be every time and it showed me that no matter how good a rider I thought I was, there are always skills to be learned and more fun to be had in our sport.

oVo

Ride For Kids

2008-04-27T20:06:00.000-07:00

Once a year a bunch of motorcycle riders in the Houston area get together and take a little ride to raise money for medical research centering on brain tumors that occur in children. This event is called the "Ride for Kids" and it benefits the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation. (See links on right side bar)

We all pay about $35 to ride a 40 mile parade where the local police close whatever roads we are scheduled to ride (including interstates) and we putt down the road. But the work is done well before the day of the ride. All year, we have groups of bikers raising money for the effort and this year the Houston area riders raised over $280,000. These events happen all over the country and combined they add up to a tidy sum funding research that has had real results.

Years ago, it was common for a child with a tumor to pass away in the time between one fund raising ride and the next, but today we heard from a 31 year old nurse who was one of the early brain tumor survivors. The youngest patient we heard from today was 13 months old. She didn’t have much to say, but her father spoke for her and expressed the hope that he had for her future.

We bikers can't take credit for the advances that have occurred over the past 25 years that the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation has been funding research, but it is nice that a bunch of regular folks like us have found a way to be involved in furthering this effort.

My camera ran out of battery before much of the ride was complete today, but it was a good event for a worthy cause. Eighteen survivors and current patients from 13 months to 31 years old took the stage to tell us a little about their cases and thanks to the PBTF and Ride for Kids all of their futures look a little brighter.

Even the rain on the way home couldn't undo the good that came from today's ride.

oVo

Skaggs Spring Road

2008-04-21T21:41:00.000-07:00

Skaggs Spring Road (SSR) was cited as "the best bike road in Northern California" by my riding buddy Joe. So without delay, Joe and I headed North today to check it out.

We rode 77 miles to get to Calistoga where the road turned good. Nice and scenic with some sweepers and a few tight twisties. But the main course was still to come and soon enough we turned West on the SSR. It was great. I took a bunch of pics with my left hand while negotiating the sweepers with my right hand on the throttle. I think it can give you an idea of how nice this road is and how much fun the sweepers are. Just after the big bridge I put the camera away because the road narrowed and wound its way through the forest with steep drop offs just over the edge of the pavement. It was no place to be careless so I wasn't.

SSR dumps you out on the PCH at Stewarts Point after a satisfying 45 miles or so of sweepers, hair pins, grand vistas and finally a jungle scene right out of Jurassic Park right before you see the Pacific Ocean. Great road.

The PCH was also a fine ride with views unparalleled. Click on any of the pics here to see the rest of them in the web album.

oVo

Day hike through Pine Valley on Mt. Diablo

2008-04-17T18:55:00.000-07:00

I had several items on my list of fun things to do this week. I was going on a motorcycle ride Monday but the weather turned even colder than normal with night time temps in the 30s and the days warming up slowly. To top it off, the guy I was hoping to ride with had a family emergency and wasn't able to join me so I just filed the map and will do it some other time.

I was also going to take the commuter train into San Francisco to scout for a weekend trip that Brenda and I were planning to take this Saturday. But, although the weather has warmed back up the forecast for the weekend looks cold and windy in the city so we are holding off on the Saturday trip too.

But the one thing that I had not planned to do, but that has been on my list for some time is to take a walk up in Mt Diablo State Park. Mt. Diablo is the biggest thing around here rising 3,849 ft and offering views of things as far away as the Golden Gate Bridge on clear days. One web site says that Mt Diablo provides views of more geographic area than any other peak except Mt Kilimanjaro. Not sure I believe that but there are some nice views. Check it yourself though at this site.

Anyway, last night I pulled out my trail map that I bought a few months back and with the help of the web found a trail route that I thought fit my needs for today. It was a six mile loop with a 1000 ft elevation gain and is rated "strenuous" or "moderate" depending on the website you find it on. For me, it took three hours and I rested about three times during the steepest portions of the climbing sections. Moderate is probably about right.

I picked up the trailhead at Macedo Ranch which has a ranger station at it along with some picnic tables, drinking water and water for horses. The state charges $3 on the honor system to park in their gravel lot so after stuffing an envelope I strapped on my day pack and headed out.

I was a little disappointed initially since the "trail" was actually a dirt road that they use for fire abatement during the dry season. It turns out that most of the trails here are like that. But at the furthest point in my walk today I took a hard right hand turn onto "Secret Trail" and was rewarded with a foot path that gained elevation from 1175 to 1465 ft in about a mile and joins BBQ Terrace Rd with Wall Point Rd.

My walk today provided plenty of rewards besides the clean air and exercise. I saw lots of scenery and plants that I am not used to seeing. I listened to wild turkeys from just over the next ridge and was stopped in my tracks by bees buzzing so loudly that they commanded attention. I even heard that "Eagle screech" sound that all the TV shows use when they want you to know that you are viewing a wilderness program.

Mt. Diablo is far from wilderness and does not even allow back country camping. Normally there is no where to camp in the back country because of the scarcity of water, but today I made three stream crossings and enjoyed touching the icy snow runoff each time.

My route today started at Macedo Ranch and proceeded North by Northeast about 0.87 miles along Wall Point Rd to Dusty Rd, which branches due North (left.) Dusty Rd descends 260 ft in a half mile and intersects with Stage Rd before merging into BBQ Terrace Rd in another 0.45 miles and after ascending a mere 80 ft before splitting from Stage Rd for good. At this point you are at 715 ft with a steady climb to 1175 facing you over the next mile to the intersection of Secret Path. Turning Right (SE) on Secret Path continues the climb over the next mile to 1465 ft where you rejoin Wall Point Rd and climb the remaining 135 ft in just a quarter mile or so before starting your descent with the sheer drop to your left. Look closely and you may spot some interesting erosion patterns in some of the rocks jutting up from the canyon floor 500 feet below. The descent is easy as long as your knees are good. I stopped a few times to rub my worn out hinges. I guess my basketball injury from earlier in the year is not quite healed yet. One and three quarter miles later you intersect Dusty Rd again, only this time you turn hard left (SW) to get back to the trailhead having seen wonderful vistas and no telling what else.

With 20,000 acres and over 100 miles of trails I suspect that Mt Diablo has not seen the last of me... …or me of it.

oVo

Point Arena Light House

2008-04-12T21:26:00.000-07:00

Our mission for today was to get North as fast as we could and then cut over to the Pacific Coast Highway and head South for a nice drive home along the wonderfully scenic PCH. Like all of our California trips so far we were surprised by the scenery, both on the PCH and while getting to it.

We drove Northward diving deep underground through the tunnels through the mountains on HWY 24 and then across the San Francisco Bay on I-580. I was completely surprised to see San Quentin located right on the bay. Man this is some high dollar real estate put to use as a retirement home for criminals. What a view they have. Well, they WOULD have a great view I guess.

We stayed inland and fought the weekend traffic through Novato, Petaluma and Santa Rosa Continuing to stretch our legs ever Northward. Finally after we cleared Santa Rosa, HWY 101 narrowed to four lanes and the traffic thinned out making the driving a little more enjoyable and less like a massive session of "Dodge Car." HWY 101 is scenic enough but I was eager to get off of it and onto some smaller and more interesting roads.

We finally did that at Cloverdale where we veered West by Northwest on Hwy 128. Now that is a great road; two lanes of smooth pavement winding its way toward Booneville where we stopped for an "organic hand made" lunch. Booneville looks to us like sort of a hippy holdover, full of interesting looking people and more cafes and restaurants per capita than anywhere I can recall. Nice town and it is in a good spot in the road for a day trip. Just far enough away to have us wanting a little break.

After lunch we hung a hard left on Mountain View Road where we enjoyed the 30 mile meander over the last mountain range before we hit the coast. Mountain View Road is a beautiful run through a redwood forest and allows speeds less than 30 mph with no penalty. Go faster than that and you are either a really good driver or about to meet a new group of doctors. While still about 8 miles from the coast we broke out of the forest and saw the Pacific Ocean in the distance. Cool.

We stopped at the lighthouse and snapped a few pics. I have learned that I have to budget my time at these ocean overlooks because I could really just sit and watch the swells all day. After the photo session we headed South on the PCH and alternately caught spectacular views of the ocean and ducked into the forest as this famous road shared it's multiple personalities with us. At one minute you are at sea level and could walk down to a secluded beach not even seen from the road, and the next moment you are 1000 feet above the surf on a road carved out of the cliff. Top a hill in the forest and ease down into the next glade and the temperature can drop 10 degrees. Now we know what a micro-climate really feels like.

We were in the convertible today but this ride would have been a great bike trip. It was a long day at 330 miles and much of that in the 30 - 35 mph range. Any serious exploring along the PCH North of San Francisco is going to require a multi-day trip but I am absolutely certain that it will be worth it.

Remember, you can click on any of the pics in this post and go directly to my web albums where you can see full size versions and a few that I didn't have room for here.

oVo

Day Ride Toward Reno

2008-04-07T19:52:00.000-07:00

I have a lot to learn about planning rides in California. After about an hour of interstate and some two lane highway, which was a small price to pay for getting to the roads I suspected I would find on the way across the Sierra Nevadas, I spotted snow in the approaching mountain peaks. I pressed on figuring that even if I had to turn around, it would still be a good day of riding.

It ended up taking me about 2 hours to clear the interstate and the flatland traffic at Jackson, CA. By this time I had already enjoyed what is becoming a staple of my forays into this scenic state. I had run past the windmills along I-580 in Livermore and had taken in a new set of rolling grass covered hills as the bike and I steadily climbed toward the snow.

In Jackson the changes became more abrupt and the road started winding its way upward via the path of least resistance. Kit Carson first navigated this pass that became a crucial link across the Sierras for the Pony Express. I encountered my first roadside snow at 4500 feet and thought to myself "This won't be so bad." That was before I realized that the road kept climbing to 8000 feet.

I had dressed for temperatures between 50 - 70 degrees F because I left the house at about 10 AM after the chill was out of the air. Normally things warm up around here by about 2 and by 5PM it is in the high 60s or maybe low 70s. Well, in the valleys at least. Up in the passes things are a little different.

When I stopped for lunch, I put on my heavy gloves. The temperature was in the low 50s. At 5000 feet, I checked the temp again and it was in the low 40's. At 6700 feet I had had enough and stopped to put on my jacket and pant liners which are good to the low 30's. Good thing too because when I checked before I re-mounted the bike, it was 36 and it stayed that way for quite some time.

I continued climbing past the signs that declared the area an avalanche hazard and past the swing gates that are permanently installed for the inevitable times when the road must be closed. Dodging just a few ice boulders in the road (rocks really) I eased my way to the top and then down the other side of the pass into the Diamond Valley.

My route called for a right turn on CA 89 which I took, but as I made the turn I saw what I had expected to see ever since first spotting the snow on the distant peaks. The passes back to the other side of the mountain range were closed along HWY 4. I figured I was lucky to get this far and continued down the road a little while until I found a beautiful little trout stream where I shot a few pics before heading back the way I came.

This turned out to be a great ride because it had 170 miles of smoothly paved roads filled with gentle sweepers and a few hair pins along for good measure. On the way over the pass the first time, I rode between 50 - 60 mph taking in the tall pines, snow fields and beautiful vistas. On the way back I picked up the pace a little and really enjoyed the bikes capabilities on these winding roads.

oVo

Vote Gridlock

2008-04-04T23:48:00.000-07:00

Remember when we thought a 50% effective tax rate in some northern European countries seemed outrageous. Well here ya go.

If you file individually and earned just $31,850 in 2007 your federal tax rate was 25%. Your Social Security tax was 6.2% and Medicare added 1.45%. If you live in all but 9 states, you also incur a state tax liability that varies between 3% - 9.3%.

So far we are paying between 28% - 34.3%

We also pay sales tax on pretty much everything we buy. That's generally about 8.25% And if you earn around $32,000 per year, I am pretty sure you are spending every bit of it to keep the wolves from the door so it too is effectively an income tax. That means that right here in the good old USA we are paying 40% tax. We won't even discuss the 50 cent per gallon fuel tax (for now.)

So what do you do about this situation? Well, first I suggest that you fire anyone that you ever voted for in any local, state or federal election. They are all complicit in this grab for YOUR cash. Some tax is necessary, but is it really necessary to take almost half of the salary of a school teacher, bus driver, and secretary? Where is all this money going?

"Vote Gridlock" is what I say. When too many Democrats are in office, they enact whatever spending plan they want and it all comes out of your pocket. Ahhhh, but when the Republicans are in power, guess what... they do the exact same thing. The only way to stop them is to try to make sure no one has the advantage and we can only do this by keeping the Congress as close to 50/50 as possible and hoping that a few from each party will cross over when the really worthwhile ideas emerge from the noise.

There is one other thing you can do if you are self employed or retired. Be careful about what you earn. Stay on the right side of the delineations in the federal tax schedules. In 2008 those delineations will be as follows;

Taxable income -> Fed Tax Rate
$0 - $ 8,025 -> 10%
$8,026 - $32,550 -> 15%
$32,551 - $78,850 -> 25%
$78,851 - $164,550 -> 28%
$164,551 - $357,700 -> 33%
$357,701 - $lots more -> 35%

Staying below one of these lines in the sand can save you thousands. Good luck

oVo

WOW - What great roads

2008-04-01T18:11:00.000-07:00

From San Ramon to the Lick Observatory atop Mount Hamilton, CA is about 180 miles round trip. The thing that is amazing to me as a flatlander is that after about 28 miles of the route we took today, there is a sign that says "Mt Hamilton 44 miles." The thing about this sign is that the 44 miles is nothing but twisty turny scenic road that is pretty much perfect for motorcycles. And you gotta know that a 44 mile trip up to the observatory on twisty roads involves a 44 mile return trip down the mountain on those same roads. That's roughly half of a day ride that is nothing but twisties. Wonderful.

I really don't know why I say "pretty much perfect" to describe these roads. I can't think of much that would improve them. The surface is good, the scenery is fantastic and our average speed was 34 mph (according to the GPS - not according to me - who had time to look at the speedo?) I swear there was one right hand turn with no shoulder... I had taken it in pretty good fashion with the bikes tire near the right hand edge of the road at the apex of the turn. I swear that I believed that although my tires were on the pavement, my shoulder was hanging off the road over a 200 ft drop off. I'm sure it wasn't... it couldn't have been right??? RIGHT??? At any rate, the penalty for not paying attention to the road on this ride would have been steep. Literally - STEEP. And the temptation to let your eye wander is strong. Such a beautiful place.

I'll go back to Mt Hamilton again because when I got home and looked at the map, it turns out that I missed more than half the good roads that climb that hill. Gotta go do the rest of the attraction and soon.

oVo

Light bulbs

2008-03-29T23:47:00.000-07:00

I'm a little cranky.

I have a friend who calls himself "Grumpy" and who has a little Elf doll that looks like "Grumpy" in Sleeping Beauty strapped to the back of his motorcycle to prove it. But the fact is that I am much more deserving of the title than he is. Here is an example....

A few years back.. say three years, I bought some of these high dollar fluorescent light bulbs to replace some standard incandescent light bulbs in my house. Now I didn't just buy a few, I bought about 20 of 'em. And you gotta know that these bulbs are not cheap. You can get a 4 pack of standard Soft-white incandescent bulbs for about $2 and these fluorescent things cost me around $10 each. So here it is, a couple of years later and some of these high dollar bulbs have burned out. Now keep in mind that I have been in Bangkok for a full 12 months of this time so don't be thinking that I should be happy with three years out of a bulb. I have had regular bulbs last for YEARS and they don't cost $10.

So I start looking around for info on the true cost of light bulbs.... and you, because you chose to read my BLOG have to put up with this resulting rant.

Here's the deal.

Assumptions
Standard Incandescent 60 Watt bulb - cost $1.50 for a pack of 4
LONG SUPER LONG LIFE fluorescent GE 60 watt equivalent - cost $14 (that's right - $14 per light bulb - see why I am grumpy!!!)

Now, A standard bulb is supposed to last about 1000 hours. You can verify that from any number of sources with a simple web search. One of these super duper long life fluorescent bulbs is supposed to last 10 times longer... HA!!!!! In your dreams. Maybe some of them do, but not the ones I got... so I went to figuring how much I overpaid for my crappy fluorescent bulbs. Here is the result.

Paying $1.50 for 4 standard bulbs means I pay about 37 cents per bulb. That bulb is supposed to last 1000 hours, but alot of mine seem to last longer... maybe 2000 hours right.... am I right???? You know I am! And I am supposed to be happy spending $14 for a stupid fluorescent bulb... I don't think so.

Anyway, the $14 "long life" bulb is supposed to last 10,000 hours. HA! Even if it does last ten times longer, I am paying $1.40 for the same amount of time that the cheap bulb is supposed to last. Man am I getting grumpy.

So this standard bulb is a 60 watt bulb. I pay about 15 cents per Kilowatt hour for electricity, so to operate my bulb for 1 hour costs me about 1 cent. A little less. But that high dollar bulb only uses 15 watts, so it costs alot less. But so what. A lot less than a cent still ain't much. Actually it is about 0.2 cents. Too little to count.

Lemme figure this out a second. A standard bulb costs $0.37 plus $0.01 per hour to run and it lasts 1000 hours. That's a total of $10.37 over the life of that bulb. Wait a second. The whole bulb and the energy it takes to run it is cheaper than just the bulb when you buy that expensive one! MAN am I getting grumpy!

OK, just for the exercise, I'll look at the fluorescent bulb. It cost $14 (crap!) and it uses 15 watts per hour so that costs hmmmmm.. 0.2 cents per hour. OK, that's pretty cheap to run. The standard bulb cost 1 penny - 5 times as much. But still, we are talking pennies here.

OK this fancy bulb is supposed to last 10,000 hours. HA!!!! so over the "supposed" life of the fancy bulb it would cost me $22.50 in electricity costs PLUS the $14 that the original bulb cost, that's a total of $36.50. That's TOO MUCH to run a light bulb.

Hmmmmm, what would the standard bulb cost I wonder. Let's see. 37 cents per bulb and the bulb lasts 1000 hours. That's $3.70 for enough bulbs to last 10,000 hours. And each bulb takes 60 watts per hour at 14 cents per KWH so that's $90 in electricity... WAIT JUST A SECOND HERE!!!! $90 to run a light bulb.. That's TOO MUCH! Lemme check that again

60 watts X 10,000 hours = 600,000 watt hours = 600 KWH
$0.15 per KWH X 600 KWH = $90.... hmmmmmm

Ok, lemme think. The high dollar bulb cost $14+$22.50 for electricity. That's $37. And the cheap bulb cost 37 cents plus 1 cent per hour, but for 10,000 hours that adds up to $90. CRAP!!!!!

Yea, but wait a second. The thing that ticked me off was that some of the bulbs I bought didn't last very long. I don't know how long, but it didn't seem very long. So what if the fancy bulb only lasts half as long as it says it will? Yea, what if it only lasts 5000 hours and then I have all that money tied up in an expensive bulb that crapped out. Let's see.... $14 for the bulb, and 0.2 cents per hour for 5000 hours is $14+$10 so that's $24. The same deal for the regular bulbs would be 5 bulbs (1000 hours per bulb) at 37 cents per bulb... that's a buck 85, plus 1 cent per hour to run them that's 5000 cents or ... .wait a second.... 5000 cents is $50! So even if the fancy bulb only lasts half as long as it is supposed to, it is still twice as cheap overall as the cheap bulb. Hmmmm

Hey, but what happens if my cheap bulbs last twice as long as they say they should? OK, at 37 cents per bulb, and it lasts twice as long.... Oh crap so I save 37 cents.. so what, I am spending $50 to keep the stupid thing running.

I think I am less grumpy than I was a little while ago.

Here is the chart. The green line is the cost of the "fancy bulb" as it lasts longer and longer. It dips below 1 cent per hour at a life of 2000 hours. At 10,000 hours, it costs 1/3 as much. There is a similar red line that shows that the cost of the "cheap" bulb is basically 1 cent per hour, no matter how long it lasts. This chart stops at a bulb life of 3000 hours. Imagine how it would look at 10,000 hours.

oVo

Nice day trip to Carmel and Point Lobos State Park

2008-03-29T19:24:00.000-07:00

Today we took a little drive down South, mostly to take in some of this new scenery, but we ended up at a place called Point Lobos. If they haven't filmed movies at this location, I don't know why. It is beautiful.

We headed South in the most efficient manner possible until we got about 90 miles from home. We then ventured off the beaten path to some twisty roads that included Laureles Grade Drive, a nice little stretch with 10% grades, up and down the pass. We even got further off the trail when we took a side trip off the pass onto a 1 lane road that my GPS said would be even more interesting but ended up dead ending. Oh well, it was still interesting.

After the pass, we pretty much just found the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) and headed about 5 miles south to Point Lobos. It takes $9 to get into the park but I could have spent a week there just watching the waves. It was a little cold and very windy so we didn't stay long, but take a look at my pics to see some of the amazing scenery.

When we left Point Lobos, I had noticed a road called 17 Mile Drive that looked interesting. Well, it is so interesting that the residents have decided that they can charge a $10 toll just for driving through. It's pretty worth it though, at least if you are just visiting. We paid the man and drove along the shaded road with the Pacific Ocean on our Left and amazing houses and golf courses like Pebble Beach, Cypress Point and Spyglass Hill along with some less notables as well. It was a great drive. Brenda thinks that this is where Clint Eastwood probably lives but we didn't see him jogging so we don't know.

After the 17 Mile Drive, we just returned to the PCH and headed homeward. We got pretty far along and heard that our planned route was suffering from a Semi accident earlier that day on the bridge that we planned to use to cross the San Francisco Bay. We backtracked about 10 miles and took a more direct route home having had a great drive.

If you look closely at the map you will see a little box about midway down on the right that says "Lick Observatory" on Mount Hamilton. That's where I am headed Tuesday.

oVo

A little Catch-up

2008-03-27T16:54:00.000-07:00

Ever since coming home from Thailand in October last year, I have let this Blog sit idle. There are a few reasons for that I guess, but none of them are because we have quit doing fun stuff. Let's see... I went diving in Honduras in October 2007, and took a great trip to Big Bend National Park shortly thereafter. We got a little tied up trying to find a place to live in San Ramon, CA while maintaining our place in Texas, but even that was adventurous in the "something different" sense of things. One reason I like blogging is because from time to time, I review the posts here and recapture some of the fun I had on these trips. And that's why I am going to pick this blog up again and keep it pretty current.

Since we now have a foothold in the far west of the US, we are using it to great advantage. Last weekend was functionally our first in CA. We have been here a few other weekends, but those days were consumed with apartment hunting or moving chores. But this past weekend we ran off from our remote base here and hit the trail to Yosemite National Park. What an amazing place. Even the drive there and back is amazing. We went out on Hwy 120 and came back on Hwy 140. Hwy 140 follows the Merced River all the way down the mountain so it is just spectacular.

Yosemite itself is pretty crowded, we thought we were rushing the season a bit since there is still snow in the higher elevations, but even this early the accessible parts of the park are packed. But we were able to basically drive up to Yosemite Falls and then take a couple of short hikes to Mirror Lake and Columbia Rock. Not back country hiking by any means. The trail to Mirror Lake is paved (for crying out loud) but the trail to Columbia Rock is far more severe.

Columbia Rock is only 1 mile from Yosemite Lodge where we stayed, but it is also 1000 ft higher in elevation. That is a average grade of 34% and that can wear on your legs. Still it was a great walk and left me wanting more. I came home and started looking for a good back country hike for when the snow melts.

We have other trips planned and we are looking forward to seeing this different part of our country. I'll keep you posted.

oVo

Koh Losin

2007-09-18T08:32:00.000-07:00

HA HA HA HA HA!!!!

That's about all I can say about Koh Losin. It is an island for sure, but not much of one. It is about 100 square meters in area (small) and maybe 3 meters above sea level at its maximum height at low tide. What a place. But thanks to it's location 100 Km from the nearest land, it boasts plenty of clear water and we were treated to 30+ meters visibility on our trip. Great water indeed.

We were all hoping to see sights like the pic here, but none of the big animals felt like coming around the day we were there. Still, it was a great dive.

I had some "not unusual for me" sinus problem during this trip. I picked up a minor cold a few days before we left. As a result, I was unable to clear my ears properly and the text books all say that when that happens, you should do the smart thing and just stay on the boat, or better yet, stay home. But I had been looking forward to this trip for two months, and the visibility was so good, I figured I could stay at a comfortable 5 meters depth if I needed to and still see alot of what was there to see. It turns out I was right on the vis issue, but by descending slowly, I was also able to reach the same depth as my dive group and see the sites up close. It just took a little while longer and I had to be more careful than usual.

To get to Koh Losin from Bangkok, we flew South into Hat Yai, and drove an hour or so to Songkla, TH to pick up the boat. The boat cruised about 9 hours through the night and into the morning arriving at Koh Losin at 8:30 AM Saturday. The tiny Koh Losin is approx 62 miles (100 Km) East of Naritiwat, TH. The island houses a small light standard to warn off ships.

I was very pleased when I entered the water and put my face down to clearly see the 26-28 meter bottom from the surface. We spent the day in this area and planned to make a night dive at the nearby Losin Pinnacle, but a squall blew in and cancelled those plans, so we just relaxed on the boat and cruised toward our dive site for the next day.

Overnight we steamed to a large bay near Naritiwat, TH. Naritiwat has been plagued in the past few years by violence in the Muslim community. We stayed well offshore and in a fleet of 4 dive boats, presumably for safety. In the morning we made a quick trip south about 15 minutes to Lopi, a 24 meter site with poor vis and moderate current. We saw lots of small life including a resting lion fish and several large parrot fish. During our efforts to photograph the life, our dive group swam out of visibility so my dive buddy and I just kept poking around on our own. Most of the group got stung by small jellies on this dive, including me. No big deal. One more thing to say I've done I guess.

The Second dive of Sunday was the most enjoyable for me. We moved toward shore just a few dozen meters to an island larger than Koh Losin, but not named. At this site there was little current and lots (LOTS) of life from small to medium sized. We found a beautiful Blue spotted ray at this site, along with the Nalopeon Wrasse, a cool nudibranch and some bigger fish. This was my favorite dive of the trip.

The Third dive of Sunday was a couple of hours back to the Northwest at "Train Bogey" a 28 meter site made up of about 9 rail cars sunk there in 2001. My dive buddy split off on his own causing me some concern as I was still having problems descending as fast at the rest of the group and by the time I got to the dive depth, I could not find him. I spent most of this dive looking for my buddy, but finaly decided that he must have had camera problems and returned to the boat becaues he had told me that he did that anytime his camera enclosure showed signs of water intrusion. I was not right, but my buddy was OK and had just decided to make his own dive instead of complying with normal buddy protocol. As for myself, I was still plenty safe as I maintained close contact with the larger group so the only real risk was to my buddy and he brought it on himself. I guess all is well that ends well.

Visibility was not good on this dive, but I could clearly see that the site had plenty of potential if you could get there on a day when vis was good. Nine rail cars sunk to the sea floor provides plenty of cool places for sealife to gather and thrive.

Koh Losin is a good trip, but for my money I would go back to Koh Tao instead of taking this airplane/bus/boat trip. I guess if we had seen some whale sharks, my opinion might be different.

oVo

Koh Losin - Pre-trip report

2007-09-13T05:31:00.000-07:00

My Koh Losin dive trip is almost here. This will be my second "Live Aboard" dive trip, which is where you go out on a boat and just stay on board for a day or two or maybe longer. On Live-aboads you can dive more remote sites where hopefully the ecological pressure brought by divers is less, and you can (again hopefully) see stuff that is not impacted so much by us air breathers.

Koh Losin is so remote that it is only accessible by live-aboard trip. It is about 100 Km from the nearest land, which is Narawhitwat, Thailand. Narawhitwit is in the far South of Thailand, almost to Malasia, and Koh Losin is 62 miles East of that. It is on the border of the Gulf of Thailand and the Deeper South China Sea and there are no other land masses around.

The big hope for everyone diving Koh Losin is that they will see some of the Pelagic visitors that frequent the Island. I had to look up the word Pelagic, so I see no reason to tell you what it means in this Blog. Just do a websearch for yourself and get back to me.

I am hoping to see some of the "Bigs" that come around the island, but even if I don't this will be my Southernmost dive so far. I have been farther South, having crossed the Equator during my Naval career, but I honestly can't tell you what that looks like. Remember, I was in submarines.

I will leave for my trip tomorrow afternoon (Friday), and I will return Monday having made at least 7 dives including one more night dive.

Tuesday I get to pack up a few things and then Wednesday morning I head for the US for a visit. It will be a quick few days so I may not get to post any pics for a little while, but I hope that will be made up for by my ability to visit some of you while I am home.

oVo

Meeting People

2007-08-29T03:36:00.000-07:00

Well today was more interesting than normal. I got bored sitting around the house so at around 10:30 in the morning I logged on to the internet and looked for a good movie to go see. I found one showing at 11:15 so I headed out and arrived at the theater in plenty of time. Actually I arrived at 11:13, but I know that the movies here show a half hour of previews, advertisements and a mandatory tribute to the king before each show so I had plenty of time.

I went to the box office to buy my ticket and was informed that the 11:15 showing had been cancelled today. The next showing was at 1:45 so I walked over to the MBK mall to have lunch and kill some time "people watching." MBK is one of the more interesting malls in Bangkok because it has a huge mix of small shops and almost everything you can think of is somewhere in the mall. It is also on the less expensive end of the shopping spectrum in Bangkok so it attracts all sorts of people from Thais to farang looking for good deals.

After lunch, I walked one of the six or so floors, not moving fast, just poking around and seeing what there was to see. After an hour or so, I decided to take a seat in one of the common areas to rest a bit and still be able to see the humanity flow past. After five minutes or so, a pretty, young Thai girl sat down next to me and ate meatballs on a stick, dipping each bite in a plastic bag of hot sauce for extra flavor. When she sat down, I turned and nodded. She smiled and nodded back. At that time, I didn’t notice the tattoo on the upper part of her breast, visible thanks to her low cut tee shirt. Do you see where this is going? I did not.

She finished her lunch and after a few more minutes she got my attention by saying “Hello.” I turned and greeted her and she continued with her thought. She said “You go home with me?” I only know that she said that because in what was likely a fairly surprised tone of voice I said “Excuse me?” And she repeated herself “You go home with me?” with a big smile.

I thanked my new friend but declined her very hospitable offer. I guess I must have looked homeless or something. Such a generous young lady.

A little while passed, and my potential new roommate got my attention again with her tried and true method of saying “Hello” and once again I turned, not sure exactly what to expect next. She said “Hello” again followed immediately by “Goodbye” with that same friendly smile on her face before rising and walking down the mall in search of her next friend. Who says it is hard to meet people in a strange land?

I watched her a bit as she walked away toward the escalator and as she turned to go down a floor, she looked up with the biggest smile yet and waved goodbye. Yup, some of these Thai folks sure are friendly.

oVo

The Wreck of the Suddahadib (The Hardeep)

2007-08-25T08:03:00.000-07:00

We took a little two dive day trip to Sattahip today. Sattahip is on the Gulf of Thailand South and East of Pattaya, which is South and East of Bangkok. It takes about three hours to drive to the pier and than another hour aboard the Marlin to reach the dive site.

The Gulf of Thailand was more calm than I have seen it so far. That should translate into good diving with no current and excellent Vis(ability) but it didn't. When we reached the site, another dive boat was already tied up to the permanent bouy so we had to enter the water on the fly. Our boat drove by the bouy and we just jumped. Sort of like Marines do I guess.

Once in the water, the current took us and took us hard. We fought to reach the bouy, which had an anchor line we could follow down to the wreck. By the time I reached the bouy, and began to "down climb" the anchor line into a zero visability green soup, I knew the bottom was 26 meters (85 ft) down and I could see no reason to continue this dive. Diving in poor vis is bad enough, but add a multi-knot current to it and it just seems like work. I called my dive (that means I returned to the boat) without ever going below 15 feet in depth.

My team (4 other intrepid divers) made it varying distances into the void and stayed down between 5 and 15 minutes. Not a great dive by any standard. When were all back aboard the Marlin, we headed to a calmer spot, protected by an island and featuring a small, but interesting reef (there are no un-interesting reefs.)

I "entered" and enjoyed a pleasant and easy dive with some fellow beginners and re-surfaced having had a wonderful, and not exciting dive. Not-exciting is a good thing for a dive since "exciting" usually means something went wrong and maybe you sort of .... drowned. (just kidding Mom)

When I surface and re-boarded the Marlin, my dive instructor SaN, asked me how the dive went as he always does, and I reported favorably. He then told me that he and "The Team" were going to dive the wreck again and he thought I should come. I readily agreed knowing that I could always call my dive again if I didn't like the way things were going, and I fully expected to call my dive because I could see a rip in the surface waters near the nearby wreck.

We motored over to the wreck site and bailed off of the security of the Marlin once again. I swam over toward the bouy having to look up every few seconds because the current was still strong and was taking me North back to Sattahip just about as fast as I could swim South toward the bouy.

I reached the bouy and emptied my Bouyancy Contol Device to begin my descent. I down-climbed the anchor line hand over hand for 10 meters (33 feet) in a current that had to be 3 - 4 knots. If you think that is slow.... think again. Hanging on to the anchor line I figured I now know what a flag in a stiff breeze feels like.

But at about 35 feet, the Vis started clearing up and the current diminished. At 60 feet I could see the bottom (at 85 ft) and the wreck was in full view. It was a massive feature rising from the sandy bottom in rusted steel beams and corroded metal plates.

We tucked into the "shadow" of the wreck and began to probe "foreward" toward the bow. As we reached the bow SaN poked his head out from the protection of the old ship and immediatly signaled that we should turn and go toward the stern. The current was still strong, even on the bottom, but the wreck was shielding us from it.

We turned and headed aft along the 90 degree listed deck of the wreck. About a third of the way aft, a large opening in the deck made itself too inviting to resist and we all entered the bowels of the ship. Divers call this an "overhead environment" because if something happens and you need to surface quickly, you must first reach an exit or else you will just hit your head on the overhead. I have never entered an overhead before, and I didn't expect to enjoy it. I am a BIG guy at 6'5 and 210 lbs and small spaces in places where there is no air to breath do not appeal to me. But I went in and I must say it was WAY cool. I really enjoyed it, but honestly it was not crowded and the 65 years beneath the waves had rusted away the deck (hull) enough that there was plenty of light so it was not at all what I expected. Hmmmm I wonder what cave diving might be like?

We fiddled and piddled until I was nearly out of air in my tank. At that point I headed back toward the bouy anchor line and began to up-climb the line toward the surface, once again flapping in the current like a cartoon character.

We all had such a good dive, but only after we were able to descend beyond the first 33 feet of turbulent, turbid waters and into the relative calm afforded by the protection of the old wreck. I am so glad I gave this dive site a second effort. Hmmm I wonder if there is a life lesson in that?

If you want to see more about the Hardeep (Suddahidib), go here.

One of our team had a camera, and he may send me pics of me around the Hardeep. If so I will update this post to include at least one. Til then....

oVo

Brenda Working

2007-08-17T10:49:00.000-07:00

Anyone who knows Brenda, knows that she works too hard. But from time to time, she can surprise you with a team building outing to a world class resort or...... a bowling alley. Click on the pic here, and then click the arrow that looks like a "play button" on your VCR. Be sure to watch until her ball hits the pins.... You may be here awhile.

Enjoy

oVo

Practice Dive - 11 Aug 2007

2007-08-13T00:17:00.000-07:00

Some new friends took me to Pattaya for a quick training session in the milky green waters just off the mainland. Pattaya is not great diving, but it is close, only a couple of hours drive, and it is reasonably predictable. Sort of like McDonalds, you are not going to have a great meal there but you can count on it being acceptable most of the time.

My training is yielding benefits. I am more and more comfortable in the water so I am more relaxed. I am breathing better and using less air, although I have a long way to go before I am proficient at air usage.

I am also controlling my bouyancy better and I think I am about ready to drop a couple of pounds off my kit. I have been diving with a 6 lb backplate (the thing my tanks strap to) and a 6 lb lead weight on the tank adaptor, and another 2 lb weight on the upper tank strap for a total of 14 lbs of weight on the kit. All this weight is necessary to overcome the bouyancy of my wetsuit and my body, but also to compensate for poor breathing practices that I have been trying to eliminate. I think I have just about conquered the worst part of my breathing. We'll see next trip when I try to reduce my weight to 12 lb.

The highlight of this trip was the scooter ride. One of the group has two Diver Propulsion Vehicles (DPV or Scooter.) He broke them out and let us all try them. Some fun. Unfortunatly, the visability was very poor Saturday so this pic is not of our trip, but is of the owner of the DPVs. Jim, the owner also has a website that has some dive video of his trips if you want to see some of the stuff we see on our dives go to Jim's Web Site

oVo

Diving - Koh Tao: August 2007

2007-08-06T04:37:00.000-07:00

What a great dive trip! Koh Tao is pretty isolated in the Gulf of Thailand but the island and it's surrounds has over 25 named dive sites and we were lucky enough to hit one of the best on an exceptional day.

Chumporn Pinacle is a site that has a beautiful reef starting at about 15 meters and having a vertical drop off to 40 meters. All along the vertical drop are different species of sea life. And patrolling the outskirts for careless animals (and/or divers) on the day we were there were some ominous gliding shadows that were clearly identifiable as Bull Sharks. I felt pretty secure because the sharks generally stayed below 30 meters, and usually at least 15 meters away from the reef. Our dive group was 20 divers and there were also three other dive boats at the site the day we were there, so I was counting on being only one of maybe 60 potential meals for these guys too. As it turned out, we all returned to the boat with our fingers and toes in tact and having seen some amazing coral, anemones, a turtle and fish of all types. Such a good trip.

All in all we made 7 dives in two days at sites that went to 40 meters, and a few places that only went to 10 - 20 meters. We had one night dive but the site was apparently not a night spot because we didn't see much activity. Most of us on that dive were doing some sort of certification that required a night dive using only a compass to swim away from the instructor and back to her without getting lost. Most of us made it!

I don't have an underwater enclosure for my camera, but I am lucky enough to have friends who take pictures and let me have copies. My "above the surface" pics can be found at http://perfectloop.vox.com/ if you would like to look around. The two exceptional pics shown here were taken by Kuhn Nat, a professional underwater photographer who generously let me have these pics just because I liked them so much.

Can't wait for the next trip.

oVo

Angkor Wat - Cambodia

2007-07-23T21:23:00.000-07:00

Angkor is an ancient city in Cambodia. Angkor Wat means "The city that is a Temple" or something like that. The kings of this day had a great deal going. They were gods (of course) and they told their subjects that anyone who helped build the temple, or supplied materials, or supplied food for the people building were assured of going to heaven upon leaving this life. Well, like all pyramid schemes (pun intended) that worked for awhile but eventually everyone who was interested in gaining their spot in heaven had been pretty much worked out. So the free labor scheme turned into true multi-level marketing when the king proclaimed that there are 36 levels to heaven, and only those who gave their all would gain the highest levels. One king used this tactic to build a new temple every 5 years.

These ruins are 800 - 1100 years old. If you do a web search on the 7 wonders of the ancient world, you will see that Angkor Wat usually comes in at number 9 or 10, just out of the money. Not bad though considering that of the original 7 only 1 survives until now and Angkor is still going strong.

Some of these temples took only 5 years or less to build but the grand dame of the region took over 35 years to erect. It is still in the best shape of all the ruins despite being the oldest. Over the years, France, Japan and other countries have undertaken both restoration and humanitarian projects in this war ravaged region. We saw numerous water wells spotting the country-side, each with a sign giving credit to the country or Non-profit agency that drilled it. The ones we saw were heavily utilized too, with activities from simply drawing water to taking a bath from a bucket right at the well. Bullet holes are also evident in the structures as Cambodia has generally been in a civil war for the last 1000 years only emerging from it around 1979 with the demise of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.

As we drove through the North part of town, our guide told us that the people here in the North end of town are the business people and are generally in much better financial position than the farmers in the South. Hmmmm.... The homes we saw there on the “right side of the tracks” were predominantly grass huts varying in size from 8x10 to around 10x20. I figured that our guide, clearly one of the well off folks in this town has the potential to bring in about $5000 per year if he works 200 days a year.

Speaking of money, you don't need to exchange your money in Cambodia. Everyone eagerly accepts the good old American Greenback and can even make change in US$ as long as it doesn't require coinage. They price things for the American tourist too. Our guide says that the attitude when they see a tourist is "Hey, the Millionaires are here." And yes that is a quote. Most of the stuff you see is not worth half of what they ask, so they have signs everywhere claiming that all the items are made locally by orphans and land mine victims. Never mind the labels on the back that say made in Malaysia.

This was a good trip. It was hot, too hot but it was the slow season (did I mention that it was hot) so it wasn’t too crowded. In the busy season I can imagine not being able to get a picture at all without another tourist in the frame.

Before we left Bankok on this trip, we had asked the Thai people that we know if they had ever been to Cambodia. We were a little surprised when no one had ever been, but once we got there and learned the origin of the town that we stayed in we lost our surprise. Angkor is the ancient town, but Siam Reap is the modern town nearby. Siam means Thailand. Reap means Defeated. So the Cambodians named this little town for the point in time when the Khmer warriors defeated the Thai army and gained their independence from Siam. The Khmer speak glowingly of their fierce army and how they struck fear into the weaker Thai army. The Thais on the other hand giggle at our reports of the dirt roads and primitive living conditions of their neighbors. I’m not sure anyone has won any significant battles in this struggle.

oVo

SCUBA Diving - First Dive Jitters

2007-07-01T18:59:00.001-07:00

I took my first "fun dive" yesterday; a dive that involved no certification or mandatory skills to demonstrate. I was surprised when I got to the sea floor on my first dive of the day and became "uneasy." It was a strange feeling, but exactly like the first dive on my certification trip. I just felt the urgent need to "surface, surface, surface." I wasn't afraid, or worried that something bad would happen, just anxious for some reason.

I think I have it figured out now. I think it takes 30 seconds, or maybe a minute or two to descend to ten meters or so. During that time, I am thinking about equalizing my ears and trying to remain or attain some sort of controlled posture while slowly falling to the bottom. Then, as soon as I get down and settled my body starts sending these messages that sort of say "HEY!!! WE CAN'T BREATHE DOWN HERE! LET'S GO!!!" It's a strange feeling since I obviously can breathe down there with the help of a little equipment. But my body thinks it knows better than I do and it just almost insists that we surface, and do so as fast as possible. Very strange.

I have to take a few deep breaths which is exactly what you want to avoid in order to conserve air, and after a few minutes I calm down a bit. Within 15 minutes or so, my body has given up talking to me and we swim happily around the sea without a care in the world. Then on the subsequent dives of the day my primal instincts are apparently suppressed. I consider this phase sort of like my body giving me the silent treatment. You know, "Since I am not going to listen anyway." Can't you just hear it pitching a little hissy fit inside? But the result is that my second dive is nice and relaxed. Not a worry in the world. It is a strange sensation, those "first dive jitters." But at least I have a working theory about what is going on down there.

Got another dive planned for July 14 and then a big 2 day/2 night "live aboard" trip to Koh Tao (Turtle Island) on August 3 - 5. Stay tuned.

oVo

Depth of Field

2007-06-23T02:28:00.001-07:00

I have a new camera and I have had the same problem over and over - insufficient depth of field (DOF) So I decided to try to figure it out. Here is the result.

Depth of Field is the distance from the focal plane of the camera over which a picture is in focus. With insufficient DOF, sometimes my subject is either out of focus, or partly out of focus. So I did a quick study for myself to see how DOF is controlled with my new camera. If anyone technical is reading this, here are the important specs on my camera. It is a Nikon D200, 10.2 Mpix, with a 17-35 mm f2.8 lense. The lense is designed for a film camera and due to some other techincal stuff, this lense performs like a 24 - 52 mm lense on my digital camera. All the other stuff will be cited below. Remember, I need a deeper depth of field in order to overcome my inexperience as a photographer. That's the goal.

For Scenario 1 I set a pencil on a ruler approximately 30 inches from the camera's focal plane. With my lense, that means the pencil is about 24 inches from the front edge of the lense. I took pics on Apperture Priority with onboard flash. Here are the results

At f2.8 (apperture wide open - pictured on the right here) the pencil is in focus and you can see from the ruler that the pic starts coming into focus at about 26 inches and stays in focus until about 33 inches. That means two things. First, the camera did not actually focus on the pencil at 30 inches. The area around 28 - 29 inches is actually the sharpest. Second, at 30 inches with a wide open apperture, I get a 6 or 7 inch depth of field. That should normally be sufficient but if I am taking a picture of Brenda, her face might be in focus, but some of her hair might be fuzzy. Not good. Of course it depends on the subject being photographed.

The other end of the DOF spectrum is with the lense stopped all the way down, f22 in this case. At this point the apperture is letting in as little light as possible, so shutter speeds have to slow down, but look what happens to DOF. This pic is in focus basically for the entire photo. Nothing is fuzzy.

The other two pics in this series are at F10 and F5 (left to right below). F10 seems to be a good compromise to get sufficient DOF and still let enough light in to get a fast shutter speed.

Scenario 2 is with the pencil at 12 inches, about 6 inches from the end of my lense. This lense is pretty big and you can see that the lense obscures the flash in the forground of the pic (that dark shadow on the ruler.) Big problem for tight shots with a flash, but there are ways to fix this little issue.

First pic is F2.8 (on right) and look how tight the DOF is. The pencil point is in focus at 12 inches, but the 11 on the ruler is blurred. Similarly, the 13 is in focus, but not the 14. If you had a high resolution pic like I have on my computer here, you would see that the DOF goes from about 11 3/4 inches to 13 inches. So I got the pencil into the sharp area in this pic by only 1/4 inch and total DOF was only 1 1/4 inch overall. Not much tolerance in this set-up.

Now look at F22 (stopped down) Again, everything is in focus, even the cup holder in the forground and the banannas in the background (might be too dark on the web to see, but it is clear on my computer.) Nice. The F10 and F5 settings gave similar results as in the 30 inch scenario.

So my conclusion is that with this new, very nice camera, a wide open apperture (f2.8) gives me the fastest shutter speed possible but gives me a DOF of about 10%-20% of the distance from the camera's focal plane to the subject. At 12 inches, I get a 1.2 inch DOF, at 30 inches I get a 6 inch DOF. For pics beyond 30 inches, DOF becomes less important with this lense. So to get my subjects in focus, I need to use Apperture priority more often and try to shoot most of my subjects in the f10- f5 range. If it is a very brightly lit area, I can go to F22 and get everything in the field of view in focus. As I get better, maybe I can start opening the aperture more and reducing the DOF.

fun stuff

oVo

Certifiable

2007-06-23T00:16:00.000-07:00

It has been awhile since I posted here, and that was primarily because I had run out of interesting things to do in Bangkok. I don't want to bore anyone, least of all myself by writing "Went to Burger King for lunch today...." so I have just held off on the posts. But Last week I found something new, at least to me and it turned out to be a pretty interesting week. I got certified as an Open Water SCUBA diver.

To make a really long story short, I studied the book one night and took written tests the next day. Aced them all. The following day I had the pool sessions. No problems there either. And the next day I went diving in the Gulf of Thailand near Pattaya, Thailand. That trip was not so problem free.

Much to my surprise I became quite uneasy as I descended for the first time into 10 meters of wild water. Visibility was poor and I could not see the sandy bottom until I was well over half way down. Of course that means that I also could not see the surface once I was down past 10 feet or so. I have never been anxious in the water, but this experience rattled me. My anxiety was exacerbated by some equipment problems too. My rented bouyancy vest was old and not functioning correctly (it actually sprung a leak later in the day and had to be scrapped) and I had on too little weight on my weight belt. These two things and my inexperience meant that I had a very difficult time keeping myself at the proper depth to stay with my group. My anxiety and the exertion used staying at depth lead to heavy, anxious breathing that used up my air tank in about 45 minutes. They should last a lot longer than that. But my first dive was complete and I was on track for certification. The pic to the right is a black sea urchin. It stings.

During my second dive, I still did not have my weight belt configured properly and I was too light to stay on bottom again. Well, it was actually a couple of things. During this dive my bouancy vest gave up the ghost. It sprung a leak and refused to hold air for more than 30 seconds. It was also too big for me (too fat, not too tall) and would cantankerously hold air in folds when I didn't want it to be there. To make matters worse, this was a skills dive in which I had to do things like flood and clear my mask, ascend from the bottom with no air supply and what not. To do all that I had to be able to stay in position so my instructor could see me. But after clearing my mask for the second time, I had to signal my instructor that I had to surface. I was fighting my bouyancy vest so hard I just could not stay down. We surfaced and added a Kilogram to my belt and went down for more tests. I got them all done, but I was not getting any more comfortable in the water. It seemed like nothing was going well, and I was thinking that maybe this wasn't such a good idea. But the second and final dive for the day was over and I headed to the surface after about 1 hour and 10 minutes on the bottom. Better than the 45 minute first dive.

My dive group consisted of Eleven age 30 something Thais who invited me to spend the evening with them. We went to a Thai seafood resturant where they passed plate after plate of "not too spicy" foods over for me to sample. They all laughed heartily as the expression on my face indicated that some of the dishes were maybe a "little too spicey" after all. We had a good time and I ate things that I have not eaten before. I may have some of them again. Some I may not.

In the morning our group went to a Thai breakfast place for another meal like I have not had before. Thai breakfast apparently focuses on soup. Not what I am used to but it was hearty and satisfied my hunger.

After breakfast, and a quick stop at Starbucks we got back to the boat for the second day of diving tests. I had a new bouyancy vest (that worked) and I had finally found the right set-up for my weight belt so the first dive this day was perfect. I was comfortable and performed all the skills easily, just like in the pool. Finally a good dive that boosted my confidence. Back on track. At the end of this dive we found a nearby coral reef and poked around a little. A fishing net was tangled on the reef and my instructor freed it while I kept back a little and rolled it up to carry back to the boat. I hope the reef is happier now. My instructor got stung a little bit, but she obviously felt that her effort was worthwhile.

A rain squally blew in while we ate lunch and it looked like it would not clear very soon so we took the dive boat to the other side of the island and prepared to dive the abandoned pier near an Island resort. Unfortunatly, I am a big guy and we took nine novice divers into this pretty confined space with very poor visibility. There were lots of fish to see, and corals, sea fans and all sorts of things growing on every piling. But I cannot yet put myself in postion and maintain it very long, so as the instructor would find interesting things, by the time all nine of us tried to get a glimpse of them, I found myself more often than not drifting into something that would sting me if I didn't get myself out of there. Another less than perfect dive, but this time it was just because of my insufficient skills and a group that was too large for the dive site.

Well, I am certified for open water diving now, but I have alot of practicing to do before I am competent. I intend to go back for another practice dive next weekend and hopefully I will be ready for a real dive into clear water with lots to see in August. Might even dive at night. We'll see.

oVo

Hua Hin redux

2007-03-17T09:11:00.000-07:00

We last visited Hua Hin on November 17th... Or at least that is when I posted to this blog about our trip there. Last time, we stayed at the Anantara Resort. $$$$$$ Big bucks per night and a really nice room, but it was a company expense so no big deal to us. We went back this week, again for a business trip and again on the company dime. But this time we stayed at the Hyatt, Hua Hin and I must say it was better than Anantara... And cheaper.

We had a nice enough room overlooking the "river pool" which was a long slender swimming pool about 5 ft deep and ten feet wide that meandered through a lush tropical garden and finally emptied into the main pool.

The Gulf of Thailand is still less than spectacular. About on par with Galveston with brown "sand" beaches that more resemble dirt than sand. But clear water and a bit of surf now and then.

The Hyatt had a nice lawn that was elevated from the beach and littered with lounge chairs shaded by coconut trees so it made for a pleasant place to sit and watch the day pass by.

There were horses for rent, as well as jet skis and wind-surf boards, and in the distance I could see the wind sailors... the guys that use a big kite as propulsion for their surf boards.

I am still waiting for the "club med bikini team" to show up at one of these places, but so far I have only been able to spot fellow geriatrics undoubtably dreaming of their more youthful exploits in days long passed.

This was a pretty good early weekend for us. The snorkling and scuba waters are still about 3 hours south from Hua Hin so I had to make do with a long "sit" for my activity, but it was a nice sit and it made me re-think my evaluation of Hua Hin from November. The night market was more fun since Brenda went there with me this time, and we found some pretty unusual "light Pots" that we brought back with us. What is a "light pot?" Well, I have no idea if that is what to call it or not, but take a look here and imagine a candle burning inside. We got three of these with different height columns. Maybe they'll look good on our balcony. You can see some of the other "crapage" that we have picked up in the background. Don't ya wish you were here to buy some of this stuff????

Hua Hin is a nice place to run to on a weekend. Only about 3 hours South of Bangkok and nice enough to take the trouble.

Brenda is headed to Malaysia tomorrow (Sunday) to help present some technical and managerial best practices for the Society of Petroleum Geologists. When she gets back we'll have to start thinking about out trip back to the good old US in April.

oVo

Krabi

2007-03-11T06:12:00.000-07:00

Our trip to Krabi defies my ability t describe it. Krabi is in the South of Thailand, about a 1 hour flight from Bangkok and about the same latitude as Phuket, its more famous resort town cousin that was devastated last year by the Tsunami.

We got off the plane in the three gate Krabi International Airport and boarded a van that took us about 45 minutes, to the town of Ao Nang and our “Check In” area for the hotel. This is pretty much where the strangeness began. When you check in to most hotels, you are at the hotel, but not so for the Central Krabi Resort. The check-in area is a fifteen minute drive from the “pier” which is another fifteen minute boat ride from the resort. The Central Krabi is accessible only by boat or by foot. More about overland access later.

The resort is brand new, having opened its doors in November of 2006. It is built in an isolated cove protected by massive limestone cliffs on three sides. It is plush with all the normal luxury resort trappings. Similar to what you would expect in Hawaii or the Bahamas. Rooms start at about $1000 per night. Luckily for us, they END significantly lower in cost than that.

The water is emerald green and pretty clear. We were told that another 1 hour boat ride South into the Andaman Sea results in crystal clear water with visibilities in the 150 foot range, perfect for snorkeling or diving. This trip did not allow us to check that out. Maybe next time.

We had read a little about the resort on the web, and we knew about the overland route to the resort. Good thing, because none of the resort staff knew anything about it. On our first night there, we decided to find the trail which is described as a wooden, lighted trail maintained by the national forest service and passing over the headland onto Ao Nang Beach and on into the beach town of Ao Nang. All of that seems to be true except that the wooden trail comprises a 400 foot climb over a ½ mile path. The trail is a series of double 1x4 planks separated by 3 to 5 inch gaps. The steep climb is pretty unforgiving. A missed step could easily result in a sprain or worse if your foot dropped though the gaps in the planks. The path was solid, but off kilter in places that made you pitch forward or to the side unexpectedly. I told Brenda that it seemed like something that kids would build to gain access to their “fort.” But we survived it, and made it into Ao Nang for a pretty nice evening of people watching and dinner.

Ao Nang is definitely a beach town and anyone who has been to Virginia Beach, Galveston, Pennsacola or any of the US beach towns would feel pretty much at home in Ao Nang. Interestingly, many of the signs and restaurant menus were also printed in German. And I was actually approached by a Thai street vendor speaking German to me. I guess I look like the master race. Anyway, Ao Nang is apparently a destination for Eastern Europeans and we saw (and heard) many German and Scandinavians while we were there. We saw almost no Thais except the ones working as wait staff or in the shops. If you didn’t know you were in Thailand… well, you might not know from the people you saw either.

We retraced our steps after dinner, mostly because we wanted to see the trail back to the hotel after dark. It was well lit, but still precarious. Signs along the way warned that we should not feed the monkeys because it would upset the natural balance of the ecosystem. No problem. The monkeys were elsewhere during our visit.

When we arose in the morning, we had a resort style breakfast, a buffet with everything imaginable that cost about $40 for the two of us. So much for getting value for you money in Thailand. Well, maybe it was worth it. If you wanted honey for you biscuit or pancake, you got it from an actual honeycomb dripping slowly into a collection bowl. No bees, just honey. That’s gotta be worth something. After breakfast we headed off to connect with our Kayak tour that we had booked before leaving Bangkok. And so another adventure began.

While the boat that delivered us to the resort was a modern, twin engine fiberglass “seat boat”, the boat that took us to Ao Nang to find our tour was a traditional Thai long boat powered by a 4 cylinder car engine mounted on a pivot point with a 15 foot propeller shaft sticking out the back. To turn the boat, the boatman pulls or pushes hard on the tiller which turns the whole engine and propeller shaft. These are heavy wooden boats in which you can see the ribs and outer planking. They move surprisingly well though the water, but they are very loud. Sitting on the beach you hear what sounds like a constant hum from school bus sized bees, the sound of the long boats.

Another surprise awaited us when the boat beached at Ao Nang, but not at the “pier.” It pulled up to the beach like the landing at Normandy and another boatman ran out to tip the boat over a bit so we passengers could more easily exit the boat into the calf deep surf. With wet shoes and trousers we walked up the beach where we were told to expect a tuk tuk (three wheeled motorcycle) in which we could continue our journey to meet our excursion guide. Hmmmmm. No tuk tuk. But after a few minutes, a “bus” pulled up behind us beeping it’s horn with the driver finally opening his passenger side door to ask us in Thai where we were going. We told him and despite his slightly confused look we piled into the back of the “bus” where we joined eight adults and three school children who were already huddled in bed of the pick-up truck er.. I mean Bus. I swear it was labeled “official bus.”

As Brenda and I discussed the probability of actually arriving anywhere near where we were supposed to be, we reminded ourselves that vacations, like everything else in Thailand are going to be an adventure. As the saying goes, when ordering a meal in Thailand “order what you want, eat what you get.” Same thing for travel I suppose.

But we did arrive where we expected to, and in relatively short order. As we got off the bus, Brenda kept assuring me that “they have our name” so finding the tour would be easy. Well she was right. They had our name, and after walking around for fifteen minutes asking everyone I could find if they spoke English (Khun Phuute Angrit Dai Mai) one of the boatmen responded to our request for “Thailand Sea Kayak” by pointing back up the beach toward a van marked only in Thai and with two young men standing near it. After we slogged our way back to where we were dropped by the “bus” one of the fellows by the van asked if we were who we are. “I am you guide” he said after we confirmed and we piled into the van to begin the next hour in our trip after which we arrived at the Sea Kayak headquarters and began to prepare for the actual adventure part of our day. Whew!

In this discussion, I have tried to convey the uncertainty with which we were met at virtually every turn of this trip. We were never certain about our accommodations or our ability to arrive at the places we intended. Never-the-less we always arrived exactly where we intended, and pretty much at the time we expected. The Thai style of travel was making a mockery of our Type A personalities and US style logistics. What fun.

But from our arrival at the Sea Kayak dock until the end of our trip some six hours later we had a wonderful time. We kayaked through mangrove forests on a river that only three hours before we began our trip had been completely dry. The water we kayaked in had swollen up from the sea with the tide and took us along the edge of the forest and into the limestone caves that pepper the area. Several caves were barely high enough to get through in the boats, but once through they opened into 300 foot shear cliffs that surrounded us bringing to mind the Lost World movies or Jurassic Park. We almost expected a dinosaur head to peek out from among the heavily jungled wall of limestone at any time.

Among the more unusual sights we saw were tree crabs (I named them”tree crabs” because that’s where they were, in the trees.) These crabs make their living in the mud left behind at low tide, but at high tide they evacuate to the roots and branches of the mangroves. A strange sight seeing a crab climbing a tree.

We also saw a monitor lizard sunning itself on a rock and an eagle fleeing our rattling and banging attempts to kayak quietly through the river. But the best part of the trip for me was seeing the 3000 year old cave paintings in the cave of the Big Headed Ghost. There are over 200 cave paintings in the cave and some are in remarkable condition. And some just make you go Hmmmmmmmm. You can see more at my photo album which I have had to move to Flickr because photobucket has just become unusable.

All in all a great trip. We should probably go back.

oVo

Food Poisoning

2007-02-11T00:32:00.000-08:00

It finally happened. I've been laid up since Friday afternoon with a pretty decent case of food poisoning. I guess that is to be expected when there is so much inexpensive and tasty food being prepared and consumed right on the street. I've thought many times that none of these places would be allowed in the US because of health department regulations. It is really amazing to see the cooking pots and even the cups, bowls and plates being scrubbed out right on the sidewalk with the rinse water poured directly into the storm sewar. I guess it's surprising that more people don't get sick.

BUT WAIT! I didn't eat anything off the street Friday. As a matter of fact, I was reasonably busy Friday and I ate very little at all. Hmmmm, let's see if we can reconstruct the day and figure out exactly where the problem lay.

I had my normal "breakfast smoothie" made by Suporn at about 8:00 AM. This is a simple dish made from fresh fruit, usually pinapple or bannana mixed in the blender with ice and milk enough to make it about the same consistency as a milk shake. It's not as fancy as the Smoothie King drinks we have at home, but I have one most every morning and I am pretty sure that it can't result in food poisoning.

After taking care of some normal morning stuff, I headed out to scope out some new places to take Brenda shopping. She has a thing for local items that are unusual for us, so I got her a book for her birthday that has pictures and explainantions of Thai cultural items both decorative/artsy and functional. As the second part of her gift I intended to take her shopping at places that might be likely to have some of these items, but first I needed to find the places. I found them, and while I was out, I had a burger... actually two cheeseburgers, fries and a coke at about 12:00 at the McDonalds at the Amarin Plaza, just down the street from the Erawan Shrine.

I eat out roughly once a day here. I like Thai food, but I am used to eating it once or twice a month, and having it once a day here is way more than I am ready for. So I usually eat lunch out, and usually at a hamburger or pizza place. If they had Taco Bell, I'd eat there too. So I eat out alot, usually in KFC, Pizza Factory, Burger King or McDonalds. Helps keep my unsophisticated palate satisfied. But by 4:00 PM my palate had gone on strike and I was headed for an evening, night and morning peppered with multiple trips to the bathroom, cold sweats and aching joints. Miserable was what it was.

Now I don't want to say that my McDonalds sandwich purchased and consumed at the Amarin Plaza Mcdonalds was the cause of my lost weekend, but it is the only thing I consumed except for a fresh fruit smoothie that day, so you be the judge.

So what people told me before I came here is still true. The street food is safe, cheap and good. Too bad they didn't tell me to watch out for Ronald.

oVo

More About Driving

2007-02-05T04:52:00.000-08:00

I don’t drive every day here. Maybe if I did I would get used to it sooner. One interesting side affect of driving on the wrong side of the road is that it’s not just the stuff outside of the car that is wrong sided.

You can spot one of us newbies in the parking lot as we habitually head for the “driver’s side” to unlock the door. Once we realize we are on the wrong side of the car, we have to pretend that we are being courteous by opening the door for our wives. In the unfortunate event that we are alone, we have to either put our package on the passenger seat, or if we don’t have a package, we have to pretend to look for something under the seat and then smile as if to say “finally found that darn thing.”

Once out of the parking lot, you’d think that things would go a little smoother. Well, maybe. If you approach intersections slowly, you are not only driving like every other Bangkokian, but you allow yourself extra time to make sure you look right, not left for that approaching traffic. But extra time is not the only thing you need as you transition to left side driving. Everything that is on the left in your car is on the right in mine. And all on the right is… well you can guess.

It doesn’t seem like a big thing and some of it isn’t. The console with the gear selector is on your left here. No big deal. You always have plenty of time to find it and put the car in gear while you recover your dignity after opening the wrong side of the car to get in. But Blinkers are real interesting.

You use your blinkers a lot to alert other cars to your intent and to give motorcyclists who split lanes on both sides of every lane at least a small chance of surviving the day. But if you drive on the right, your blinkers are on the left side of your steering wheel and the the windshield wiper controls are on the right. So while my head is on a swivel and I am trying to find the right road and make sure no one is splitting a lane in the direction I want to turn, I reach to signal my turn and there go the wipers (swoosh.) Just turn them off right? Nope, too much going on. The car is still moving and bikes are still lane splitting, the turn is approaching and now the wipers are “swooshing” on a perfectly clear day and I am sure that everyone in Bangkok has received an instant message on their cell phones to tell them to “Look, another farang tryng to drive.”

Today after I turned on my wipers therby signalling my turn, I entered a parking lot and rolled down my window to get the parking pass I said “sawadee krap” to the attendant as the wipes went "swoosh." He smiled and said “sawadee krap” (swoosh.) As I (swoosh) drove away from the (swoosh) booth I could not for the life of me(swoosh) find the off position (swoosh) for those wipers. I did manage to find the(swoosh)(skreek) position that (swoosh)(skreek) turns on the (swoosh)(skreek) back window wiper (swoosh)(skreek). I finally gave up until (swoosh)(skreek) I got the car parked (swoosh)(skreek). As I looked around I saw five (swoosh)(skree… there it is) people looking at my car and smiling. I felt like such an idiot. My consolation is that the only way they would know is if they had at some point done the same thing themselves. Well, at least that’s what I am telling myself.

The picture here is a typical turn. This one happens to be a U turn but it is the same for any right hand turn here. Wait for a gap and then hit it. The amazing thing is that this happens millions of times every day and you almost never hear a horn in Bangkok. Everyone just waits.

oVo

Say CHEESE

2007-01-29T05:14:00.000-08:00

Our ship has come in, literally. Four months ago when we arrived in Bangkok, one of the first orders of business was to locate a reliable supply of......... well.... Cheese.

Brenda LOVES cheese. She loves Mild Cheddar most, but she also enjoys anything with Velveeta and her favorite snack is Cheezit crackers. She doesn't just eat stuff with cheese on it; she eats the cheese straight up, right out of the package. She stops short of gnawing it off the stick; she always makes dainty little slices but often there are no crackers or vegetables involved at all. Just Cheese.

I think most of the folks that read this BLOG know Brenda, but just in case there is someone thinking that she has to be as big as a house and shaped like a cheese wheel, let me assure you that her contract with Victoria’s Secret as an underwear model would never allow such a thing.

Anyway shortly after we arrived, we found what we thought was a store that carried Kraft American Cheese slices and Cracker Barrel cheddar cheese. We were set. We bought a couple of things and made our way back to our apartment. The next week when we went back..... WHERE IS THE CHEESE? All the store had was Thai cheese and Thai's don't like cheese. If you have ever eaten a meal cooked by someone who doesn't like to eat then you can imagine how bad cheese is when it is made by people who don't like to eat cheese. It is bad. Even their best cheddar has the color of Swiss. It is pale and not at all tasty. I predict that Thais will never like cheese if this is all they ever get.

We have been checking the cheese store pretty regularly ever since to no affect. We have developed some alternative sources for imported cheese that costs accordingly. So we have been getting by, but tonight our ship came in. Somewhere in Asia a ship literally came in loaded with cheese and some of it showed up at the store down the street. We were there tonight to pick up some Triscuits and on a whim Brenda went by the Daily Food aisle. Yes, I said Daily Food. You would know it as Dairy Food but we are in Asia. You figure it out. Suddenly while I was trailing Brenda at a respectable distance as husbands shopping with wives are known to do I hear an exclamation "CHEESE!" And as I rounded the corner there she was, standing mesmerized by the sight of, not just a little, but a LOT of Kraft and Cracker Barrel packages all eagerly waiting just for us.

We loaded up what you see in the first pic above while carefully checking expiration dates and mentally calculating how many days our supply would last making sure to neither under nor over-buy and made our way to the checkout counter.

Right now you should be wondering something like "Hmmmmmm if cheese is so hard to come by, I bet it's expensive too." Right you are Sherlock. You are looking at $52 worth of “American made gold” and by Brenda’s reckoning you could double the price and it wouldn't matter. All told tonight, two boxes of Triscuits, the Cheese, one jar of Salsa and a medium size bag of M&M's cost 2,843 baht - almost $80 and it all fit in two small grocery bags. Remember, you can eat every meal here cooked to order for about 30 Baht (less than $1) but not if you want farang food. Isn't Asia wonderful.

Oh, one more thing. When I went back to the grocery store with my camera to take the "Daily Food" picture, I also noticed this unusual pairing on one of the aisles. Proof that a sign doesn't have to be in Thai to be surprising here.

Say Cheese!

oVo

Oozing in Bangkok

2007-01-27T23:51:00.000-08:00

Longtime readers of this BLOG know that we have had some difficulty with our driver here in Thailand. For those of you who are new readers, or who want a refresher on this issue, you can go to the archives for October 05, 2006 to see my post that day.

"Fred" is no longer with us. The consensus of opinion regarding his voluntary departure was that he did not appreciate being watched so carefully. He enjoyed his "freedom" to use his employer's vehicle for his own purposes and the fact that we clamped that down on his second day of employment stuck a bit in his craw. Does anyone know what a "craw" is? I don't, but the cliché works well for now.

Anyway, we have a new driver.... let's see... we'll call him Jack (not his real name.) So far Jack has been a good driver. He shows up on time, is courteous and has not even once disappeared with our car. That's good. So we have decided that even though we pay Jack about the same amount of money that we paid Fred for the same level of service (24 x 7) we would try to make Jack's working life a little more bearable than we made Fred's.

The first thing we did was to install Brenda into the Bangkok public transportation system for roughly half her commute. Brenda works long hours leaving our apartment at 6:30 AM every day and returning between 6 and 9 PM with most days hitting the magical 12 hour work day. For our driver who has to commute to our apartment and back, a 12 hour work day for Brenda translates into a 14 to 16 hour day depending on traffic. So to provide Jack with a more reasonable schedule, Brenda takes the car to work and then sends Jack back to check with me to see if I need to go anywhere. Usually I don't and Jack gets to go home after about 4 hours.

The second thing we did was to give Jack most weekend days off. We rarely go anywhere on Saturday that we can't get to on the Sky Train, and on Sunday we mostly just go to church and then relax around the house. So on Sunday's I have begun driving to church myself. Today was my first day.

Now, I know that you folks in the US are saying to yourself "So what, he drives a car... big deal" or something like that. I admit that it is going to be hard to explain exactly why that is a big deal, but trust me for a bit.... it is.

Driving in Bangkok is sometimes described as "oozing." A few years ago, before the BTS (sky train) was operational, the average car in rush hour traffic moved 600 meters per hour. Do you remember your high school track that encircled the football field. That was 200 meters. Another way to think about 600 meters per hour is that it is about 4/10 of a mile PER HOUR. You can walk at 3 to 4 miles per hour so BKK traffic was ten times slower than walking.

It's not quite that bad these days.... not quite. But it is still crowded and the driving habits from those days persist. Specifically, if there is room for a car to squeeze into a gap in traffic, there will be two cars trying to do the squeezing. And in between the cars there will be motorcycles splitting the lanes of moving and non-moving traffic every instant of every trip. The only place were motorcycles can't split lanes is on the expressway (toll way) where they are not allowed at all - ever.

So driving in Bangkok requires a deft foot on both gas and break pedals. It requires really excellent rear view mirrors and absolute diligence on turn signals both the ones you give, and the ones you really must notice that others are giving. And most of all, it often resembles oozing like the cars are molecules of lava moving slowly toward the sea more than the 70 mph nominal speeds that we are used to in Houston.

To make matters somewhat more challenging, at different times of day, and days of week an East bound lane may become West bound. And what is normally a two way street can become a one way street, and an overpass may be off-limits to the type of vehicle you are driving or to a vehicle with fewer than three passengers in it. And the signs that announce these changes are well… not there. Or if they are there, they are in Thai, or symbols that are not meaningful to a foreigner. And the Royal Thai Police are ever diligent to write traffic citations because the standard practice here is to pay your "fine" on the spot... in cash. Hmmmmmm. The good thing is that the "fine" is usually negotiable. The bad thing is that if you are a foreigner, they assume that you are rich and can afford the maximum "fine." One friend tells a story that he got stopped for going over an overpass that was restricted at that time of day to vehicles carrying at least three passengers. He was on his way to play golf with two sets of clubs in the car and somehow convinced the Police that he couldn’t pay the fine. “You are speaking to a poor man my friend” was his shtick and somehow it worked. He got out for only 100 Baht. Most foreigners pay 1000.

So with the stage set, I headed out this morning for our drive to church, my lovely wife safely ensconced in the passenger seat with a steely determination not to kibitz my driving evident on her face. She did well too. Not until we got all the way home did she say "Did you see how close your passenger side mirror was to that truck and that other car?" Yes, I saw it. Maybe a one inch clearance I reckon and I was pretty proud of it.

After safely making it to church, I decided to ask some advice on the route back home since the signage is not always clear to me. I asked some of my friends at church "Can I make a U-turn on Sukhumvit to get back home." Laughter erupted and snickering continued as the men gathered to give advice that ran the gamut from taking back roads and parking lot shortcuts to paying a toll and driving 20 miles out of the way just to avoid making a right hand turn (left turns are the easy ones here because they drive on the wrong side of the road.) After five minutes listening to road names that made no sense to me, I decided to just go home the route I had seen Fred use dozens of times before he quit.

I did have a little side excursion in mind for the trip home and broached the topic while heading back. I didn't quite get the idea completely stated when Brenda interrupted saying "NO LET'S JUST GO HOME NOW." She may say she didn’t speak in all CAPS, but it sounded that way to me.

All told, our little drive was 15 kilometers round trip, about 9 miles. And it took twenty minutes per leg to do it. We got no traffic tickets, had no wrecks and even parked in the same spot at our apartment where Jack left the car on Friday.

I can’t wait until next Sunday.

oVo

New Years Eve Fireworks

2006-12-31T10:50:00.000-08:00

What a great time.

From our apartment, I could see no less than a dozen separate fireworks displays. The longest lasted more than 15 minutes and the closest was right outside our North balconies. I mean RIGHT OUTSIDE.

These pics are not great because I was running back and forth from our North balconies to our South depending on what I heard going on. I took the pics I could, but I didn't stop to adjust exposure times or f stops. Still I think they give you an idea of what it looked like here at midnight.

Happy New Year - 2007/2050

oVo

New Years Eve Bombings in Bangkok

2006-12-31T07:09:00.000-08:00

CNN is reporting that bombs have exploded in Bangkok this evening at about 7-8PM our time. They say that 4 explosions have occured and 12 people were injured. Brenda and I were not near the bomb sites nor do we expect to be.

We have cancelled our New Years Eve plans and are now safely ensconced in our apartment well away from any revelry.

With only 2 hours to go before New Years, the terrorists would love to claim credit for our current predicament, cooped up as we are in our home, but the truth is that we have ushered in every year since we have known each other in this exact same fashion. HA!

Happy New Year!

oVo

Fish Sauce

2006-12-27T23:24:00.000-08:00

Finally a discussion on this BLOG that might be useful to someone who reads it. I am primarily thinking of my dad who is an adventurous eater and who pretty much wants to visit us in Thailand for the food. I imagine his greeting at the airport going something like this “Hi son, where’s Brenda?” followed quickly by “What are we having for dinner tonight?” But some of the others of you might also be able to use this entry to spice up your next Thai or Chinese dish, or maybe even a taco or burger. Use it instead of salt and apply it after all cooking is done for best affect.

There is another blog that discusses the making of fish sauce in detail. That is, they discuss making the sauce in the bottle that you buy at the store. But I suggest that you refrain from reading it if you are the suggestible type, or if something someone says has the ability to put you off your appetite. The sauce is good, but the process of making it from raw materials may be a bit much if you think milk comes from bottles or that chickens don’t have feathers. Never-the-less, here it is if you are up for it.

But the trick for making good fish sauce is in what you do to it after it comes out of the bottle, so I asked Suporn (our maid/cook) to take me through her modifications. Turns out they are so simple that I can’t believe she actually showed me rather than laughing out loud while informing me that she simply can't work for anyone as stupid as me any longer.

Pour about a quarter cup or so of good quality fish sauce into a bowl. Good quality sauce should be reddish/brown and clear, not cloudy. I'm told that good brands in the US are Tra Chang and Golden Boy. Cut up two or three of those tiny, 1 – 1 ½ inch chili peppers into tinier slices and add them to the sauce. Use both green and red peppers so your sauce will be pretty as well as tasty. Mash up a toe of garlic and add that too. Drop in about ¼ tsp of sugar and squeeze a quarter or half lemon or lime (to taste) into the mix. Then stir it all up for 30 seconds or so. Take a taste and you will find that you have made a salty and peppery-hot condiment that tastes great on just about everything.

Don’t use a lot on your food especially at first because depending on the peppers you use it can be HOT. I put less than a half tsp on an entire dish of fried rice. Brenda uses about a tsp. but she likes things saltier than I do. The sauce is high in sodium and is the primary salt substitute in Thailand so don’t mess around if you have high blood pressure or anything else that makes salt a no-no. But it is very high in protein and wonderfully healthy otherwise.

Use this recipe as a starting point and play around adding some this or some that to get your blend exactly like you like it and keep some in the fridge. Suporn says it’ll keep a week without refrigeration and I expect that is a very conservative estimate. Most Thai houses don’t have refrigerators so the sauce is kept on the shelf in 90+ degree heat most of the time. But make small quantities often so you can experiment. It doesn’t take long and even if you aren’t an adventurous eater you will enjoy the flavor it adds to your favorite dishes.

oVo

Spring Roll II

2006-12-26T02:33:00.000-08:00

Here is the pic of the "un-cooked" version of the spring rolls. It turns out that some of the ingredients are cooked, but the final assembly is simply rolled into the wrapper and is ready to eat. Compared to the fried version, the wrapper is different, the ingredients are different and the sauce is different. Other than that, it's all pretty much the same.

Suporn promises to make me a chocolate pie tomorrow. Yumm

oVo

Sa-ping Roll cooking lesson

2006-12-25T04:52:00.000-08:00

Unlike most of Thailand, Brenda had today (12/25/2006) off for Christmas. So it was an unsual day when both Brenda and our Maid/cook, Suporn were here at the apartment. To take advantage of this unusual alignment of the stars, Brenda decided to ask Suporn for a Thai Cooking lesson. She wanted to learn how to make Spring Rolls (Suporn pronounces it Sa-ping Roll.) I have no idea what went on in the kitchen, but there was giggling and laughing along with note taking and even some actual cooking.

I tried to get Brenda to give me her notes so I could share the recipe with you, but it is now a closely guarded secret.

These rolls really are good. You can tell from these pics that these are the fried version which we generally think of as Egg Rolls, but tomorrow they are making the version that doesn't get fried and has only vegatables in it. The food continues to be pretty good around here. No Christmas turkey or ham, no sweet potato casserole, but somehow I didn't miss it much.

Don't forget that you can click your mouse on these pics to get a larger version or you can go to the Food section of my photo album.

Merry Christmas to everyone!

oVo

Chiang Mai

2006-12-23T21:23:00.000-08:00

Chiang Mai is about 400 miles North/Northwest of Bangkok. Wednesday morning we hopped on a Thai Air flight and voila, an hour and about $200 later we hopped off at Chiang Mai International Airport. A few Baht after that, we closed the door on our cab at the River Ping Palace, a genuine antique (about 150 years old) Teak House situated on the banks of the River Ping, just south of the city.

If you have ever stayed in a bed and breakfast type lodge, you know that they are unpredictable in their “atmosphere.” The Palace is no different. Being an old teak house built in a country without meaningful building codes, we were not surprised, but we were concerned when climbed the slightly off-kilter stairs and entered our darkened room at about 2:00 PM. Was that sunlight streaking in from the many (many, many) cracks, gaps and outright holes in the walls and ceiling? Did I say ceiling? I’m sorry, there was no ceiling, just a roof, a teak roof that glowed in spots as the wood had merely deteriorated in some spots allowing a sort of back-light affect. We were thankful as we realized that we had arrived during the dry season, but our imaginations wandered to the monsoon season each time we caught a new glimpse of our perforated shelter.

Our adventure continued to mature as we listened to the conversation in the next room as if we were looking the speakers in the face. That acoustical magic played out over and over as guests arose in the morning or settled in for the night and continually as the traffic roared by on the main road just outside the Palace’s property lines. From the sound in our room it seemed that the traffic was routed just past the foot of our bed. Honestly it seemed less like the other guests and trucks were audible in our room, and more like there was an amplifier piping the sound in at higher than realistic decibel levels.

But since lodging in this B&B is apparently intended to stimulate all the senses, it was necessary that something be done for the tactile sense. What could be better than floor joist framing intervals that allowed each step made most anywherer on our floor to be transmitted directly to our bed frame resulting in a step wise undulation whenever any guest moved about their room. Not just when Brenda and I moved around, but when ANY guest moved around ANY room. Ahhhhh, what a relaxing time we had. On the morning after our arrival I joked with Brenda and some fellow guests that “it takes all night to get a two hour nap here.”

But these accommodations, lacking in fit and finish as they obviously were, almost faded into insignificance in the face of the service and other features of the Palace. The food was more than excellent. It was superb. And it was prepared and served with the utmost care by the proprietor and staff who paid close attention to our preferences. The first question that our host asked when she met us was “Is there anything you don’t eat?” I responded with my now trusted “Faces and Feet” disclaimer while Brenda mentioned curry. As a result I can report that none of our dishes featured faces, feet or curry. Quite an accomplishment in this part of the world.

The written menu was complete with offerings of fish, fowl, pork and beef, but the best choice was usually something not on the menu that happened to suit the taste of the owner and chef. “Whatever is good and fresh” seemed to be the driving force behind the culinary decisions at the Palace and none of us were disappointed with the meals and snacks that seemed to appear organicly rather than as a result of a request. And as noisy as the rooms were, the outdoor dining area was surprisingly quiet and peaceful, and a fine place to dine, relax and chat with fellow guests. Well, enough of the Palace, on to the trip.

On our first full day we headed up country to the Maesa Elephant Camp where more than a dozen elephants ranging in age up to about 36 years old live and work with their full time mahouts (trainers/caretakers.) Brenda and I are a little leery of these animal shows since they can easily succumb to poor conditions and suffering animals, but Maesa has proven itself over years. Each elephant has its own individual mahout who is completely responsible for the animal's well being. The elephants seemed happy and as if they enjoyed their “work” entertaining tourists in three shows daily. Each show is preceded by “bath time” which was clearly “play time” in the river that flowed along the property edge. After the bath, the behemoths did tricks, played soccer and harmonicas (not at the same time) and painted original works of “art.” These guys and girls are pretty serious about their art. Maesa holds the Guinness book of Records title for the largest elephant painting in the world. Each show ends with a crew of four Goliaths stacking a wall of 20 meter long half meter diameter logs by working together as a team. Impressive. Take a look at http://www.maesaelephantcamp.com/ for more about this special place.

We also took in the Royal Flora Show, which covers over 5 acres south of the city with floral displays from 30 nations on five continents and contains more than 2.5 million plants. You will see from my pics that my favorite area was the orchid pavilion. Spend some time looking at these flowers. They are amazing.

Each town in Thailand has a night market and we visited the Chiang Mai market on our first night (why not, we couldn’t sleep.) It seems like they have pretty much the same stuff at all these markets, but they are fun and provide endless people watching opportunities. I get to practice my limited Thai language skills and sometimes we find a bargain or an unusual item. Take a look at Brenda’s “antique tea pots.”

We also took a night cruise on the River Ping which included dinner aboard a teak long-boat and we were particularly pleased to be able to enjoy that trip with two of our friends from Bangkok who were also in town (but not with us) and two new friends that are here on a “no reservations” vacation from Canada.

You think you are adventurous? HA! Our new friends, Mike and Stacy got on an airplane headed toward Bangkok from Edmonton, Alberta with NO RESERVATIONS for hotels anywhere in Asia and they did it in the PEAK TRAVEL SEASON. I’d call ‘em crazy except that they were having such a good time bouncing from one hotel to the next as rooms became unavailable here and available there, that it seemed like a completely reasonable thing to do. And as we got to know them we soon realized that this type of trip isn’t even all that adventurous from their perspective. Mike has over 2400 skydiving jumps and he and Stacy used to own and operate a skydiving and bungee jumping operation in Canada. Now That’s Crazy!!! Just kidding Mike and Stacy (but not really.) We are looking forward to Mike an Stacy stopping by to spend a night or two with us when their adventure nears its end around January 5 as they mosey through BKK headed back to the frozen North. When we left them today, they were searching the internet for a place to go next. Wonder where it will be?????

So what’s our take on Chiang Mai and our “Christmas Trip?” In spite of getting almost no sleep (did I mention that each of the bed springs in our mattress left a separate and semi-permanent indention in our backs?) we had a really great time. Some of the credit belongs to the hospitality at the Palace, some to the exotic locale and a heaping helping belongs to the friends that we met and made on this “Interesting” mid-week break.

This last pic is me and Brenda setting our fire balloon free. It's supposed to make wishes come true and such, but for me it was just cool. There is a sort of half toilet paper looking roll that we set on fire and the hot air propels it up pretty high. There are a couple of pics of it leaving in my photo album so check it out.

oVo

Suam-Lum Night Bazaar

2006-12-02T07:01:00.000-08:00

We took in the night bazaar this evening. There are several, but the big one is adjacent to Lumpini Park and it's called Suam-Lum. Pretty nice. You recall that we have also been to Chatuchak weekend market, the world's largest open air market. Well Suam-lum is cooler (because it is at night) less crowded, and has better quality stuff. It has no plants or flowers, and no live animals (pets) but if you want Thai silk, clothes, a fake Rolex or fake Gucci purse this it your best bet. Seriously, if you are a family member and you get a Rolex from us for Christmas, it is real. I swear, it is real.

We had fun walking around for about three hours and in that time we felt that we saw most of the market. In any case the offerings are not as diverse as Chatuchak so even if we missed something we probably saw someting else almost like it. And once you get bored with the merchandise, the people watching is still a lot of fun. There were lots of Farang in various stages of aculturization. Most were answering the polite Thai merchant's greetings with "HOW MUCH IS THIS?" in a voice clearly too loud for the situation. It is obviously a well known fact that if you are talking to someone that does not speak your language, it helps to speak you own language LOUDER!

We did well on the few items we purchased tonight. I am getting better at recognizing and using numbers in Thai and I have found a few phrases that reveal my vast knowledge of the Thai language. Of course I am kidding about that last part, but I did do well with the numbers and when I reacted to a high price with "paeng maak" (very expensive) the combination of my flawless Thai and the pained look on my face invarably resulted in a lower price..... and a giggle from the Thai.

I hope you are all enjoying your Christmas shopping as much as we enjoyed the market tonight. It is still 90+ degrees here every day so I think our hopes for a white Christmas may be dashed. Never-the-less we are thankful that this time of year is set aside to celebrate the birth of Jesus who loved us before we knew Him and came to die that we could live.

Before I go I wanted to let you see the "sup pen ak pie" that our maid cooked this week. Some of you may recognize it as quiche, but our maid insisted that it was "sup pen ak" pie. After three or four tries to get me to understand, she stormed over to the counter in a huff and grabbed a handful of fresh spinach (sup pen ak) and waved it at me like a green fist. Communication remains a daily challenge here, but the pie is always good.

oVo

Pak Chong District

2006-11-26T02:30:00.000-08:00

This weekend, we took a short trip Northeast of Bangkok to the Pak Chong District where we found the Phu Pimarn Resort (poo pimon) nestled in the mountains. Our plans to walk in the nearby Khao Yai national park were thwarted by the rains that peppered our day, so we hung out in our room waiting for the rain to stop and the corporate dinner that brought us there to begin.

The dinner event was something to see. We've been to a few of these now and the consistent feature of all of them is VOLUME. They have great sound systems in Thailand that provide a low distortion experience no matter how much they crank up the decibels. This night's event was a variety show entirely in Thai so my evening was spent people watching and trying to keep count of the Thai words that I could pick out of the entertainment. Still we made a productive evening out of the whole thing by chatting with a couple of expats and some very gracious Thais that stopped by to translate a little for us. One of the Thais explained that of the three people pictured here, one was a famous male Thai rock star, one was a very good female singer and the third was another guy. Can you find the two men in this pic? Gives a whole new perspective to the “Where’s Waldo” game.

The garden area of the resort is very well done. Lots of folks were out taking pictures when the rain subsided. I took a few myself, and one that I labeled "the end of Eden" shows the edge of the property in its more natural state which provided a striking contrast from the manicured plantings on site. You’ll have to go to my photo album if you want to see that one.

On our way home the next day we stopped by Farm Chokchai an 8000 acre dairy farm that is the largest in Southeast Asia. In addition to their farming operations, Chokchai has a thriving tourist industry in which they offer tours of the farm including the dairy, ice cream factory, feedlots, pastures and "genuine wild west show." The tour was surprisingly long. Even though we started our trip at 9:40, we didn't finish until noon. Now that's a long time to ride around a farm.

We made it back to Bangkok in time to clean up and head out for the annual St. Andrews Society Charity Ball downtown. An evening full of kilted men and ~~Irish~~ Scottish dancing kept us out until 2:00 AM during which time we were befriended by Duncan. Duncan chatted us up and asked us how we were enjoying Thailand in a heavy brogue that has survived his nineteen years living in Bangkok. He was hilarious as he told us about his kilt and admitted that he would never dress that way in his native Scottland, but that here in Bangkok it felt perfectly natural.

Such are the characters that find us as we stumble about this strange new world. Take a look at some pics at my photo album, but don't expect any of the ball. For some reason I neglected to take my camera, a mistake that I will probably not repeat.

oVo

China Town

2006-11-23T04:19:00.000-08:00

Houston has a population of 4 million, give or take. New York City is around 9 million. Bangkok is between 9 million and 13 million at any given time, so I don’t know what in the world I expected as I ventured into Bangkok’s China Town today.

I told my dad that I’d look for some model railroad stuff for him. Derek, my friend that I went with said that we needed to go look at the flower market which he has seen and says is amazing. I saw neither trains nor flowers but did I ever see…….. well you be the judge. Take a look here and see if you are ready to hit the mean streets of Bangkok’s China Town. I know I’ll go back. Will you?

oVo

What's in a Name?

2006-11-20T23:46:00.000-08:00

Here's a unique concept. Everyone in Thailand that has the same last name is related to one another. And not only are they related, but they generally recognize each other at family reunions and such. Coming as I do from the "land of a million Smiths," this is a seriously strange idea for me.

The topic came up today as my language teacher asked me what I am doing tomorrow.

"Prungnii kuhn gamlang ja tham arai?" she said, which litterally means "tomorrow you will do what?"

"Prungnii phom gamlang ja len golf." I replied revealing my plans to play a round of golf.

"Ahhh" she said. "Cheu khon len golf gap arai?"

"Phom gamlang ja len golf gap Kuhn Derek," I said easily providing the name of my playing partner and thinking to myself "Well this is going quite well."

"Ahhh, Kuhn Derek," she repeated, and then "Naamsagun kuhn Derek arai?"

This turned out the be the critical question because Derek's last name (naamsagun) is Anderson.

"Khun Derek naamsagun Anderson," I uttered at which time Noi nearly exploded in a frenzy of activity searching her lesson materials and finally producing the name of one of her other students, Ian Anderson. And then she proclaimed "They are related!"

You and I know that such a relation is unlikely, but to a Thai it is a very simple matter. Same last name = related.

From time to time I run across someone with my same last name and we are never, ever related, or at least they don't admit to it. But here, if you meet someone named Joe, Fred, Bob or Mary, if their last name is Chuanarong, you can bet your last Baht that they are related to my Thai teacher. Isn't that amazing? Or maybe I'm just easily entertained.

oVo

More Shopping Woes

2006-11-20T04:20:00.000-08:00

I have previously mentioned the difficulties associated with grocery shopping in Bangkok. It was the subject of a rant not very long ago. Today, I have a similar rant, but on something so mundane that you just can't believe the difficulty I've had.

Our maid is typically Thai. By that I mean she is honest to a fault (unlike Fred, our driver) dark haired and...... short. So I decided that a step stool would be a welcome addition to our household tool set. She could use it for all manner of chores I reckon, but little did I know the difficulty I would have in finding a simple step stool. Just to relieve the obvious tension that you must now be feeling, let me tell you in advance, I still do not have a step stool despite an entire day spent searching.

Ok, it might not have been an entire day. I spent the morning in a workout (6:30 AM - 8:00 AM.) Then I watched Monday Morning Football. You know MMF better as Sunday Night Football (SNF), but all the world is perspective and from my perspective it's MMF. But right after football, and at the stroke of.... oh..... about 11:42 or so, I struck out to find a folding step stool.

I figured it would be an easy find, and set out to not only get my stool, but to enjoy the day as well. With these two goals in mind, I headed via BTS to the Siam Paragon shopping mall. This is the place that has a Lamborghini dealer on the third floor. Porsche, BMW and Ferrari as well. When you are a guy and have to shop, it helps to have such a warm and inviting environment.

I had a leisurely lunch at the Paragon. For this day I chose a new Thai tradition, Burger King. Let me just say this about Burger King in Thailand.

Thais are a beautiful people. I can't really evaluate the men, but the women here are definitely above average looking. They are all petite with glossy straight hair and big happy smiles. (OK, not all of them but enough to make this point) But the folks you see at Burger King are on a radical departure from the Thai norm. If ever there was an in-situ case study on the affects of American Fast food, the McDonalds and Burger Kings in Thailand are that study. As I ate my Whopper (super sized) I couldn't help but notice that everyone in the restaurant except me was FAT! How in the world does something like this happen? Not only are they all Thai, but they are all FAT and I am the only one in the restaurant that is normal for my race. Go figure. All I can say here is "Run Thailand, run."

After my lunch and requisite Buuuuuuuurp.... I continued looking for a folding step stool in the largest, most upscale shopping center in Bangkok (and Southern Asia.) No luck.

So I walked about a half mile to Central Chitlom department Store. This store was my "sure thing." I have been here many times and I was certain that I would walk directly to the folding step stools nestled securely on the fifth floor near the mops and brooms and what not.

Oooops. No stools. At least no folding ones. Everyone here has the non-folding plastic stoolsbtu they take up too much room and I want a folding one. Our apartment is not that big after all.

Well now I am at a loss. I had previously looked at Tesco Lotus, the Wal-Mart of Thailand. Tesco has no folding step stools. So I headed toward home resolved to check every hardware store I found on the way.

I am home now having checked all those stores. I still have no folding step stool. But undaunted, I will continue my quest..... maybe after Tuesday Morning football.

oVo

Hua Hin

2006-11-17T07:41:00.000-08:00

The Anantara Resort in Hua Hin Thailand is a true resort. It has accommodations to rival anywhere that I have ever vacationed which is even more surprising given that it is in such an out-of-the-way place. There are reasons to visit Hua Hin. At least the King thinks so. His beach palace is located only a couple of miles down the beach from Anantara.

But “beach” must mean something different here than at home. You would more likely consider this beach a seawall. Only at low tide are you able to see more than a very few feet of sand, and then only in a few select places. Never the less, the Gulf of Thailand is accessible at Anantara, and like most resorts they have ample space around their two pools to accommodate those who prefer a less salty dip.

Hua Hin itself is a confusing place in that I couldn’t find much of anything in the town that was interesting. The main street though town is six lanes, but the traffic did not seem to warrant such a large thoroughfare. And as beach towns go, it wasn’t particularly well developed for the purpose. It was just another Thai town with some tourist areas, and a night market with plenty of folks looking to relieve you of your Baht.

There are some good seafood restaurants along the waterfront, and lots of tourist oriented shops like in any beach town. But for me, there just was not “difference that makes a difference” in this town. Oh well, it was still a nice weekend for a Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

I took a quick trip to the Pa LA-U waterfalls about an hour and fifteen minutes drive from Hua Hin. It was a nice trip that offered a casual walk through the forest alongside a small river.

Pa La-U has two falls, the minor and major falls. The major falls is about 25 to 30 feet high, which gives you a pretty good idea of the minor falls. Still, it was fun to do the hike and get off the beaten path. I was with two friends and we had the place all to ourselves most of the time. But after we had been there an hour or so a small tour group showed up to help us enjoy the trip.

Several of the girls in this group were not at all amused by the hundreds of carp that have grown familiar with the tourists who bring fish food with them to the falls. My fishing techniques were crude, but I got my hands around several of these fish. Happily for them, they are all still safely huddled in there schools awaiting the next group of tourists and their handouts.

You can see a few more pics a my photo album.

oVo

Language Barrier

2006-11-14T00:46:00.000-08:00

Apparently there is no Thai word for "Copyright Infringement." It's not quite the Orange and Black, and I don't think Mr. Harley or Mr. Davidson would recognize their names, but the Bar and Shield is definitely..... well.... not authentic.

But for 200 Baht (bargained down from 280) I couldn’t resist this “genuine” HD shirt found at a street vendor in Bangkok today. I asked my maid to read it to me and she faithfully sounded out ‘Haree Davidsun” across the bar, and “Moto Cycuh” on the shield so I got the real deal and for only $5.41 US.

oVo

Packing

2006-11-12T20:59:00.000-08:00

We had no idea how to pack clothes for our time in Thailand. We knew that it was generally hotter here than in Houston, but there area places in the North where we might vacation or take weekends that get cooler, or even cold. But the thing that I have learned while here for the past six weeks is that you really don’t need very many different clothes, at least that is, if you have a maid.

Each day I kick my dirties off into a corner of the bedroom. And each morning, our maid scurries about doing her this and her that and among those things is the laundry. The result is that every day, everything I own is clean and ready to wear again. If I were so inclined, I bet I could get by with two of everything, one to wear and the other in the laundry. Can you imagine a closet with only two empty hangars in it each day? Then about half way through the day the hangars get re-populated with your shirt and shorts while the unmentionables are tucked neatly away in a drawer. It might be boring to wear the same thing every day, but it is absolutely doable.

So my advice to anyone headed this way is to be conservative on your clothes. The closets are small, and you really don’t need much anyway. Bring enough to provide some variety, but multiple pairs of jeans for instance is just a waste. Bring some shorts, some lightweight jeans (it is hot) a few tee shirts, some golf clothes and some dress clothes. But you don’t need three blue shirts and four pair of jeans. You certainly don’t need a lot of suites because it is a rare occasion when anyone here wears them. Well, maybe they wear them to work. I wouldn't know anything about that.

oVo

Haircuts and other exotic things

2006-11-09T22:25:00.000-08:00

Before I talk about haircuts, I want to mention that I've played golf here twice and I really like it. You have the option of using a golf cart here, but we walk. Why not, we don't have to carry clubs, everyone uses caddies.

The caddy fee is usually 250 Baht (about $7) and we tip another 200 Baht. So let's see; A caddy can make two rounds a day if they are lucky. They get 170 Baht from the 250 fee and the entire tip. So on a good day they can make about $20. If they work 7 days a week, these ladies (all the caddies are ladies) can make about $7,200 per year max.

I assume that like the US, they stand to be taxed on some of this income, but not the cash portion. Did I mention that the caddy fee must be paid in cash? So the most generous estimate possible still has these ladies living on less than $12,000 per year Gross (before tax) US equivalent. Actually a pretty good living here, but can you imagine working for that in the states? OK, you can if you are a teacher can't you!!!! But remember teach, for the caddy to do that well, they have to walk two rouds a day 7 days a week 52 weeks a year, and with obnoxious Farang no less.

The caddies do add a lot to the round. On my first hole yesterday, I had a 12 foot putt to sink for par. My caddy said "Sawng barr qwa." So I aimed two balls to the left (Sai) of the hole and it broke two balls right (qwa.) In it went. If I could have done what she said to do on every putt I might have only putted 18 times that day.

On another hole, a 170 yard par 3, she handed me a 7 iron. I looked at the hole, and then at her. After a bit, I said "hok" so she handed me my six iron. I still felt I was misclubbed too short, so I took a mighty swing. The ball bounced once on the BACK of the green and stopped in the rough about 30 feet from the pin. As I handed my club to my caddy, she quietly said "seven." The rest of the day I hit what she handed me, no matter what.

Golf is a hot sport here. The daytime temperatures in November seem to be pretty consistent at 89 - 91 Degrees F. There is always a breeze and that helps, but after a few hours walking in that heat, I get farily drained. The result is that if I want to score well, I had better do it on the front nine because I have played significantly worse on the back side both times I played.

So golf is fun, and different than in the states. And there are plenty of places to play, so when you come to BKK, bring your clubs, and your umbrella to shield you from the sun.

Now for haircuts.

You'd think a haircut is a haircut wouldn't you. Especially when the hair is like mine, cut 3 mm from the scalp leaving only a trace of its former glory. But in BKK it too is a little different than you'd expect.

The haircut itself takes about the same amount of time as in the states, and it costs about the same. But after they cut your hair here, they take you back for a shampoo. Still nothing special right? Well remember that my hair is 3 millimeters long and try to account for a shampoo job that takes longer than the actual cutting. I got lathered up three times, and creame rinsed once.

Each treatement was several minutes long and included what I can only call a full scalp massage. After awhile I just closed my eyes and almost took a nap. I can't imagine that I have enough hair to justify such a washing, but it was kinda nice. And this wasn't at a spa, or fancy salon. It was just a barber shop that I found near our apartment. I wonder what they do in the many, many spas that are all over the place here???

oVo

Mail - snail, pouch and e

2006-11-06T20:46:00.000-08:00

We were very concerned about mail delivery before we came to Bangkok. We get a lot of financial mail… bills and such with account numbers on them and we felt that an enterprising crook could gain access to some important information if we didn’t get our mail handled properly. I think we might have been right. We haven’t had any problems, but we have seen plenty of indications that problems could occur.

We have only received a couple of paper mail pieces in Bangkok mail. Both have been greeting cards from family members, and both had been opened. One had been opened very cleanly as if it was steamed open. The other was less artistic and more of a brute force effort. I am reasonably certain that someone along the long chain of mail handlers was hoping for some cash. Lesson – don’t send cash in the mail.

Solutions – pouch mail:
Many companies provide “pouch mail” for their ex-pats. In these systems, your US mail is sent to a central address in the US by regular USPS. Then a company mail room sorts it all and packages into “pouches” to be sent directly to the employee at their overseas office. We haven’t had too many problems with pouch mail, but we have had a few.

We have received almost none of our magazine subscriptions. We did get my motorcycle mag, but Brenda’s chic mags are almost all missing in action. What does this mean? Is there a guy in the mailroom that understands how important it is to get good quality Harley-Davidson information while abroad? Or is it a chic that doesn’t care to steal my mags, but latches onto Brenda’s like a crab trying to avoid the boiling pot? And what’s the big deal on magazines anyway? First, we paid for them, they are ours and we want them. Second, US magazines over here are phaeng jangloey (sooooo expensive) and difficult to replace.

We have also had some mail ripped open in the pouch mail system. It’s hard to say whether or not it was opened on purpose or not, but it was opened to an extent that would have allowed it to be extracted and read.

Pouch mail takes a long time too. About the same as mail sent to our BKK address. Both seem to take an average of ten days. One package sent by a friend took 21 days to reach us by pouch mail. I figure it would never have gotten here by regular mail.

Solutions - E-mail
So what do you do about all this if you are coming to live here. Well, here is what I did. I converted ALLLLLLLLLLLLL of our financial accounts and bills to electronic delivery. I get NOTHING related to finances in BKK. Not by pouch mail, Not by regular mail. Just plain old NOT AT ALL. I also send nothing financial out of BKK via mail of any sort. It all goes electronically via internet. That makes the internet very important here. Luckily, our internet is pretty reliable and pretty fast. I have heard no complaints from any ex-pat about internet so I guess it’s pretty good all over the city.

I also forwarded any mail that could be sensitive to a trusted relative. The quantity of this mail is small because most sensitive stuff has been converted to electronic and not duplicated on paper mail. So now, about once a week I get a note from my family that we got some sort of envelope and do we want them to open it. Most of the time it is something that I know about and I know what is in it because I have already gotten an electronic message about it. But sometimes it is something I don’t expect and I get them to open it and tell me what is in it. Every now and then, I have to get them to send it to me in pouch mail, but when that happens, I ask them to reinforce it with good packing tape so it will be harder to “accidentally” open while in transit.

That’s our mail situation. Feel free to send a letter. Don’t get anxious for a response because I won’t see it for awhile. But don’t send cash. You can just buy me something nice next time you see me instead.

oVo

Loi Krathong

2006-11-05T18:16:00.000-08:00

Loi Krathong (kra-tong) is a festival held here in Thailand during the full moon of the 12th lunar month. Apparently that happened last night because Loi Krathong was held at the river and in waterways all over Thailand. Even some hotel swimming pools are used to carry out the rituals.

The central idea of Loi Krathong is to float little boats made of flowers and adorned with candles and incense on the river. They really look more like centerpieces for a nice dinner, but in this case they are offerings.

From what I gather, the festival was originally secular and was to celebrate the harvest, but from the demeanor of the participants, some have incorporated some religious aspects in their evening.

Some Thais tell me that the festival is to thank the river for its life giving water. Some say it is to thank the river for not flowing out of control and drowning everyone. Some say it is to make offerings to the river goddess (or water goddess) and others say it is to release all the bad things in your life into the water to be carried away forever. The most interesting reason I was given was to apologize to the river for all the pollution that they put into it during the previous year.

To witness this festival, two of our ex-pat friends and I headed toward the river tonight using the sky train as our transportation (40 baht round trip.) After we found the river, we crossed on a ferry boat (3 baht one-way - remember there are roughly 37 baht to the dollar) and found a Chinese restaurant on the river that we could get into without reservations. We got a pretty good table with some pretty good waitresses and enjoyed a buffet style dinner while waiting for dark.

As dusk came and went, river boats decked out for dinner cruises headed away from their docks, and more and more people crammed themselves onto the limited waterfront. Prayers were offered and offerings released. Dinner was consumed and music was enjoyed.

Whatever the reason for the festival, the river and its canals around BKK are crowded and fun places to hang out on this festival evening. Most folks seem to just have fun releasing their offerings, but some are quite serious and make long prayers on their knees prior to the release.

The big winners, as in the US are the merchants and restaurateurs who jack up prices to outrageous levels and undoubtedly make several months worth of profit.

Oh! Did I mention that we had great waitresses?

oVo

Lettuce Wraps

2006-11-03T00:45:00.000-08:00

One of our favorite meals in the states is Chicken Lettuce Wraps at Pei Wei Asian Restaurant(in Houston.) Since we like it so much, and since we are now in the land where the lettuce wrap is said to have originated, we thought we'd get our maid to cook it for us sometime.

Hmmmm. She had never heard of Lettuce wraps. So I started asking around and found that none of my Thai friends or aquaintances have ever heard of Lettuce Wraps. As a result, I no longer believe anything I read about a dish on a menu. It's all just marketing. But I don't really care because the wraps really are good.

So I searched the web until I found a recipe and proudly brought it to our maid. She looked at me like I was from the moon. I quickly realized that maybe my Thai maid has as much difficulty reading English (Angrit) as I do reading Thai. So I mobilized my small network of new friends over here and found someone who could translate from Angrit to Thai (in Bali Sanscrit.) I thought you might enjoy this recipe too, so here it is. Let me know how it turns out.

ไป่ไว่ไก่ห่อผักกาด (Chicken Lettuce Wraps)
เครื่องปรุง
เห็ดแห้งชิทาเก (Shiitake) 8 ดอก
แป้งข้าวโพด 2 ชัอนชา
เหล้าเชอรี่ 2 ชัอนชา
น้ำ 2 ชัอนชา
เกลือ และ พริกไทยป่นเล็กน้อย
เนื้อไก่ล้วนไม่มีหนังและกระดูก ½ กก.
น้ำมันพืช 5 ช้อนโต๊ะ
ขิงสับละเอียด 1 ชัอนชา
กระเทียมสับละเอียด 2 กลีบใหญ่
ต้นหอมซอย 2 ต้น
พริกแห้ง (ไม่ใส่ก็ได้) 2 เม็ด
หน่อไม้ฝอยกระป๋อง 1 ถ้วย
เกาลัดกระป่อง 1 ถ้วย
วุ้นเส้น ห่อเล็ก 1 ห่อ
ผักกาดขาวจอ 1 หัว

ซ้อสปรุงไก่
ฮอยซินซ้อส 1 ช้อนโต๊ะ
ซีอิ้วขาว 1 ช้อนโต๊ะ
น้ำมันหอย 2 ช้อนโต๊ะ
เหล้าเชอรี่ 2 ชัอนชา
น้ำ 2 ช้อนโต๊ะ
น้ำมันงา 1 ชัอนชา
น้ำตาลทราย 1 ชัอนชา
แป้งข้าวโพด 2 ชัอนชา

วิธีทำ
แช่เห็ด ½ ชม. ในน้ำต้ม แล้วนำมาตัดก้านแข็งทิ้ง ซอยละเอียด
เทส่วนผสมซ้อสปรุงไก่ทั้งหมดในชามคลุกให้เข้ากัน แบ่งออกมาเพื่อใช้หมักไก่แล้วเติมเกลือ และ พริกไทยป่น ใส่เนื้อไก่ คนให้เข้ากัน เติมน้ำมันพืช 1 ชัอนชา คนให้เข้ากันแล้วหมักไว้ 15 นาที

ตั้งกะทะให้ร้อนใช้ไฟปานกลาง ใส่น้ำมันพืช 3 ช้อนโต๊ะ ใส่ไก่ที่หมักไว้ลงผัด 3-4 นาที ตักขึ้นพักไว้ เติมน้ำมันพืช 2 ช้อนโต๊ะ ใส่ขิง กระเทียม พริก ต้นหอมคนให้เข้ากัน 1 นาที ผสมเห็ด หน่อไม้ และเกาลัด ผัดให้เข้ากัน 2 นาที ใส่ไก่ที่ผัดไว้แล้ว เติมซ้อสปรุงไก่ที่เหลือไว้ ผัดให้เข้ากัน ชิมรส
วุ้นเสันนำมาลวกน้ำเดือด แล้วผึ่งให้แห้ง นำมาจัดบนจาน แล้วเทไก่ที่ผัดเสร็จลงบนวุ้นเสัน ตักวุนเส้นและไก่ลงบนใบผักกาดและห่อพร้อมรับประทาน.

oVo

Thai Broom

2006-11-01T01:59:00.000-08:00

When is a broom worthy of a post on a blog? I guess when it is a Thai broom, and the blog is about stuff I've never seen before.

Our maid reported for duty today, right on schedule. There is no telling how long it takes her to get here. She lives North of Bangkok, near the old airport, maybe 20 miles from here. But she makes the trip on busses and managed to arrive ten minutes early, despite having to call to get our exact location.

Once she got here and settled in a bit, she started puttering around cleaning first this, and then that. After awhile, she needed a broom and asked me if I had one. This question came as something of a surprise because she was holding our broom at the time. It is a Yellow wooden handled broom with yellow synthetic bristles. I'd take a picture, but you can just look in your utility room and see one almost exactly like it in your house.

So I responded "That is our broom." And she said "No, Thai broom. That's OK, I Buy." And sure enough, she went out for dinner ingredients and came back with dinner and a Thai broom.

This thing is remarkably effective. The bristles are made of hundreds of stems from some sort of grass. They are soft and conform to every nook and cranny. It is very light too when compared to a western broom. And operation is a one handed affair, leaving your second hand free to pick up stuff, or carry a dust pan. Pretty nice.

She cooked us dinner too. She'll do this every night. Tonight is Thai food with Khaw Phat Gai and Dum Yum Guun. That's Chicken Fried rice and Dum Yum soup with Shrimp. It's waiting on the stove for Brenda to get home now. Pretty soon, we'll dig in.

oVo

Banking

2006-10-27T10:31:00.000-07:00

This is another of those posts directed at any potential ex-pats that are reading this blog.

Banking in Thailand is not difficult. It is not scary nor is it un-secure. We set up a checking account here with cash that we brought over on our first trip. It is a little difficult to set up initially because you have to have either a long term work permit (which takes a couple of months) or a letter from an employer that is trusted by the Thai government. Luckily, our employer is trusted.

Once it is set up, the Thai checking account works pretty much like the ones in the US, including on-line banking that is accurate and very fast. I can purchase groceries two blocks from our apartment and log in to our local bank website when I get back to the house and the debit will be there. Amazing. (There are a couple of things you need to know about checking here so e-mail me if you are coming this way.)

But the problem with banking over here is that US companies insist on paying salaries in US dollars and crediting them directly to accounts held at US banks. They are not at all happy or even willing to send some of the salary in Thai Baht to a Thailand bank. So what you have to do is set up a wire transfer from your US bank to the local Thai bank so you can pay your bills. No big deal, except that with the anti-terrorism legislation that has come about recently, US banks are under increasing pressure to report and prevent cash transfers from the US to "unknown places" around the world.

What I did was to go to my local bank branch in the US and set up a standing wire transfer that was to occur on the same day each month. It turns out that no one will do that though. They said “If you are kidnapped or killed overseas, the transfers would continue forever and the money would be going ‘who knows where’” To this I responded “KIDNAPPED OR KILLED?????????”

Anyway what I ended up with was a paper file at my US bank with all the necessary authorizations to allow the transfer to occur upon e-mail notification from me. Certain key words must appear in the email, and nothing regarding the source or destination accounts can be changed except in person so it’s really a pretty secure system. Even if someone forges my e-mail, they can’t send money anywhere except From me/To me.

The first transfer worked perfectly. It actually occurred within a few hours of the request at my US bank. I was able to verify it on line with my Thai bank. Cool. Now that it is time to do it again however, I hit this huge brick wall that is entirely understandable, and entirely human, but also entirely unacceptable.

As agreed in advance, I sent an e-mail to a half dozen employees at my local branch. That e-mail was to initiate a response from at least one of the bank employees to transfer money from my US bank to my Thai bank. So how did it work out? Poorly! I got a response from the bank to "call them on the phone."

WOW, I wasn't expecting that. Calling from Thailand is a little unpredictable and I was hoping to avoid this method of communications. I e-mailed my US bank to remind them that they have a file with instructions on this systematic transfer and I also fired up my overseas phone to try and get in touch with them during their normal working hours (my normal sleeping hours.)

It took six calls, most of which did not go through, and a very difficult conversation over a spotty connection to get my primary contact at the US bank to recall that we had set this all up over a month ago and that she has a file on it. Once she remembered the set-up, she pulled the file and agreed that the transfer was legitimate and she would carry it out as discussed. I can only imagine how difficult this would have been if I had sent the e-mail one or two days earlier. You see, my primary contact, the only one with any direct recollection of the conversations or the location of my file was on vacation until TODAY!

I understand everything about this event. I understand my contact's forgetfulness. She only deals with about 200 people a day and it has been 45 days since I talked with her. I understand the regulations on banks that prevent them from transferring money helter-skelter around the world. I even understand the US Company’s reluctance to "direct deposit" to our Thai bank. But man-o-man does it all add up to a major headache for us ex-pats.

Well, I think it will all work out soon. If not...... Mom......Please send cash.....

oVo

Grocery stores

2006-10-25T05:12:00.000-07:00

You can buy most anything on the street in Bangkok, especially when it comes to food. Fruit stands abound, along with vegetables, meats, flowers and breads. But it can be a hassle for a US ex-pat to meander around the various street markets and shops collecting grapes here, pineapple there (fruit shops often specialize), lettuce at a third shop... on and on until you end up at the bakery for bread and finally a small grocery for milk. Tiring is part of the issue, but just finding everything is the major difficulty.

So it would seem that a supermarket would be the answer to this day-long dilemma. Yes, it would seem so, but it is not. Thais simply don't like the same foods as we do. I love fried rice, so why can't they love a nice burger? Well, they don't. Fair is fair though, I've decided on a few Thai dishes that I will avoid as well.

So I went to the supermarket today. I chose the largest and deepest discount place I know, which is Tesco-Lotus. Tesco is the Walmart of Bangkok. Tesco has a large grocery department along with an interesting array of household appliances, TVs, tools, furniture, CDs, and I don’t know what else. It is a big store, and they have stores all around BKK. There are three within easy striking distance of our apartment. So with all this variety, imagine my surprise as I failed to find paper plates. PAPER PLATES for crying out loud! But then it struck me. What in the world would a Thai do with a paper plate? Most of their dishes are more suited to bowls, and not of the paper variety. Thais love noodles and noodles are a wet dish. So I left Tesco without even looking for Cheezits (Brenda's favorite snack) Thais don't like cheese either so searching for a cheese cracker seemed to be a waste of time after I realized they didn't have paper plates.

Right about now is when some lady reading this blog is saying to herself "Why doesn't he just ask someone where to find paper plates?" That is a second problem that permeates every errand here in The Land of Smiles. Do you know the Thai word for "Paper" or "Plate"? And if you do, do you know if the proper syntax is "Paper Plate" or "Plate, paper?" I happen to know that "Plate, paper would be the correct choice, now if I only know the correct words, and which of the five "tones" in which those words should be uttered. "Five tones" you say. Oh sure. There is the middle tone, low tone, falling tone, high tone and rising tone. Some people tell a joke that "Mai mai mai mai mai" is actually a sentence if you say each "mai" with the proper tone. I don't know about that but I don’t doubt it either.

How's this for an example I do know. Glai with a falling tone means "to be near." Glai with a middle tone means "to be far." Bothe rhyme with “Thai,” and in each, the "L" is more-or-less optional. Remember that Orientals have trouble with the letter "L" so some pronounce it and some don't. And some pronounce it as a sort of jumbled "r."

Ok lady, do you still think I should ask where to find Paper plates?

I did leave Tesco with about half of my shopping list. Bread is easy to find, eggs, milk, even yogurt are most everywhere. But for paper plates, I headed to the next level of grocery store in BKK and that is Tops. Tops is not large, and it doesn't have everything a westerner will want, but it has a lot and it is relatively inexpensive.

For example, Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes were on my list and Tesco did not have them. Thais, you see don't eat breakfast cereal either. But Tops has it and they are called "Frosties." They also have "Cocoa Frosties" and a small variety of other breakfast cereals at a fair price.

Fruit is also cheaper at Tops. Cheaper even than some of the street vendors. I bought some grapes at a street side fruit stand a few days ago and paid 300 Baht per kilo after being assured that the grapes were seedless. Keep in mind that I know neither the Thai word for Grape nor the word for "seedless," but if I did, I would certainly ask for "grape,seedless". Not only were my grapes not seedless, but they were also not cheap as
Tops. At Tops, I found grapes of the same basic variety, clearly labeled in English "Seedless Grapes - 150 Baht per kilo." So I overpaid on the street, but again in fairness, the seeded grapes are sweet and excellent.

It also turns out that Tops has paper plates, but what Tops does not have, and never will have is Cheezits. For that you have to go to a store that caters to Farang. In fact, any cheese product is likely to be found at only one of two places in Bangkok. The first place is Villa supermarket. They, like Tesco and Tops are all over town. Unlike Tesco and Tops, I find them very expensive. Notice that this comment is in the form of an opinion rather than an outright statement of fact. You can interpret this any way you like. Just remember that I am from the US where Lawyers get elected to Congress so they can right the law so other lawyers can make millions of dollars presenting law suites all over the country.

The other place that carries cheese products is Carrefour. Carrefour is a French supermarket, so I assume that their cheese will be very good. There is not one near us, so I haven't been yet, but if Villa ever runs out of Cheezits I am certain that I'll have to go. Hmmm, I wonder if French supermarkets consider “Cheezits” Food?

There is one other supermarket that folks talk about and that is Big C. I can’t say much about them as I haven't been there yet but they are supposed to be like Tesco.

UFM is another small chain that cateres to Thai (not Farang) and Food Town is supposed to be cheap, but is it hard to find one, at least in my corner of BKK.

So if you are shopping in BKK, Try Tesco, then Tops, then Villa or Carrefour. And if you are looking for an apartment, you might want to see what sort of supermarkets are nearby. If all you have is a Villa, be prepared to overspend on groceries every time. But at least you'll find what you want.

oVo

Adventure Cruise

2006-10-24T06:49:00.000-07:00

A lot of the stuff that amazes me about bangkok would amaze me in any big city I suppose. The mass of tall buildings, the traffic, the crowds and the availability of almost anything you can imagine within the distance of a 15 minute sky train ride.

But today the trip I had been hoping to have an opportunity to make finally presented itself. I had to go somewhere that the sky train did not go, and neither did the subway. Busses go there, and so do taxies, motorcycle taxies and of course, our driver Fred. But I had wanted to take a Klong Boat and this was the perfect trip to do it.

A Klong, is a canal and Bangkok has plenty of them. Klong boats are probably 40 feet long, skinny and diesel powered behemoths that ply the waters of Bangkok delivering passengers all over the city.

Our apartment is about 1/4 mile from one that runs parallel to Petchuburi Road to the North, and Sukhumvit to the South. I walked to the canal and waited about 5 minutes for the boat. It was really an uneventful experience, except that I learned a few things that you have to know if you ride the boats.

First, you have to know how far you are going before you get on. The fare is dependent on how far you ride, unlike the busses, and it's not that easy to figure out how far you are going. There is no map, at least not a good one that shows the boat stops. So you kind of have to guess at what to tell the guy that collects the fare. Oh, and collecting the fare happens after you get on the boat and it is underway again. I don't know what they do if you can't reach an understanding. Do you think they still have "Planks" to walk in Asia?

On this trip I called ahead to ask which stop I should use. That brought up the second problem. On my street (Thong Lor) there is a sign in English showing where you are. I used this single point of reference to deduce that all the stops have sign that I can read. Ooops. I didn't see another sign that I could read for the whole trip. Maybe there were there, but I looked and looked and didn't find them.

Luckily, I also knew what my destination looked like, and after a few stops I saw it. All excited, I hopped off the boat at the very next stop, right across the canal from where I wanted to go. Unfortunately I got off one stop too soon. That was the second problem. On my street (remember - my single source of information) there is a bridge over the Klong so you can cross over. Not so at my disembarkation. As I watched the boat pull away, I looked around for a way across the canal and realized I had probably made a mistake. It turned out to be a mistake that required a 45 minute walk to the South, then West, then back North to get to a main street that crossed the canal. Oh well, I told you it was an adventure cruise......

I walked my way out of difficulty, as I have done so many times before since arriving in BKK, and completed my business at my destination. I made my way back to the Klong, this time at a stop that let you cross the canal if necessary, and hopped aboard the next boat that came by in the right direction. Fun day. Total cost - 20 Baht round trip (54 cents)

You can see from the pics that a lot of Thais use the boats. They are reliable, relatively cool and fast compared to busses. If you sit in front of the engine, they are reasonably quiet and smog free, and they are much faster than any method of over the road travel (taxis, busses, cars…) due to the lack of competing traffic. Most of the Thais were on the boat when I got on, and still on it when I got off. I surmise that these boats are generally used for long distance travel, and they do traverse the city from East to West along several lines of Latitudes. A few canals go North to South, but not nearly as many as the E/W paths.

I'll do it again, but it will take a lot more planning than I gave this trip. Now I have to figure out how to plan with no map….

oVo

The Grand Palace

2006-10-23T07:15:00.000-07:00

We took a trip across town to the Grand Palace today. We spent about an hour and a half walking the grounds and seeing many of the religeous areas, including the Emerald Buddah. Statues abound in this country and there is no shortage of folks to worship them, but the Emerald Buddah is one of the more famous ones here. The other big ones are the Gold Buddah and Reclining Buddah. We haven't seen those yet.

Photographs are not allowed inside the Wat (temple), but I managed to get this one after I left the building. Being 6 foot 5 inches tall has its advantages. I turned the flash off so I wouldn't disturb the folks inside and lifted my camera as high as I could to get the snap. The little green guy is the Buddah. He is about 40 feet in the air on a shrine and he looks very tiny from where we were. The statue is carved from a single piece of Jade, but I guess Jade Buddah doesn't sound as good as Emerald Buddah.

Take a look at my photo album here. We took about 30 pics today. Take your time and notice how ornate everything is. I tried to get shots of the buildings, but also some close shots that capture how much effort went into everything on this site. There are also some cool trees that have a black bark and are hard as a rock. They either grow slowly or they have been treated like Banzi trees. I don't know which.

Finally as we left, Brenda saw some people selling bamboo and paper umbrellas on the street. She wanted one so I walked over and gave them my best "An Nii Thao Rai?" The little Thai woman sized me up pretty quickly and said "Ha Roi Baht."

"Ha Roi," I said. Then "Ha Roi" to myself as I tried to get the answer sorted out in my mind. And finally "HA Roi?????? No no no no. Mai Ha Roi" as I started to walk away. She wanted 500 Baht for this thing that I had figured at a humdred or so.

She quickly stopped me and said "How much you pay?' I said "Roi Baht, Neught Roi Baht" (100 baht - about $3) She said "OK" right before her daughter said "Roi Ha Sip" (150). I gave the lady a 100 Baht bill and she happily handed me the umbrella. Brenda loves it, and I'm enjoying being able to work out simple negotiations with these folks. It's fun.

oVo

Phang Jangloey

2006-10-22T12:07:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's 2:00 PM in Houston, which means that I am up at 2:00 AM Bangkok time. It's not really a problem because tomorrow is a Thai holiday (Oct 23 Chulalongkorn Memorial Day) so we don't have to keep to our normal schedule. As a result, I decided to stay up and watch NFL footbal LIVE instead of delayed by a day or so.

Normally, I get Sunday night football during my Monday morning workout, and Monday Night Football during my Tuesday morning workout. But since we can play it free and easy tomorrow (today) I am watching the Steelers and the Falcons in real time. It is not only a pretty good game (currently 21/24 PIT) but I end up with the raw feed here. No cuts to New York for the tedious commentary by NFL "has-beens" for me. While you are watching that, I am watching the uneditted cameras in the stadium searching for the "local color" shot that will make the next sequence memorable for the TV audience. I think the color commentators are aware that we all all watching here because the commentators are amazingly PC (politically correct) while you are watching commercials and what not.

Anyway, we took another trip to Chatuchak (Jatujak) market this weekend. It was pretty much like our trip last month (see the archives on this blog) but we found some amazing wood carvings. The pic here is an example, but take a good, close look at the pics in my photo album here for more. Don't rush. Look closely and slowly. You will be amazed as we were.

Other than that, it has been just another weekend in BKK.

Anni Thao Rai? Phang, Jangloui!!! Lot DaiMai? Mai Dai???? Mai Pen Rai.

(How much is this? Ohhhhhh so expensive!!! Can you discount? You can't????? No problem.)

oVo

Lot DaiMai

2006-10-20T02:45:00.000-07:00

My education continues here in the land of smiles. This week, I found a still cheaper way to ride the sky train which normally costs between 15 and 45 Baht to go most places. But if you purchase a 30 dayx30 trip pass, each trip is only 20 baht no matter how far you go. The catch is that the pass expires after 30 days so any unused trips are not refunded.

The real lesson this week was "Lot DaiMai." "Lot" (rhymes with boat) is the Thai word for "discount." "DaiMai" (Dai and Mai rhyme with Thai) means "Can You" so Lot DaiMai means "Can you discount?" The merchant may respond "Mai Dai" meaning "I can not" but I have yet to hear that phrase. Even in a department store today (similar to Dillards in the US) right before I paid for my merchandise I uttered "Lot DaiMai?" and was rewared with a 20% discount.

On the streets it is even more important to know these simple words. I bought a little bundle of flowers that were priced at 300 Baht. After the magic words I walked away having paid 220 (27% discount).

So now I can eat lunch for less than a dollar a day, and I can buy flowers and other essentials at a discount. If I could only get the ongoing problems with our overpaid driver solved, life would be even better.

oVo

Pollution

2006-10-19T02:53:00.000-07:00

It's weird living in a heavily polluted city. Keep in mind that there are between 9 million and 13 million people living here and many get to work and home via electric sky train, subway, diesel busses, motorcycle taxis and other relativly efficient means of transporation. Never-the-less, Bangkok is a heavily polluted city.

After only two weeks here, we have stopped noticing most offensive smells like exhaust fumes and sewar gases unless they are very close. And we have quickly learned to appreciatte the smells wafting up from the food vendors on the street. All day every day smells like an exotic BBQ.

But the thing I have not adjusted to yet are the visible indicaions of pollution. Today (Oct 19) is a relativly clear day with a hot, bright sun. But unless you look almost directly upward, there is little evidence of a blue sky. Some white cummulus clouds can be seen, but they sort of merge into the bacground whiteness of the horizon rather than standing out from a field of blue. The pic of the sun shown here was taken at 4 PM with the smallest iris and fastest shutter speed my camera allows. Still, there is no obvious entity of he sun, but a mass of light hidden and diffused by the haze.

oVo

Back in the Saddle

2006-10-18T04:03:00.000-07:00

It has been five days since I posted to this blog. You, my faithful readers have every right to say to yourself "What the heck is going on with Mike?" Notice, you should say that to yourself... not necessarily to me.

Here is the deal. We moved from the hotel into the apartment last Saturday. In the hotel, I had gotten into a groove. I knew the neighborhood and was comfortable with the means and methods of getting around and accomplishing the things I needed to accomplish. But when we moved, it was like I was once again in a whole new world. Even though we are only five minutes drive from the hotel (assuming reasonable traffic) there are very few people here who speak engish. Lots of people speak Japanese. It turns out that the Japanese International school is near here so there is a natural attaction for those folk in this section of town. There are also no shopping mallls and there is no meaningful public transportation. I had become so dependent on the sky train (BTS), now that I am a 25 minute walk from it, I felt crippled.

But today, I got all that solved. Another ex-pat called and wanted to go to the driving range. I didn't know where to find one, but he did. It was a thirty minute walk to the BTS and then one measly BTS stop East to the range. But what I learned will set me free.

It turns out that my apartment complex is also the residence of the owner of the building. He lives two floors above us. And when he got ready for a new Mercedes, he retired his old one (maybe five years old) to service as a shuttle from the aparment building to the BTS, free of charge for all his tenants. My thirty minute walk is now a 5 - 10 minute drive so I got to the driving range in about 15 minutes. Pretty cool.

I also rode my first cross town bus today. I don't have a route map yet, but Bus route #25 goes East/West down Sukhumvit all day long. Miss the bus? Wait five minutes, there will be another #25 along pretty soon. As #25 appoaches the bus stop, hold out your hand to let the driver know you want to ride. He will stop....well, pause until he knows at least one of your feet is on the bus, and then he'll take off again. Don't start thinking that I am kidding here. My left foot was on the bus, and my right was barely off the curb when the bus took off today. And herky-jerky only begins to describe the driving style, but as you scramble for a handhold, a nice lady who never heard a word of english that made her mad (or that she understood) will hold our her hand and you will put eight Baht (22 cents) into it. She will then hand you a receipt and you are welcome to stay on the bus all day. The non-airconditioned bus.....The BTS is nicer, and maybe faster, but the bus is great for going places in between BTS stops.

So I got back around town today, and maybe now I'll work my way out of the dumps that accompanied having to learn a new neighborhood for the seoond time this month.

Hey, ya wanna see our new personal chef? This guy cooks whatever you want on the corner of Thonglor and Soi 19 - I can almost shout my order down from our balcony.

oVo

Moving Pictures

2006-10-13T08:28:00.000-07:00

We went to the movies tonight. More interesting than the movie we saw was the place in which we saw it.

The Siam Paragon is a 15 (or so) screen theater with five screens being something called "Ultra Screens." The regular movies in this place cost 180 Baht, but the movies in the Ultra theaters cost 600 Baht per person.. Less than $20 but still more than three times the regular price.

I really didn't notice much special about the screens. They are the old fashioned BIG screens, as opposed to the tiny screens you see in many of the multiplex cinemas in the US. But inside this normal size (big) theater is seating for just twenty couples. Each pair of seats is set ten or more feet from the nearest neighbor, and each seat is an electrically adjustable recliner. OH, and the seats are not the whole story.

When you arrive the ticket taker turns out to be your personal concierge. He seats you in a lounge and offers you a dizzying array of drinks that are (of course) included in your ticket price. In the lounge, you wait a minimum of 5 minutes, but really as long as you want to wait if you arrive early. One lady was getting a Thai massage. This is not an exageration, she was getting a massage in the movie lounge!

We arrived basically on time, so we got just the minimum lounge experience, but they seat you in the lounge even if you arrive a little late for the movie. You sit. Get a drink and some cookies and in a few minutes, they escort you to your recliner to enjoy the previews and eventually the movie.

Before you get too comfy, your concierge kneels at your feet and opens a sealed bag containing a pillow and a blanket. He hands you the pillow and covers you with the blanket before asking if you require anything else just now. Warm and comfy, you settle in to watch the flick.

It was really something. Too bad you missed the flick. What was that movie anyway???

oVo

IT City

2006-10-11T03:21:00.000-07:00

I went on a mission today, to find and purchase a hair dryer for Brenda. Some fun huh; old, bald headed, white guy running around Bangkok not speaking the language, but trying to find a hair dryer. What do I do, point at my head and pretend to dry the non-existent hair? Lots-o-laughs.

Anyway, I decided to check out a place I had heard of called IT City. It is about Â¼ city block with a five story building dedicated to computers, electronics and software. Strictly speaking, a hair dryer does not actually belong in such a place, but I was going on a hunch.

Entering IT city is a hazard. A tall Farang (remember we are "rich and naïve ") is immediately set upon by hoards of hawkers especially if he is wearing a Harley-Davidson Tee shirt from Shepherds HD in Houma, LA.

"Software sir, you want software?" "DVD" said another and yet another "Sexy DVD sir, you want sexy DVD." Even if I did want "sexy DVD" the demeanor with which these guys approached me would have kept me away. Like a little Satan close enough to whisper in my ear one guy finally took a risk with his well being when he put his hands on me to make sure I knew he had "Sexy DVDs." Upon being touched, I turned and let the fellow find himself so close to me that all he could see was my shirt at about belly button level. After that, I had no trouble from him or anyone else. I had tried to handle these guys by maintaining my pace and avoiding eye contact. That would have worked in the states, but here they are more tenacious and more annoying. I finally learned to make eye contact as soon as possible and wave them off from afar. After that they kept their distance and my wandering became more enjoyable.

After making it through the entrance and the welcoming committee, I slowly made my way around the place, taking it all in. Shop after shop offered everything from blank media (CDs, DVD, etc) to ink cartridges, or even just the ink. Components including mother boards, memory cards, processors, every imaginable PCMIA card and USB device, along with complete computers that, from the logo looked like Michael Dell had put them together himsdidn't only they didnÂt look like any DELL I had ever seen. The cases were smaller but thicker than the ones they use in Texas. Hmmmmm. Cameras, printers, you name it and it was there and at a variety of prices.

Given as I am to wandering off the beaten path, I found myself way in the back of IT city where the pic here was only one of the "re-packaging" operations I saw. Brand new computers were being systematically removed from their factory packagingcouldn'tomething (I couldn't figure out what) was being done to them and they were being put back in the boxes and sealed. What could it be that they were doing? Not sure, but all over IT city there are shops that specialize in crates of pieces-parts sitting on the floor in various stages of un-packing. I saw power supplies, disc drives, memory cards and the mundane things like cables and patch cords. Could these pieces come from the computers being "inspected" in the back? Lots of stuff got inspected at IT city but not just computers, but smaller things too. And much of the stuff I looked at on the shelves of the shops had suspiciously inferior looking cables and odd shaped power supplies in the "factory sealed" box. Hmmmmmm.

Recall however, that I am on a mission. I gotta find that hair dryer. On my wanderings, I located three places that had dryers that I wanted to try to negotiate. The top price I saw was 1300 Baht and the cheapest was 580. The difference in price was primarily the wattage of the dryer ranging from 2200 watts on the high end to 1800 on the low. Here is how the purchase went.

Before going back to the stores to negotiate and while well away from any of the stores that I intended to visit, I put 400 Baht in my pocket all by itself. In each case I really didn't care if I got the dryer or not because there are always department stores if the negotiations didn't work out.

Store #1 had the most expensive unit and wanted 1200 Baht. I walked in and politely waited while the proprietor helped another customer. When she addressed me "Sa wa dee ka" I responded "Sa wa dee kup" with a smile on my face. I pointed at the 1200 Baht dryer and said "400?" She said "No, 1200" so I held out the 400 that I had separated prior to visiting the store. She said "No, can not." And offered a smaller dryer that had a price tag of 380 Baht on it. I thanked her and left, but slowly in case she wanted to call me back.

Store #2 had the exact same dryer as store #1 and was asking 950 Baht (which I knew from my earlier visit.) I again greeted the proprietor and offered 400 Baht for the dryer. She countered with 900 so I held out the money and offered again to which she said she could not. I thanked her and left.

Store #3 had a 1800 watt dryer that they wanted to sell for 600 Baht. We engaged in the same greetings and I offered 400 Baht. The owner said "No can not" but offered 550. I said "No 400." She said "OK 500." I said "No 400." So she said "450?" I said "No 400." And after a two second conference with her partner, they took the deal and my money. Now Brenda has a 1800 watt hair dryer for $10.80 including tax. Pretty fun!! Time will tell if it actually dries hair, but take a look at the box in the first pic of this post. It promises "Super silent. Cold. Warm. Hot wind and Fast Cold Four Shifts." Like I said, Time will tell.....

Each time I negotiate with a Thai the pattern is the same. They are initially Âvery happy to helpÂ and as the negotiation proceeds, it either falls apart quickly as in the stores above that simply said "no." Or it begins to go back and forth with each successive pass leaving the Thai more crestfallen. By the time my price is reached the disappointment of not getting the payday that they envisioned when I walked up is obvious on their face. I know that they are making money on the transaction or else they would not take the deal. But it is fairly difficult to leave the transaction with such disappointment on their faces. Difficult, but doable. Now I wonder if I can get that Lamborghini for 400 Baht????

This last pic is interesting because it showed me where old Dell's go to die. Note that they are Pentium III's which are pretty old. The price is less than $100. Remember you can click on any pic to get a larger version of it.

oVo

Rainy Season

2006-10-10T02:13:00.000-07:00

I guess the rainy season is here at last. We have been told that it begins in August but that is has been dry this year with hardly any rain. When we were here a month ago, it rained only once in two weeks. This trip though, we have seen rain nearly every day at about this time, 4PM or so. It reminds me of summer in New Orleans where you can almost set your watch by the afternoon thunderstorms. Unlike New Orleans though, these Thai storms settle in pretty well and might go on until morning.

From our hotel room on the 39th floor, I can see clouds gathering from miles away, and when they arrive the puny electric lights in the room compete in vain with the lightning right outside my window. The worst of it is that the Hotel TV is on satellite so when the rain comes and there are few options for outside activities, that is the precise moment when the TV goes out as well. Glad I brought some books.

Lunch today was high end. I paid 65 baht ($1.75) for the Pad Thai with Shrimp you see here.

A few days back I snapped the pic of the shrimp while at a different restaurant. Jumbo shrimp does not do these guys justice. Two of them make more than a pound.

oVo

Sunday Driving Tour

2006-10-09T01:47:00.000-07:00

Sunday we took a short driving tour of Bangkok. It is hard to give a meaningful description of the trip since we saw so much but didn’t get out of the car for pictures or even a closer look. It was a useful trip for us though, because it helped us get a feel for things we want to see, especially in the “royal” part of town where the houses of the kings have been built.

We saw Chinatown, several Wat’s (temples) including the one with the Reclining Buddha, Marble Buddha, Emerald Buddha and the Golden Buddha. We saw “India town” where you can get all sorts of custom clothes made cheap. And we saw the largest flower market I have ever heard of.

We drove past the national museum, the Bangkok Zoo, the house that King Rama 1 through Rama 7 (except Rama V) lived in and then we saw Rama V’s house (pictured here).

We also saw Rama IX’s house which Fred (our driver) calls “My King” in a very charming manner. It’s never “our King” or Thailand’s King. It is always “My King.” We asked Fred if he had ever seen the king and he said “Yes, when I was a boy I saw him at boy scout camp. It was a very long time ago.” Never the less, Rama IX is still Fred’s King.

There wasn't any talk or drives to locations for Kings prior to Rama I. Hmmmmm. I asked about the earlier kings and was told "Rama I coup"

This last pic captures a small bird being released outside the Grand Palace by a fellow seeking good favor from his god. Look closely to the right of the guy stooping down.

You can see the rest of my pics from Sunday here.

oVo

Petchaburi

2006-10-07T06:15:00.000-07:00

We finally got out of Bangkok today for the first time. We took a day trip in the car about 160 KM South and West of the city to a town called Petchaburi (Pet-boo-ree.) Petchaburi is an ancient city with archeological finds dating to as far back as the 6th to 11th century, an era here known as the Dvaravati period.

The drive took us about two hours, but after one hour of driving, I was really pleased and surprised to see a small mountain range in the distance. Petchaburi is near the coast on the Gulf of Thailand, and I sort of expected a coastal plain, which I got. But near the coast, the mountains were pushed up by all those geological forces that I know nothing about, but which can apparently do some serious reconstructive surery to the landscape. These days, the mountains are heavily treed, and where the rocks peak through the brush, you can see that they are eroded by rainfall so they must be a soft rock like limestone. There are caves in the area too, accorcing to the literature.

Once we reached Petchaburi, we got out of the car to climb Khao Wang (Palace Hill.) The hill is a sort of three peaked formation on which has been built a complex that includes one of the summer palaces of King Rama IV dating to the early 1900's (the current king is Rama IX.) It also includes defensive battlements as well as quarters for an army contingent, royal halls and temples. The tallest structure is a huge white pagoda that should have a budda in it, but the Budda was missing today. Now where did that statue get off to?

We were a little surprised that the summer palace was not more oppulent. It was gives a pretty similar impression as an antebellum home in the South US, except of course for the distinctive Asian architecture. I think I was expecting larger fancier and more "over the top" sorts of design from a royal palace. But then again, this was just a summer home. Maybe like a beach house in Galveston? The photo here is the King's bedroom. Notice that it barely has room for the bed.

After wandering around the palace complex for an hour or so, we headed back down the not inconsequential hill top to find lunch at the nearby beachside resort town of Cha-Am.

Cha-am’s waters are much like the Gulf of Mexico being a light chocolate, or coffee with cream color. There were storms offshore today so the surf was churning, but that didn’t give pause to any of the beachgoers that we saw today.

The sand is brown and more like dirt than sand. It actually supports a nice grove of trees right on the beach which gives a welcome covering of shade for the hot days of summer. It is the cool season now so it was only 94 degress F today. You can also see the mountains rising in the not far away.

Petchaburi and Cha-Am will not make it to our favorite destinations lists, but it was a nice day and it was really good to get out of Bangkok and see some of the countryside.

I still have not seen anywhere worthy of a motorcycle ride since the roads are all basically like our interstates, except much bumpier, more crowded and with a speed limit of 80 KM/H (50 mph.)

We took more pics today than I can do justice to here. Monkeys on the Palace hill, Cha-am beach, lots of shots of the hill top palace complex and some surprising looks at the small and steep stairways that these folks built only a couple of hundred years ago, as well as fish strips drying in the sun at the "Center of Thailand Deserts and Thia Food." You can poke around in my photo album for today's pics.

Oh, one more thing. I can't leave you with no food pic. Petchaburi is pretty far off the normal farang path. We were advised to eat only deep fried food today so we would be sure to avoid getting ill. This shot is of Brenda's plate when she was finished with her fried fish. It tasted very good, but I told her that the dark places (fish skin I think) were "fried fish butts" and she declined to eat them. Bon appetite!

oVo

Erawan

2006-10-06T08:08:00.000-07:00

One of the more interesting things I have done since we have been here was to visit the Erawan Statue located near the Erawan Hyatt Hotel on Sukhumvit at Ratchadamri. The sign at the entrance to the shrine says;

“At the end of the year in 1955, the Union of Thai Hotel and Tourism Company Ltd, the founder of the Erawan Hotel was told by rear Admiral Luang Suwichanphet, who specialized in astrology, that the original moment for laying the foundation stone of the Erawan Hotel was not really right auspicious moment. It must be corrected by building a shrine of the Thao Maha Brahma and a spirit house in the Area of the hotel. Then a shrine with the designed and sculpted by Mr. Chit Phimkowit, a sculptor of the fine arts department. It was brought to enshrine ther since the 9th November 1956 and a worship ceremony of the image has been held on the 9th November of every year.”

With such an inception one could be forgiven for assuming that the statue would soon come to be a pigeon roost or worse. But such is not the case. Every day, supplicants from all over Bangkok and the world make their way to this spot to ask favors from the Brahma. They leave strings of flowers and burn incense. The Brahma as seen today has four faces. Interestingly Brahma originally had five faces, but in a fit of rage brought on by a disrespectful speech he gave Siva, another god with three eyes, opened his third eye and burned Brahma’s fifth face to cinders leaving only the four faces you see today. Hmmmmm.

The Brahma is said to grant favors to any who ask, and those to whom favors are granted, often leave gifts like the elephants you see here.

This shrine is big business. Booths are set up for a couple of blocks to sell flower strings, elephant statues and other gifts to leave the Brahma. It is a heavily repeat business too as I happened to be present when the crew came out to remove the gifts left by the early visitors to make room for the later guests. Hmmmmmm.

You can also pay the dancers to dance for any length of time you can afford to help your requests get heard even better. And if you are feeling particularly magnanimous, you might want to purchase one of these little birds which are captured specifically for the purpose of being released to give the worshiper a feeling of blessing. Hmmmmmmm.

This is a really cool culture over here. Very different from my Judeo Christian upbringing. I felt sort of strange taking pics of these folks as they carried out their worship and made requests of the creator as they understand him. But I turned my flash off and no one seemed to mind. If you want to read more about the Erawan, take a jump to this website. There are also more pics at my photo album, under Thailand/Erawan at this link.

Can’t wait for my trip to the reclining Budda.

oVo

A Cautionary Tale

2006-10-05T21:37:00.000-07:00

One of the readers of this BLOG is a cultural advisor for large US companies. This reader has expressed an interest in our Bangkok comings and goings, in part to help her glean experience to assist her in her advisory sessions. I say that to set up the fact that this post is not going to be very similar to others lately. This one has to do with culture differences, and how those differences can sometimes lead one or the other parties to do things that they would not normally do. Are you warmed up and ready to read the dirt now? I hope so. Let’s get to it.

Most Ex-pats in Bangkok have Thai drivers that they pay to shuttle them hither and thither, to and fro, back and forth. Some companies even forbid their ex-patriot employees to drive in Bangkok. Our company is such a company. So we have a driver. He works for us full time, 24/7 for which we pay him monthly. Our Driver, whom we shall call "Fred" (not his real name) showed up for his first day of work Monday this week. He shuttled Brenda to work and came back to the hotel to help me run errands for about half a day. Prior to arriving in Bangkok (BKK) Brenda and I, both being somewhat managerial in background had discussed the appropriate levels of controls that we should install to help Fred do his job to our satisfaction and avoid the unpleasantness of unfulfilled expectations and potential firings.

So on the first day, I handed Fred a mileage book (Kilomerterage?) and explained how I wanted him to fill out the start and finish Odometer readings each day and deliver the book and our car keys to me at the end of the day. He is also to administer a small petty cash fund and provide receipts and details for any gas, tolls or parking that he pays for. Here is a description of how that went.

Monday - Drove the normal commute (36 KM round trip) plus ran errands with me (unknown mileage) No keys, no book delivered to us at the end of the day as requested. Keep in mind that Fred has to drop us off, then park the car and then get the keys to us in our room, past hotel security. No easy task, but we checked at the front desk and there were no keys, no book, no nothing for us that first night. Hmmmm wonder where the car is.

Tuesday - Drove the normal commute. No errands. At the end of the day, we said "Fred, give me the book." This comment was met with the most convincing "Me speaky no enrish" look you have ever seen in your life. That sort of ticked me off because I spoke with Fred for two weeks when we were here last month. He speaks pretty good Engrish.

But we persevered and got our book after watching Fred fill out two days worth of mileage, pretty much from memory, or worse. So with book in hand, I head to my computer to transcribe the data into the spreadsheet that I have prepared for that purpose. Results - Monday - drove 75 KM (remember - commute and errands)
Tuesday - Drove 85 KM Hmmmmmm. 85 KM on a 36 KM round trip. Something is fishy.

Wednesday, we filled out the mileage ourselves and had Fred sign the log. He also holds the book during the day so both Brenda and I have access to it anytime we need it. Fred spent a considerable time studying the book and considering why we were so focused on it, and why we started filling it out ourselves after only two days. What Fred may or may not have figured out was that he was one day from being fired after only two days on the job if he didn't straighten up. Well, he did straighten up. Thursday the book showed 35 KM for the normal commute so we think the problem is solved.

To confirm our suspicions and actions, we asked around about Fred and found a few who knew him. Fred's previous employer had left the country for a month on vacation. While the employer was gone, Fred took the vehicle on a 4000KM personal trip at the owner’s expense. We have no idea why Fred's previous employer left out this bit of info when he recommended Fred to us, but he did. But know we now, and so do you.

Lesson: Trust but verify. (and when verification fails, step up the controls)

Here is another short story. I regularly ride a motorcycle taxi from the top of Soi 2 to the bottom where our church is. The first time I did it, I asked a taxi at the head of the street "How much?" and pointed to the other end of the 1 KM dead end street. He said "20" meaning 20 Baht, about 50 cents. I said "No, too much" and turned to walk the 1/2 mile myself. The driver stopped me and said "How much you pay?" I said "10" and he said "OK."

Now I know that the difference between 25 cents and 50 cents isn't going to break me, and it may make his day better. But here is the deal. Some people say that Thai's consider Farang "rich and naive." I take that to mean that they consider that they can take advantage of us with impunity. And while 25 - 50 cents is no big deal, it is a big deal if I find I pay double the value of something (anything) and it is a very big deal if I feel I am being taken advantage of, or worse, laughed at for being too stupid to know better.

Lesson: Ask for a price and walk away. Try again in 4 seconds when the next taxi (or driver, or maid, or ...etc) shows up. Do this over and over until you get a feel for what is negotiable and what is not. (Most things seem to be negotiable)

Final lesson: Don't let these unpleasant parts of being in BKK mess you up. Just call it an adventure and have fun with it. You won't win them all, but if you learn from the ones you win, you'll win more and more each day.

oVo