Depth of Field

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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