Goodnight Phuket

GOODNIGHT, PHUKET....HELLO, BAAN JOCHIM

2007-11-03T19:57:00.000+07:00

As I am no longer actively maintaining this blog, please direct your bookmarks to Baan Jochim Phuket. This is an alternate blog I created in late May when the government of Thailand was blocking the entire Blogspot domain.

Initially, I used the Wordpress-hosted blog to reprint interesting news items concerning Thailand or Southeast Asia in general with occasional entries relating to Thai history, culture, and holidays. But lately it has developed into a complete replacement for Goodnight Phuket.

Of course all of my previous entries here will remain available in the Archives. And, should there be another sweeping blockage of Wordpress that lasts more than a couple of days, I will post here once again (currently, my ISP -- TOT -- tries to blog the domain but it's haphazard at best).

I hope to see most of you over at Baan Jochim Phuket.

FORTY-FIVE BODIES FOUND AT PHUKET AIRPORT

2007-09-16T19:03:00.001+07:00

From The Nation, published 16 September 2007:

Higher death toll very likely after budget airplane carrying 128 crashlanded

Forty-five dead bodies, most of them foreigners, have been retrieved from wreckage of a One-Two-Go plane at the Phuket airport. The budget airliner exploded and broke in two after it crashlanded and skidded off the runway and crashed into nearby walls on Sunday afternoon. Dozens more are feared dead.

Some reports put the death toll at about 60, but this has yet to be confirmed. The nationalities of those onboard are not immediately known, but Phuket is a highly popular destination for overseas tourists.

A surviving passenger said the plane "landed hard" and "bounced" and then skidded off the runway. Civil aviation official Chiasak Angkauwan said, "the airplane requested to land but due to the weather in Phuket -- strong wind and heavy rain -- maybe the pilot did not see the runway clearly."

"The plane then fell onto the runway and broke into two. It is expected that there will be a lot of casualties."

"We are rescuing people from the aircraft ... we know now there were 123 passengers and five crew," he told the news channel.

"We won't know what really happened until we get information from the black box."

The airliner services Bangkok-Phuket flights six times a week. The ill-fated airline left Don Muang airport at about 2.30pm.

Information now coming in said the plane, which was being used by local budget travel company, One-to-Go Airline, had 123 passengers and five crew.

The aircraft, flight number OG 269, landed at Phuket airport at about 3.40pm from Bangkok and was taxiing along the runway when it went into a slide. Phuket had earlier been hit by heavy rains.

It crashed into trees and walls surrounding the airport.

Eye-witnesses said the impact of the crash caused the plane to break in two and they heard a series of explosions.

Rescue teams and navy personnel were involved in the rescue operation. All flights in and out of the Phuket airport have been cancelled.

WORDPRESS BLOCKED IN THAILAND

2007-09-12T03:52:00.000+07:00

Last night when trying to access my main blog at Baan Jochim Phuket, I was greeted by the page above. This translates as:

Sorry. TOT Plc., as an organization of Thai people, has restrained the access to this website as it contains content, text, and/or picture that is unappropriated which affects the mind of Thai people all over the country and cannot be accepted.

Apparently my internet service provider, the government-owned TOT, is blocking all blogs on the Wordpress domain in the latest example of Thai censorship of the media. According to articles on FACT- Freedom Against Censorship Thailand and Global Voices Advocacy, this block has been in effect since 22 August. As with all things that TOT has a hand in (i.e., frequent downtime once they finally connect your service -- it took a couple of months from the time we placed the order to the time they installed the line and connected our ADSL despite us living less than half-a-kilometer from the service center), this blockage seems very haphazard. Until last night, I'd had no problems accessing various Wordpress blogs and they're all coming up fine this morning.

Still, the blatant censorship practiced by the Thai government gets extremely tiring. Readers may remember that I began this particular blog as a result of the Thai Ministry of Information and Communication Technology's ban of the Blogger domain and my inability to access my longtime blog, Goodnight Phuket. We finally just got the ban against YouTube lifted but we always have to wonder what will be next...

Additional articles about the TOT blockage of Wordpress:
DBTB Protests Against the Wordpress.com Blockage in Thailand
Wordpress Blocked in Thailand as Well
wordpress.com Blocked in Thailand

SUIT & TIE, KHAKIS, OR PAJAMAS?

2007-08-12T10:04:00.000+07:00

Seen on Daily Blog Tips:

Thanks to the anonymity of the Internet, your readers have no way of knowing what you’re wearing as you write. The tone and content of your writing, however, affects the reader’s perception of you just as much as your clothing would if they met you face to face. So what is your writing saying about you? If I read your blog, would I envision you in a suit & tie, khakis, or pajamas?

Suit & Tie Bloggers

Suit & tie bloggers are out to impress. Plugged in to the information that matters, they are the expert voices of their niche. They give their readers the facts, news, and developments that really matter. Their writing is formal and succinct, free of bias and absolutely packed with useful information. These bloggers usually have another full time job, and they share professional experiences coming from their field. Guy Kawasaki is an example.

Khaki Bloggers

Khaki bloggers straddle the middle ground between expertise and personality. They showcase facts and opinions, giving their readers a unique but informed perspective of their niche. Their writing has the feel of a newspaper columnist, inviting discussion and educating at the same time. Unlike suit & tie bloggers, they aren’t afraid to ask questions. This balanced approach allows khaki bloggers to attract a more diverse audience than their professional and casual analogues. Brian Clark is an example.

Pajama Bloggers

Pajama bloggers project personality through their writing. They tell stories, engage their readers, and share their feelings. Their writing may play hard and fast with the rules of good grammar at times, but it flows in a very natural way. Readers can relate to pajama bloggers, so they feel more at ease to communicate. Thus, pajama blogs enjoy a higher degree of interaction than their more professional cousins. John Chow is an example.

So, which kind of blogger are you?

DISCOVERING HARRY POTTER

2007-08-06T22:02:00.001+07:00

Yes, I'm very much behind the times on this one but I have never read any of the Harry Potter books or watched any of the movies in full (we do have the first film on a Thai VCD but it always stops playing during the Quidditch match scene). With the release of the seventh book a few weeks back and the resulting media coverage (not to mention my sister sending me photos of my nephew during a book release party — he's the spitting image of Harry), I decided that it was time to find out what all the fuss has been about.

However, I've put my family on a rather severe budget and wasn't able to justify buying the hardcover of Deadly Hallows (at a minimum of 850 baht in the local bookshops) and I can't seem to find any of the earlier novels in either paperback or hardback. I'm sure I can find the DVD's in the markets but these are always hit-and-miss with either poorly-dubbed Thai soundtracks (and really bad English subtitles) or pirated camera-in-the-theater renditions. I thought about asking for some Potterian Christmas gifts but I simply couldn't wait that long. Then I thought to search for downloads on my favorite BitTorrent search engine. Voila! Not only did I download all seven books in nice PDF versions (OCR scans, but they seem mostly accurate) but I'm currently downloading iPod-ready versions of all five movies.

I printed out Chapter One of The Philosopher's Stone this morning and read it during lunch today. I enjoyed it and am looking forward to immersing myself in Harry Potter during my free time in the upcoming weeks...

A HOLIDAY ON KOH YAO NOI

2007-08-05T16:24:00.000+07:00

Lying midway between Phuket and Krabi Province, Koh Yao Yai and Koh Yao Noi are the largest of the islands in Phang Nga Bay comprising a total of 137 square kilometers. According to local legend the strait between the two islands was created when a very angry Naga (sea dragon) crashed through on its way to Krabi to see his fiancee being married to someone else.

A giant sea serpent had used its magical powers to help a woman give birth to a baby girl. In return, the Naga demanded that his son be allowed to marry the girl when she was of age. When the time came, however, the woman forgot her promise and arranged for her daughter to marry a local prince instead. Learning of the woman's treachery, the sea dragon swam towards the Krabi shore in a rage splitting in half the largest island in the bay on his way. The pandemonium caused by the arrival of the Naga at the wedding ceremony disturbed a powerful hermit who was meditating in a nearby cabe. The hermit, who apparently had a low tolerance for noise, transformed the warring families and the sea serpent into the oddly shaped mountains that are now so prominent around the Phang Nga peninsula.

For centuries it has been believed that Koh Yao was populated by the Chao Leh (sea gypsies), nomadic groups who traveled from island to island for fish and other see food. There is also evidence that many early settlers migrated from Thailand's southern provinces and from Malaysia.

The smaller of the islands, 50-square kilometer Koh Yao Noi, has seven villages with a total population of around 4500, ninety-nine percent of whom are Muslim. The largest settlement is Tha Khai, a subdistrict seat which contains a hospital, market, police station, and the only 7-Eleven of the 44-island archipelago. Hat Pa Sai and Hat Tha Khao are the best beaches (the local residents hope that the extreme low tides will continue to keep the large resorts so prominent on Phuket from developing there).

A visit to Koh Yao Noi is like stepping back in time to witness the Phuket of 20 or 30 years ago. Accommodation is still limited to simple bungalows and a few boutique-style resorts although Evason has recently opened a high-end resort on Koh Yao Yai (with prices topping out at USD $10,000 per night). There are a few tuk tuk's and songtaews available to transport visitors and motorbike rentals can be had for 200 baht per day.

The main industries on Koh Yao Noi are fishing and rubber planting. Rice farming and a few coconut, palm, and fruit plantations are also evident. Boat building and farming techniques here have been passed from father to son and, while some of the youngsters leave Koh Yao to seek the bright lights of Phuket, most eventually return to their tight-knit community.

The best way to explore the island is by bicycle or motorbike. A narrow mostly-paved road winds its way around the periphery of the island and most locals walk or get around on their motorbikes. Cars and trucks are a rarity. As we traveled around on the Sunday of our three-day visit, I was struck most at how many people waved and smiled at us as we passed by.

We headed out from Baan Jochim about midday on the Saturday of the holiday weekend; it took us about 45 minutes to travel from our home in Chalong up to the Bang Rong pier out past Paklok on Phuket's eastern shore. Our motorbike-sidecar secured at the pier we boarded the ferry that would take us over to Koh Yao Noi. The boat is actually a lontail boat with a flat-roofed cabin with space for approximately 50 passengers. Since many locals take day-trips into Phuket to purchase supplies, the roof was laden with everything from reams of copier paper and cartons of eggs to computer equipment. We threw our bags among the market purchases and settled down for the passage.

I would say around 70 people total had crammed onto the small ferry, along with four or five motorbikes lashed on the front desk and in the forward part of the cabin. One of these longtail ferries on the Phuket to Koh Yao run capsized last year because of a combination of overcrowding and high waves during rainy season so this was on my mind as we shoved off from the pier. There are now lifejackets provided but nobody seemed to pay much attention to them. Everyone on the boat was jovial and I had fun playing peek-a-boo with a Down's Syndrome boy had befriended me.

The trip to the islands took a bit over an hour; our first stop was at Klong Hia Pier on Koh Yao Yai where several passengers and motorbikes were offloaded. Then, it was a short passage across the strait (passing a solitary rock which locals believe is a scale that fell off of the Naga as he sliced through the land) to Koh Yao Noi's Manoh Pier. The voyage cost the three of us a total of 200 baht. A jeep from the bungalow was waiting for us and we enjoyed the 20-minute drive from the southern point of the island to our destination in the northeast.

We were given a family-size bungalow at Tha Khao Bungalows, just off of the beach. The view was magnificent and I fell in love with the Lanna-style teak bungalow. It had a large porch fronting the building where we were to spend hours relaxing and watching the sea towards the Krabi coastline. Inside contained a front room with double-bed plus three side rooms which we didn't use. A large bathroom at the far end contained a small sink plus separate toilet (Western-style!) and large shower rooms. It was a real bargain at 1000-baht (approximately USD $30) per night.

During our stay, we took all of our meals at the Tha Khao Bungalows restaurant. Our first night, I had an excellent tom kha gai (coconut soup with chicken) that contained red peppers and chili instead of the usual mushrooms (which I don't like). Breakfasts were pancakes (with pineapple one morning and bananas the next) topped with locally-made honey.

We spent most of our weekend (arrived Saturday afternoon, departed midday on Monday) at the bungalow or on the beach immediately in front of it. During the low tides, we walked out towards the nearby island Koh Nok and when the water was in on Sunday we paddled around in a rented kayak (200 baht per day). Other available activities include bird-watching, snorkeling, diving, rock climbing, or voyaging among the nearby islands by longtail boat.

I caught up on a lot of reading while my wife worked on a crochet handbag and our son played with toy dinosaurs or colored in a Thai-history coloring book (there wasn't a television, thank goodness). We also spent a nice morning driving around the island on a motorbike (half-day rental was 100 baht). We turned in around 7:30 each evening (the light bulbs on the patio and in the main room were too dim to read by) and I woke up each morning shortly after six. Because of a typhoon coming in from Sumatra, it did rain both nights but this only served to clear the air and make it easier to sleep.

We returned to Phuket on Monday's 11:00 ferry which started out in a downpour but the sun began to shine as we approached Bang Rong pier.

I must say it was the most relaxing journey I've made in Thailand thus far (I wasn't sure this would be possible with Alex along; this was the first trip we've made together since he arrived shortly before Christmas last year). We had a great time and I felt like I experienced a bit of the "real Thailand" that I've been missing lately (Phuket tends to feel more like the West much of the time between my job and our shopping expeditions). I'm already planning a return visit for the Christmas/New Year's holiday, possibly taking the ferry the rest of the way over to Krabi...

To view more photos from our holiday on Koh Yao Noi, please click on the thumbnails for each day of the trip:

Saturday

Sunday

Monday

ASARNHA PUJA AND BUDDHIST LENT

2007-07-27T22:33:00.000+07:00

There are two important Buddhist holidays on Sunday and Monday of this coming week -- Asarnha Puja Day (วันอาสาฬหบูชา) marks the Buddha's first sermon which he gave on the full moon day of the eighth lunar month; and Wan Khao Phansa (วันเข้าพรรษา), the beginning of the three-month Rains Retreat during which time monks aren't allowed to leave their temples or to defrock.

This year, Asarnha Puja falls on 29 July. The Lord Buddha's first sermon -- which the day honors -- is called Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta. During this discourse, the Buddha talked about "The Middle Way", which means that we should try hard enough but not too hard. If we wish to be successful in Spiritual life, we should avoid the two extremes:

Trying too hard, such as not eating or not sleeping enough.

Not trying hard enough, such as eating and sleeping too much.

He also spoke about the Noble Eightfold Path. This path tells us:

To live in a way that does not harm ourselves or others.

To help ourselves and others.

To purify the mind.

He advised people to speak and act and earn their living in good ways. He also advised them to practice meditation to purify their minds. Then they can get deep wisdom.

Being the day before the beginning of Buddhist Lent which coincides with the rainy season Asarnha Puja is also the day when the laity presents Rains Cloths to the monks. A Rains Cloth is used while taking a bath in the rain or in a stream during the rainy season. It was introduced in the Buddha's time by a rich lady called Visakha, who was then the Buddha's main female supporter and benefactor

Known as Khao Phansa, the Buddhist Lent is a time devoted to study and meditation. Buddhist monks remain within the temple grounds and do not venture out for a period of three months starting from the first day of the waning moon of the eighth lunar month (30 July in 2007) to the fifteenth day of the waxing moon of the eleventh lunar month (in October). Traditionally, this is done to prevent monks from trampling upon rice paddies when they venture out to receive offerings from the villagers.

The celebration of the beginning of Buddhist Lent is marked by a ceremony of presenting large candles to the monks. These are purchased in pairs, one for the worshiper and one to get a mate for the next life. The wax candles are large enough to last through the three-month Rains Retreat. Schools and universities, including public and private organizations, will organize a colorful candle procession leading to a temple where the offering of the candles will be made.

During the donation ceremony robes, lotus flowers, food, and other useful items are given in addition to the candles. After receiving the donations, the abbot blesses the crowd by sprinkling lustral water (nam mon, -- น้ำมนต์) on the faithful. Lustral water is water that has been infused with magical powers or has received a blessing from monks. Thais believe that those who drink lustral water or have it sprinkled on their head, the most sacred part of the body, will be blessed.

Some Buddhist followers consider the beginning of Buddhist Lent as a time for making resolution such as refraining from smoking or observing The Five Precepts (Panjasila - ศีลห้า) throughout the three-month Rains Retreat.

On Wan Khao Phansa, Buddhists will go to the local wat, offer food and others necessities to the monks, and attend a three-round candle procession around the Buddhist temple. They behave according to the rules of Buddhism, praying and meditating.

For Buddhism and its followers the Buddhist Lent has the following Important characteristics:

Buddhist monks who have been travelling from place to place have to take up shelter in a particular place, according to Lord Buddha's discipline.

Buddhist monks who stay at a particular place for a length of time shall teach the young boys who wish to be ordained in order to study the Buddhist Doctrine, and preach to the lay followers.

During the Buddhist Lent lay follows refrain from bad actions in particular drinking alcohol, taking drugs or leading an inappropriate life.

During the Buddhist Lent, the laymen acquire merit, observe five or eight precepts, listen to sermons and sit in meditation in temples.

If, during the three months of Buddhist Lent, a monk travels beyond the boundaries of his monastery and is prevented from returning before the first moment of sunrise the next morning, he breaks his vow and will not be able to count that Rainy Season in his seniority. A monk's seniority is counted by the number of completed rainy seasons. Furthermore, he will automatically forfeit the strong beneficial karma of the Pavarana ceremony at the end of the Rainy Season.

Our school has "Buddhist Lent Week" activities throughout the past week, including class-level field trips to various local temples (my P.3 class visited Wat Thep Wanaram in Tambon Sri Sunthon on Tuesday). Monday and Tuesday are school holidays so we have a four-day weekend. My wife, son, and I are planning to take the ferry over to Koh Yao Noi and spend a couple of nights in a bungalow on that small island.

ANNIVERSARY PRESENT -- NEW CAMERA!

2007-07-15T08:50:00.000+07:00

My wife surprised me yesterday with an early anniversary gift (we were married on 2 August 2006 in the Bang Rak district of Bangkok). She gave me a "Caribbean blue" Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W55 camera, replacing my old DSC-W7 which was stolen back in mid-April. It's a bit of an upgrade in features and styling (being thinner and more colorful, for example) but the 7.2 megapixels is the same as the one I had before.

I'd been dreaming and saving up for the Cyber-shot T100 but at an average price of just under 18,000 baht in Phuket that proved to be unattainable. Tim's main reasoning for buying this particular camera (other than "it looks nice") was that she thought the lens was the same size as my old one and that my adapter and additional lenses/filters would fit (it's not and they don't; I think I'll put them up on eBay). Something I really like is the availability of a custom marine pack -- a waterproof casing that enables me to shoot underwater (up to a depth of ten feet), during inclement weather, or in particularly dusty conditions (my old camera lens had picked up some pits from beach sand). I'm thinking I can take some worry-free Songkran photos next year.

I can't wait to get out-and-about today and shoot some photos (had to spend seven hours charging the proprietary lithium ion battery yesterday). In the meantime, here are a couple of photos I've shot already including the very first picture taken with the new camera (in the IT "mall" in the basement of Big C while browsing camera accessories) and one of my laptop last night while planning an upcoming holiday trip.

A BIRTHDAY WEEKEND

2007-07-08T22:40:00.000+07:00

We've just concluded a weekend-long celebration for Alex's seventh birthday, the bulk of which was auspiciously held on 07/07/07 (7 July 2007).

After returning home from work at mid-day on Saturday (yes, I do work six days a week at my school), I spent much of the afternoon hanging out with our son on the ground floor of our shophouse (something I don't often get to do). We played some games and then watched a couple of DVD's (disc one of U2's ZooTV Live From Sydney and a new Bangkok concert video from Bird Tongchai which started with a lengthy medley of 1970s disco songs). The little three-year-old girl from down the road came for a visit and we had to entertain her to make sure she didn't get into too much mischief; my nickname for her is "Grabby" as she wants to grab just about anything that's not nailed down.

Tim and La prepared various snacks for the party including some awesome onion rings and buffalo wings. I ate my fill before many guests had arrived. As each person came and gave Alex a present he'd immediately grab it and tear open the paper. We've been trying to teach him that he needs to say "thank you" when accepting gifts but he continues to be rude in this manner. (In fact, he exhibits a total lack of respect to virtually everyone — totally alien behavior in the Thai culture — and it has earned my wife and I much embarrassment, not to mention some admonishments from his school. Nothing we do or say to him seems to help...) I managed to get Tim over to watch him open a few presents but it wasn't easy. However, when our Dutch neighbor Franz gave him a very cool car track set late in the evening Alex was all smiles and "thank yous" for a change. Everytime our son opened a present "Grabby" immediately tried to wrench the gift from Alex's hands. He soon learned to spirit the toys away before she could get her mits on them.

I thought the highlight of the presents would be when we presented Alex with his new (first) TV and DVD player. He'd been asking for his own TV since we moved into our new house. I finally caved and told my wife perhaps we could do this, it being his first birthday since moving in with us (and, I have since found out, his first-ever birthday party!). I had in mind a 14-inch television and one of those mini DVD players to hook up to it. A visit to Makro with their extremely low prices put an end to that plan and we ended up purchasing a 25-inch set (Katana brand) for a bit over 2000 baht (USD $60 or so). I kind of regret that decision now because I still have to haul it up three flights of stairs to Alex's bedroom. Anyway, he hardly glanced at the TV when La and I carried it in (we'd been hiding it at the restaurant two doors down) being more focused on a set of plastic dominoes someone had given him.

A very nice surprise was that many of the girls (and one boy) in my P.3 class at school had made birthday cards to give to Alex. He seemed pleased to think that he has several potential little girlfriends over there...

Finally, it was time for cake and ice cream. Tim had purchased a special Spider Man cake at the bakery just off of Chalong Circle (Spidey having supplanted Ultraman as Alex's favorite character). It had kind of a spice cake flavor underneath the chocolate. Tasty. I dished out the vanilla ice cream (Thai ice cream tastes better than any other I've had before) while my wife sliced the cake. Dtom arrived around this time and soon had the karaoke playing at ear-splitting volume (she's the biggest abuser of our hospitality and tends to argue with me when I ask her to turn something down, etc.; I was REALLY glad when she got a job at a massage parlor in Patong and began living at that shop so we hardly see her anymore).

I played with Alex on the floor for a while (putting together his new car track and showing how to play dominoes) before an upset stomach got the best of me and I retreated upstairs. I have no idea how long the party continued after I left but I was very surprised this morning to see that the downstairs had been (more or less) cleaned.

Much of this morning was rainy (and with more of the terrible gusts of wind we've been experiencing lately) so our planned outing to the zoo had to be scrapped. But in the afternoon we headed out to Central Festival in order to catch the "Transformers" movie (and getting soaked by a rain shower en route). We don't get out to the movies very often (our last time was the first installment of "King Naresuan" back in January) so it's a real treat to go. I always enjoy being able to pick our seats on the computer screen and they always give you a free gift with your tickets ("Transformers" magnets this time). We had a bit of time to browse at the huge B2S book shop before the movie began and I fell in love with the lavishly-illustrated Thailand: A Traveller's Companion but I felt it was a bit too pricey at 895 baht. I did hint to my wife that it would make a lovely anniversary present (our first is coming up on August 2nd).

After the movie, I treated Alex and Tim to a dinner at Pizza Hut. We really splurged (spending 800 baht); I had a Meat Supreme personal pan pizza, Tim had lasagna, and Alex ordered a medium-sized pizza with a cheese-sausage crust (it looks disgusting but apparently it's very popular here to have strange meats in your pizza crusts) and crab with pineapple toppings. We shared an order of barbecue spare ribs (really, the best thing I've eaten all week) and drank some really nice apple shakes.

It was a really nice way to end a great birthday weekend. I feel like I've gained a few pounds this weekend (desperately needed as I've lost all sorts of weight climbing four flights of stairs throughout the school days not to mention three flights every night and every morning at home). After our anniversary on August second, the next gift-giving holiday is Mother's Day (coinciding with HM the Queen's birthday) which is actually a Friday through Monday affair. And then I suppose it's Thanksgiving (we'll give a turkey with gravy dinner another try) and on to my birthday, HM the King's birthday (AKA Father's Day), and Christmas...

HAPPY, BIRTHDAY AMERICA!

2007-07-04T18:19:00.000+07:00

Happy Independence Day from southern Thailand!

Last year, Independence Day found me on a large wooden boat crossing the strait between Ranong, Thailand, and Kawthung, Myanmar, on a visa run (the only one my then-fiance accompanied me on; we would be married in a bit less than a month).

Since I'm working this year I don't plan to participate in any celebration other than taking an American flag to school (which I'll hang in the classroom). There are a few small July 4th celebrations scheduled among the expat community (including one at Don's Mall in Rawai) and there was the large one at the U.S. Embassy Annex in Bangkok on Saturday. Perhaps I'll be able to watch some fireworks on CNN or Fox News tomorrow.

It's on holidays such as this that I really miss Kansas City barbecue ribs, my brother-in-law's charcoal-grilled hamburgers, and my sister's (via my mom's recipe) potato salad. Not to mention, a nice cold bottle of Boulevard Pale Ale...

NATIONAL SCOUT DAY IN THAILAND

2007-07-01T22:21:00.000+07:00

July 1 is National Scout Day (วันคล้ายวันสถาปนาคณะลูกเสื) commemorating the founding of Thai Scouting by King Rama VI on this day in 1911. Thailand was only the third country in the world to take up Scouting and remains the only nation to have ever had it's program directly founded by a monarch. The king established the Wild Tiger Corps for adults and created a junior branch which continues today as the Scouts. King Rama VI is thus fondly remembered as the "Father of Thai Scouting."

The Thai Scouting program (which includes Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, and Girl Guides) is also probably one of the largest national programs as it's mandatory for every student in school to enroll. In our school, Mondays (for lower Primary) and Wednesdays (for P. 4 through M. 1) are the weekly Scout days when the students wear their uniforms to school and participate in activities during the final periods of the day. I'm the leader (along with one other teacher) of the P. 1 through P. 3 Scout Patrols in English and I enjoy it very much, having been in the U.S. Boy Scouts when I was much younger (I now regret not having kept my uniform when I moved out of my parents' home).

Most schools in Thailand stage parades and other activities to mark National Scout Day. Since this year it fell on a Sunday, a brief ceremony was included in our school's regular morning assembly honoring the memory of King Rama VI. The P. 4 through M. 1 Scouts, along with the school band, were to hold a more extravagent commemoration today. I wasn't able to attend but I watched them drilling and rehearsing while at the school yesterday for my extra lesson.

YOU KNOW WHEN YOU'VE BECOME...

2007-06-25T22:48:00.000+07:00

You know when you've become a part of a community when your photo starts appearing in local tourist publications.

The latest issue of the Jungceylon free shopper broadsheet includes two photos of my wife, son, and myself taken when HRH Princess Soamsavali Phravararajatinuddamatu visited Patong on 19 May. I'd previously written a blog entry about how I'd been the subject of a number of official photos taken during the royal audience as the only farang seated up front. Well, these are the first I've seen (although some friends of Tim's said they'd seen some in various Thai-language newspapers) and aren't too bad at all (my face is partially obscured by a yellow King's flag in one, however).

Enjoy...

KHAO PRA TEAW WILDLIFE PARK

2007-06-19T13:16:00.000+07:00

Last weekend, we made a family outing to Ton Sai Waterfall in the heart of Phuket’s last remaining pristine tropical rainforest. Officially called the Khao Pra Taew Wildlife Conservation Development and Extension Center, this 5,570-acre non-hunting sanctuary sprawls north to south over three tambons in Amphur Thalang — Thep Krasatri, Sri Sunthorn, and Pa Klok. The three highest peaks in the mountain range are Khao Pra Taew at 384 meters above sea level, Khao Bang Pae (388 meters), and Khao Phara (422 meters).

Declared a wildlife park by the Royal Forest Department in 1977, the sanctuary features a wide variety of wild animals such as the tusked hairy wild boar, Malay sun deer, langurs, porcupines, deer (including the barking deer and mouse deer), monkeys, gibbons, cobras, pythons, monitor lizards, flying foxes, civet, bats, macaques, flying squirrels, chameleons, and many species of birds.

The tropical rainforest contains many kinds of trees and plants with various ferns, climbers, palm shrubs, and bamboos sharing space with tall canopy trees without many branches dominating. There’s also a unique species of palm not found anywhere else in the world. Kerridoxa elegans Dransfield grows to about five to seven meters and has fairly large fanlike serrated leaves. Commonly called palm lang khao, or Thalang Governor’s palm, the back of the leaf is greenish white in color which is a unique characteristic of the species. The palms grow cream-colored flowers from December to February and they produce yellow fruit which is eaten by some animals. the nut has a yellow rind that becomes darker when ripe. Fallen seeds take root on the ground, becoming new plants.

Many small underwater wells rise to the surface in the dense forest and flow into two waterfalls, Bang Pae in the southeast and Ton Sai on the western slopes of the range. There is a large ficus three located near where Ton Sai originates, hence the name meaning “ficus waterfall” (ton is southern dialect for waterfall and sai is Thai for ficus tree).

The park has a number of hiking trails in the forest including a 2km circuit of Ton Sai waterfall and a 14km trek connecting it with Bang Pae. Guides can be hired from the reserve office near the Ton Sai entrance.

To get there, head north from Phuket Town towards the airport on Thepkasattri Road (route 402) about 22km. Turn right at the main intersection in the town of Thalang; the road is actually called Ton Sai Waterfall Road but is narrow and easy to miss (it’s a bit north of Thalang Hospital and the Provincial Electricity Authority and a bit south of the Provincial Police Station). You will drive through about 5km of rubber plantations before reaching the Forestry Department checkpoint. Two-tiered pricing in in effect here (100 baht for farangs) but if you have a Thai driver’s license or tax ID card you can get the local price. Admission is free after 3pm.

I was very impressed with the facilities at Ton Sai. The grounds themselves are nicely landscaped and the trails well-maintained. There’s a small visitor center with information about the flora and fauna found in the park. While the displays are written in Thai, brochures are available in several languages including French and English. There’s also at least two restaurants, nice restroom facilities (not sure if they were squat or Western-style toilets as I didn’t need to go), and a playground. Just past the parking area is a large reservoir ringed by fig trees; bearing fruit year-round the local villagers eat the figs with chili dip or rice spaghetti and curry. The falls themselves are fairly attractive, descending in several streams forming a number of pools.

Although much smaller than Bang Pae I think I much prefer this waterfall as it’s less crowded, cleaner, and has a prettier setting. We’ll definitely return at some point for a picnic and some hiking (Alex and did a bit of climbing around the falls). A few small bungalows are located near the waterfall and are probably worth further investigation.

WAI KHRU

2007-06-18T17:37:00.000+07:00

Teachers are very highly regarded in Thailand. The most important event at schools throughout the country is the Wai Khru. This is always held on a Thursday towards the beginning of the academic year because Thursdays are considered to be an auspicious day for teachers. Our school held Wai Khru ceremonies for the English Programme this past week. It was my first experience of this truly memorable event.

"Wai Khru" is Thai for "pay respect to the teacher." The students present their teachers with flowers or jasmine garlands, thanking them for teaching them in the past and also to gain merit and good fortune for the future. The students actually prostrate themselves at the teachers' feet in what is called a krab — the most polite way to show respect. It's similar to lay people making an offering to high monks which says a lot for how Thai people feel about teachers.

Our school had two Wai Khru ceremonies in the English Programme — one in the morning for the Kindergarten and another after lunch for lower Primary through Mattayom 1 students. They each began with the school band playing a song for teachers and the students reciting several prayers. The teachers and school administrators were seated in a line of chairs across the length of the assembly hall.

The flower presentations began when a boy and a girl representative from each class in turn approached the center of the line of chairs walking on their knees. They then presented a flower arrangement they'd made the day before to the school's manager and principal. The flowers used in these arrangements are chosen for their symbolism. Dok Ma Khue (eggplant flower) stands for respect because when the tree blooms it's branches bend down in the same way a student pays respect to his teacher. The Yam Puek (Bermuda grass) flower stands for patience and perserverance; it actually appears wilted but it is very much alive. And Khao Tok (popped rice) is symbolic of discipline because the rice is placed in a pan together and heated up to become popped rice.

The students prostrated themselves, presented the flowers, gave a wai to the school manager and principal, and then proceeded along in front of the row of teachers' chairs while remaining on their knees. The flower arrangements were passed along the line from teacher to teacher until eventually there was one sitting in front of each of us on a knee-high bench.

Next, each class in turn lined up and approached the row of teachers. They did a krab at our feet, presented us with their individual flowers brought from home, waied us, and then proceeded back to sit on the floor of the assembly hall. Most students gave us the Dom Kem flower which means "needle" in Thai. It's symbolic in that the students believe it will make them sharp-witted and brainy. Many of these flowers were presented in an arrangement with incense sticks and a candle. Together with the flowers, they represent the Triple Gem (ratanatri) of Buddhism — the Buddha, his Teachings (Dharma), and the Community (Sangha).

We each received so many flowers (there being some 800 students in the English Programme) that once we received them we would hand them to student volunteers behind us. I kept a particularly beautiful arrangement to give my wife when she picked me up later in the day, surprising her immensely.

Wai Khru ended with a speech from the school's principal and the band playing a song for HM the King. It truly was a remarkable ceremony and I felt somewhat humbled to be on the receiving end of so much respect. I did videotape portions of the event from my vantage point in the row of teachers; although I'm still without a camera I hope to post some photos taken by some of the school staff later in the week (the picture of the students doing the krab at the head of this entry is from a post by Richard Barrow on the Praknam Web Forums).

The only detractor to the afternoon was the intense heat — our school's assembly hall/canteen aren't air-conditioned and the three or four large fans brought in for the ceremony just couldn't cope. It was quite a trial for students and teachers alike to sit there sweating for some two-and-a-half-hours. Still, I wouldn't trade the experience for anything. My first-ever Wai Khru really did make me feel like a part of something special.

[Cross-posted on my Thai culture & news blog at Baan Jochim Phuket.]

BLOGSPOT UNBLOCKED

2007-06-11T21:47:00.000+07:00

The Thai Ministry of Communication Information and Technology has lifted their country-wide blocking of the Blogspot domain. This is good news for Thai-based Internet users and blog-writers as we can once again view hundreds of thousands of blogs that are hosted by the Blogger service.

Aside from occasional cross-posts with my other blog, Baan Jochim Phuket, GOODNIGHT PHUKET's primary focus will now be my family life with occasional travel/tourist/local info.

Baan Jochim Phuket will deal primarily with the politics, religion, customs, etc. of my adopted country of Thailand with various news clips, other blog posts that I find interesting, as well as my original writings. I urge you to check both sites regularly (or subscribe to the RSS feeds).

New content on my Wordpress-hosted blog includes a primer on Thai culture and customs, news items about violence in the south and an increase in protests as the new national constitution is drafted as well as a user's guide for Thailand's ubiquitous squat toilets. I've also included a page listing the holidays and festivals in Thailand for 2007 (although I still need to complete the section on regional special days). Please check it out when you have time...

My next post on GOODNIGHT PHUKET will detail a weekend trip we made to Ton Sai Waterfall in Tambon Thalang that included a stop-off at Bangrong Pier in search of gibbons. I also plan to write a report on our school's Wai Kru ("Honor the Teacher Day") which will occur on Thursday. Watch for both to appear soon...

61 YEARS OF HM THE KING'S RULE

2007-06-09T20:40:00.001+07:00

His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej (ภูมิพลอดุลยเดช), or Rama IX as he is known in the West, ascended to the throne following the death of his brother, King Ananda Mahidol on 9 June 1946. The world's and the longest-reigning current head of statelongest-serving monarch in Thai history, he was formally crowned in Bangkok on 5 May 1950. During last year's massive celebrations for the 60th anniversary of his rule, the King and Queen appeared on the balcony of Ananta Samakhom Throne Hall before hundreds of thousands of people on 9 June which was a public holiday (as was most of the following week).

On 16 January 2007, the Council for National Security officially declared the end of the 60th anniversary celebrations and commenced year-long celebrations of Bhumibol's 80th birthday. Thus, today was extremely low-key compared to the festivities last year.

But we do have a new song, courtesy of the Office of the Prime Minister — "Father of the Land" (พ่อของแผ่นดิน, Poh Khong Phan Din). The song was first played nationwide this morning at 9:00 a.m. and will be continuously aired in public places to encourage people to learn the song. Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont (สุรยุทธ์ จุลานนท์) is inviting people from all corners of Thailand to jointly sing the song.

THAI SCHOOL LUNCH PRAYER

2007-06-09T19:47:00.000+07:00

In Thai schools, there are many chants and prayers said at morning assemblies and lunch. Although the school where I work is bilingual with 800 students in their own English Programme building, all of these are said exclusively in Thai. This leaves curious teachers like myself wanting to learn more Thai in order to understand what is going on (at least I can now [almost] sing the entire national anthem...phonetically).

When I take my students downstairs for lunch (in separate lines for the boys and girls), they are seated at long tables in the canteen (again, boys on one side and girls on the other). Only when all of the classes are seated more or less quietly at the tables is the lunch prayer said. A kind of grace, it is not really religious but more ethical. It's to remind the students that they should eat properly and that they should be grateful to the people who provided them with the food. The children and adults wai while a school administrator or teacher leads them in the prayer, repeating each section.

I just found a translation of one Thai school lunch prayer done by a Primary 6 student. I'm not sure if it's exactly the same as the one said at our school but the general content is probably the same:

"During the time that we eat lunch, don't speak or say things that aren't good. Don't make a noise. Take enough food for only one mouthful. Chew the food into little pieces so that you can digest the food properly. Before you get up from your seat, clean up your desk. Put the plate or a bowl orderly into the enameled basin. You mustn't waste any food. You must eat it all. There are many starving children in the world. Pity all of the children that don't have anything to eat. All of the food has a worth. When you eat food you must have good manners. Don't chew the food loudly. Don't talk when you are eating and don't say something that is bad. Don't laugh when you are eating. Thank you to our teachers that take care of us and all of the cooks that make us the food we eat. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much."

WEEK IN REVIEW

2007-06-03T19:27:00.001+07:00

We've come to the end of another long week. I did a bit more substitute teaching — Language Activities for a P4 class and English for P5 — in addition to my regular Reading classes for P3.

On Monday I was in charge of the lower-Primary Cub Scouts during which I (tried) to teach them the Scout Motto ("Be Prepared"), Oath, and Rules. I'd made a worksheet that explained each of these — both in English and Thai — but this group of Scouts just don't seem interested at all. The Thai Scouting program is a big part of teaching morals to students in the schools here but I'm finding it difficult to reach the kids in this way. Perhaps my co-Scout teachers (Tony and Ted) will have more luck this coming week.

During my lunchroom break duty on Wednesday, a P1 student came up to me saying he'd lost his shoes. When we began to look for them I asked where he'd last seen his shoes to which he replied in all innocence, "On my feet, teacher." File this under "the funny/cute things kids say..."

Friday was extremely eventful as I was given a Homeroom, sort of. The teacher in P3 Yellow had had some problems so the school's director decided to move him to another level. I've been given the responsibility of teaching all the English-related courses (including Phonics, Language Activities, etc.) for that class in addition to my P3-level Reading classes. Two very experienced teachers will teach the Math and Science courses in P3 Yellow (one has been at the school for eight years now), sharing the class with me. Unfortunately, I don't get to take over the Extra Lessons in the afternoon (which means more pay) but at least I'll be learning more of the homeroom routines and have a chance to tackle the administrative duties (paperwork) as well.

That evening was the P3 Parents' Night. Our school's director personally came to the P3 Yellow classroom so he could explain the change in teachers and introduce us to the parents. I was a bit nervous at first but the parents soon warmed up to me when I answered their questions about how long I'd been in Thailand (virtually every Thai I meet are very impressed when they find out I have a Thai wife and family). One of the mothers invited me to her son's birthday party the following day.

The party was held in a very nice house in Land & Houses Park — a gated community about five minutes from our home in Chalong. Upon arriving at the clubhouse I heard some children call out, "Hello, Teacher Mark." The more I teach, the more I run into my students at all sorts of places. Teachers Dave and Donna were there waiting for Teacher Cornell. When he arrived we made our way to the parents' home. It was a very nice get-together. The father is from America; he and his (Thai) wife had laid out a very impressive spread of food that included guacamole with chips, baby-back ribs, and fajitas. I gave everyone a crash course in how to prepare and fold a fajita. There was cake and ice cream for desert and I'm still full almost 24 hours later!

My wife had a good time as well as the hostess's mother is from Lamphun (Tim's home province) and they spent sometime talking about that area. We did have to leave earlier than I would have liked but we needed to check on Alex who'd been left with a couple of Tim's friends.

I've been fairly lazy today — working on the computer (some school-related work, some music-related tasks) and watching a bit of television. I think I'll try to read for an hour or so before going to bed.

THE DEATH OF mjochim.com

2007-06-03T18:29:00.000+07:00

Ever since my website host was bought out by another company last year, I've experienced intermittent problems. Most of these problems have involved billing; I changed my credit card details with the hosting company after my old card expired at the end of last year. Yet each month since then they've attempted to bill the old card and the site gets shut down for a couple of days until I resend the newer card info. They still send billing and change-of-service notices to my AT&T e-mail address although I've sent customer service the domain email address (that THEY provided in the first place) repeatedly over the past year.

Well, the latest is that I just received an email that my domain is due to expire in five days along with a link to renew the domain. Yet, clicking on the link brings the error notice "The domain zone is not supported by vendor." When I visited the log-in page for my website's control panel, I received the message "Invalid Domain, IP address or password" after entering the same log-in information I've been using since the beginning of the site. And this comes after they sent an email a few months ago announcing site upgrades, along with an increase in fees from $9.95 to $19.95 per month.

I'm fed up with the whole thing. I really haven't had time to make any updates to the site in several months and it had become rather cluttered. So I think I'm just going to let mjochim.com fade into the past. Perhaps I'll bring it back sometime in the future in a better-organized form — at least I have most of the pages backed-up. Plus, I'll be saving around 800 baht per month and at this point that's more important than having my own domain. Now, to start writing all those change-of-email-address notices...

BAAN JOCHIIM PHUKET

2007-05-31T10:53:00.000+07:00

With the Thai Ministry of Information and Communication Technology still blocking the entire Blogspot domain I've started a new blog over at Wordpress, called Baan Jochim Phuket (บ้านโย้ค้ำภูเก็ต). In some ways, I hope that it will complement Goodnight Phuket with some duplicate posts. However, I do intend for it to focus more on Phuket itself — history, current issues, off-the-beaten-path attractions — rather than on my day-to-day family and work life. When I do write about my wife, son, teaching experiences, etc. I'll continue to do so here. Everything else will be posted at the new blog, at least for now.

To explain the name: baan (บ้าน) is Thai for "home" or "village" while Jochim (โย้ค้ำ, pronounced "yo-kim") is my German surname derived after Saint Joachim (father of the Virgin Mary). And, Phuket (ภูเก็ต, sounds close to "pook-get") is of course where I live. It’s similar to calling one’s home something like Casa de Jochim back in New Mexico (where I lived before moving to Thailand) and one sees a great number of homes, guesthouses, etc. named Baan something or another around here.

Please add Baan Jochim Phuket to your bookmarks. While there's not a lot of content right now aside from a history of our island (still a work in progress...) I hope to change that in the near future.

VESAK HOLIDAY

2007-05-31T10:23:00.000+07:00

Today is the holiest day in the Buddhist calendar, Visakah Bucha also known as Vesak Day. Dated to coincide with the first full moon of the fourth month in the Chinese lunar calendar, Vesak marks the birth, enlightenment (Nirvana), and passing (Parinirvana) of Gautama Buddha. Because of the leap year in the lunar calendar, in 2007 the day is a public holiday in some countries on May 1st or 2nd (including Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Cambodia, Nepal, Laos, India, and Bangladesh), still others on May 24th (Hong Kong, South Korea, Macau, and Taiwan), and the remainder on either May 31st or June 1st (Singapore, Thailand, Bhutan, and Indonedia).

Devout Buddhists and followers observe Visakah Bucha by assembling in temples before dawn for the ceremonial raising of the Buddhist flag and singing of hymns in praise of the holy triple gem: the Buddha, the Dharma (his teachings), and the Sangha (his disciples). Devotees bring simple offerings of flowers, candles, and joss-sticks to lay at the feet of their teacher. These symbolic offerings are to remind followers that just as the beautiful flowers would wither away after a short while and the candles and incense would soon burn out, so too is life subject to decay and destruction.

Devotees are also instructed to make a special effort to refrain from killing of any kind. They are encouraged to partake of vegetarian food for the day. Birds, insects and animals are released by the thousands in what is known as a “symbolic act of liberation;” of giving freedom to those who are in captivity, imprisoned, or tortured against their will. Some devout Buddhists will wear a simple white dress and spend the entire day in temples with renewed determination to observe the Eight Precepts. This is called ‘Rub Sil’ in Thailand.

The Eight Precepts are:

1. Not to kill
2. Not to steal
3. Not to engage in improper sexual activity
4. Not to indulge in wrong speech
5. Not to take intoxicating drinks and drugs
6. To abstain from taking food at unreasonable times
7. To refrain from sensual pleasures such as dancing, singing and self-adornment
8. To refrain from using high and luxurious seats in order to practice humility

Celebrating Vesak also means making special efforts to bring happiness to the unfortunate like the aged, the handicapped and the sick. To this day, Buddhists will distribute gifts in cash and kind to various charitable homes throughout the country. Vesak is also a time for great joy and happiness, expressed not by pandering to one’s appetites but by concentrating on useful activities such as decorating and illuminating temples, painting and creating exquisite scenes from the life of the Buddha for public dissemination. Devout Buddhists also vie with one another to provide refreshments and vegetarian food to devotees who visit the temple to pay homage to the Blessed One.

Tradition ascribes to the Buddha himself instruction on how to pay him homage. Just before he died, he saw his faithful attendant Ananda, weeping. The Buddha advised him not to weep, but to understand the universal law that all compounded things (including even his own body) must disintegrate. He advised everyone not to cry over the disintegration of the physical body but to regard his teachings (The Dhamma) as their teacher from then on, because only the Dhamma truth is eternal and not subject to the law of change. He also stressed that the way to pay homage to him was not merely by offering flowers, incense, and lights, but by truly and sincerely striving to follow his teachings. This is how devotees are expected to celebrate Vesak: to use the opportunity to reiterate their determination to lead noble lives, to develop their minds, to practise loving-kindness and to bring peace and harmony to humanity.

During the Vesak celebration an image of the new-born Buddha, in a gesture of pointing to the Truth, is usually displayed in the shrine room of temples. There is actually a party feel to the entire occasion. Houses and streets are cleaned and decorated with Buddhist flags and flowers. In villages, Buddhists gather around statues of the Buddha when it is dark. They walk around the statue with candles until all is covered in light. Light is used by Buddhists to recall that the Buddha showed people how to become enlightened.

The tree the Buddha attained Englightment under, in Bodh Gaya, India, is called the bodhit tree. It is greatly revered in Buddhism. A bodhi tree can usually be found in the grounds of most temples or monasteries and is decorated with flags, lamps, and lanterns for the Vesak celebration. It is customary to paint an image of the Buddha on bodhi tree leaves to give as gifts on Visakha Bucha.

My wife had planned to get up early this morning to make merit and attend ceremonies at Wat Chalong but the monsoonal rains put an end to that idea. Since I have a holiday from work we'll go into Patong later if the rain lets up.

MORE THAI CENSORSHIP

2007-05-25T21:22:00.000+07:00

Well, at least I can still post to it even if I can't view my own blog in my own country. In yet another overreaction, Thailand's Ministry of Information and Communication Technology has ordered internet service providers here to block all blogs hosted by Blogger domain. Apparently, a few blogs on what is certainly world's most popular blog-hosting domain were deemed offensive to Thailand. In a repeat of the TouTube ban, many honest and respectful users in Thailand are being prevented from accessing a significant number of blogs because a few feel they need to say things against our government or royalty.

Unfortunately, I think we'll be seeing much more of this in the coming months. Thailand has a long history of media censorship. The 2006 ranking of press freedom conducted by Reporters Without Borders lists Thailand at 122 out of 168 (we dropped from 59 in 2004 to 107 in 2005). Currently, Thailand is without a constitution (the 1997 version having been revoked during last September's coup) and the ruling military junta (AKA Council for National Security) has been placing all sorts of human rights restrictions on the media and internet.

One organization set up to provide information about this issue is Freedom Against Censorship Thailand (FACT). Luckily, their blog is hosted by the Wordpress domain so we can still access it here...for now.

BIG WAVES ON PHUKET

2007-05-20T19:05:00.000+07:00

There's been a lot of seismic activity in Thailand over the past few weeks. A couple of weeks ago, I felt a bit of a tremor at school but shrugged it off. When I went downstairs to clock-out, there was a notice saying there had been a local earthquake and to steer clear of the beaches. That one didn't amount to anything but there have been other quakes felt in the north, most significantly in Chiang Mai about a week ago.

The other day, we noticed very large waves along Karon Beach and my wife later told me there had been another tsunami, something most local residents fear to one degree or another. Well, it wasn't exactly a tsunami but the following article from Phuket Gazette Online gives some interesting details:

Friday, May 18, 2007
High Tides Slam Phuket’s Northern Beaches

PHUKET: Following Wednesday’s earthquake felt across much of the country, unusually high tides yesterday created fear of another tsunami among some residents of west coast beaches.

Authorities said the waves, which damaged a number of seaside restaurants in Thalang District, were unrelated to seismic activity and were just the result of normal tidal conditions and strong monsoon winds.

The waves damaged nine restaurants along Haad Saikaew in Tah Chat Chai, just south of the Sarasin Bridge along Thepkrasattri Rd. Tides there reached their highest at around 9 am, when they overturned tables and chairs and washed away the concrete foundations of the restaurants, constructed of bamboo and corrugated zinc. No injuries were reported.

Pointing to a pillar put in place to mark wave heights during the December 2004 tsunami disaster, locals estimated that the waves reached a maximum height of almost four meters at the restaurants.

Chanthira Kalmachshima, owner of Andaman Seafood, estimated the damage to her restaurant at about 10,000 baht.

“Conditions were normal on Wednesday and we were operating as usual, but for about two hours this morning the waves came up very high, almost reaching the main road. We are going to monitor the situation tonight,” she told the Gazette yesterday afternoon.

“It wasn’t like a tsunami because the sea didn’t recede first. They just came up like regular waves, but much larger than normal. About nine restaurants were open at the time and all were badly damaged. We will have to find a safe place to stay tonight,” she added.

About 50 vehicles were still parked on Sarasin Bridge at 8 pm with people monitoring sea levels there.

K. Chanthira noted that a few days before a large sea turtle washed up on the beach and died.

“We felt that this was a sign that there was something wrong with nature. Then today these huge waves came, the biggest we have seen since the tsunami,” she said.

During a meeting at the Governor’s office this morning, an official from Mai Khao Tambon Administration Organization warned that even higher tides are expected for tomorrow and there was a possibility that sections of Thepkrasattri Rd could become inundated.

The official said he thought the unusually high tides could be a result of global warming.

In Phang Nga, some villagers in the Baan Namkem area of Khao Lak evacuated their homes yesterday to seek shelter on higher ground in fear of tidal waves, the state-run Thai News Agency reported.

The area was devastated in the 2004 tsunami disaster.

Phang Nga Tourism Association President Chittiporn Suthipibul, also a member of the Khao Lak Resort management team, told the Gazette at about 1:30 pm today that seawater was flooding the ground floor of her hotel and several other resorts in the area.

Similar flooding occurred at about 9 am yesterday, she added.

FIRST WEEK OF THE SCHOOL TERM

2007-05-20T18:52:00.000+07:00

It was a very interesting week at school as the students returned for the start of Term 1/2007. Our school has some 800 kids in the English Programme, 85 of whom I will see each each as the Reading instructor for Primary 3. I had a lot of fun in my classes this week; these children will be a joy to teach.

I was just getting into my daily routine when I was called to substitute for a P.1 class on Monday; as the Reading teacher I will occasionally be required to fill in as homeroom teachers become ill or need to go on visa runs, etc. I was a bit nervous going in but the small students were a lot of fun and really kept me on my toes!

I've also been recruited to help with the Cub Scouts for Lower Primary one day each week. That will be fun as I was a Cub Scout and Boy Scout during my youth (and that led to a stint in Navy ROTC during my high school years). I have really great memories of my experiences as a Scout. However, it means that I will not be conducting a Friday Club for this term — I'd planned a Stamp & Coin Club but I'm sure I'll have a chance to do that at some point in the future.

The school has also arranged for me to give extra lessons to a P.6 student who actually attends my son's school. His sister attends ours and his mother would like me to prepare him for the M.1 entrance exam. I'm really looking forward to this and I'm gathering material so I do the best job I can. I'll be doing these extra lessons on Friday evenings and Saturday mornings so it will be a nice ending to the week.

I want to say that I truly feel a part of something greater working at this school. I get to participate in the shaping of young minds and helping these children become good citizens. I've always been a believer of good morals and the school really stresses the importance of instilling these on the students. Thailand is an awesome place to teach morals as one only has to look at the respect everyone gives to the Royal Family, elders, monks, etc. to feel a tremendous swelling of pride. I do feel like I'm a member of the good guys for a change (something I didn't often feel in my last years in retail management). The entire school staff — from upper management to the office staff, fellow teachers, even the cafeteria and housekeeping workers — constitutes a solid team. Everyone I've come in contact with has been so gracious and so willing to help that I know I made the right decision by coming here. I only hope that my own small contributions do help make an even stronger team. I'm doing something I enjoy at work for the first time in many, many years and I look forward to going to work each and every day.

I mean, how right is it that myself — a lifelong avid reader — has become the reading teacher to 85 young students without even a mention of that love of reading in my resume or interview?

Cheers....

NOTE: My blog entries about my teaching experiences will continue to be rather vague so as to protect the privacy of students, staff, indeed the school itself. I trust my faithful readers, family, and friends understand my decision.

THAILAND AND YouTube: A RECAP

2007-05-20T18:10:00.000+07:00

I hadn't really been following the most recent (since April 3) blocking of YouTube by the government of Thailand but I found the following excellent recap on Global Voices Online:

Friday, May 18th, 2007 @ 13:04 UTC
YouTube vs. Thailand: The Latest Round
by Preetham Rai

YouTube’s latest round of trouble with Thailand started in April when some YouTube user uploaded a video mocking the Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej. The Ministry of Information and Communication Technology (MICT) tried to get YouTube to take down the clips. YouTube and its parent company Google ignored the call. MICT decided to block out YouTube. The ban fueled more copycat videos to appear on YouTube.

The king is highly revered in Thailand, not just because of his status but also due to his involvement in development projects. People openly show their respect and affection for the king. Thai blogger Mr. Pavee explains:
If any of the video uploaders have been out here in Thailand (though I strongly doubt they have), they’d notice how the king is loved by everybody here. Many shops hang his photos up on the walls and yellow flags (yellow represents the monarchy here) can be seen hung from many houses. The nation is filled with people wearing yellow shirts showing respect to the king. If a photo of the king’s face graffiti’ed on was hung up on the streets, someone will go and tear it down within a few seconds, let alone minutes. Once last year, hundreds of thousands of people wearing yellow shirts gathered to listen to his speech, the crowd was literally a kilometer long. That’s how much people love him here.
The king was born on a Monday. Many people wear yellow on Mondays to honor the king.

Long time Thailand resident Andrew Biggs feels that blocking YouTube only helped encourage the miscreants.
I don’t care how offensive the video clip in question is. The truth is, the power of the love and devotion the Thais feel towards their King is so strong, it can never be hurt or destroyed by one stupid video clip. But the government has banned You Tube, and in doing so, they have drawn the attention of the whole world to this situation. Now every obnoxious person in the world who has access to the internet (and believe me, that’s a LOT of people) is now busily making his/her own anti-King videos.
Early in May, MICT decided to sue Google under Thailand’s lèse majesté law. Thai blogger drewkam called the legal action an “absurd” move. Drewkam reiterated the affection that the Thai people have for the king but felt the action would only end up bringing more negative publicity to Thailand. The blogger urged the MICT to get on with
other things much more important (like making my DSL connection faster!).
On May 11th, Google backed down and agreed to take down the clips.

Lost Boy wrote
It looks like Thailand won’t be suing Google after all. “We have called that off,” said Sitthichai. Google VP Kent Walker apologized to Thailand in an official letter. All defamatory clips of HMtK will be removed and soon we will all be able to watch videos of cats falling off TVs again. Will it be happily ever after? Perhaps, although I’m surprised that Google buckled to Sitthichai’s bullying tactics.
Sitthichai Pokai-udom is Thailand’s minister for Information and Communications Technology. A week has passed since that news and YouTube is still inaccessible.

Wonder what is taking the MICT so long?

A comment by Hew on New Mandala might offer some clues.
In the report I read, Google had said that half the clips had already been removed by their original posters. Of the remainder, several would be removed as offensive to HMK. The remainder on the government’s ‘offensive’ list were judged by google to be political criticisms of the government and nothing to do with lèse majesté. These would not be removed.

That's it in a nutshell. I certainly hope that the two sides can come to some sort of resolution in the near future...

IN THE PRESENCE OF A PRINCESS

2007-05-20T17:27:00.001+07:00

Last evening my wife, son, and I attended a special tribute to HRH King Bhumibol Adulyadej honoring His Majesty's 80th birthday (which occurs on December 5). The event was presided over by HRH Princess Soamsavali Phravararajatinuddamatu (พระเจ้าวรวงศ์เธอ พระองค์เจ้าโสมสวลี พระวรราชาทินัดดามาตุ และ พระเจ้าหลานเธอ พระองค์เจ้าพัชรกิติยาภา, which translates to "the mother of the king's first grandchild"). She was the first wife of HRH Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn; they divorced in the 1980s.

Arriving fairly early (just before five o'clock for an event that wasn't to begin until after seven), we secured a prime viewing spot at the very front to the left of the VIP seating. We started out sitting on the edge of a concrete planter encircling one of the many trees in the Port section of Jungceylon and had to briefly move when the bomb-sniffing dog came around. Security was very tight with, I'm assuming, representatives from every one of Thailand's various branches of police and military. Sometime between 5:30 and 6:00 members of the Royal Guard came around to have all of us kneel/sit cross-legged on the ground. We were also given Thai tricolor and yellow King flags to wave. As the only farang sitting up front it seemed like everytime I looked up there was an official-looking still- or video-camera pointed my way. Alex also had his share of images shot of him.

Although I'm still without a digital still camera (I'm holding out for the 17,000-baht Sony CyberShot T-100) I did go armed with my trusty camcorder. I did get some rather nice footage of the HRH's arrival and start of a presentation until a Secret Service-type (black suit, menacing appearance) indicated that unauthorized images weren't allowed at that point. Following a number of local dignitaries paying tribute to the Princess, the regular Jungceylon water & light show was presented followed by an even more spectacular tribute to HRH the King (including images of his artwork and of His Majesty playing in various jazz combos, all accompanied by some of his excellent compositions). At one point, there were ballroom dancers onstage and then a popular Thai singer sang a couple of rather rockified traditional songs. It all ended with a huge fireworks display and Her Royal Highness disappearing inside the mall to view an art exhibition and the That's Siam! section of shops. We were quickly ushered out by Thai military and so couldn't get to our planned meal at Burger King.

I felt really privileged to have been able to attend this event and to have been so close to Royalty as well. It was far more interesting than last year when we watched the various events for His Royal Highnesses' 60th anniversary of rule on TV. Despite seeing numerous Royal motorcades traveling to and from Wat Chalong over the course of the year (and once while standing outside of Maio's home in Bang Pa-In), this is the closest Tim or I have gotten to Royalty. The thing that struck me most was the feeling of reverence the citizens have towards the Royal Family. You hear and read a lot about that love here but that cannot prepare one for experiencing it firsthand.

A NICE AFTERNOON

2007-05-13T20:40:00.001+07:00

We finally got rid of Dtim's friend La this afternoon (my wife told me that she, too, was getting tired of La constantly coming over unannounced) and decided to spend the rest of the day in Nai Harn. We drove to the lagoon a short distance from the beach and had a nice time sitting on the little island in the middle of the lake. Dtim ate sunflower seeds and did some crochet work, I did a bit of reading while watching Alex play. He'd spent most of the drive over singing at the top of his lungs and so was in a very hyper mood. At one point he found some twigs and began drumming on my little plastic chair and the picnic hamper. But nowadays when he plays in this way he seems to be very careful to not disturb mama and papa too much. He truly is becoming a respectful little boy.

Around 5:30 the clouds began darkening and we could hear thunder in the distance so we decided it would be a good time to head for home. But as we rounded the bend overlooking the southern part of Nai Harn Beach we could see a dark squall line just a short distance offshore. The rain was coming heavy and fast. Luckily, it was a short distance to my favorite Mexican restaurant in all of Thailand — Los Amigos Cantina. We made it there just moments before the sky opened up with a torrential downpour.

We enjoyed our dinner and I overdid it a bit since it'd been quite some time since our last visit to Los Amigos. I ordered a cheese nacho appetizer for us to share and then had my usual order of a Combination Plate (Mexican fried rice, refried beans, chicken enchilada, beef taco) with an extra taco. This time I could barely finish the second taco but was able to wash it down with a pineapple shake (which I rarely order anywhere anymore). Alex finished his two chicken enchiladas but we needed a box for his Mexican fried rice (Dtim's favorite as well). He was oddly subdued during dinner (no naughtiness in sight); perhaps he wore himself out with his vigorous drumming at the lake.

We drove home in a steady drizzle which increased the closer we got to Casa de Jochim. No worries as we were all protected under our rain gear. I might mention here that I'm always amused at the other Thai motorbike drivers during rainstorms. They NEVER put on a raincoat (usually those thin trashbag-type ponchos available for 20 baht at any soi shop) until it has already begun to pour despite the usual signs of ominous clouds and increased wind. And then half again of the riders/drivers don't even bother with any protective gear at all. Indeed, the majority of those who try to avoid the rain while driving do so by pulling their shirts up over their heads (including the drivers) or trying to cover themselves with an umbrella. It always makes me laugh to see some pour motorbike driver riding in the heavy rain with a flimsy umbrella pointed in front of them.

Anyway, I have been spoiled by this year's seemingly early start to the rainy season (called the "green" season in Phuket). Most days over the past two or three weeks have been overcast and fairly cool with morning, midday, afternoon, evening, and overnight thundershowers. These storms typically blow through within a fifteen- or thirty-minute span and then an hour or two or more go by before the next storm. We've (mostly) been successful at not getting rained on while going to and from school but sometimes we have to cancel planned errands (such as trips to the hypermarts) rather than risk getting soaked. But the air has been pleasant and sometimes I clear my mind by standing on the third-floor balcony watching the incoming storms approach (especially spectacular when they come over the mountains to the east). One night we were even treated to the most spectacular lightning show I've ever seen and that includes some dramatic ones observed while living in one of America's prime lighting-viewing areas. The bolts were traveling down to the ground and back up to the clouds and jumping from side to side as well. I managed to capture some of this on film as well!

But yesterday and most of today were just plain hot. And so muggy that I felt I was living back in northeast Kansas and truly wilted whenever I attempted to do anything remotely strenuous. At least we had a nice breeze while at the lake and that helped to make it an enjoyable afternoon. If nothing else, it was nice to get out of the house and away from making lesson plans and trying to figure out first-week ice-breakers and games for school.

WHAT A GOOD BOY!

2007-05-13T20:03:00.001+07:00

Sometimes my son surprises us with a completely unexpected act of selflessness or kindness. Tonight, we'd returned from our dinner near Nai Harn Lake driving through the rain for thirty minutes or so. I was removing my rain poncho when I commented that I wished I'd remembered that I was out of soda while we were out. Alex suddenly said, "I buy for you papa," and jumped on his bicycle. I tucked 60 baht into his hand and asked him to buy me three cans and to use the change to buy himself something. I was so surprised that Alex offered to ride up to the corner market that I didn't heed my wife's protests. Of course, I watched from the side of the road while Alex peddled up the soi and disappeared around a bend in the road. Dtim was just firing up the motorbike when Alex came back into view carrying a bag of Cokes and Sprite. He even gave me 15 baht in change while saying, "I don't need something papa." He's truly becoming a joy to have around and he really is beginning to make an effort at trying to please me. He's becoming my little buddy and my wife tells me that he constantly tells her how much he loves his "new papa."

HOW TO SPEND TIME WITH MY WIFE?

2007-05-13T12:47:00.000+07:00

One of the biggest adjustments a male farang in Thailand must make is the fact that when he has a Thai girlfriend or wife his relationship isn't simply with her and her alone. Oh, no. He has a relationship with all of her friends and family as well.

I consider myself somewhat fortunate in that my wife's family lives far to the north of us — ranging from Bang Pa-In (between Bangkok and Ayutthaya) to Pa-Sang (in Lamphun Province south of Chiang Mai). That means I only have to deal with the friends on a day-to-day basis. Over the months, the sheer numbers of constant hangers-on has dwindled but it is still frustrating when I never know when somebody will show up for a visit (they never stay for short periods of time, either) or when they do visit they tend to stay for far longer than we consider polite in the West.

I tend to go through stages as sometimes I don't mind so much but other times I get sick of people "mooching" off of us (me, as there's only my income to keep the household going).

None of Dtim's friends seem to possess the quality of kreng jai (consideration for others). They think nothing of drinking the last of our water/soda/beer without offering to purchase more. The few items of food that I actually like to eat tends to disappear. When they do buy food, I'm never remembered so I rarely eat unless I'm at work.

A few mornings ago I was awoken a bit before six a.m. by the sound of the downstairs TV blaring. At first, I thought it was my wife but I found her asleep in Alex's room; apparently, one of her friends had let themselves in the house after we'd gone to sleep (I told Dtim when we moved to the new house that she was NOT to give out any keys to her friends).

I'd breathed a sigh of relief a week ago when Dtom (finally) got a job in Patong as I thought we'd finally have the house to ourselves. She'd come down from Lamphun (I'm still unclear whether or not she's related to my wife by blood — she refers to her as her friend but calls her Alex's aunt) in February to look for work and proceeded to spend much of the ensuing weeks laying around doing nothing but eating our food and watching TV (once I purchased a second set for the downstairs). Although she'd been offered numerous jobs she always had one excuse or another for not taking them. Finally, Dtim told me that she couldn't get to the jobs because she didn't have her own motorbike (that never stopped Nadia as my wife drove her into Patong from Chalong every night for almost three months and then picked her up afterwards). Anyway, we (I) bought her a secondhand motorbike a couple of weeks ago and she began learning how to do proper Thai massage at a shop on Nanai Road where she now has a room. But she's still at our home, along with La, virtually every day when I come home from work.

I'm most tired of La hanging around. I suspect she/he (I'm never sure what to call the ladyboys) is the person who's been stealing from us from time to time. Some months ago, somebody stole money from Alex's piggy bank. La and Nid were the only two people around; Dtim accused Nid and lost her as a friend. A few weeks ago, coins disappeared out of a piggy bank I keep in the upstairs bedroom (I just throw 10-baht coins in there); one day it was half-full when I left for work and when I returned there was only one coin in there and the plug was on the other side of the room. I began locking the room when leaving for the day. When my camera turned up missing, La was the only one in the house (the case was sitting empty in my wardrobe). But I can't directly accuse her/him or even hint it to my wife as both actions would make me lose face. I can only point out obvious clues and hope Dtim comes to the same conclusion. That may be helped by the fact that she had a 500-baht note disappear from her purse when La was sleeping downstairs a couple of nights ago.

Whatever her friends are doing here, the fact remains that I can never be alone with my wife. I don't care so much if they're around during the daytimes in the week while I'm at work. But when they are here throughout the evening, spend the night, and sit around all during the weekend as well that it's creating problems. I'd like to at least have my house to myself and my family during the weekends. I don't spend enough time with my wife as it is (not through lack of trying, either — we don't even get to sleep together the majority of the time because Alex can't/refuses to sleep alone).

What do I have to do to make her and her friends understand that I don't want them constantly underfoot? I know that if I just tell her they need to go home, I'll lose face as I'm no longer being jai kwang (generous) and she'd probably leave as well.

I'm just tired of sharing my limited time with my wife's circle of friends rather than my wife and my son. Yes, it is an integral part of Thai culture that the people are never alone and I accept that. But I've also tried explaining that sometimes I'd like to do things with my family without an entourage. And I certainly don't want any of these people staying in our home when we are away as I'm tired of things turning up missing (and also the increased electric bills; they think nothing of letting themselves inside late at night and then turning on the TV all night and I'm sure they have it on all day when I'm at work).

What can I do?

ADSL... FINALLY!!

2007-05-11T19:57:00.001+07:00

My problems with getting an ADSL hookup through TOT have been well-documented in this blog. We'd started the process (and paid the deposit and other fees) back in March and most recently had been told to wait another three months after paying (twice) for a modem.

Imagine my surprise yesterday when my wife called me at work to ask for my computer password so that TOT could set up the broadband connection! I'd all but given up on them showing up at our house without another round of phone calls. After work, I expected to be told there had been some unforeseen problem and they couldn't get us connected. Dtim said that I was supposed to wait for 24 hours for them to "turn on Internet." Lo and behold, it's working tonight!

I did a test of my online speed this morning using my new favorite broadband site, Speedtest.net, pinging a server in Bangkok:

Compare those results with the test I did just a few moments ago:

Quite a difference on the download speeds! For some reason, I had a faster upload speed on the dial-up connection. I also don't understand the "distance" readings as Bangkok is actually a little under 500 miles from Phuket.

I probably won't have time to enjoy the faster connection (i.e., searching around for movies or music to download via BitTorrent) until Sunday, however. I'm too tired tonight (it was a long week preparing for the start of classes on Monday) and tomorrow we're attending a mesquite BBQ party sponsored by ThaiVisa.com.

NEW PHUKET MAGAZINE

2007-05-04T13:18:00.001+07:00

Living on Phuket I'm always on the lookout for reading material about our island, particularly about it's history and culture. Unfortunately, apart from the weekly Phuket Gazette newspaper, English-language material is fairly scarce.

So I was delighted to stumble across the premier issue of Phuketscape, a quarterly magazine published by the Old Phuket Foundation. The Foundation's mission statement gives a good indication about the scope of this publication:

To develop, restore, revitalize, and preserve the way of life, the art, and the architecture of the old buildings in the historical conservation area under the Designated Area and Environment Act of 1997, from the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Environment.
To create an awareness of the importance of Old Town preservation to residents living in the historic conservation area and to the people of Phuket.
To promote culture affairs.
To promote democratic administration with the Kind as head of state, without financially or nonfinancially supporting any politicians or political parties.

Among the articles in Vol. 1 No. 1 (March-May 2007) are reports of the Poontay Fair and Old Phuket Town Festival (both of which helped raise awareness of the early Phuket way of life), information about the port of Jungcylon (the first name Westerners gave to the island), and the story of The Sharks — a local group popular in the mid-1960's.

Many of the articles are bilingual, Thai and English, and well-illustrated with color and black & white photos. It's really nicely done and I look forward to future issues. My only real complaint is that not ALL of the articles are translated into English. It's a bit frustrating at being "denied" a few interesting-appearing stories given my inability to read the Thai language (I am beginning to learn, however).

PHUKET BIKE WEEK PHOTOS

2007-04-30T11:07:00.000+07:00

Dtim, Dtom, La, Alex and I attended the final night of activities for this year's Phuket Bike Week on the Sunday of Songkran weekend. For the first time, it was held at Jungceylon in Patong rather than the OTOP market and I think it was the better for it.

We all enjoyed looking at the various choppers (called "big bikes" here) from all over Southeast Asia and farther abroad (including one or two from America and several from the U.K.). There was also a multi-band concert (the AC/DC tribute band from Sweden was extremely good as was a blues band from Germany and a group of teenagers from Phuket). There was also a Miss Phuket Bike Week contest as well one for the best tattooed body. We did get a bit wet from a few thunderstorms but we were all used to getting soaked from Songkran anyway.

Enjoy the photos!

Alex acting 'ting tong' ("crazy") on the drive into Patong.

Now, I can drive a bike like this — three wheels so I don't fall over...

This was my favorite bike this year.

That's a proper sidecar!

Dtom, Dtim, and Alex pose for me.

My wife and son with coconut man.

No trip to Jungceylon is complete without a visit to Burger King. Alex demands his very own Whopper to eat; it takes him awhile — and he removes all the lettuce, tomatoes, onions, etc. — but he does finish them.

The four of us (not including Alex, of course) downed three of these jumbo Heinekens (450 baht each) during the evening.

This garish Thai bike even had a torpedo-like trailer and reminded me of those strange trucks you see on the highways in the middle of the night.

This band consisted of 15- and 16-year old local boys and played mostly Bon Jovi covers; my sister would have been impressed.

The show included a perfomance by "coyote dancers" from Tiger Entertainment. I thought the present government was cracking down on such public performances but I suppose "anything goes" in Phuket.

An evening out with Alex isn't complete until somebody has to set him straight again.

We were surprised to run into Dtim's old friend Mike at the concert. They've known each other for about three years (he's a good friend of Lek's and Jum's) and he visits Thailand several times each year. A Harley mechanic in Texas, he's currently doing contract work in Iraq.

Dtom found a new friend to dance with during the concert.

The winner of the Miss Phuket Bike Week contest. She's Thai, naturally (although she was given a good run by several women from Sweden).

Winner of the "best tattooed body" contest.

The Harleys thundered off at the end in a downpour.

That will be all the "new" photos for a while since my camera turned up missing sometime between my wife's birthday party and the installation of our new glass entrance to our home. We don't know if it sprouted legs by itself or was helped along by one of Dtim's friends or one of the workers who were in our home. At any rate, I hope to be able to buy a new camera in another week or two so I can resume chronicling my "adventures" in paradise.

IMAGES OF SONGKRAN (PT. 2)

2007-04-30T10:31:00.001+07:00

As promised, here's the second half of my photos from this year's Songkran (สงกรานต์) celebrations in Patong:

Alex really loved soaking anybody, and anything, within range of his water cannon.

We encountered a wide variety of people while manning our little drinks stand.

My wife gave the novice monks free sodas. Good kharma, indeed.

A mobile water cannon is better than a stationary one...

Of course, Alex was good at running away when the water was directed towards him.

HOW CAN TOT STAY IN BUSINESS?

2007-04-26T13:15:00.001+07:00

I had been looking forward to a working ADSL connection when I returned home from work today. After all, TOT's "customer service" center had promised us yesterday that it would certainly be hooked up today. But, as usual with dealing with this company, our expectations were shattered by being told we'd have to wait another two months and possibly more!

Here's a brief summary of our "adventures" with the only phone company that services our part of Phuket:

On March 22, my wife submitted our application for a phone line and ADSL broadband service at TOT's office in Central Festival. This was several days after we filled out the application at the large TOT center on Chaofa West Road in Chalong (located less than one kilometer from our home and where all the service calls for southern Phuket originate from). They had told us that we'd have to pay the deposits and installation charges at the Central office. At the time, they were running a promotion where the router was included in the installation charge. Dtim paid fees of more than 5800 baht and upon returning home told me that the phone line and ADSL would be hooked up in a few days.

Workers arrived on March 29, stringing phone cable along the front of the entire row of shophouses (including three soi gaps) before reaching our home. One worker leaned a very tall bamboo ladder up the side of the house and drilled a hole right under the third floor window in the master bedroom. The phone line was run straight up the wall, nailed to hold it in place, and run through the hole on the third floor before being tied off in a messy loop and a phone jack attached to the end (just hanging there without being attached).

The leader of this trio of workers (whom Dtim had corralled into putting up two wall fans as well) gave me a sheet of paper listing our new telephone number and the number of the guy who hooks up the ADSL. He told me to wait 24 hours before calling this other person. When we called the next day, we were told he'd be out later in the week.

A week went by and we were into the second before I had my wife call and find out what was going on with the Internet hookup. She was told that the guy who does this (apparently, TOT only has one employee who installs ADSL) had gone home for the Songkran (Thai New Year's) holiday and would be out the following week. Another week and Dtim called again. Tomorrow. Another call. If not by Friday, definitely on Monday.

Yesterday (April 24th — mind you, we paid our money on March 22), I had Dtim call again. The ADSL hookup guy asked her if we had a modem. TOT never gave her one when she paid the installation fees despite the then-current promotion that said the router was free. She was told she'd have to buy one from him at a cost of 3000 baht! I told her that was bunk and proceeded to dig out the original flyer from the promotion plus the receipt of what she'd paid (itemized, but it was in Thai). There was nothing about a modem on the receipt but there was a phone number to the customer center at Central Festival. She called them was told that the promotion had finished on March 30th (we signed up on March 22) but we could buy a modem there for 1,470 baht and that they would "definitely install tomorrow." Again, I said that was bunk (not my exact words, of course) that they were trying to sell us the modem since the promotion was in existence when we applied and they needed to honor that.

We decided to go down to the customer service center in person since we were getting nowhere on the phone. There was A LOT of confusion while we were there in that there was no record of us even having telephone service in their computer and various employees would come over to the cubicle we were sitting in, fiddle with the computer, and leave. Dtim did all the talking and they only spoke Thai so I was fairly lost except for the occasional phrase such as mai dai ("cannot") and mai kao jai ("don't understand"). Every once in a while, someone would bring over a large looseleaf binder and flip furiously through it; I assumed they were looking for our application. At first, I would occasionally ask Dtim what was going on but she told me to remain quiet. So I spent two hours siting there — grinning like a bewildered idiot so as to demonstrate jai dee ("cool heart") because getting angry in public is a sure-fire way to loose face in Thailand — wondering if the fate of our first-born was being decided.

Sometime in the middle of this confusion and negotiation, a fellow farang barged into the center screaming at the various employees about how his business had been ruined because he's been without internet for a week despite his repeated calls and their repeated promises of help. He soon left muttering how he'd be writing letters to The Phuket Gazette about the terrible service TOT provides. It seems that this is very common as TOT has many complaints againt the company on a regular basis. If we were able to have TT&T or somebody else provide home phone service, we'd jump ship in a second.

Anyway, the end result yesterday was the discovery that our service had been (conveniently) cancelled out of the computer so they couldn't give us the "promotion" since they had to enter a new service contract. This despite Dtim repeatedly pointing out the dates on the desposit/fees reciept and our copy of the invoice when they had installed the phone line (both of which fell BEFORE the promotion ended). In fact, the TOT people didn't believe we actually had a workng phone until they called our home! We ended up paying 1,470 baht for a router; my wife later told me that the girl who had taken over the computer for the last stage of our drama was actually going to honor the promotion and give us the modem but Dtim overheard the center's manager saying to charge us since I was a farang. Dtim was very angry at this obvious example of corruption (there's a new series of commercials on TV educating the Thai people about the evils of corruption) but I just accepted it as one more form of two-tiered pricing.

We left with the "promise" that they would be out to setup the modem the following day (I told Dtim that I could probably do it myself if only they would give me the username and password for our account).

Today, it was a different story. TOT called Dtim sometime in the morning saying that it would take between another week to a month. She couldn't explain to me what the lady had told her (I wasn't sure if Dtim was saying they needed a "part" or a "port") so I called them back after work. At first, the "customer service" agent wouldn't tell me anything. She kept saying, "I talk to Khun Sangwan this morning." When I asked her to tell me what she'd told my wife the response was, "I tell Khun Sangwan already." "Well, can you tell me what you told her?" Finally, she said that the ADSL department didn't have a "part" or "port" — again, I couldn't quite understand until she told me "they full port" and that I was on a waiting list. When I asked how long this waiting list was, I was told "two month, maybe three month."

This is just totally unacceptible. They happily took our deposit and installation fees, failed to honor a promotion and collected more money for a modem over a month later and still won't hook up the broadband for at least another couple of months! And it's not like we have a choice of providers here otherwise I'd switch in a heartbeat. I'm tempted to cancel the entire service, including the phone line, but we'd end up without anything at all (refunds are nonexistent in Thailand) — I did purchase a dial-up service card (unlimited for 30 days at 320 baht) but the speed is so slow (just meausured at 8.10kbps using the bandwidth meter at DG Shipping) as to be completely useless. At the time being, I suppose I'll remain reliant on internet cafes (the nearest one is quite a drive from our new home) or occasional computer time at work (which I feel guilty about using for non-school purposes, even to check email).

I just can't understand how a company which has such a consistant record of poor service (back issues of Phuket Gazette and the various expat online forums are full of complaints against TOT) can remain in business. In the West, this type of incompetence would not be tolerated. Sometimes the mai pen rai and sabai sabai attitudes are not so endearing...

IMAGES OF SONGKRAN (PT. 1)

2007-04-26T08:39:00.001+07:00

Here are a few photos from our Songkran (Thai New Year's) celebrations earlier this month.

The first set of photos were taken at Kajonkietpattana School where the kids and Thai teachers kept myself and the Fillipina teachers hiding in the English Department office for fear of being drenched with water. Lisa was the first to be trapped outside and then Espy was attacked when returning from the restroom. I sacrificed myself so that Espy could sneak back inside.

The school armed the kids with their water cannons and buckets.

My fellow English Department teachers at Kajonkietpattana — (left to right:) Espy, Joy and Grace.

Lisa gets soaked.

Natured called Espy and she couldn't make it back inside the office before she was attacked.

We spent this year's Songkran Day in Patong once again. However, this time my wife and her friends had a stand where we sold beer, soda, and water as well as refilled people's water cannons and pails. Alex had a great time soaking everyone (and everything in sight).

Part Two photos (hopefully) coming soon...

ALL'S WELL

2007-04-25T10:41:00.001+07:00

It's amazing how little free time I have these days. I'm at the school from eight in the morning until close to four in the afternoon each weekday while my evenings are taken up preparing for the next day's lessons. I've been teaching the Primary 5 classes since last Friday as they asked me if I could replace the regular teacher. It's been quite a challenge but I've had some really satisfying lessons, ones where I could see the lightbulb going off in the student's brains as comprehension set in. It being the second summer course we only have three lessons each day — English, Math, and Science — and then we have other activities in the afternoon (i.e., yesterday I assisted in the Science Lab). Math and Science were never my strong subjects in school so I've been struggling coming up with lessons I could actually teach.

I'm still waiting for my ADSL hookup at home (more on the drama with TOT when I have more time to write); I have VERY SLOW dialup service but it's barely useable. What little computer time I can actually get is at school but most days the computers are all in use during my free time. Hopefully (knock on wood), the end of my online doldrums is in sight.

I have A LOT to write about when I have time (maybe Sunday; I'll be in Burma on Saturday). Unfortunately, my camera came up missing after my wife's birthday party so I'll have to buy a new one at some point to continue taking photos (can't exactly afford that right now).

FIELD TRIP (WRITTEN 12 APRIL 2007)

2007-04-20T14:01:00.001+07:00

Yesterday, our kids at Kajonkietpattana School had a field trip to S.P.A. Water Company's bottling plant. I was one of the teachers chaparoning, along with Teachers Jeff (from England), Grace (from the Philippines), and one Thai teacher. It was nice to get out of the school for a change and the students were fairly well-behaved (even remarkably quiet on our bus, thanks to Grace's sometimes loud voice). We were even given sample bottles of water at the end of the tour.

Here are a few photos from the field trip:

two of the P2 students on the bus

sitting quietly,waiting for the presentation to begin

checking out the water filtration area

clean room where the water bottles (large and small) are prepared

Teacher Jeff presents a gift to the manager of S.P.A. Water

behaving?

some of my fellow teachers

heading back to school

view of Kajonkietpattana School

CHECKING IN...

2007-04-17T13:52:00.001+07:00

A busy second second-half of last week and a full Songkran holiday weekend left me without any free time at all. And today, Tuesday, we began the second summer session of classes at Kajonkietsuksa (allowing me a bit of time to access a computer; we're still without an Internet connection at home).

I hope to write a few entries over the course of the next few days to bring you up-to-date on my activities, complete with a few photos (I hope).

In the meantime, I'd like to send out congratulations to my cousin David in California for the latest addition to the Jochim family — Natasha was born last Thursday morning at 4:30.

MISCELLANEOUS UPDATES

2007-04-10T11:37:00.001+07:00

There really isn't much new news to report apart from my experiences as a beginning TEFL teacher. The move to the new house has gone nicely although there remains quite a bit to be done. My computer is working but I'm still without an Internet connection at home. And we're all preparing to celebrate Thai New Year and Tim's birthday this coming weekend.

I've already written quite a bit about my first few days teaching. Our normal daily routine is that my wife drops me off at my school each morning around 8:10 on her way to taking Alex to school. She then picks me up after 3:30 on her way home from retrieving our son. Lunch at school is free; it's always Thai food and most of it isn't very good. I liken it to prison meals and this is reinforced by the tin cups they give us for water. There is a nice restaurant just off the campus and most of the teachers end up there, particularly if we have a longer-than-usual lunch (sometimes the Sports or Thai periods are immediately before or after the meal hour). I usually buy a soda when I go over with Timmy or Evan but I did have a ham and cheese sandwich with fries one day and an ice cream cone on another.

I'm still a bit lost at Kajonkietsuksa (and I won't be able to "catch up" this week since I'm subbing at Kajonkietpattana). I still don't have a username/password for the school computers and photocopier so I need to get that arranged as soon as possible when I return. The farang teachers are required to wai the Thai teachers when we encounter them around the school but I often mistake Filopinas for Thais. We're also supposed to line the kids up and escort them downstairs (our classroom is on the third floor) for breaks and lunch. Timmy didn't know this even though he'd been at the school for three weeks already; we finally brought our kids down properly on Friday (for a magic show).

Since all of the lesson plans for the summer course were written before the term began, I haven't had to do much evening preparation for the classes. I do spend a lot of free time flipping through my various volumes in the Cambridge Handbooks For Language Teachers series looking for ideas. My favorite titles include Lessons From Nothing, Five-Minute Activities, and Games For Language Learning.

Dtim and I finished cleaning out our old house this past Saturday. I called our landlord, Jon, and we did the walk-through and I returned all of the keys. He seemed pleased with the amount of cleaning we did and I pointed out a few problem areas (the ink on the sofa and various-colored paint on the patio, both courtesy of Alex). He also needs to replace the mattress in the master bedroom (a year of wear-and-tear doesn't do good things to cheap Thai mattresses). Jon will call us later in the week so we can collect what remains of our 36,000-baht deposit (I'm thinking around 25,000 baht).

We still need to buy curtains for the master bedroom balcony window at the new house but we hung (light blue) miniblinds on window overlooking my desk. That turned out to be a major process on Sunday. My wife and her friends Dtim and La told me they wanted to do this for me and assured me they could use the drills, etc. After a half-hour or so, Franz and I went upstairs to check on the girls and found a some odd holes in the concrete wall and strange measurements written in ink which would have made the blinds sit at an incline. Anyway, Franz took over and soon had the situation under control. The blinds definitely make the room feel cooler (although I'm still missing the air-conditioner) and I don't have to worry about that Thai man in the neighboring shophouse staring at us through the window any longer.

After a week operating my laptop solely on Ubuntu (and purchasing The Official Ubuntu Book at B2S for 1,275 baht so I'd know what the heck I was doing), I finally broke down and purchased the Windows Vista operating system. In America, I'm used to every Wal-Mart or Office Depot type of store selling software but it's different here on Phuket. Your choices for software are either to buy cheapo pirated copies from a street vendor in Patong or at an open-air market or to purchase a genuine sealed-package from one of very few authorized distributors in Phuket Town.

I didn't fancy driving around that part of the island (Dtim and I tend to get lost downtown with it's numerous confusing streets) blinding looking for computer software distributors so Friday after school I directed my wife to IT City on Thepkassatree Road. I'd glimpsed the sign months ago early one morning when returning to town on the Bangkok bus and thought this would be our best bet for finding Windows software; if they didn't carry it I figured they could tell us where we could go next. We managed to find the store okay and lo-and-behold they actually had software. At that point, I was still planning to buy a new XP disc but they were out-of-stock. They could order it for me and it would arrive on Wednesday with a cost of 3,790 baht. I decided to place the order (I wasn't certain if my laptop met the minimum requirements for Vista).

Before going home, we stopped off at B2S in Central Festival so I could browse through some books about Vista. I found out that, yes, my computer could run the new system and I ended up purchasing Master Visually Microsoft Windows Vista (1,150 baht). Saturday afternoon, after our walk-through at the old house, we returned to IT City and I bought my new OS. Vista was a breeze to install and now my laptop works very well. There are a still a few problem areas such as a DVD I tried to burn last night took a couple of hours before I gave up (this might be a problem with too little RAM) and needing to download some updated drivers for various other components. I'm still waiting on TOT to come and install my ADSL (they told my wife "sometime next week") but I can go to an Internet cafe to check email and try to get caught up on other online activities.

Dtim's mobile phone stopped working this past weekend so I've decided to buy her a new one as a birthday present — probably one of the Motorola Razr models because I know these last longer than the cheapo LG and Nokia phones that are sold all over the place here. In fact, this will be my wife's fifth phone in a year! I also plan to give her some extra money so she can buy herself something nice as well. Since her birthday falls on Songkran day (Friday), we won't be able to have her party until sometime next week. She wants to have a booth selling water and beer in Patong for the celebrations on Friday and I plan to buy giant water cannons for both Alex and myself to participate in the all-day water battles.

SUBSTITUTE TEACHING

2007-04-09T20:12:00.001+07:00

With under a week of real teaching under my belt I'm already being farmed out to teach at different schools. Actually, Kajonkietsuksa's original campus — Kajonkietpattana — was in desparate need of an English teacher to fill in from Monday to Thursday this week since the regular instructor had to go to Bangkok unexpectedly. Since I've been "co-teaching" with Timmy it was natural that one of us would be the substitute and I was given the opporunity; they asked me on Friday if I could do this.

All weekend long I dreaded going to work at the other school. Afterall, I'm still a complete "newbie" and still trying to figure out the routines at Kajonkietsuksa. I needn't have worried as today was a piece of cake. I do have to go to my "home school" in order to clock-in each morning and return in the afternoons to time out but that's the only real annoyance — since we live so close to Villa 5 we don't have to drive too far out of the way.

I do have to be at Kajonkietpattana each morning before 10am but the first English class isn't until one in the afternoon. Upon arrival this morning, I was given a stack of lesson plans to choose from each following a different theme. I chose "water" and then spent an hour expanding on the given outline — I began with a brainstormer of different uses for water (drinking, bathing, swimming, etc.) and added vocabulary for different forms (liquid, frozen, hot, cold, etc.) before throwing in a word search using most of the vocabulary. Anyway, the remainder of the downtime before my first class was spent checking email in the school's computer room and perusing various books looking for games and other activities I could do.

I also spent some time talking to the other teachers in the English Program office — there are four Filipina ladies and one gentleman from England. Teacher Jeff has lived in Thailand for nine years now and has taught at Kajonkietpattana for the last three. He told me how laid-back the school was compared to Kajonkietsuksa and the ladies kept asking if I was going to stay there for next term rather than going back to Villa 5.

I'm not even sure of the level of the class I taught. Judging by percieved ages I'd say the kids were about as old as my P3's at Kajonkietsuksa but I do have a difficult time telling ages of Thai children. The big difference came in the level of their English comprehension. Where my home school is bilingual and the kids receive four or five lessons in English daily and only one of Thai, the kids at this school only have two English classes each day. I'd planned to use the first 50-minute period talking about the different uses for water and then given them the wordsearch during the second lesson. But I lost them with "drinking"; although I recovered a bit by mentioning the Thai word for "swimming" (wai nam) I decided to just hand out the wordsearch. This brought forth a big cheer from the students (all 30 of them — another difference as I only have eleven in my class at Kajonkietsuksa when they all show up); I'd been coached that they really love the wordsearch sheets.

This kept them busy for the remainder of the period although the second half brought forth plenty of cries of "teacher" as they begged for help on the few really elusive words. Luckily, I had an answer key that help enormously. They went on a break at 2:00 and I searched through my backpack looking for an idea for the last period. I found a wordsearch I'd printed out at Kajonkietsuksa and even though the subject matter was aliens and outer space I decided to use it. Unfortunately, I didn't have an answer key and couldn't find all the words before the kids returned from their break — this was a really difficult puzzle as many of the words were backwards and upside-down. But it did keep most of the kids occupied until about fifteen minutes before the end of the period (it was a major victory once I'd found the last few words myself). I did let the noise-level get a bit loud at the end as I helped the few stragglers and allowed the others to play at the back of the room. Right before everybody ran out of the classroom, I did get them seated and they yelled a "Thank you, teacher. Have a nice day" in chorus (the first period began with "Good afternoon, teacher. How are you today?" to which I said, "I am find. How are you?" and they all responded in unison, "I am fine, teacher.").

Even though I relied on the wordsearch puzzles, I think my first day at Kajonkietpattana went very well. It was much easier than I'd thought it would be and the "crowd control" was much easier than at Kajonkietsuksa (poorer parents equals better behaved kids, perhaps?). Also, my four days as substitute is really just two days of work — the kids are going on a field trip Wednesday and then they have a end-of-summer-course party on Thursday. I'm sure Timmy and the others will be jealous once I report back to them...

YOU CAN CALL ME 'AJARN'

2007-03-29T19:02:00.000+07:00

I got a job! I start Monday as a Reading/ESL instructor for P. 3 at Kajonkietsuksa School, just five kilometers or so north of our new home in Chalong. It was the first kindergarten and primary bilingual school in Phuket and is one of the highest-regarded schools in the province. I'll be coordinating with the Thai P3 teacher and an English reading teacher who will send me students in small groups who will read for me while I correct pronunciation and test for comprehension.

Summertime hours run from 8:30am to 3:30pm so it gives me a good chance to get my feet wet before the new term begins in mid-May. It sounds like the first day will consist mainly of paperwork; the school will handle my Teachers License application and Work Permit and these costs are deducted out of my first three paychecks (3000 baht each time). It certainly helps that I already have a Non-Immigrant (O) visa as I can remain in the country on that until the end of next January.

There is plenty of cause for celebration in Casa de Jochim tonight but a proper night out will have to wait until next week while I wait on a money transfer (too many moving-related expenses this past week).

MISCELLANEOUS UPDATE

2007-03-29T18:55:00.001+07:00

Just to bring us more or less up to date:

We've moved almost everything from our old house to the new. In fact, my office is nicely setup in our (huge!) master bedroom. All that remains at the old house is a few odd pots & pans, cleaning supplies, and the modem and broadband cable.

I'm still operating with a barely-functioning computer — I have to connect to the Internet while using the Linux OS and then only in brief sessions at the old house since the telephone company still hasn't shown up to install phone lines and broadband (worse than the cable companies in America, TOT will tell you the week they will be out but not the precise day or a range of hours). I can't even play MP3's on Linux as I can't figure out how to properly install the decoder through the command line and don't have the time to learn right now. I'm still burning backups of my photos from the crippled Windows system; once that's completed, I'll try reformatting the hard drive and see if I can reinstall XP (or, perhaps, Vista).

We had a tough time getting Alex ready for school this morning. This was much more than the usual kicking-and-screaming we endure just getting him into the shower. It took us almost two hours just to get him down the stairs (sans shower and teeth-brushing). We finally got him outside by making a big show of my giving his his mom 1000 baht which she told him was to buy his bus ticket back to live with his old father. It worked but I felt guilty about using such a frightening form of blackmail. But at least Tim and I worked as a team and really played off each other very well.

There really isn't much other news. Doug left for Vietnam this past weekend and isn't sure if he'll return to Phuket. "Little" Mark managed to create havoc during the brief time he stayed with us and is now on Tim's "shite" list. He left last night to retrieve his things from Bangkok; he's been offered a job at Kajonkietsuksa as well but he may take a job at a Krabi resort instead.

Tim's friend Tom (a Lamphun girl) has been staying with us — she came down a few days before "little" Mark arrived as my wife had planned to do some matchmaking. Needless to say, it didn't work out (hence part of the reason Tim's upset with him right now) but she's a lovely woman who should have no problems finding a boyfriend. Quite reserved at first, she's beginning to open up a bit more although she still seems overwhelmed much of the time. Tom's started looking for work (mostly at local spa's so far) but it's low season and jobs are few and far between.

Since my wife and her friend both have nicknames that are boy's names in America I'm considering writing them differently in these blog entries. It might be less confusing for new readers if I spell the "T" sounds in their names as "Dt". Since I've been learning the Thai language, I do actually hear the "Dt" sound when they refer to their names with each other than just a plain "T". Think of it as a hard "T". So, I'll try to remember to write "Tim" as "Dtim" and "Tom" as "Dtom". It looks funny to me right now but might be better than someone thinking my wife is a man rather than the 100% woman she truly is...

It looks like we'll also be purchasing a car very soon. I've always told my wife that I'd consider it once I'd found a job and we had more income. Yesterday, she gave me a brochure for the new Mitsubishi Triton 2WD pickup truck. It can be financed with 39,000 baht down then 7000 baht per month for five years. I'd rather not finance a vehicle down here, preferring to buy and be done with it. I've seen good-condition/slighly-used Diahatsu Mira's out here for 70-80,000 baht (USD $2000-@2500) that (I think) suit our needs. They're similar in size to a Ford Festiva — which I owned once and was always amazed at how much stuff I could cram in one. Last night, I told Dtim that if I was offered the job today that I would buy a car in either June or July (once I got past the standard three-month probationary period for new teachers).

I'll be glad once we finish cleaning our old house (and, hopefully, having the lion's share of the deposit returned). There's still plenty to do with the new house but at least it's liveable. The ground floor will require the most work (such as installing a kitchen as there isn't even a sink or counter or anything) but we're saving that for last. It does get dreadfully hot in the master bedroom despite having two fans on and a cold-water air cooler operating almost constantly. This is mainly because of the large sliding glass doors leading to the balcony. Once we hang curtains it should remain much cooler in there.

Alex made a big deal about us buying him a bunkbed when we took him to the furniture store last week. Last night was to have been the first night he was to sleep in it. But when Dtim told him that she wasn't sleeping up there with him he made a big fuss and she ended up sleeping on the floor of his room with him while Dtom slept in the bottom bunk.

The night before was supposed to be Alex and me spending the night alone in the new house. I'd finished putting together all of the furniture and setting up the video system in the master bedroom. I had the first (Episode III) Star Wars movie on a Thai-language DVD and my wife thought it would be a good bonding experience for us to "camp out" together with movie night.

Unfortunately, I don't think she told Alex he would be staying with me alone. Dtim dropped him off and hung out while he did his homework and had a bit of dinner. I started the movie and then walked her downstairs to let her out — she'd planned to pack up the kitchen and a few odds & ends. I sat watching the movie with Alex for around 45 minutes when he suddenly began looking around and asked, "Where's Dtim?" "She's staying at the old house tonight," I told him. Tears welling in his eyes, he jumped up and ran to open the door. Peering out, he screamed for his mama. I didn't waste any time getting her on the phone so she could talk to him and calm him down (past experience has proved that is the only thing to work). That just made him more upset and angry; he screamed at her over the phone (cursing in Thai sounds even worse than in English) and even threw my phone to the floor (luckily, it's pretty sturdy). Picking it up, I asked Dtim if she could come back and help calm down Alex. She said it would be about an hour. It turned out to be almost two and during that entire time Alex was crying, throwing his entire body around on the bed (he doesn't just hit with his arms but with his head and legs as well), and screaming (I worried if the neighbors thought he was being tortured). The only time he quieted down was during the attack on the Death Star at the end of Star Wars.

By the time Dtim and Dtom arrived, Alex was coughing and hoarse from screaming. The three of them ended up sleeping on a mat on the floor while I slept alone in the big new bed. Unfortunately, this crying-and-screaming routine is the norm everytime Alex is left to sleep without his mom. Usually, she ends up sleeping in his room and I'm left alone. The few times both of them have slept with me I haven't been able to sleep at all because he tosses and turns all night long (I call him the Tasmanian Devil when he's sleeping). The first night that "little" Mark stayed at our house, he made a big deal that Alex could sleep in the bed with him (mainly so my wife and I could have a badly-needed night alone); Alex thought that would be great fun. But he flung himself around so much while sleeping that Mark put him out of the room and locked the door. Alex began screaming and managed to empty the contents of Mark's backback all over the living room floor before I had a chance to go out and see what was happening. He quieted down as soon as we said he could sleep with us and, again, I was awake all night because I had to avoid getting hit from his constantly flailing arms.

Sometimes, Dtim is able to sneak out of Alex's room after he's fallen asleep so I at least get partial nights alone with her but those aren't near as often as we would like. When Alex first came to stay with us, I never could fall asleep when Dtim wasn't by my side (so accustomed I'd become to her constant presence) but now I've become (more or less) accustomed to it as the norm rather than the exception. My hope is that Alex will (soon) grow out of his constant need for mama to be with him. I don't think this is normal behavior for seven-year-olds, not even in Thailand (however, Dtim did sleep in the same room as her parents until she was in her twenties but then again they only had one room in their house).

Well, I suppose that's all there is to right about on this hot, hot day. I'm in a great mood now that I'm employed (a little fearful as it's been a long time since I had somewhere I had to be on a daily basis. And I'm very happy that I have this nice new house (the view outside my window as I write this makes it ALL worthwhile) despite the amount of work that remains. And I still think coming to Thailand to begin a new family was the best decision I've ever made, despite the setbacks and oddities.

Until next time...

UPDATE:

TOT showed up soon after I wrote the draft for this entry. They hung a spool of telephone cable on a pole at the end of our row of shophouses (five houses away) and then ran the line by threading it through holes just beneath each of the houses' second-storey balconies. Finally, they leaned a VERY LONG one-section bamboo ladder against my wall, climbed up to the third floor and drilled a hole underneath the side window. They ran a bit of cable through the hole and tied it off in a loop before dangling a small phone box connector to the end. I suppose it'll work but it's looks rather primitive. I'm supposed to wait for 24 hours before calling for the ADSL to be connected.

While the TOT guys were at our home, my wife talked the supervisor into drilling holes and hanging the new wall fans she'd just purchased. This only required a "tip" of 150 baht — a bargain (and I'm considering doing the same for our mailbox, etc.).

WHAT ELSE CAN HAPPEN?

2007-03-25T13:44:00.000+07:00

It's been a VERY LONG week with a few frustrations threatening to overshadow the good things that we encountered. I really don't have time to go into too much detail right now but I'd like to (briefly) bring things up-to-date and perhaps I'll expand on a few things later on.

It's difficult to decide the most "significant" event in a week where I went on a number of job interviews now that Phuket's schools are (finally) hiring, when we purchased various appliances and furniture for the new house, and my friend Mark returned to Phuket to look for work. We also had a few nights out with Doug and Caroline (including dinner at Los Amigo's with Jonathan and a fun evening at Ska Bar on Kata Yai) before saying "goodbye" as they left for Vietnam. They'll be missed.

But this weekend saw a few less-than-fun occurances:

Friday night we had a power outage caused by a lightning strike. This is nothing new for us; other times I'd have some lost data due to my external hard drive shutting off without any warning b ut that was always fairly easily restored. But this time something really bad happened — when I eventually restarted the computer I was greeted by the "blue screen of death". Nothing I attempted worked at bringing Windows to life; not even the "recovery disc" I'd made when I first purchased the laptop (a year-and-a-half ago) worked. This is Acer's solution to providing XP discs.

Anyway, I eventually booted-up the computer using a Linux disc I'd received in the mail last summer. It's actually Ubuntu version 6.06 and I played around a bit with it using the Live CD. I couldn't mount the partitions of the hard drive containing Windows XP but the external drive (crammed with about 270 GB of downloaded but not-yet-backed-up audio and video) worked (but Read-Only so I couldn't play any media but I can burn it onto CD-R's — the DVD+/-R drive isn't working in Linux either). Unfortunately, my "backup" of digital camera photos (dating back to last October) are on one of the "unmountable" partitions of the main hard drive. After many hours of attempting to boot back into Windows I was able to get in using Safe Mode (it would hang while trying to download some damaged drivers). I was glad to see that my photos were intact and I tried burning a couple of CD's (they took more than half-an-hour each in Safe Mode) and copying them over to the external drive (again, very slow and I quickly ran out of space). As soon as I'm able to burn the remaining photos (23 CD's worth!) I'll try erasing that hard drive and reinstalling Windows (I'll need to purchase that — perhaps I'll go ahead and upgrade to Vista).

For now I'll continue using Ubuntu. I installed the system after I cleared some space by burning photo discs. It works okay — I can access the Internet and there are a lot of programs in the bundle that I haven't had time to check out. But it's frustrating how many of my other programs won't work on a Linux-based system and I'm not that happy with some of the alternatives. I'm especially missing my iTunes right now...

I wrote more about the computer problems than I'd planned (what else is new?) so I'll briefly mention the other less-than-fun things that happened (so far) this weekend:

Yesterday, my wife lost her wallet somewhere between the house and 7-Eleven. A frantic search followed assisted by numerous neighbors but to no avail. Again, this occurred right after I'd given her money to pay bills (hence the trip to 7-Eleven) and to deposit. Once we decided we'd never see the wallet again I had Tim go down to the police station to report the loss. I also had her try to cancel her ATM card but the bank won't do this without her presenting her ID card. However, her ID card was in her wallet. To replace it, she can't just go to the local Amphur (no...that would be too easy) but has to travel to where she was born — Lamphun south of Chiang Mai. In fact, she got this ID (with my surname) by making this 2-day (minimum, each way) journey just before Christmas. She has 30 days in which to do this and she can't get a new driver's license without the ID card as well. The way I look at it is that the trip will have to replace some furniture we'd planned to buy and (possibly) serve as her birthday gift from me.

And, finally, today was to have been "move the big boxes and non-rental furniture" day and we'd enlisted the services of several friends and one pickup truck. Of course, it's been raining cats and dogs all day... Alexander's driving us all crazy because the TV's are packed up and there's nothing to sit on in the living room ("I want to watch DVD!" with much screaming and crying right now). At least I have more time to work on the laptop trying to learn Linux enough so I don't screw up this operating system.

What a week. Hope Monday brings some contract offers and sunny skies (and, better yet, the discovery of Tim's wallet). At any rate, the week to come can't possibly be more eventful than the week just gone. Or can it?

101 THAILAND TRIVIA

2007-03-18T15:25:00.000+07:00

I'm a big fan of Phil Roeland's columns on Ajarn.com. Back in January, he had an interesting list of items you might not have known about Thailand. I'm happy to be able to share this here:

The first column of 2007 (or 2550) is a collection of cultural trivia for people unfamiliar with Thailand. I guess most long-stay residents or frequent visitors can add a few lines of their own. I admit that what follows is not all there is to know. It’s only a small part of an endless collection of local pieces of knowledge and experience which I randomly jotted down. Sometimes topics are grouped, sometimes they’re not. I limited myself to 101 items. Feel free to send in your own bit of knowledge.

Did you know that?

1. For Thai people the concept of gaining or losing face is extremely important.

2. Displaying or showing off one’s wealth will result in respect from others.

3. People often spend more money on their car than on their house.

4. Half of the world’s luxury goods are sold in Asia.

5. Public display of affection – except for holding hands - is largely still a taboo.

6. Teachers traditionally get a lot of respect.

7. Foreign teachers are usually considered the clowns of the school.

8. Students behave when studying with a Thai teacher; this behaviour is usually the result of fear.

9. Corporal punishment – although outlawed - is still common in many schools.

10. Students often misbehave when studying with a foreign teacher.

11. Foreign teachers are often frustrated by the way Thai administrators run things.

12. Communication between Thais and foreigners is often crippled due to insufficient language skills from Thais and lack of cultural understanding from foreigners.

13. Getting angry results in loss of face – for yourself primarily – so conflict is to be avoided at all times.

14. Thais will never really understand foreigners.

15. Everything has to be ‘sanuk’, i.e. fun, in Thailand.

16. The sanuk-attitude might be one of the reasons why students often perform poorly in schools.

17. Thais get bored very easily.

18. The rainy season usually starts in June and ends in October.

19. Many Thais seem to think that you can master English in just 50 hours of tuition.

20. Students don’t like doing homework.

21. Women want their skin to be as white as possible.

22. Dark-skinned people are looked upon with disdain.

23. People enjoy putting salt in their orange juice.

24. Thais seem to think that all foreigners dislike spicy food.

25. Thailand is often referred to as the LOS (Land of Smiles).

26. Fast food has become big business in the LOS.

27. Never before have there been so many obese people in Thailand.

28. Thais smiles are usually genuine.

29. Thais even smile when they are pissed off.

30. Thais are completely puzzled why foreigners enjoy lying on the beach and getting a suntan.

31. Many Thais like swimming in the sea – usually fully clothed.

32. Foreigners will never really understand Thais.

33. Thailand is still mainly a society of haves and have-nots.

34. The middle class is making a strong comeback in the big cities.

35. Most farmers have replaced buffaloes by tractors.

36. You should never believe anyone who claims they need money because the family buffalo is sick.

37. Transvestites are very common in Thailand.

38. Cross-dressers are sometimes hard to spot for newbies.

39. These so-called ladyboys always dress like a lady, usually sport an above average bosom but seldom have their crown jewels removed.

40. Ladyboys are gainfully employed as sales staff or hairdressers and hardly ever frowned upon by locals.

41. All Thais love their ‘somtam’ or spicy green papaya salad, a national dish which is definitely an acquired taste for foreigners.

42. Foreigners are called farangs or falangs by Thais, originating from the word for French. Nowadays farang refers to Westerner.

43. Most Thais don’t pronounce the ‘r’ when speaking, but replace it with the letter ‘l’.

44. Chances of finding a teaching job increase exponentially when you are white-skinned.

45. Sad but true, the highest rated quality for teachers is often appearance; for Thai recruiters, race, skin-colour, age, gender and ‘look’ in general are more important than say experience and flexibility.

46. Thai primary and secondary school students cannot fail exams; if they fail, the teacher has to make the test easier or drill the answers into students before they retake it.

47. Quite a lot of expatriate farangs become somewhat cynical after having lived here for a number of years.

48. Employees are never allowed to criticise their superiors’ opinion; even offering constructive remarks or personal ideas are taboo.

49. Thailand was rated 63rd in the 2006 worldwide graft survey.

50. Saving money for a rainy day is a concept which is alien to most Thais.

51. Thai women forgive but never forget.

52. Thais have an amazing ability to catnap anywhere, anytime; put them on a crowded bus in a noisy street and they’ll still fall asleep after a few seconds.

53. Most Thais are fanatic supporters of English Premier League football clubs.

54. Many Thais love gambling, so the national lottery is hugely popular but just about the only legal option; betting on sports events, playing card games or going to a casino are all forbidden and operators have gone underground or abroad.

55. Many locally married foreigners met their sweetheart in a naughty bar.

56. Marrying a Thai girl means marrying her whole extended family; moreover, for Thais family always comes first.

57. There are no retirement homes in Thailand and few people benefit from a retirement pension; children are supposed to take care of their elders.

58. A considerable percentage of mixed marriages end in failure.

59. The preferred national pastime is going shopping.

60. Compared to other countries in the region, Thais’ proficiency in English is poor.

61. Thais love their air-conditioning; often it is turned so low that it seems they’re trying to cool down the planet.

62. When going out to dinner, it is customary for the senior member to foot the bill.

63. Among younger people, going Dutch is becoming more popular; they call it ‘American share’ though.

64. Thais love to put sugar in and on their food. Even salad cream contains up to 25% of it.

65. A lot of married Thai men seem to have one or more mistresses; amazingly, most wives seem to resiliently accept these ‘mia noi’ or ‘minor wives’ or get involved with a ‘gig’ (close boyfriend or girlfriend) themselves as divorce is not very common.

66. Huge massage parlours catering to locals can be found just about everywhere and business is brisk.

67. Prostitution is legally forbidden in the Kingdom.

68. Soy milk is extremely popular, cow’s milk isn’t; locally produced cheese simply does not exist.

69. Imported goods are invariably expensive, so going local is an excellent way to save money.

70. Teenagers and adults alike still think The Eagles and John Denver are hot.

71. Thais like their music so loud that talking becomes almost impossible without shouting; using earplugs when going out is probably a good idea if you don’t want to go deaf.

72. It’s ridiculously cheap to get a tattoo; getting rid of one supposedly costs an arm and a leg though.

73. Women – both young and old – often have a rather childish sense of fashion compared to Western norms; it’s not unusual to see a woman sporting a Doraemon T-shirt, Hello Kitty watch and Mickey Mouse bag.

74. Female university students prefer their white blouses so tight that it looks like most of the buttons are about to pop off; unfortunately, they hardly ever do.

75. It is common to see middle aged people offer their seat to perfectly healthy children when using public transport.

76. It is not uncommon to see children behave like spoilt brats.

77. Foreigners cannot buy property in Thailand, except for condos.

78. Banking rules and regulations often tend to be complicated and xenophobic; most banks buy foreign currencies but almost none sell them.

79. King Bhumibol of Thailand is the longest reigning monarch on the planet; he celebrated his 79th birthday in 2006 and has been on the throne for 60 years now.

80. The King is revered as a god and prostrating (i.e. lying face down at someone’s feet in worship) for all members of the royal family is considered normal.

81. The usual Thai greeting is the so-called ‘wai’, a prayer-like gesture accompanied by a bow of the head; the more respect you want to show (or the more ass you want to kiss), the deeper the bow.

82. Although the Thai Chinese community only accounts for a small portion of the population, it controls most of the country’s wealth and influence.

83. Thailand is becoming ever more popular as a medical tourist destination.

84. Apart from cheap plastic surgery (e.g. face lift 825 USD, breast enlargement 1,125 USD), heart and organ surgery seems to be in rising demand as well.

85. If you’re a bloke, you can have yourself turned into a woman for as little as 1,625 USD without any questions asked. (Quoted prices are from possibly the cheapest clinic in town)

86. Thailand is considered to be one of the safest places to travel.

87. Although Thailand is cheap, business proposals that seem to good to be true usually aren’t (e.g. the gem scam).

88. Teaching is the most popular profession for foreigners living in the Kingdom.

89. Although the majority of teachers are dedicated to their job, a number of midnight cowboys continue to give teachers a bad reputation.

90. Showing up late, phoning in sick, being unprepared or unqualified, and doing a runner are probably the most common problems with teachers.

91. The Ministry of Labour issues a very short list of jobs that foreigners are allowed to do; basically, if a job can be done by Thais, foreigners are banned from doing it so forget about becoming a taxi driver or shopkeeper.

92. Foreigners can legally own maximum 49 percent of a company; setting up your own company thus involves handing over ownership to trusted Thai companions or working with nominees, which is technically illegal.

93. Living and working in Thailand is completely different from holidaying in the LOS.

94. Newbies often claim that they “have fallen in love with this wonderful country and want to spend the rest of their life here” after a two weeks’ holiday.

95. Newbies should think twice before selling all their stuff, moving out here and giving up their plumbing career in their home country.

96. It is safe to drink beverages with ice and eat at roadside restaurants.

97. Gold is a common commodity in Thailand; buying and reselling gold jewellery is done every day by people needing money or wanting to spend it.

98. A prolonged stay in the Kingdom, especially Bangkok, can be detrimental to one’s physical health due to high levels of air pollution; it might also affect one’s emotional and financial well-being.

99. If you want to visit a county where the average girl is pretty, sexy, slim, friendly, smiling and helpful, don’t waste any more time and come to Thailand.

100. If you want to visit a country where the average girl is prudish, vain, small-breasted, petulant, moody and materialistic, don’t waste any more and come to Thailand.

101. The best time to travel to Thailand is anytime, so why put off the purchase of your aeroplane ticket?

A MODEL FOR TIM'S RESTAURANT?

2007-03-16T20:18:00.000+07:00

The photos in this entry are of a shophouse restaurant a short distance from our new home. In fact, the floorplan of that house is exactly the same as ours (except for being a mirror image) and has given us a couple of good ideas on how to utilize the groundfloor space.

Front entrance through the large garage-door; note the awning giving shade to patrons (although most customers park their motorbikes under the awning if you don't set some tables out there); the umbrella covers the main food prep/cooking area — extended outside by a temporary wooden wall which gives the cook some fresh air while she works.

Cooking/food prep area from outside and inside — very simple (and highly portable) counter (with display case/cold storage) and folding-leg tables. The burners are heated using propane tank; there's also an electric rice steamer and large container to hold the cooked rice. I think I'd add a small stainless steel sink on casters for washing plates and utensils.

A view of the front — many of the Thai-style restaurants I've visited have tables that are crammed in too tightly but this one has plenty of space between each table (only three along each wall) which allows the customers some room to eat without bumping into their neighbors. I like the wall-mounted fans — the cords are easily reachable so the customers can switch on or off for their comfort. I absolutely hate the plastic chairs that most of these restaurants have (they may be inexpensive but they tend to buckle under the weight of your average farang; we're looking for good-quality wooden-slat chairs).

Another look inside of our "model" restaurant. Note the photos/paintings hanging on the second-floor balcony — I told Tim that we could display our engagement photos above our restaurant and quickly learned that this would be taboo in Thailand as the only pictures "allowed" are those of royalty (usually Rama numbers five and nine) and of deceased relatives. The rear portion of this particular restaurant includes a large glass cooler housing water and soda, an aquarium, and a television/stereo system. These items effectively divide the customer area from the stairs leading upstairs as well as the rear washing area.

MORE ON THAI BLOCK OF YouTube

2007-03-16T19:37:00.000+07:00

From Wednesday's Bangkok Post (following up my post of March 11):

Wednesday March 14, 2007

CENSORSHIP
Thai users blocked from YouTube site

DON SAMBANDARAKSA

Authorities in Thailand temporarily blocked video sharing service YouTube on Friday and Saturday, though it remains unclear who did the blocking and why.

On Friday people trying to watch videos at http://www.youtube.com were instead greeted with an error page. By Saturday morning, rather than the error page, the site was redirected to http://www.mict.go.th, the ICT Ministry's web site. However, the block was removed around noon on Saturday.

ICT Ministry spokesperson Dr Vissanu Meeyoo was contacted by phone and denied any knowledge of a block. He said that in any case, it was unlikely the MICT was involved as everyone there was simply too busy with the telecommunications law seminar on Friday to arrange or authorise the alleged block.

A thread on the popular geek site blognone.com did some analysis of the block early on Saturday morning. It showed that the DNS (Domain Name Server) was still pointing to the correct address, but rather than data from YouTube, the "server" had returned HTTP error number 301, a permanent redirect, sending the browser to the MICT web site. This would indicate that the sessions were being hijacked.

The HTTP response said that the server was running Apache/1.3.31 (Unix) with the modhwforward10 module. Such a module does not officially exist. This peculiar fingerprint has been seen in the past when web sites critical of the government are blocked and suddenly go offline.

YouTube allows any user to upload their videos to the site to be shared and viewed over the Internet. Many popular videos are viewed by millions of users around the world. YouTube had not responded to emails by the time we went to press.

ALEX'S FIRST DAYS AT SCHOOL

2007-03-16T11:29:00.000+07:00

Alexander began attending summer school at Wittaya Sathid School in Phuket Town yesterday. Remarkably, we didn't have any problems waking him up at 6:30 in the morning and he shed a lot less tears than I suspected (this is a kid that cries up a storm when his mama leaves his sight for longer than five minutes or so). I didn't ride along when my wife took him to school but she reported that Alex was very respectful to his teacher upon meeting him, complete with the proper wai and a polite "Sawasdee khap" (he'd actually been rejected by several schools because he was rude during the interview process).

Upon returning home, our son reported that he'd made several new friends (with names like "Cartoon" and "Watermelon") and that they'd read a story, sang some songs, and had a nap. Since he didn't have any homework I had Alex begin a daily journal in which I want him to write what he learns/does each day at school. I also want him to include one thing he enjoys the most each day. By beginning the journal on the first day I figure it will get him into the habit of doing "homework" before he can play or watch television at home each afternoon. It's also a useful method for Tim and I to track his progress (right now, he can't even write so he dictates what he wants my wife to write) and shows him that we are interested in his days at school (away from us). After each sentence that Tim wrote, I asked her to translate it for me.

This morning, it was a bit more difficult to get Alexander out of bed and into the shower. We purchased some fried chicken at a roadside vendor (amidst my protests that this wasn't a good thing to eat for breakfast) and Alex ate in the sidecar during the 30-minute ride to school.

Here are some photos from yesterday and this morning:

eating a "proper" breakfast before leaving for school yesterday

showing papa his King Naresuan notebook

checking his brand-new backpack

searching for mama's keys (she can never find them whenever we need to go somewhere; I plan to buy a key peg-board for the new house)

realizing that mama can't stay with him at school

saying "goodbye" to papa

climbing into the sidecar for the ride to school

running late on the second day, Alex ate a fried chicken breakfast while Tim sped down the roads to school

going off to class but checking to see that we haven't left yet

Alex's school

MARILLION "MOST TOYS" VIDEO RELEASED

2007-03-15T03:06:00.001+07:00

Here's the official video for "Most Toys" from the forthcoming Marillion album, Somewhere Else. The clip was filmed at this year's Weekend at Port Zeland, Holland in February and was recently released by the band's marketing director, Lucy Jordache, on YouTube. The first single, "See It Like A Baby," will be a download-only release on March 26th and the album follows April 9th. The first leg of the Somewhere Else tour begins April 14 in Gibraltar and runs through the beginning of July.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVn-ew1_Kfs

TO BE CALLED "FARANG" IN THAILAND

2007-03-12T12:35:00.000+07:00

When I first came to Thailand I would often cringe at constantly being called farang (ฝรั่ง). It wasn't that I was uncomfortable with the common perception that it's a racist or derogatory term directed towards any non-Asian foreigner here. I just wanted my wife and her friends/family to understand there were differences between farangs just as all Asians are not alike. I tried to explain that calling all white foreigners this term was akin to saying that a Thai person was the same as a Japanese or Vietnamese because "you all look alike." It also seemed like I was losing a bit of my national identity and I thought about designing a shirt that said, "I'm NOT farang. I'm American."

But I've come to accept that whenever I'm around Thai people here I'll be referred to as farang (particularly when I'm the only one in sight). Indeed, I always know when they're talking about me even if I don't understand that much of the language yet (similar to the cartoon listening to his master speak: "Blah, blah, blah, farang, blah, blah, blah, farang...").

I've also come to understand a bit more about the word and it's useage, partly through the Wikipedia article and more recently through the following excellent post on the Doodee's Thailand blog, reprinted here in full:

A Most Misunderstood Word
In the last entry on Doodee’s Thailand I told you a little of how I perceive the manner in which Thais view me and my fellow foreigners. Today I’d like to continue discussing the subject of Thai and Westerner inter-racial perceptions by telling you a little about what I consider to be the most common misunderstanding of Thai people by foreigners. This misunderstanding centres on the origin, precise meaning, and usage in the Thai language of the word “Farang”.

Farang is the Thai word for foreigner, principally a foreigner who is a westerner of Caucasian appearance (However, in recent years I note that the word is starting to become used for all westerners, regardless of skin colouring). Farang is a polite word. Its politeness is confirmed for me by its listing and definition in the Oxford English Dictionary. The Oxford English Dictionary defines Farang as “Noun, (among Thais) a European or other foreigner”. Farang does not have a derogatory or demeaning connotation.

It is my understanding that Farang is a contraction of the Thai word “Farangset” which means French. Apparently the French were among the first Europeans that the Thai people encountered.

It is my belief that many westerners misunderstand the word Farang for two reasons. The first of these reasons is simply the popularly held misunderstanding that Farang is the Thai equivalent of “Honky”. It’s not.

The second of these reasons has its roots in the Thai language’s use of pronouns. Please allow me to explain.

The Thai Language is very economical with its use of pronouns. If they’re not required, they’re not used. Pronouns can be considered to be not required whenever the subject is obvious. As examples of this practice, the Thai word for “you” is never included in the question, “Where have you been?” (in Thai, “bai nie ma?”), nor is the Thai word for “I” used in this question’s response, “I’ve been shopping” (in Thai, “bai shopping ma”).

And in accordance with the Thai language’s economical use of pronouns, descriptive nouns are often used in place of pronouns. This gives amazing clarity to the meanings of sentences. It’s much more sensible than the way that we speak in English.

The following examples might help you to understand the way that descriptive nouns are often used in place of pronouns in Thai. These examples show that instead of saying “He said” or “She said” (in Thai “Cow daiy bok”), Thais will often define their meaning more precisely by saying:-

“The lady said” (pooying daiy bok)
“The man said” (poochai daiy bok)
“The child said” (dek daiy bok),

or,
“The policeman said” (tamruat daiy bok)
“The doctor said” (mor daiy bok)
“The janitor said” (jow-nahtee daiy bok)

and most controversially for westerners with a limited understanding of the Thai language, its usage, and its construction,
“The westerner said” (farang daiy bok)

Descriptive nouns are also often used instead of “they” when making generalisations. But when talking about one person in a group a defining adjective or more often the person’s name will be used in place of the personal pronoun “he” or “she”.

So, when a Thai person says, “farang daiy bok” he or she is not using a derogatory term, but is employing such word usage for its clarity and because it is the natural way for a Thai person to speak. There is no racist undertone or subtext in such word usage.

Over a period of many years I’ve seen several westerners in Thailand, and been made aware of many more of them, who’ve become irate as a result of the Thai use of the word Farang and their misunderstanding of its intended meaning. It is my understanding that they feel that the word Farang is being used in a racist or derisive fashion. As explained above, that is almost certainly not the case.

Whenever I witness westerners becoming irate as a result of the Thai use of the word Farang I am always reminded of the wise words of a friend of mine. Sadly this friend died many years ago. He was German. He spoke English well. He spoke Thai well. And he spoke Isaan very well. He once said to me; “If you understand the language, you’ll understand the culture. Language and culture are like brother and sister. And if you understand a foreign language and a foreign culture it will help you to understand your own language and culture better”.

How right he was. How wise he was.

It’s been my pleasure today to offer my former friend’s wise words, and my limited understanding of the Thai language, to you for your consideration and contemplation. I hope that you’ve enjoyed it.

posted by Doodee at Sunday, March 04, 2007

And here's a follow-up post that appeared a few days later:

Farang, Farangset, Ferengi
I have received a pleasingly large amount of feedback from readers concerning the entry on Doodee’s Thailand, A Most Misunderstood Word. The main issue of discussion seems to have been my statement, “It is my understanding that Farang is a contraction of the Thai word ‘Farangset’ which means French.” My source for this information was the Linguaphone Thai Course (Course Handbook) which I purchased many years ago.

In response to readers’ interest in the derivation of the Thai word “Farang” I’ve undertaken a little more research. As a result of this research I’ve found a Wikipedia entry which examines the derivation of the word Farang in some detail. I would recommend all students of the Thai language with an interest in this matter to visit it at Wikipedia Farang.

One reader left a comment on A Most Misunderstood Word to inform me that Farang is derived from the same linguistic root as is the name of the fictional Star Trek race, the Ferengi. To my astonishment this is a possibility. For those with an interest in such matters I would refer you to the Etymology section of the Wikipedia entry Wikipedia Ferengi. When read in conjunction with the Wikipedia Farang entry it can be seen that both Farang and Ferengi could have a common root in Persian or possibly Arabic. How about that!

I’m most impressed by the extensive knowledge that you folks, the readers of Doodee’s Thailand, possess, and I thank you for sharing it with me.

posted by Doodee at Wednesday, March 07, 2007

For a different view, here's a quote from an article on Orient Expat:

Gaijin, Farang, Gweilo - Confused?
...Perhaps in the West, we are a little too PC and tread on eggshells over words that are often used as humourous and friendly ways to address foreigners. On the other hand, there are words that are clearly racist and insulting.

The above are a selection of well known words for Westerners in Japan, China, Thailand and Laos. I would like to know of more so that I can learn.

How do you feel about being referred to in this way? From my point of view, when I spend long periods in rural Thailand, I grow very weary of locals who see me every day refer to me as 'The Farang', even though they know my name. Worse still, they will often refer to me as such when talking to my partner as though I wasn't even there. To me, it is insulting and I am deeply offended by it in the long term. I feel it is no better in this case than being called n##ger, long nose, roundeyes, whitey, spick, polak, kraut etc etc etc.

However, if you don't spend much time in a country I guess it can be humourous and fun to have a bunch of schoolkids shout 'Farang Farang' at you in the most innocent way possible and to be seen as a curiosity and in that case, what's the problem?... but when does it get too much for you, when your name effectively becomes 'Farang'?

"Body Farang, Heart Thai"

PHOTO UPLOADS

2007-03-11T23:20:00.000+07:00

I've (once again) been making some progress at uploading photos to my Webshots account. It took me some time to get through the album for 3 August 2006 — this was the day when my wife and I took her daughter and granddaughter out to tackle some of the many ruins of Ayutthaya's old city. We only hit the tip of the iceberg as far as what there is to see there but you wouldn't know it by the 406(!) photos in that day's album (I think my largest yet).

I want to get as many photos uploaded as I can before we move because I don't yet know if our internet service will be as fast or reliable at the new house.

CENSORSHIP, THAI-STYLE

2007-03-11T21:58:00.000+07:00

Yesterday, I repeatedly tried to login to my YouTube account in order to upload some video footage I shot of Alex dancing along to a Marillion song ("Accidental Man" from the new Bootleg Butlins DVD). However, I kept getting re-directed to the Thai Ministry Of Information and Communication Technology site and couldn't figure out why. When I asked my wife she told me it said that I was trying to access a website that "was bad for Thailand." I realized the last time I'd encountered the MICT re-direct was last year when I tried to access the Yale University Press page for The King Never Smiles: A Biography of Thailand's Bhumibol Adulyadej by Paul M. Handley (back then, the censorship page was a stylized eye — I much prefer the picture of their Royal Highnesses the King and Queen).

At least I wasn't the only person the Thai government was censoring from the "evils" of YouTube this weekend (I certainly haven't uploaded any naughty or politically-incorrect videos). 2Bangkok reported on the blocking and mentioned that in the past if controversy about a site censorship becomes too great the Ministry removes the block and denies it ever restricted access. Both the BoingBoing directory and Global Voices Online discussed it and the latter speculated the censorship could be due to the recent interviews former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra gave to CNN which were banned in Thailand but available on YouTube.

PHOTOS OF OUR NEW HOUSE

2007-03-10T12:37:00.000+07:00

As I wait for my wife and son to wake up following last night's birthday party (it's already noon!), I thought I'd post a few photos of our new shophouse. I'm a bit anxious to get over to Big C and buy some cleaning supplies so I can tackle the dust today but that can wait as we have plenty of time...

In this first photo, our house is to the far right. There's a fairly wide space between the two buildings which is nice because we have windows (and more ventilation) along that side and there's a walkway to the rear. It's all gravel now but I'd like to put in soil and plant grass with a teak or flagstone path, possibly lined with leafy tropical plants (Mark the gardener!). I'm thinking about purchasing an awning similar to the one seen farther down the row to offer shade for outside dining for Tim's eventual restaurant (in a later entry, I'll post a few photos of a shophouse restaurant similar to what she plans).

The ground floor of the house is a wide open space with a balcony from the second storey about halfway towards the rear. The washing area (for a Thai-style kitchen, etc.) is actually outside at the back — typical for most Thai homes — and there's a small restroom under the stairs.

The ground floor restroom is tiny — just a small sink and a toilet. The small storage alcove under the stairs can either hold cases of beer or serve as a spot for Alex to spend his "time outs" (just kidding!).

These photos show the second-floor balcony from the ground floor and the view towards the front from that balcony. The half-sized second storey is actually fairly spacious with two windows in the rear corner opposite of the stairs. I can see putting a wraparound sofa here and television for a family room. One of my first purchases towards the house will be a tall ladder so I can get up to those ledges above the front entrance. You can probably see the heavy accumulation of dust that I'd like to scrub away as soon as possible. Also, that's the only way to get to the second level's small outdoor balcony (where I want to place a flagpole and see if it's suitable to use as storage space).

This is the back bedroom on the third floor which is larger than it appears in this corner shot. The houses behind us are a bit close but at least they're lower so nobody can look in the windows! Also, they aren't close enough where Alex would be able to climb out on their roofs. We forgot to ask the landlady if cable television was available in the area as I absolutely refuse to give UBC/True Move any money for the unreliable satellite hookup (which doesn't work at all when it rains and judging from last year's lengthy rainy season that would be more than 60% of the year!). There's a large bathroom with shower between the two bedrooms and space enough as well for a small sitting room on the third storey.

A couple of shots of the master bedroom on the third floor. Finally a house with a decent view! I'm looking forward to having a nice comfortable chair on the balcony where I sit with my laptop writing out lesson plans... Tim suggested that I get a small refrigerator to put in the room or on the balcony so I wouldn't have too go far to replenish my ever-present mug of cola.

I need to start making a list of items we'll need to purchase for the house. We plan to get moved into the home before we begin to worry about the restaurant. Since it's completely empty — there's not even a kitchen counter — we really are starting from scratch. That's both liberating and overwhelming at the same time. At the bare minimum, we'll need a large refrigerator for downstairs (I'm starting the fridge fund now — any donations are gladly accepted; just view it as assuring you'll have a holder for the icecold beer you'll be enjoying at our combination housewarming/Songkran/Tim's birthday party next month!) and the aforementioned sofa (although we can get by for now with a few Thai-style pillows on the floor). Oh yes, a new wardrobe as well as a bed (I'm really going to miss our rental bed).

Now, if I just get my wife out of bed so we can get out-and-about. I think I'll suggest Home Pro rather than Big C...

BIRTHDAY PARTY FOR NID

2007-03-10T12:35:00.000+07:00

Our friend Nid celebrated her birthday last night at Amazone on the road between Nai Harn and Kata. Unfortunately, her husband — Ben — couldn't make it as he's working up in Surat Thani. We also missed Shan (who probably got lost as a result of some confusion as to the party's location) and I did call Mark E. up in Bangkok so he could wish Nid a "happy birthday" (he returns to Phuket next week).

I had a good time getting caught up with Doug and met his new friend Christina who works at Kajonkiet School. After such gatherings I'm usually a bit embarrassed at how much I talked; I do tend to blab away on all sorts of topics, making up for my rather severe lack of day-to-day opportunities to converse with other native English speakers.

I was very impressed with how well behaved Alexander was throughout the evening and I wondered if my friends didn't believe the "horror stories" I was telling him about his behavior at home. At any rate, we had a fun evening...

FOUND A NEW HOUSE (AND HAD ANOTHER ACCIDENT...)

2007-03-09T19:30:00.001+07:00

I'll write more (and post photos) this weekend but I wanted to let everyone know that we've (finally) found our new house — a three-storey shophouse in Na Kok (นากก) village (moo 5) of Tambon Chalong. It's in a very nice area with nothing but trees in the view across the street (I can visualize sitting on the balcony outside of the third-floor master bedroom sipping my favorite Tiger Beer while writing on the laptop. Plenty of space on the ground floor for my wife's restaurant...

The price was right, too — 8000 baht per month; we paid a 10,000-baht deposit today and were given the keys and a hand-written receipt. On April 1st, we pay the regular rent and receive the 10,000 baht back so it's like getting three weeks rent for free. The building itself is just three months old but has accumulated a lot of dust in the time it's sat empty so I'm anxious to get in there and do some cleaning before we start moving stuff. This afternoon, I also paid our last month's rent at Ananda Garden Hills and asked our landlord if we could buy the furniture from him but he said we had to leave our current house furnished as the day we moved in.

I'll post a selection of photos in the next day or so...

I'm very happy we found this house when we did as I was about to give up. We'd spent A LOT of time looking and coming up rather empty. We'd even begun to consider renting some rooms in a guesthouse on Nanai Road in Patong as a stopgap until we found something better.

Also, we were involved in an accident on the motorbike yesterday afternoon. My wife was driving west on Prachanukhro Road in Patong with me sitting behind her on the bike rather than in the sidecar. She turned left onto Thaweewong (the beach road) towards the Amari Resort going a bit too fast (it's a rather sharp turn made worse by the cones in the middle of the road placed there when Patong went to it's poorly-thought-out one-way routing system). The sidecar wheel came off the ground and I could feel us going over. Tim served back into the middle of the road smashing into the rear quarter-panel of a minibus (my right arm and knee as well as the handlebar of the bike took the brunt of the collision).

Of course the collision took place right in front of a grouping of the motorbike taxi-mafia guys so I knew immediately I'd be paying out a wad of cash as any accident is always the fault of the farang even when he's just the passenger. The minibus driver actually knew Tim so we could have gotten off easy if it wasn't for the mafia guys who insisted that the police (whom these particular motorbike taxi's pay bribes to for their primo spot on the beach). The taxi driver needed to save face so he suggested that he call his insurance agent and I agreed we needed to keep the insurance people happy. Smiles all around until Tim took off to look for her friend who was babysitting Alex on the beach. I started to walk up after her and the motorbike guys thought I was trying to sneak away and started making a big fuss and wouldn't let me walk too far.

Anwyay, eventually the insurance man showed up with a camera. Tim was still off looking for her friend and son and suddenly the minibus driver didn't seem to understand English anymore. The insurance man had a digital camera and began taking photos of the front of the minibus (the license plate was slightly bent but NOT from this accident as we only hit the rear of the vehicle) and small dents on the LEFT side rather than the RIGHT side. At least the driver respected his friendship with Tim (he's somehow related to Jum) enough that he figured out a potential scam and directed the agent to the damage we actually caused (a three-inch dent and some scraped paint). I tried to point out my spraped and bruised elbow and knee but he didn't seem too interested.

Tim arrived just in time for me to be presented with a bill for 4,500 baht which was a lot less than I'd expected (Tim's last accident had cost me ten times this amount!). My wife tried to argue (in times like these, I question that she's really a Thai person as she can argue with the best of them — a totally un-Thai-like quality) but I soon quieted her down. I did make the insurance man (not to mention everybody else) a bit nervous when I asked for a receipt and his card; I settled for a hand-written receipt and the minibus driver's cellular number. Through it all I just kept smiling.

It just figures that this happened on the one day that I didn't bring my camera along...

I soothed Tim on the drive along the beach road; she was more worried about the money than anything else (why do these accidents always happen right after I transfer cash to put into our local accounts?). She was very impressed with how cool I was during the entire situation particularly when the motorbike taxi guys began raising a fuss. We've all heard about other farangs who don't stay calm in similar situations and really bad things end up happening to them (like death in a few cases). You just have to understand the "system" and accept it when confronted with it; you don't have to agree with how certain things "work" but you must remember that we are still the "foreigners" and a minority of people will always try to take advantage of that...

'AFTERMATH' COMING TO DVD

2007-03-07T00:37:00.000+07:00

Last summer, I spent several days "acting" as an extra on Tsunami: The Aftermath, an HBO/BBC miniseries which dramatizes the days immediately following the 2004 tsunami which affected so many lives here. There was a lot of local controversy surrounding the filming which was done at a number of locations here on Phuket as well as up in Khao Lak and, I believe, in Phang Nga and Krabi.

When the program aired in the States a couple of months ago, I heard from several friends and relatives that they spotted me in two scenes — both filmed at the airport. In one, the setting was just a few hours after the disaster and we were looking at the flight cancellations on the big boards in the terminal. I was in a small group with my neighbor, Franz, and a small Dutch boy who was sleeping on the floor. The camera panned around us as Franz and I kept talking and pointing at the boards. That was difficult — having an animated conversation (in silence as we weren't supposed to make any sounds) during take after take after take. The second scene was easier to film; this one was set about five days after the tsunami when flights finally resumed. Again, I was at the airport (the wounds from my first day of shooting having miraculously healed — I felt that I was my own private continuity error) — ticket in hand. The camera did a long tracking shot through the check-in area of the airport, weaving through many survivors and reporters before finally turning towards me. When the camera panned in my direction, I walked from the ticket counter and the camera followed me (and a number of other passengers coming from different directions) all the way to the entrance to the international departure gates. That one required about 15 or 20 takes.

The movie wasn't (officially) shown here. It had been scheduled to open in the theaters on December 26th (the second anniversary of the tsunami) but was cancelled amidst protests of inappropriateness. I'd thought I'd be able to find bootleg or pirated copies of The Aftermath at the street stalls in Patong by now but that hasn't happened...

Finally, a 2-DVD set (with a couple of behind-the-scenes featurettes as bonus material) will be released on April 24. No word on if there will be a version with Thai dubbing or subtitles but I think I'll go ahead and place a preorder through Amazon.com.

APPLE RELEASES iTUNES 7.1

2007-03-06T23:59:00.001+07:00

The new version of iTunes was released today and is available for download here. iTunes 7.1 adds support for the upcoming Apple TV and the ability to change parental controls for several countries (hinting that the iTunes Store will soon sell video content from a total of six countries). There's also a few new sorting options as well as a full-screen Cover Flow which I think looks very cool (although it lacks the touch-screen/pinch-resizing feature to be included on the upcoming iPhone).

For more information about the features of iTunes 7.1, check out iLounge's "Instant Expert" guide.

FUNNY SIGN OF THE WEEK

2007-03-06T22:07:00.000+07:00

I couldn't find any real 555* photos on my hard drive tonight and didn't feel like going too far back in my backup discs... It seems that lately I keep seeing worthy candidates for this feature but usually at a time when we can't stop to snap a photo. Something to work on...

Photo #1 — at Patong Hospital — struck me as mildly amusing for the line "Special care by Singha" which is advertised as "Thailand's Number One Beer" (personally, I don't care for it at all — tastes like soapy water to me — a sentiment echoed by the cool Beerasia blog). I could just see the nurses administering IV's of Singha instead of plasma...

Photo #2 isn't really funny per se but I was left scratching my head as to why there were separate evacuation routes for "local people" and for "tourists". Particularly as the tourist route leads evacuees running a great distance along the length of the beach while the Thais are directed to head straight inland. This is on the southern end of Kamala which was the hardest hit Phuket beach during the tsunami. When my wife and I visited last week, it was the first time I'd been there since Christmas Day 2005 when I fell asleep and received a grand sunburn (and watched as the Japanese ambassador dedicated a special monument to the victims).

*555 — in Thai, the number "five" is "ha" thus "555" would be said "ha ha ha". It's a popular way to convey one is laughing when you IM or SMS someone here.

BLOGGERS IN THAILAND

2007-03-06T15:38:00.000+07:00

Thai English-language newspaper The Nation recently published the following article about blogging in Thailand:

BLOGGERS — A CYBER COMMUNITY
It's work, and serious, for some, and a hobby and fun for many others, but the idea of an online diary is a rage the world over
Today, almost one in five Internet users in Thailand reads and writes blogs, or Web logs.

"It's an easy, fast and personal way [to communicate]," says Duangruthai Asanasatang, who runs a-wild-sheep-chase.bloggang.com.

"WeBlog - some read We Blog while others may read Web Log — or blog for short, is a digital personal journal posted on websites [for the general public to read, make comments or criticise], covering all kinds of topics from music and the arts to politics," says Katika Saisenee of www.keng.com.

According to a Microsoft survey, the country has 8.4 million surfers, of whom 1.76 million are bloggers.

And their reasons for keeping an online diary or using the many other functions run the spectrum, from personal to professional.

"It's like talking face-to-face to your friends. I also use it to chat with interesting girls," admits Montri Boonsat of event26th.wordpress.com.

Salinee Achavananthakul of fringer.org, said maintaining a blog helps improve her writing in Thai. She spent eight years studying abroad.

"I enjoy practising my Thai-language skills [by posting articles on the Web] as I wish to write some good business books in Thai," said Salinee, who used to work in banking.

Professor Vijarn Panich, director of the Knowledge Management Institute and special adviser to the Thailand Research Fund, also writes a blog as a medium to discuss complex issues with colleagues and academics.

"I also use it to practise writing, to publish my ideas and make personal statements as well as to try to create an online community.

"So far so good, as I've learned a lot from my cyber friends. I can also discuss with upcountry researchers in real time. This saves a lot of time and resources," he said.

Vijarn updates his blog everyday. His poor typing doesn't present a problem as he jots his ideas down on a piece of paper for a secretary to type into his blog.

Duangruthai, an editor at "Between the line" Publishing House, reads and writes her blog for both work and fun.

"I read blogs to find interesting books written on the Web for my publishing house. For leisure, I like to write about my favourite music, films, travel, and so on. I also help readers and writers to exchange books," she said.

Her blog was voted by the best in "content" last year. Earlier, she won the best "book" blog of the year.

"I didn't expect such popularity, but it felt great. We're like a community of friends and family members online. We occasionally see our cyber friends in the real world for dinner, drinks or concerts and films, as we share the same tastes," she added.

Vijarn, a medical doctor, says blogging can be good for enthusiasts in other ways.

"I believe by reading or writing positive messages, we can make a positive chemical change in our body. Research has confirmed this hypothesis."

According to Microsoft's Windows Lives Report, six out of 10 bloggers here are women. About 57 per cent of bloggers are under 25, while 24 per cent are 25-34 and the remainder are over 35.

Family and friends are the two main incentives for Thais to become bloggers. They also use it as a channel to communicate and send large photos to friends and family members.

Half of the bloggers also use their blogs for entertainment.

The four most popular topics are technology, travel, education and news.

However, the Microsoft report also found that 49 per cent of blogs are not updated regularly, while 36 per cent have boring content and 46 per cent are badly written.

"Quality of content is a problem, while many bloggers don't write themselves but put other people's stories into their blogs. Good blogs should reflect the characteristics of the blog owner," Salinee said, describing herself as "a 30-something woman who's in between the Thai and Western cultures".

Duangruthai says blogs can be revealing, depending on the writer.

"You can choose the level of your self-exposure, telling everything about yourself or just part of it, but sincerity is the most important thing in cyber relationships."

Cyber relationships can also make money.

"More and more businesses have turned to using blogs as a PR and marketing tool, as some bloggers are paid to introduce new products or give positive comments," she said.

"Some customers believe that information from bloggers is more trustworthy than what comes directly from companies."

She also uses blogs to introduce her favourite books, including those from her publishing house.

Globally, an average of 175,000 new blogs are created everyday so the total number — about 1.6 billion updated blogs around the world today — will double every six months, Katika said.

Salinee says she's worried about the flood of junk blogs and the lack of maturity of blog visitors.

"More junk blogs are expected and all readers must be told that not all online information is reliable. We need skills to screen out bad ones. I hope this will be done by better software that would be able to screen junk blogs.

"Like other tools, blogs are a double-edged sword. Now, you still sort of embrace blogs at your own risk. The maturity of our society determines how best we can benefit from blogs," she said.

For Wuttichai Kritsanaprakornkij of blogsspot.com, reading and writing his blog is a hobby.

"It's boring to spend most of my free time at the movies, in shopping malls or pubs so I turned to blogs, which also helps me to discover my new capabilities in the real world."

Kamol Sukin
The Nation

MAKHA BUCHA (วันมาฆาบูชา)

2007-03-04T22:13:00.001+07:00

Today was the Buddhist holiday of Makha Bucha (วันมาฆาบูชา) which celebrates the Gautama Buddha's first sermon to his disciples. This is one of those "roving" holidays based on the Thai lunar calendar (held on the fifteenth day of the waxing moon of the sixth lunar month; it was on February 12th last year).

There isn't (yet) a Wikipedia article about Makha Bucha but I did find some information here and in Vern's ThaiPulse! blog.

The day is an important one for all Buddhists of the Therevada school and people all over Thailand (and elsewhere in Asia) visit their local wats in order to make merit. Tim mentioned that we should go to temple today but we spent the afternoon looking for houses instead. Perhaps we'll drive up to Wat Chalong tomorrow (being the substitue "business holiday" for Makha Bucha).

HEROINES MONUMENT IN THALANG

2007-03-04T02:11:00.000+07:00

After almost eleven months of living on Phuket I have yet to take a decent photograph of the Heroines Monument. Located at the Tha Rua Intersection north of Phuket City, this marble plinth with life-sized statues honors the two heroic sisters, Jan and Mook, who were instrumental in the defeat of the Burmese in 1785.

After the Burmese destroyed the Siamese capital of Ayutthaya (พระนครศรีอยุธยา) in 1767, King Taksin reunified the country and drove out the invaders. The Burmese later outfitted a fleet to attack the southern provinces and carry off the populations to slavery in Burma. Kunying Jan and Mook are credited with organizing the successful defense of Phuket against the Burmese invaders by disguising hundreds of women in army uniforms and parading them through town. This tricked the enemy into believing that they were troop reinforcements from the new capital at Bangkok and they withdrew their attack.

To acknowledge their bravery and leadership, King Buddha Yodfa Chulaloke (Rama I) conferred on Kunying Jan the honorific appellation Thao Thep Kasattri — a title of nobility usually reserved for royalty — and her sister became Thao Sri Soontorn. The event is well-known throughout Thailand and is Phuket's greatest historic claim to fame. The monument was built by local residents and dedicated on May 23, 1967. A fair commemorating the bravery of the two sisters is held each year on March 13th.

Part of the reason that I can never get a halfway decent photograph is that the monument is at the center of a very busy traffic circle. The traffic here is so chaotic that it's all we can do to avoid having an accident as we maneuver around the monument. Sometimes I have my camera ready but Tim always seems to serve or jerk the motorbike just as I snap the shutter. I suppose I could ask her to pull over sometime or I could attempt to walk out to the monument from the side of the road. But to do so would risk being flattened by one or another of the many speeding motorbikes, cars, tuk-tuks, trucks, and busses that whiz through here night and day...

I did get sort of "lucky" with one of the photos that accompany this entry. As a way to reduce traffic accidents here, the police are beginning to set up cones around the intersection during the morning and afternoon rush hours which force traffic to travel up the various surrounding streets before they can make a turn. It was a little less chaotic, but not by much so I was able to snap a couple of fairly non-blurry photos of the monument. They're the best I've been able to take in the many times I've tried. Believe me...

Click on the maps for a more detailed view.

MARILLION ARTICLE IN GIBRALTAR MAGAZINE

2007-03-04T01:29:00.000+07:00

An interesting article about Marillion has appeared in the March issue of Gibraltar's Insight Magazine about their upcoming tour-opening show on the Rock:

MARILLION: set to take Gibraltar "somewhere else"
Our part of the world is privileged in many ways, but the hosting of big-name concerts is sadly not one of them. When major acts visit the Iberian Peninsula, it’s rare for them to venture further south than Madrid, with major acts that have visited Gibraltar having done so on a special, one-off basis (Santana back in 1992 or Elton John joining the Tercentenary Celebrations). All that is about to change on 14th April, when British Rock/Alternative/Progressive act Marillion visit the Rock.

Not only will this be the first time that Gibraltar has been included as part of a major Rock ensemble’s international tour, but it also represents the inaugural date of an extensive European trek in support of forthcoming album “Somewhere Else”. Fans can witness Marillion’s legendary live prowess in London, Paris, Rome, Munich or Budapest, but they’ll have longer to wait: Things kick off here at the Tercentenary Sports Hall, the first time these new facilities have been used for an event of this type.

Marillion’s frontman Steve Hogarth has already performed locally, having delivered a stunning, stripped-down solo set at a packed St Michael’s Cave during last year’s National Week celebrations. The concert on 14th April is, however, something altogether different: a spectacular light show, large stage and suitably impressive sound to accompany the band’s uncompromising, uplifting, thought-provoking and powerful music. Steve Hogarth is, quite simply, one of the most talented singers and songwriters in the world. Behind him stand four musicians who perform with more flair and conviction than the majority of other acts. Keyboardist Mark Kelly is — if you’ll excuse the pun — instrumental in delivering the special flourishes that make the identifiable Marillion sound, while bass player Pete Trewavas and drummer Ian Mosley provide the solid rhythmic backing for the sometimes complex layers. But it is guitarist Steve Rothery, in particular, who commands the musical focus with his inimitable style and breathless solos. If you’re not familiar with Marillion’s work, I dare you to turn up at the gig and not be amazed at the sound emanating from Rothery’s guitars.

Of course, despite already having released a staggering nine albums with Hogarth at the helm (the tenth is issued just days prior to the Gibraltar concert), misconceptions still exist. Fish quit way back in 1988, after just four albums, so don’t expect to hear “Kayleigh”. Contrary to the “80’s Prog-Metal” tag they are sometimes still wrongly lumbered with, Marillion are a relevant, groundbreaking and brave Rock outfit who continue to evolve, with even touches of Radiohead or Keane ensuring that the Rock blueprint continues to venture into new musical territories.

So, what can the Gibraltar audience expect? If you’re already a fan, you know that the recent “Marbles” album (including singles “You’re Gone” and “Don’t Hurt Yourself”, which reached the top end of the UK Charts) is a masterpiece, but then again the same can be said of brilliant records like “Seasons End”, “Holidays In Eden”, “Anoraknophobia” or the epic “Brave”. If you’re not yet a follower, give them a chance and you won’t be disappointed. How could you go wrong with a band that Classic Rock magazine describes as “an enduring and undervalued treasure” or whose sound The Guardian defined as “highly dramatic, emotional, dynamic stuff”? “There are a million bands who kick ass,” says Kerrang magazine, “but just a few, like Marillion, who really move people.”

Remember: to those who already know Marillion, they’re something special; to everyone else, they’re a love affair waiting to happen.

Marillion play live at the Tercentenary Sports Hall on Saturday 14th April. The concert is organised by the Ministry of Culture and Planet Projects, thanks to the support of the Bonita Trust, Party Gaming and Ocean Village. The support band is Super Wookie. Tickets, priced at £17, are on sale at Vijay and Marble Arc or through www.marilliongib.com.

Another sampler track from Somewhere Else:

Somewhere Else
[Disclaimer: mp3s will be posted for a limited time and are for evaluation only — if the music moves you buy their albums, support the musicians]

Preorder Somewhere Else from Townshend Records.

MARILLION — SOMEWHERE ELSE

2007-03-03T11:57:00.000+07:00

My favorite band, Marillion will release their 14th studio album — Somewhere Else on April 9th. It's their first album of new music since 2004's Marbles. A download-only single, "See It Like A Baby", will be released on March 26th. Fans attending the Marillion Weekend in Holland last month were treated to the live debut of five tracks from
the new album and others in the U.S. and Europe have been attending band-sponsored listening parties over the past couple of weeks. The band posted some excerpts from Somewhere Else on their MySpace page not long ago and discussions about the new songs have dominated their official online forum for weeks.

The official Marillion online shop won't be selling the album until after it's released but they have set up a deal with Townshend Records for a pre-order special. All those who order Somewhere Else through Townshend prior to April 9th will receive an exclusive DVD featuring three live tracks filmed at the 2007 Weekend. A good deal at £11.99.

The full track listing for the album is:

The Other Half
See It Like A Baby
Thankyou Whoever You Are
Most Toys
Somewhere Else
A Voice From The Past
No Such Thing
The Wound
The Last Century For Man
Faith

The last track is actually a holdover from the Marbles sessions (which produced quite a few yet-to-be-released tracks) and a lovely acoustic number that fans seem to either love or hate.

I've really been looking forward to this new album and was very disappointed we couldn't attend the Weekend in Holland (obtaining a visa for my wife proved too daunting). I did preorder the CD/DVD combo the day it was announced in late January and listened to the MySpace clips over and over again when those were posted (none of what I heard impressed me very much, to tell the truth).

A few days ago, France Inter radio broadcast an interview with lead singer Steve Hogarth which included full versions of five of the songs from Somewhere Else. Although the broadcast was in mono and at a very low bitrate (21Kbps), I recorded it and edited the tracks out so I could listen repeatedly before the release date.

I have to admit that none of the songs have really grabbed me the way those from Marbles did on first listen — there's nothing immediately as compelling as "Fantastic Place" or "Neverland" (although several people on the forum have stated the first half of the title track sounds a bit like "Ocean Cloud", I just can't hear the similarity). The single, "See It Like A Baby", just doesn't sound like a Marillion track at all but it's beginning to grow on me a bit more. "Most Toys" is a short rocker that should have been the first single in my opinion; I love the chorus — "He who dies with the most toys is still dead" — which I think is a nice variation on my Dad's motto of You can't take it with you...

My favorite among these first tracks is either "The Last Century For Man" (which many on the message board seem to dislike so what do I know?), particularly the "A Day In The Life"-style flourihes in the second half, or "Thankyou Whoever You Are" which is majestically beautiful.

See It Like A Baby
Most Toys
The Last Century For Man
Thankyou Whoever You Are
[Disclaimer: mp3s will be posted for a limited time and are for evaluation only — if the music moves you — buy their albums, support the musician]

Preorder Somewhere Else from Townshend Records.

GOODNIGHT PHUKET PODCAST - EPISODE 002

2007-03-02T02:04:00.000+07:00

The second episode of the GOODNIGHT PHUKET podcast is a little less rough (notice how I didn't say "smoother") than the debut. For one thing, I have a "real" microphone (which cost around 75 baht, or $2.22 U.S.). I'm a bit happier with the end result which I recorded late at night as it's the only really quiet time I can find anymore. Still, it just recaps some of what I've written here on the blog namely listing some of the things we've done the past couple of weeks (attending the Chinese New Year at Jungceylon and temple fair at Wat Chalong as well as visiting Surin Beach and looking for a new house). I also mention the (continuing) job search, the fact that we haven't been spending much time with our usual gaggle of friends, and a plan to include excerpts of some Thai music in an upcoming podcast. Running just under thirteen minutes, I don't think it's long enough to induce too much insomnia...

You can listen directly using the Gcast player below; or subscribe via iTunes:

MUSIC FOR FEBRUARY

2007-03-01T15:16:00.000+07:00

This past month, I managed to find time to listen to 103 complete albums (down one from January). Remarkably — and for the first time ever for me — NONE of these albums was actually played on the stereo from a physical CD! With (most of) the music I want to listen to residing in my iTunes and iPod it's becoming increasingly rare for me to fiddle with a disc. Most of the time these days I play music on the laptop through it's built-in speakers. If there's something I want to hear through decent speakers, I just hook the iPod up to the stereo or TV. I can play lossless FLAC directly on the computer through the foobar2000 application but any music I download in the older SHN format has to be decoded to WAV first (my favorite app for this is the all-in-one Trader's Little Helper) and burned to disc. While it would seem that I'd be doing this a lot (certain artists I download, including Pink Floyd, seem to ALWAYS be in SHN rather than FLAC), the past few months have seen me just archiving all of my lossless downloads onto DVD-R and listening to very few of them!

Anyway, without any further preample, I present the breakdown of artists listened to in the month of February 2007 (all of them instead of just the most-played):Marillion — 11

Genesis — 5

Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes — 5

The Beatles — 4

Heart — 4

Pink Floyd — 4

U2 — 4

ZZ Top — 4

The Band — 3

Eric Clapton — 3

Fleetwood Mac — 3

Steely Dan — 3

...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead — 2

Derek And The Dominos — 2

Fish — 2

Robbie Robertson — 2

Santana — 2

Bruce Springsteen — 2

The White Stripes — 2

The Who — 2

Webb Wilder — 2

The Allman Brothers Band — 1

David Baerwald — 1

Calexico — 1

Johnny Cash — 1

Phil Collins — 1

The Corrs — 1

Elvis Costello — 1

Cowboy Junkies — 1

The Doors — 1

Bob Dylan — 1

Garbage — 1

Grateful Dead — 1

Al Green — 1

Kings Of Leon — 1

Oasis — 1

The Police — 1

Iggy Pop — 1

Jeff Porter — 1

Prince — 1

Linda Ronstadt — 1

Ronnie Spector — 1

Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs — 1

Wilco — 1

There were also a total of nine various artists compilations (mostly miscellaneous downloads from music blogs but also including one classical music compilation and a couple or romantic Valentine's Day mixes).

NO WATER...AGAIN

2007-03-01T11:04:00.001+07:00

Well, I just stepped into the bathroom looking forward to taking a long shower. Yet, turning the faucet did nothing. Flushing the toilet didn't work. I'm not really that surprised although I may have jinxed it just a bit: Yesterday one of my neighbors said that she'd been told that all of the water problems had been solved and that we'd never again be without running water. I told her, "Yeah. That probably means that the water won't work again tomorrow..."

AN AFTERNOON AT SURIN

2007-02-28T14:06:00.000+07:00

A few days ago, my wife and I spent several hours with Alexander at Surin Beach, just west of the twin Muslim communities of Chergtelay and Bang Tao. We'd actually wanted to visit Bang Tao Beach but there are so many resorts and restaurants lining the road that we couldn't find a way to get through to the beach!

Click on the maps for a more detailed view

We used to come here quite often with various friends last fall but hadn't visited in quite some time. There are quite a few nice restaurants lining the beach — more farang-oriented huts at the northern end and more Thai-style stands towards the south. It's also one of the few beaches on Phuket where the price of a lounge chair with umbrella is still only 50 baht (it's 100 baht per chair virtually everywhere else); how long that will last is anybody's guess.

During this particular day, there were some very large waves (which Alex and I both enjoy quite a bit) as well as a strong outward tidal pull (which tires you out quickly as you try not to get sucked out towards India). Alex loves diving headfirst into the approaching waves and then being rolled back onto the beach where he waits for the suction to pull him back into the water thus signalling another approaching wave. It does tend to frighten others when they first see him rolling head over foot in the surf but they soon see how much fun he's having (and how diligent Mum & Dad are at preventing him from being swept out very far).

We stayed until almost six before making the long journey back to Chalong (made even longer by cutting across the island to the Heroines Monument Circle, then south on Thepkassatri Road to the Bypass Road before finally picking up Chaofa West down to Chalong). For a then-unexplained reason, my wife didn't feel like driving the more direct (and rather shorter route) south along the coast through Kamala and Patong where we can either continue south through Karon and Kata before veering east or across the mountain into Kathu and thence to the Dara Samut Intersection. When we finally arrived home, Tim revealed that she'd wanted to eat dinner at the Super Cheap Prawn Barbecue but couldn't find the proper turnoff from Thepkassatri (she took me there once, last May or June).

Alexander looks more like a little gangster in this photo than someone ready to go swimming.

LOOKING FOR A NEW HOME

2007-02-28T11:10:00.000+07:00

With our lease expiring in early April, Tim and I have begun the search for a new home. She never really liked our current location in Chalong and our recent water woes has led her into finally convincing me to relocate. There are two other main considerations:

My wife has long wanted to operate a small restaurant;

Alexander doesn't have any friends to play with (nor is there much yard space to play in around our present house)

Because of consideration number one, we have been focusing our search to shophouses. In such a building, Tim could have her dream restaurant on the ground floor which would save us having to rent a separate location for the business — in the process cutting down on having to hire security and also on commute time since we would be living upstairs. Of course, this means that we would never be able to completely have a holiday away from the restaurant... Most shophouses on Phuket are three storeys tall, although the second level usually consists of a half-floor overlooking the ground floor.

We haven't yet looked at any "traditional" houses but I want to show Tim a few before making any decisions. My requirements for these would be

a completely detached house (our current home is "semi-detached" meaning we share a long wall with one of our neighbors — there's a small sliver of land and a wall separating us from the other neighbor)
at least a small yard on at least three sides of the house, complete with grass (a tropical garden would be the ideal)
must have a large auxiliary water tank already installed in addition to a reliable water source

I really don't have any preferences for location on the island although, for some reason I'm not sure of, I have some sort of prejudice against living in Kathu.

Ironically, our favorite so far is a shophouse on the northern edge of Kathu, near the large open-air market. It's a four-storey building with fairly large floors. The ground floor is open with a bathroom to one side and a kitchen/washing area at the rear. There are balconies along the back on the second, third, and fourth floors and along the front on the third and fourth. The second storey indeed has an overlook to the main floor below but there's actually enough floor space to house an office or sitting area between the stairs and the overlook (the railing has yet to be installed). The third storey is a vast open space with large restroom near the rear balcony; it would be an awesome living room and could even be partitioned into two (or even three) rooms. There's a small bedroom at the rear of the fourth floor and the master bedroom occupies the front half with enough room in between for another living area.

There isn't a whole lot of development (yet) in this area of Phuket and both the front and rear of the house offers wonderful views of the surrounding mountains. It's on a wide road; turn left and it's a fast way over to Phuket City, bypassing a lot of traffic while you can turn right to get back into Kathu and have easy access over "Death Hill" into Patong. The price of 30,000 baht per month (approx. USD $880) does seem a bit steep but is still doable (I've seen a few three-storey shophouses advertised for 10,000 per month; we haven't yet looked at any of those).

Anyway, here are a few photos of our current favorite. Click on the thumbnails to see a larger view.

The ground floor features a garage-door style front entrance. There's a bathroom to one side and the rear area has space for a Thai-style kitchen along with a washing area out back. There's a pedestal in place for a large water tank.

First photo shows the view from the edge of the second-storey overlook; obviously, a railing needs to be added. I'm not sure why the three windows aren't centered or why they didn't include a fourth... There's a balcony along the rear of the second, third, and fourth floors, overlooking the small washing area on the ground floor.

The stairways seem to be wide enough to carry furniture up (i.e., mattresses, bed frames, large bookcase, etc.) but it's hard to tell. That's the one real disadvantage I can think of for moving into a shophouse — the sheer difficulty of getting our stuff up to the living spaces...

The third storey includes a nice balcony at the front (as well as one at the rear) overlooking the street. I can visualize sitting up here just watching the traffic go by. There's a bathroom towards the rear. The large open holes can be filled either with cinder blocks or large plate glass windows (if it wasn't for the windy conditions during the rainy season I'd actually prefer to leave them open!).

There are two bedrooms on the fourth floor separated by an empty space. We could see that the one at the front included a balcony. However, the doors to both rooms were locked and a key wasn't available on our visit. I think they both wrap around since the space in between is half as wide as the other floors.

The one thing I really dislike about this particular shophouse is the pink color of the facade (many, many shophouses on Phuket are also pink; I don't know why...). I think they're going to put in a large plate-glass side door on the ground floor; I'd rather have it as a solid wall with a steel door for security.

Anyway, this Kathu shophouse is the current front-runner in our house search. I think we'll be doing good to find something similar at a lower price. We'll be looking over in Phuket City this afternoon (I quite like the areas near Sam Kong School and between Bangkok-Phuket and Vachira Hospitals.

FUNNY SIGN OF THE WEEK

2007-02-28T09:09:00.001+07:00

How can the sidewalk work? (Seen near the north end of Karon Beach.)

AND ON THE SEVENTEENTH DAY...

2007-02-27T13:20:00.000+07:00

...the faucets produced water. Upon returning from an afternoon of swimming we discovered that running water has been restored to our home. I could hear the shower blasting out liquid as I fiddled with the keys and in celebration I spent about 20 minutes getting as clean as I possibly could. It was even fairly warm (we don't have a hot water heater) so the shower was even more enjoyable than it already was. My wife was very amused at the little "happy dance" I did once I emerged from the bathroom.

The big question is, "How long will it last?" At any rate, we're now getting caught up on scrubbing floors, doing laundry, changing the aquarium water, etc. The plants are finally getting a heavy dousing as well but it's too late to save my prized palm...

OBTAINING A THAI DRIVER'S LICENSE (PART 2)

2007-02-23T12:49:00.000+07:00

I now have my Thai (automobile) driver's license. The entire process took just under two-and-a-half hours but really wasn't very difficult.

Franz and I arrived at the Provincial Land Transport Office in Phuket City just before it's 8:30 opening this morning. There were already a dozen or so Thai people waiting. As soon as a few workers appeared behind the counter, everyone rushed up without any semblance of order. A couple of workers tried to form the mass into a proper queue but it didn't really work. The application form was in Thai but we didn't have to fill any of it out ahead of time.

Once I got to the head of the line, I handed my pile of papers to the lady behind the counter. She asked if I wanted a car license or one for motorbikes. I told her both and she said that I could only use the International Driving Permit for one license and that I would have to take the motorbike test. If I only obtained the car license today, I could come back another day and use the IDP to apply for the motorbike license without taking a driving test. I, of course, opted for this since I can't actually drive a motorbike that doesn't have a sidecar attached to it.

Also, I didn't bring any copies of the IDP (nothing I'd read mentioned they needed copies) so I was sent over to the photocopying queue. They didn't accept Franz's tabien baan (house registration book) as proof-of-residency so he was sent to the Immigration Office to get the proper form. (Supposedly, this isn't allowed for driving licenses anymore but he returned an hour later with the 100-baht address proof and this was readily accepted.)

All of the proper copies in hand, I once again handed the pile to the clerk. She stapled everything together, had my write my name at the top of the application, and sent me upstairs to a testing room. The queue snaked out of this room and down the hallway. There were several other farangs staring through the windows trying to figure out the purpose of the various exams we were to undergo and hoping the administrator spoke enough English to give them instructions. While waiting, we watched a number of Thai people struggle with the tests; the lady in charge had a good sense of humor and allowed each person to try until they passed (we figured she didn't want to lose face by failing anybody).

The first test was for reaction time. There were two pedals on the floor; we had to give "gas" to the right-side pedal and when a series of green LED's began lighting up we had to quickly stomp on the left-hand pedal before the LED's turned to red. Many of the people seemed to struggle with this greatly but I got it on the first try.

You then had to pull two long strings to align a pair of uprights (reminded me of football goalposts) inside of a large block. One guy pulled the string so hard that it broke! After that, the lady pointed to various cirlces of color on a large board (reminded me of a psychedelic poster from the 60's) while you called out which color she was pointing to. The trouble with this was that most of the color circles were so small that her pen would completely cover them when she pointed. Finally, your peripheral vision was tested by placing your head against a dot while she flashed colored lights opposite of your ears. Everyone struggled with this one. I couldn't tell the difference between the green and yellow lights but I seemed to guess correctly as I didn't have to retry this one.

The lady then signed your application (the top sheet on your stack of paperwork) with a flourish and sent you back downstairs. Someone told me to take a number and wait until I was called. The numbers were called out in Thai and I ended up helping a few other farangs by telling them when their numbers were up (I'm glad I've mastered that bit of the language!).

When it was my turn I approached the counter. The lady asked to see my passport and she compared it with the photocopies. I was then asked to sign all of the copies and if I wanted the license laminated. I was given the blank driver's license card to sign and then pointed to the cashier. I paid 105 baht and was given a receipt. Ten minutes later they called my name ("Khun Mark") and asked for ten baht for the already-laminated card.

The first driver's license is good for one year. The day after it expires (you can't do it before or on the day it expires), you take the old license back to the transport office and they swap it (no tests of any kind) for a five-year license.

I'll report back on how that goes next year...

STEPS TO OBTAIN A THAI DRIVER'S LICENSE

2007-02-22T20:10:00.000+07:00

Franz and I are heading over to the Provincial Transport Office tomorrow in order to obtain our Thai driver's licenses. Although most residents don't even bother (you can drive here using your home country license AND an International Driving Permit) but it does have it's advantages including being recognized as a form of credit and a proof of residency (allowing you to pay Thai admission prices rather than the two-tiered rates).

If you do have an IDP, you can basically just swap it out for the Thai license without having to take the driving course or test (administered in the Thai language). I believe we will have to take a vision test, however.

You need to take several things with you to the transport office:

1) Passport with valid Non-Immigrant visa (Tourist visas don't qualify). The list from the American Citizens Services Unit of the U.S. Embassy says to take one photocopy of both your details page and the page with your current visa; past experience with Thai bureaucracy suggests it's a good idea to take two copies of each.

2) Proof Of Residency. Previously, you could obtain this at any local Immigration Office presenting your rental lease or house registration (tabien baan) book but they now require you to obtain a notarized affadavit from your home embassy or consulate in Bangkok. This is one of the many changes in immigration policies instituted around the time of the September coup. My form cost 1,140 baht (approx. USD $30) at the U.S. Embassy last month.

3) Medical Certificate. You can obtain this at any local clinic or hospital (just don't use one of the big international hospitals). It's sort of an expat joke that this is the easiest obtainable official Thai document —

"Are you breathing?"
"Yes."
"Congratulations. You passed."

I obtained my medical report from the Wattana Clinic in Patong (on one of the small sois leading off the beach road) today. We'd had a bit of difficulty actually finding a clinic that was open — most of them on Phuket don't have daytime hours, only operating between five in the afternoon and around midnight. I told the receptionist that I needed a health report for a driver's license and she retrieved the proper form. She took my passport and gave me a number. After a two- or three-minute wait, the doctor took me into a small examination room. She touched the stethoscope to my heart and to my belly button and asked how long it had been since my last doctor visit. I honestly don't know but it was at least ten years ago. I told her "three."

"Nothing has happened in the last three years?"
"No."
"Okay. Sign here."

She then had me follow her back out to the cashier where I paid 100 baht (USD $2.95). The cashier stamped the form and I was on my way five minutes after entering the clinic.

4) International Driving Permit. These are good-for-one year translations of your regular license issued in your home country by the national automobile association or similar agency. There are many people who advertise international driver's licenses but these are a scam that have no validity (although I doubt if most Thai traffic police would know the difference — I've heard stories of foreigners presenting school ID's or even library cards, passing them off as licenses). The U.S. Embassy list mentions the state license but I don't think you can swap this for the Thai license without the IDP.

5) Two 1-inch by 1-inch photos. I obtained mine at the Kodak Express in Chalong Circle — six for 80 baht.

The fees are 105 baht for a car license and 55 baht for a motorcycle license (I think I might get one of each). Oh yes, if you want the license laminated (and who wouldn't?) it's an extra 10 baht.

FUNNY SIGN OF THE WEEK

2007-02-22T09:53:00.000+07:00

I know they mean carp but... (Seen at the Wat Chalong fair — plus, they had three or four varieties of the banner, all with the same misspelling!)

TWELFTH DAY

2007-02-22T09:26:00.001+07:00

I'm not guessing who may have read about our continuing water woes in this blog, but...

Yesterday our landlord delivered a 500-liter (I think that's around 150 gallons) water tank for us — free of charge — to be filled whenever we need it, also free. They also ran a hose from the tank into my master bathroom so we wouldn't have to haul water in buckets. Jon then informed me that the Provincial Governor would be meeting with the Water Authority today to find a resolution to the lack of running water.

We'll see what happens...

In the meantime, I think I'm going to go out today and see if I can find a "camp shower" to hook up to my new "running water" hose.

Perhaps, sometimes it does pay to complain on this blog as you never know if someone who can effect change will be reading. Thank you whoever you are...

MOSQUITOES IN THAILAND

2007-02-21T03:55:00.000+07:00

I sometimes feel that I'm the primary target for the local mosquitoes to aim for. It often seems as if they have special radar that tells them they should bite the farang as none of the Thai people around me ever have a problem with them. My wife says it's because my blood is sweet but I think it's just payback from living the previous twelve years without having them around (Albuquerque was relatively mosquito-free because of it's altitude and the dry desert air). I've only found one spray that works against them but this is only available in America (my sister sent me several bottles last fall). I've been particularly worried about bites ever since my friend Ben was hospitalized a few months ago and they didn't know if he had dengue fever or malaria (it turned out that it was neither, but they never did actually figure out what he did have).

And, yet, I don't think I've ever written an entire blog about the pesky little biters. Vern over at Thai Pulse beat me to that. I really can't improve on what he's written (and I can relate to many of his observations) so I present his entry here:

Thailand Mosquito Bait: You

I am a 71 kg piece of mosquito bait.

The mosquitos in Thailand are OFF THE HOOK down here in Surat Thani. I'm not sure how they're getting in the house, except that by now they must be breeding under the couch and in that dark room that we never have the light on.

Living in the northeast (Isaan) we experienced some level of mosquitos that I thought was HIGH. I lived in Florida for a number of years and we have mosquitos, but they are BIG. We can see them. We can control them for the most part because they are so big and easily seen.

Here in Thailand we have the citronella coils that we light — but they don't work here. In Florida they work pretty well. We have torches in Florida too — that work well.

We have mosquito lotion that we rub in and the mosquitos don't bite us... here they bite me THROUGH my shirt if there is lotion on my arm.

Are their suck-tubes that long that they can go through my shirt AND pierce my skin through the 3rd layer to reach blood?

That's amazing, because they are so small!

In Florida you FEEL the mosquito as it's biting sometimes. Here — never. In Thailand I only feel the after-effect, the insane itchiness that doesn't last all that long but that drives me farking insane for a few minutes especially when they get me on the tops of the feet or between the toes.

There are some mother-mutant mosquitos around the house here too. I've caught a couple on video.

These are like UFO mother-ships that spit out hordes of babies every few hours. I kill those immediately sparing no effort.
The greatest tool we have in Thailand for controlling the population of mosquitos indoors are these mosquito racquets. These have an electrified wire grid that is great fun to use — and I never tire of the rush of hearing (and smelling) a mosquito sizzling on it.

The mother-mutants are not easily killed with these racquets though. Two days ago I zapped one in the outside restroom. I got it about 3 times leaving it for dead.

My girlfriend told me that night that she found it — laying on the floor in the restroom still alive and she tried to nurse it back to health!

WHAT IS SHE THINKING?

I asked her, "Weren't you just bitten over 70 times by mosquitos when you stayed in Bangkok at your friend's apartment?"

"Yes" she replied.

*E#*)#()$*%! I said...

"But Buddhism says we shouldn't kill something."

Mai pen rai, krup I mumbled...

With large bugs she has a problem with killing them, or me killing them even... but with small mosquitos, no problem!

The notecard above shows the times of day that you're likely to get bitten by a mosquito in Thailand.

If you are walking in the woods outside though, you will get bitten anytime of day or night. They love the cool shade, and this is where I was bitten yesterday as I walked around Suan Mokkh Temple in Chaiya.

I had a couple bites on my head where I didn't apply the lotion so thick, and the rest on my back where they bit through my shirt!

:( Cover up and lather up with the repellant. I've had one friend get Dengue fever here and seen another kid or two at school get it. (They're never really sure if it's dengue for some reason).

Posted by Vern at 2/19/2007 11:21:00 AM

I've never seen the "mutant mother-ships" Vern describes but I pray we never have one of these in our home. And, I've seen the electric mosquito swatters in Big C but I just thought they were for some odd Thai version of bandmiton or something...

TWO-TIERED PRICING & OUTRIGHT ROBBERY

2007-02-21T03:00:00.000+07:00

I've come to accept the system of two-tiered pricing in Thailand — that farangs are expected to pay slightly higher prices than Thai people for admission to national parks, the zoo, etc. When bargaining at open air markets, I know that as a Westerner I'll never be able to get the same price that my wife will pay. What I take exception to is that occasionally greed takes over in certain situations; fortunately, before this week, I'd only heard stories from other foreigners rather than experiencing any obvious price-gouging for myself.

In the past few days I've been the victim of two incidents of attempted highway robbery of the greed-induced variety. In one I was able to come away relatively unscathed. I'm just now dealing with the second.

With our current (lack of) water situation it's needless to say that tempers are beginning to flare. We still are unable to receive any kind of answer as to when running water will be restored and my landlord became irate with me the other day when I asked (it was the first time I'd seen him or asked the question; he's from Grenada by the way). We'd been buying large jugs of drinking water every day until that supply diminished and a community well was soon emptied as well. Finally, the village council ordered a daily delivery from a water truck. Water was to be provided to each house in our soi; the council paid for the water each day and they were to fill up as many containers of water as we had at no extra cost.

Apparently, the guys on the water truck decided they would try to make some extra cash on the side. I was working in my office two nights ago when my wife burst inside yelling that I needed to tell the water man to give us water. Tim rarely becomes angry with anything so I asked her what had happened.

"I don't know why water man speak not nice to me."

She went on to say that she'd gone out front and showed the men on the water truck where our buckets were (we have two round plastic garbage cans, a medium-sized ice chest, and two small pails for bailing water out of the big buckets when they're full). He told her 100 baht. Tim, remembering I'd told her the water was free, asked him again and he'd yelled at her that he'd said 100 baht — not 100 dollars (knowing I was a farang). That's when she came to get me.

I walked outside and asked which of the three men told my wife that the water was 100 baht. One of the men said that she misunderstood and that it was 100 baht for each container so I needed to pay 500 baht! Just then, our landlord walked into view so I called out to him that they were trying to rip us off. Normally, Jon is a very soft-spoken gentleman but he became very irate and began yelling that they'd already paid for the entire water delivery and that the men needed to fill up our buckets and I wasn't to pay them anything. (In Thailand, you simply do not show anger towards a Thai as it never has a positive affect. Jon's lived here for nine years and he knows how the system works but you can tell that the constant complaints about the lack of water, etc. is really taking it's toll on him.) Our buckets did get filled but there was a lot of tension left hanging in the air. I kept waiing and apologizing to diffuse the situation and was very happy when the truck moved to the next house.

Afterwards, Nadier told me that he'd paid the man 1000 baht two days before and Franz said he'd paid 100 baht. Neither knew that the council had already paid for our water until they'd heard Jon yelling at the men on the truck. Pen also told me that the girls living in the house next to her had been complaining the men had been trying to charge them every day and they had refused knowing it was supposed to me free. Thus, they had been borrowing water from other neighbors. I think that a representative of the council should meet the truck from now on and accompany it to each house to make sure this doesn't happen again.

If it was only a couple of days that we'd have to rely on this water truck then I probably would have just paid the 100 baht (or even the 500 baht) and accepted it as part of the system (although I'm still not happy about a Thai man being rude to my wife — perhaps he's actually Burmese or something...). But we have no idea how long this will continue (11 days without running water and counting...). Someone from our soi did call the main office of the Water Authority in Bangkok a couple of days ago and a couple of other people are writing letters to the Phuket Gazette so we'll see what happens...

The second attempt (successful) at "robbery" was not so easily diverted, if much less dramatic. In Thailand, if you are farang and involved in an accident you are always at fault no matter how many witnesses you might have that state otherwise. (I'm not sure what happens if two farangs are in an accident together; they're probably still in the wrong and the settlement goes to the street vendor at the corner.) My wife is a very cautious driver but driving is chaotic here at best so it's just a matter of time before any one person is involved in some sort of accident. We had a near miss on New Year's Eve but that was just a slight scrape.

A couple of nights ago (yes, the same evening of the "water incident") Tim was leaving work when she ran into a car on her motorbike. Now, I'm not sure of the amount of damage to the car Tim told me "car broken" and showed me some nasty-looking scrapes on her knee. She waited until tonight before telling me as she was worried that I'd be angry about paying money since we'd just paid Alexander's tuition on Monday. Ordinarily, since it was a Thai-on-Thai accident the money paid would be minimal (although most drivers have some form of insurance usually one just pays cash on the spot).

But Tim managed to run into the brand-new car of her boss as driven by his wife. They know that she is married to an American (which most Thai people automatically think means "big money"). She says that she had no choice but to give them what they asked for — she hasn't told me how much but I'd just transferred some cash over from the States and gave her a nice amount to deposit into her account. That's gone now, plus more (she had my debit card as I'd asked her to pick up something at Jungceylon on her break; I haven't checked how much yet...).

I could tell she was very upset when she told me as she was more worried about the money than the accident itself. I told her that the money wasn't the important thing — I made sure she was okay (and was happy Alexander wasn't with her at the time). Accidents do happen — you can't really plan for them — we'll be okay regardless of how much she had to pay her boss's wife. I do know that if it had been somebody who doesn't know she's married to a farang that Tim probably would have gotten off by paying one or two thousand baht at the most.

I had wondered why she hadn't gone to work last night (she said she wanted to take us to the Wat Chalong Fair instead and asked Jum to tell the boss she wasn't going to work). Tonight, Tim told me that she didn't have to work but needed to go talk to the "big boss" about something and would be home within an hour or so. She left around 5:30 and didn't come home until almost 1:00 (I'd called her twice and both times she'd said the boss was too busy to talk to her but she would wait because it was important).

At least when I get my Thai driver's license, I can pay the Thai prices at the zoo, aquarium, etc. Too bad that won't work at the market, with the water guy, or when we have fender-benders.

Maybe I need to have a t-shirt made up that says, "I'm American but I'm not 'big money'..."

DAY 9

2007-02-19T08:34:00.001+07:00

Still no water...

WAT CHALONG FAIR & RHYTHMIC EXOTIC BACKPACKERS

2007-02-17T12:34:00.001+07:00

This weekend, my wife, son and I are planning to check out the temple fair at Wat Chalong. Here's the info from Phuket Gazette:

CHALONG: The annual Wat Chalong Fair this year will be held February 16 to 22. Each day of the fair, which was first held in 1954, will feature a sermon by monks, live entertainment and hundreds of stalls selling food and wares.

The fair is free to enter and will start at 4.30 pm each day.

Thai country music (look thung) stars, including Roong Suriya, Arpaporn Nakornsawan, Bew Kalayanee and Jingreedkhao Wongtewan, will perform live at the fair from 10 pm to midnight as follows:

Feb 16 Mangpor Chonthicha

Feb 17 Bew Kalayanee

Feb 18 Ying Thitikarn

Feb 19 Jingreedkhao Wongtewan

Feb 20 Rung Suriya

Feb 21 Lew Arjareeya

Feb 22 Arpaporn Nakornsawan

Before the stars take to the stage local students will perform live on stage.

Each night of the fair Asian and European movies will be shown at an outdoor cinema from 8 pm, and there will be live performances of traditional Thai shadow plays (nang talung) from 9 pm to 2 am as well as traditional Thai music.

The Wat Chalong Fair attracts thousands of visitors each year. Motorists are warned of tailbacks in the surrounding areas.

Vendors looking to join the fair may bid for their preferred pitch at an auction of stall sites at the fair at Wat Chalong on February 4, starting at 9 am.

But tonight we'll be at Jungceylon Shopping Center in Patong for their "Pinky Piggy Celebration" for Chinese New Year. What sold me was the listing of the Hip Hop Dragon Show with the Rhythmic Exotic Backpackers. With a name like that, I just have to film and blog about it (although I will be missing the Phuket International Blues Festival with the Soi Dog Blues Band).

JERICHO — FREE EPISODE FROM iTUNES

2007-02-17T09:30:00.000+07:00

One of my favorite new television shows is CBS's Jericho. It's a drama set in a small western Kansas town following a series of nuclear explosions. I only discovered the program following the mid-season finale at the end of November but I just finished watching all of the previous eleven episodes. The series is set to resume on February 21.

This past week, a special recap episode — "Return To Jericho" — was broadcast:

Catch up on Jericho during a special recap that chronicles what took place during the first 11 episodes of the series. Jericho is a drama about what happens when a nuclear mushroom cloud suddenly appears on the horizon, plunging the residents of a small, peaceful Kansas town into chaos, leaving them completely isolated and wondering if they're the only Americans left alive. Fear of the unknown propels Jericho into social, psychological and physical mayhem when all communication and power is shut down. The town starts to come apart at the seams as terror, anger and confusion bring out the very worst in some residents.

For a limited time, iTunes is offering a free download of this recap show. Click here.

DAY 7 WITHOUT RUNNING WATER

2007-02-17T08:02:00.000+07:00

Our village is still without running water; it's now been one week since our faucets have gone dry. The community well gave up the last of some really murky brownish water a couple of days ago and even the guys who sold 10-gallon jugs from their motorbike sidecars have run out. The landlord (who is on the village council) has not been seen for a few days and nobody will tell us when they expect the water to be turned back on. At least 7-Eleven still has small bottles of water...for now.

And yet, we just received our water bill. It's about a third higher than usual (still under 200 baht — USD $6.00 — though). It sort of reminds me of how flood victims in Ayutthaya received significantly-higher-than-usual electric bills a few months ago despite their homes being under water for two or three months previously. The Electric Authority admitted they had "guessed" how much to charge because it's workers couldn't reach the homes in order to read the meters.

We'd all like to take a decent shower or use the toilet without any fears. Tim wants me to find us a new place to live; despite her growing up in a very remote area of Thailand she never before has had to deal with so many water outages. And this is one more thing that is creating problems with Alexander...

I hope that I can soon report that we have running water at home and are able to clean floors and clothes...

HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR

2007-02-16T23:51:00.000+07:00

Yes, Chinese New Year is widely celebrated in Thailand — many people of various Chinese ancestry here, particularly Hokkien Chinese who came to Phuket from Malaysia in order to work the tin mines in the 18th and 19th centuries. This year of 2007 (or 2550 on the Thai calendar) is the year 4704 — Year of the Pig — on the lunar calendar.

Although the New Year begins on February 18th, celebrations have already begun and transportation hubs are clogged as family members travel to visit each other. According to the Bangkok Post, this weekend one should:

Saturday, February 17
Fill an auspicious rice urn with rice to the top. Place an 'ang pow' red packet containing nine different currencies of rich countries inside the urn. In addition, your fridge should be full of food when entering into the Chinese New Year.
Sunday, February 18
Wear red clothing to welcome the Chinese New Year and the first thing you eat should have a sweet taste.

Decorate the house with fresh blooming flowers. Place a pair of auspicious lime or orange trees in front of your house to prevent bad energy from entering your home.

To increase good 'chi' energy, roll 8, 18 or 28 bright oranges with golden coins into your home at 9:18am.

I don't know about rolling oranges into the house Sunday morning but I do think we'll go watch some fireworks at Jungceylon tomorrow night.

Happy New Year (and it's only two more months before we celebrate Thai New Year/Songkran — my favorite of the three New Year celebrations we have here in Thailand).

GOODNIGHT PHUKET PODCAST - EPISODE 001

2007-02-16T21:11:00.000+07:00

I've recently become hooked on podcasts, mostly because of browsing within the iTunes Store. A podcast is an audio or video program, usually in a talk show format, that includes a syndication feed that you can subscribe to. New episodes can be automatically downloaded to iTunes and added to your iPod. It's really the next step in broadcast radio and there are a lot of really cool shows out there (and a lot of junk, too).

That's part of the appeal of podcasting — any yahoo with a microphone and something to say can make one and distribute it far and wide. I've just read the chapter on podcasts in Steven Levy's fascinating The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness (Simon & Schuster, 2006) which has inspired me to create my own.

I doubt if the GOODNIGHT PHUKET Podcast will garner as many readers as, say, Car Talk or that it will be interesting to anyone at all. This first episode (001) is simply an experiment. I wanted to check each step of the process — from recording the program (and I don't even have a real microphone, just sort of a tiny hole on the top of my laptop) to editing it, uploading the show to a server, and generating an RSS feed so listeners could subscribe.

Episode 001 is just a brief introduction to who I am — Mark in Phuket, new family man and unemployed English teacher living in a new country — and offers an idea or two of what I'd like to do in future episodes of the podcast. The only audio in this first episode is the sound of me talking into that tiny hole on the laptop, wondering if it's actually recording. It's just under three minutes long but it could be the start of something big. Or not...

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UPDATE: I did something wrong — the podcast subscription shows up in iTunes but it won't download the episode. Back to the drawing board. (At least you can listen to it online...)

VALENTINE'S DAY IN THAILAND

2007-02-15T09:18:00.000+07:00

From an article in the Bangkok Post:

Love Is In the Air, At Least for Some, On Day of Romance
POST REPORTERS
There was love, ambition and anger in the air on Valentine's Day yesterday. A couple in their eighties formally tied the knot, a student tried to rob a dentist to raise the money to take his sweetheart out, and a high-profile pathologist received a pestle in protest against her work.

With the aid of a cane, Grandpa Mak Charoensuk, 88, walked hand in hand with Grandma Ui, 86, to register their marriage at the Muang district office in Nakhon Ratchasima yesterday.

Grandpa kissed his bride, whose wide toothless smile lit up her face. They were among 34 couples joining a mass wedding.

In Suphan Buri's U Thong district, Sorn Poh-ngam, 68, and Nuan Unpee, 66, kicked a kerosene can to show that they are physically fit. In the Thai saying, people able to kick the kerosene can ''hard and loud'' are fit enough to have sex.

All 60 couples who converged there received free health check-ups.

In Trang, 40 couples were married 12m under the sea.

In Prachin Buri, seven pairs glided 60m down the Weluwan waterfall cliff to register their marriages.

But Bang Rak, Bangkok's ''district of love'', remained the favourite place with 665 couples choosing to formally tie the knot there.

In Nonthaburi's Muang district, an engineering student tried to rob a dentist in the morning in order to take his sweetheart out last night. But police chased and arrested Supatchai Sudglao, 26, after spotting him hitting Kamol Tangkij-ngamwong, 37, on the back of his head with a wooden stick. Supatchai was charged with attempted robbery.

To patch up differences after the dismissal of Pol Gen Kowit Wattana as national police chief on Feb 5, Supreme Commander Gen Boonsang Niampradit hosted a reunion of Class 6 of the Armed Forces Academies Preparatory School.

All Council for National Security members and their spouses went to the party at the residence of CNS leader and army chief Gen Sonthi Boonyaratkalin last night.

But for pathologist Khunying Porntip Rojanasunan, a pestle wrapped in a red ribbon and a lawsuit against her did not signify love from Noppadol Thammawattana. The head of the Central Institute of Forensic Science said after the second autopsy of his elder brother, Hangthong, that murder was the cause of death eight years ago. Mr Noppadol was charged with conspiring in the murder, before a third autopsy confirmed suicide was the cause.

THAI LOVE - TEN COMMANDMENTS

2007-02-15T08:51:00.000+07:00

Ever since reading about the "official" 10 commandments of Thai love released by the Ministry of Culture earlier this week, I've been trying to track down a copy. I finally found the list this morning, courtesy of Steve Suphan at Thai-Blogs.com. He prefaces the list by writing,

"...according to the golden-oldies in charge [at the Ministry of Culture], all proper Thai girls are virgins before the day of their marriage. And any girl who dares get herself involved with any disgusting behaviour beforehand is labeled ‘Un-Thai’ and declared a threat to both national security and Thai Culture."

The Ten Commandments:

1. Love with patience, so as not to become a premature parent.

2. Truly love only one person.

3. Love with mercy, trying not to hurt the one you love.

4. Carefully love to avoid taking risks that might lead to contracting sexual diseases.

5. Love with honour, waiting until the proper time to have sex.

6. Love in accordance with custom.

7. Love reasonably, not taking sexual advantage of your lover.

8. Love permanently, without defaming the one you love.

9. Love honestly, believing in your partner.

10. Love with understanding, forgiveness and without anger.

I don't know. Sounds pretty reasonable to me...

But it does sound like the Ministry should worry considering polls such as the one reported on in this Reuters article:

Thai Teens Keen for Valentine's Day Sex
Tue Feb 13, 2007 6:51 AM GMT16

By Panarat Thepgumpanat

BANGKOK, Feb 13 (Reuters Life!) - A third of Thai teenage girls think Valentine's Day is an excellent time to lose their virginity, and police in Bangkok are out to stop them.

Police in the capital, famous around the world for its fleshpots, will enforce a 10 p.m. curfew on February 14 after a poll of teenagers was published last week.

Love-struck teenagers would be sent home or taken to a police station to wait for their parents to fetch them on Wednesday night, Bangkok Deputy Police Chief Kamol Kaewsuwan said.

"Love is nice and beautiful, but it does not necessarily involve sexual engagement. Teenagers would do better focussing on school," Kamol said of the curfew.

Police would also be on the look out for public displays of affection by under-18 youths hanging out in shopping malls, cinemas and other entertainment venues on Valentine's Day.

"Hugging and kissing in public places are indecent," said Police Colonel Chokechai Deeprasertvith, who heads a special unit to fight crimes against children, youths and women.

The Assumption University poll of 1,578 teenagers published last week found one third of teenage girls were willing to have sex on Valentine's Day if their boyfriends asked.

Another survey of 1,222 youths by the University of Thai Chamber of Commerce found 11 percent planned to lose their virginity on Wednesday night. Nearly 51 percent said they would not have sex.

It's not the first time predominantly Buddhist Thailand has tried a social order crusade popular with the middle class, many of whom are uncomfortable with public sexuality and support moves to rein in anything-goes Bangkok.

A short-lived 2004 morality campaign under former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra cut the operating hours of go-go bars, nightclubs and massage parlours despite warnings it would hit the country's lucrative tourist trade.

Recently, university student and budding movie starlet Chotiros Suriyawong was rebuked for wearing a revealing sexy black dress to Thailand's version of the Oscars.

"Society feels this is a disgrace and her actions have affected the reputation of this university," Suraphol Nitikraipot, rector of the prestigious Thammasat University, was quoted as saying by the Nation newspaper on Tuesday.

I'm not trying to take some moral high ground here (or, maybe I am?) although I do agree with the points on the Ministry of Culture's Ten Commandments.

I'd also like to point out that such campaigns against public displays of affection and premarital sex are very common in Thailand despite the often Western assumption that the red light areas of Bangkok, Pattaya, or Patong are the only reason tourists come to this country. (And to repeat how offensive the topless swimmers on local beaches are to the devout Buddhist and Muslim Thais that live here. It often amazes me that people come here and repeatedly insult the culture...)

DAY 5 WITHOUT RUNNING WATER

2007-02-15T07:43:00.001+07:00

'Nuff said...

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY

2007-02-14T21:31:00.001+07:00

My wife's at work tonight (she's cooking for Papaya Pok-Pok on Rat-U-Thit in Patong) and I'm home alone. I did put together a nice, romantic, music mix for later however...

Anyway, since this is Thailand I thought I'd share an article found via 2Bangkok.com:

Thai Cops on Alert for Underage Kissing
The Associated Press

BANGKOK, Thailand - A word of advice to young Thai lovers on Valentine's Day: No kissing in public. Bangkok police say they plan to protect underage couples from the sting of Cupid's arrow, and will crack down on what is deemed to be "inappropriate" behavior.

Patrols will start after school hours in "high-risk areas," like public parks, shopping malls and restaurants and expand in the evening to include nightclubs, bars and so-called love motels, which rent small rooms for short periods of time, said Police Lt. Vorawat Amornviwat of the Metropolitan Police Bureau.

"If we find teenagers below 18 engaged in inappropriate behavior like kissing, we will give them warnings and report to their parents so they can pick them up," he said. "Alcohol is definitely a catalyst for this kind of behavior, so we will keep an eye on underage drinking."

The Metropolitan Police force has also asked nightclub and bar owners to help by turning away underage customers.

"These places are not meant for kids," he said, adding that Valentine's Day required extra vigilance "because they seem to be more vulnerable to sexual temptations on this particular night."

The crackdown on public displays of affection is the latest effort to balance the country's look-the-other-way tolerance with Buddhist values of modesty and manners.

Over the weekend, the Culture Ministry issued what it called the "10 Commandments of Love" to encourage teens not to engage in sexual activities while celebrating Valentine's Day. The first commandment: "Love with patience, so as not to become a young parent." No. 4 urges youths to love carefully "to avoid the risk of sexually transmitted diseases."

February 12, 2007 11:29 PM

WATER WOES

2007-02-13T04:46:00.000+07:00

A common frustration in our village lately is the frequent lack of running water. I'm not talking about outages in terms of hours but in terms of days. Mostly, this is due to the continuing widening of the main road through Chalong (which — when we moved in 10 months ago — we were told would be finished within three months but now looks to be at least another year away from completion!) and the fact that when a water pipe is broken they don't seem to be in any hurry to fix it.

In January, we went at least 10 days over the course of the month without any water (the longest stretch was five days) and now we've gone the past three straight days without water flowing from our pipes. When this occurs, we have to buy (many) large jugs of drinking water from a guy on a motorbike and use this not only for drinking but also for "showers", for brushing our teeth (and shaving my face), as well as to pour in the toilet so we can flush the damn thing. I was sick last night (while Tim was at work) and used up ALL of our remaining jugs of water trying to flush. The landlord usually just shrugs and says, "This is Thailand," and suggests we buy one of those HUGE 5,000-gallon containers so we we'll "always have water" (my neighbor has one and can't even get it filled...). And, yet, the fancy new fountains at the entrance to our village are still flowing!

There have been many frustrations about living in Thailand these past ten months (changes in immigration policies and a crackdown on foreign teachers, chief among them) but most are soon dealt with and more-or-less accepted. The constant worries about whether or not the shower/toilet/faucet will work, however, is really starting to wear me down. I mean, I really would like to do some laundry without using the water I need to rehydrate myself or flush the toilet...

LAEM KA BEACH

2007-02-12T15:42:00.000+07:00

From time-to-time, I rely on blogs such as the excellent Jamie's Phuket to point me towards finding "new" spots on the island to visit. Since reading about Laem ("cape") Ka Beach back in November, I'd been planning to check it out.

We finally got there yesterday — it's a bit off-the-beaten path, laying on the headland dividing Rawai from Chalong. I don't suspect many tourists stumble across it; most of the people we saw there were either Thai or obvious expats. There are a few nice-looking bungalows up the hill behind the beach but no clue as to which resort owns them. The western-most part of the beach is mostly rocks enclosing a deep pool of water while the eastern section is a 400-meter or so stretch of sand. The waves were fairly high during our rather short stay and there was A LOT of debris in the water (plus a large white jellyfish had washed up which a number of Thai kids were poking with a stick).

We weren' that impressed — the waves, trash, and motorboats which occasionally backed up onto the beach made it rather hazardous for swimming — and we soon retreated to Nai Harn where Alex and I swam for a couple of hours waiting for Tim to help out a friend. BTW, Nai Harn is another of the local beaches which seems to have an ever-increasing problem with topless (insensitive-to-Thai culture) farags but at least most of the women here weren't the wrinkly-and-droopy variety we've been noticing at Karon, etc.

The view from Laem Ka Beach towards Lone Island in Chalong Bay.

Click for a larger view

VIKING KITTENS

2007-02-10T01:03:00.001+07:00

This is one of the funniest things I've seen in a while — kittens grooving to Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" at vikingKittens.com. There's even more to be found at rathergood.com, where you can even buy plushies at the rather steep price of USD $20.50 each; my fave's the Ninja Kitten (speaking of ninjas, I also recently stumbled across the hilarious Ask A Ninja video podcasts...check it out for a laugh or two).