Muay Thai

The three of us went to Akwa for dinner (a restaurant/guest house run by an Australian) for some surprisingly good thin-crust pizza before headed to the stadium to experience muay thai.

We wisely passed up the VIP tickets for ringside seats at a small bar table with padded stools. We were literaly in the front row and got some great pictures and videos.

The bouts we saw has contestants ranging from about seven years old up to young adults. You could see the progression in speed, strength and tactics as the fighters grew more experienced.

As I said, I have a lot of pictures and some good muay thai video but the internet cafes here don't have the upload capacity to allow me to load a lot of photos in a timely manner. I'm going to give it a shot later today and will hopefully have the first of my pictures online soon.

Paradise Found?

Life is so hard sometimes. This is not one of those times.















I am enjoying my time here so much that I am giving serious consideration to returning here for a week after we visit Angkor Wat. My two friends who were supposed to be here today still have not arrived, which leads me to believe they are having issues getting visas to get into Vietnam. If that is the case I'm back on Koh Samui and getting my PADI cert.

I found Bangkok to be stiflingly hot and dirty. There are some very interesting areas to visit like Wat Po, the Grand Palace and the canals that line the river but I almost felt like I was in a very hot version of New York. The moments I remember best are when I'd climbed up the stairs to the SkyTrain and caught an actual breeze while waiting for the train.

Koh Samui also has some pollution issues, especially sewage, but all told the beaches are clean, the water is sparklingly green and just cool enough to be refreshing.

Yesterday we went on a day long snorkeling and fishing expidition. I caught what was either a monstrous fish or a rock. It sure felt like a fish, because I felt the nibble then the tug on the line but since it eventually broke the hook we will never know for sure.

We are staying on Chaweng beach on the eastern side of the island which has soft, smooth sand. The boat trip left from the southern coast and the beach consisted more of shells and coral than of sand.

The snorkeling was pretty good as we were surrounded by hundreds of small and medium sizes fishes as we dove off of a reef. We did not see anything in the way of larger fish like barracudas or sharks, however, which was a little disappointing.

That ended about 3pm and we made our way back to the hotel for a nap before heading out that night for dinner and some muay thai boxing.

A short update on my luggage. We had a friend at Delta check the lost bags at JFK and it is not there. Hopefully it is in Bangkok. The phone number that the China Airlines rep gave me has just been ringing and ringing, so I'm probably going to have to visit the terminal in person when I flight out of Samui on the 31st. Hopefully my bag will be there for me.

Koh Samui

I flew into Koh Samui last night with my friends Nissa and Kully, who I met at the airport. They were traveling from Hong Kong, where Kully worked this summer. The flight was on an 80 person prop plane (the first time I've flown a prop in 10 years) and was very uneventful. Bangkok Airways is quite good, I would recommend flying them to anyone who travels in Southeast Asia.

Koh Samui is sort of like the Florida Keys, except the development has not been as stringently controlled and this sometimes shows up in ugly ways, such as run down and abandoned buildings. And in the Keys you don't get all the Thai hookers that seem to be everywhere. As we walked the main strip last night looking for bars to have a drink at there were some that seemed entirely populated by pros.

Also, as far as I can tell we might be the only Americans on the island. There are plenty of foreigners but almost all of them are Europeans, with England, Sweden and Italy seeming to lead the way. This makes a lot of sense if you think about it geographically. You can essentially get what is offered here in the Caribbean and getting there only takes you 3 hours, not an entire day. To fly here from Europe is only about a 10 hour flight, about as long as it would take a European to fly to the Caribbean. Since Koh Samui and Thailand in general are a lot cheaper than the Caribbean, it makes sense to come here

Nissa's cousin owns a hotel here and got us a couple of rooms. They are at the far end of Chaweng beach and are very nice. From my door to the ocean is maybe 50 yards and there is a nice pool as well. We enjoyed both last night after wandering the bars, showing the Thai waitresses how to play quarters (they thought it was hilarious) and getting a feel for this part of the island.

Koh Samui and Chaweng beach in particular have a reputation for being party central. I think we are so near the southern end of the beach that we have avoided the noise that comes from the all night discos farther north. As we were taking the cab down to the hotel from the airport we were very amused that people were on a beach resort island wearing their best club clothes.

Tonight we are going to grab dinner at one of the many seafood restaraunts here. They have large displays of fresh fish, squid and lobster on ice right on the street. You pick what you want, they weigh it and charge you (usually about $5) and cook it on the charcoal grills that are right next to the fish. Not too shabby.

Tomorrow Matt and Jake should arrive from Bangkok and we are going to head to Koh Tao, a smaller less developed island an hour north of Samui by ferry. There is fantastic diving and snorkelling there and we also plan to see if we can charter a fishing trip. You can fish here for barracuda, cobia, shark, spanish mackeral, sailfish, snapper, and grouper among many other types.

I would post some pictures but I managed to delete the contents of the SD card on my pocket cam messing around with the menus today. Among them was some great video of our quarters game last nigth so we're going to have to recreate it tonight.

I still have plenty of Bangkok shots on my FZ-30 though, so it's not that big a tragedy. Still, I plan to start uploading photos soon.

Internet time at the cafes here is charged at 1 baht per minute, or less than $2/hr.

I'm off to buy some mosquito spray to go with my recently purchased sunscreen and Tylenol.

More soon.

Problem

This morning was a bit of a rush, but everything ended up being OK. I was up much of the night packing and organizing my stuff. My carry-on bag is packed with electronics and reading material and will get much lighter as I read and discard the magazines. The travel clinic I visited this morning gave some great information and I received shots for hepatitis A, typhoid fever and encephalitis. I also got a prescription for an antibiotic (in case in intestinal problems) and anti-malaria medicine. Unfortunately I was so pressed for time I did not get them filled. Luckily my buddy Matt leaves tomorrow, so he will pick them up and bring them with him after my wife fills them. He will also bring my guidebook to southeast Asia which, of course, I forgot to pack.

The airport was amazingly uncrowded, so I was able to have a nice lunch with Pam and say goodbye until December. It was very hard, much more so than I thought it would be originally. She is my rock and my strength and I am going to msss her terribly. However, since she is not going to be around to roll her eyes at my picture taking I lan to take so many that she will feel like she is there with me.

Just got the boarding call and we are off for New york......

And new york is a disaster. When I booked my flight neither Expedia nor Air China informed I needed a transit visa simply to transfer airplanes in Beijing. I do, and there is no way to get one in time before the flight leaves. So I had to book another flight through Taipei (which has no such restrictions on Americans.)

That flight does not leave until midnight so I get to enjoy jfk for eight hours instead of four. And instead of getting to Bangkok at midnight i'll get there at 4pm instead.

Moving on, I've arrived in Bangkok but as you might expect, my bag did not and no one seems to know where it is. Air China told me that the bag would not go on their plane since I was not going on it. I went down to the baggage claim area and talked to the person who runs it (a Lufthansa employee) and another worker who both assured me it has gone on to Bangkok. It didn't.

I talked to just about every baggage claim desk in the Bangkok until I found someone who seemed willing to help. I still have heard nothing on the status of the bag, though my guess is that it never left New York.

Today I found my way to a Tokyu department store and managed to find some underwear, socks, shorts and one shirt that fit. I also bought a bathing suit as I am heading to the beach tomorrow, bag or not. Seems I'll be hand washing my clothes on a very fast rotation, but if that is what needs to be done, it will be done.

The real bummer is that I wanted to get my scuba certification on Koh Samui so i could take some underwater pictures. The waterproof case for my camera was in my checked luggage.

Despite my misfortunes, I decided to go out and make the best of it. I visited Wat Pho this morning and saw the 60 foot long reclining Buddha there. I'll try to get some pictures uploaded tomorrow.

My buddy Matt and his friend were supposed to be here at 11am. Of course he could have meant 11pm. I'm not sure and Matt has a tendency not to provide all the information you need. ;)

More later!

Jeff

My bags are packed...

and I am flying out tomorrow at about 1pm. I will be travelling for approximately 24 hours and will land in Bangkok on August 25th at about 12:30am if all goes according to plan. I have lengthy layovers at every changeover stop (New York and Beijing) that should allow me plenty of time to clear security.

My pack is mostly loaded up. I might make some minor changes but this is a general list of what I'm taking:

2 pairs of pants (REI, with legs that zip off)
3 t-shirts (Coolmax fabric)
bathing suit
2 pair of sweatpants (very light, breathable fabrics)
3 pair of shorts
1 pair hiking shoes
1 pair hiking sandles
1 pair flip-flop sandles
underwear, socks, etc

2 cans of mosquito repellent
1 bottle of SPF 45 sunscreen
1 bottle of anti-bacterial hand wash
2 rolls of toilet paper (just in case)
1 multitool my buddy Dave got me that has a fold-out knife, fork, and spoon.
2 travel bottles of shampoo
1 Mach II razor with two spare blades
1 bottle of shaving cream.

In my carryon I will have:

Hitachi DVD camcorder and all batteries, cords, discs, etc
Panasonic Lumix FZ-30 ultrazoom camera
Canon A540 point-and-shoot camera
Treo 650 cell phone
SD cards
2 2GB cards
1 1GB card
15 GB Dell Jukebox
Bose noise reducing headphones
The latest Wired, Men's Health, Economist, and BusinessWeek magazines
my Japanese language textbook
the first book of Neil Stephenson's Baroque cycle


Along with various other things I'm sure I'm forgetting.

I'll report more from Bangkok.

The diaspora commences...

My main crew of three other guys is about to get out of Beantown for a while. Dave is already in Korea, I'm dropping Alfredo off at the airport tomorrow morning so he can fly down to Miami and look for apartments and I'm heading off to Bangkok next Tuesday. My buddy Matt follows on Thursday. Alfredo will be likely heading down to Miami for good in mid-September, and the rest of us will not return to Boston until January.

Moonshot

We had a brilliant full moon here a few nights ago with crystal clear skies, so I broke out the camera and tripod around midnight and shot some pictures. This is cropped and blown up significantly. I loaded it up as large so you can see some of the detail.

Going to Miami....

The first of my main grad school posse has gone and got himself a job. He was in the one year-MSF program and will be working in private wealth management in Miami.

Great city, great job, great opportunity.

And more importantly, we all know where we are going for spring break next year.

Congratulations, my friend. It has been a very rough year and now the payoff for all this hard work begins.

Man it's hot. It's like Africa hot. Tarzan couldn't take this kind of hot.

To quote one Eugene Morris Jerome, "It's hot."

It's going to break today after three days of near record heat in Boston. Supposed to be cool and in the 80s this weekend. I can't wait.

You know it's really hot when the office AC has trouble keeping up.

Partner in crime...

My buddy Matt finally got the word that he was accepted to Waseda and was granted housing in the room next to mine.

He was somewhat slack in getting his paperwork filed and paid the price with a few sleepless nights this week, but now all is well and he is very much relieved.

Now it's time to plan the clam bake!

All the arrangements for the fall have been made...

I received word that I was granted housing at Waseda. It will cost under $600 a month. This does not include electricity, which apparantly is very expensive in Japan so I shall have to be frugal with it. Nor does it include internet connection. I think that there might be enough Wifi spots that it might not be necessary to pay for it over there. I will if I have to though.

That said, I was budgeting for between $1200 and $1500 a month for housing to be on the safe side, so this is an unexpected surprise. It should mean that I'll be able to take some side trips (Beijing, Seoul, possibly Taipei) which ties in with my plan of visiting every country that I possibly can while in Asia.