She mad
Pattaya United FC!
We now have our own Thai Premier League team, Pattaya United FC!
What a view! The Nong Prue Municipality Stadium is less than a 5 minute motorbike ride from our house. Lorraine and I took off about 10 minutes before the game. We arrived, she hopped off the bike, bought 2 tickets, hopped back on the bike, handed the tickets to the ticket taker (who I think was a police officer) and drove on in. In another 10 minutes, I had my new jersey and we had beers in hand. Now we just needed to find a place to sit.
I threw on my jersey and a fellow jersey wearing fan called to us and said “Pattaya!” and pointed to the stands across the other side of the field and led us to where the serious fans were. We took off in his direction and he kept looking back to us to make sure we were following him. He must’ve been the foreign ambassador because he brought us over to the packed stands and he introduced us as ‘new fans’ in Thai to everybody. Next thing you know, the obvious happens. They made room for 2 more seats in the front row for us. Just another one of those “man, I love Thailand’. The usual local hospitality was waiting for us. I think Lorraine and I will become a fixture for the home games.
Ticket to get in: 50baht ($1.38)
4 Leo beers: 120baht ($3.32)
1 Loaded home jersey: 780baht ($21.59)
Living in Thailand: Pretty f’in cool
The moon smiles upon Thailand
I took this photograph from the backyard last night. What you are seeing is the earth’s reflection on the moon with Jupiter and Venus creating the eyes forming a very pleasant smiley face. This is particularly fantastic during such a dramatic moment in time here in Thailand.
Our flight home for the holidays is on December 12th. Cross your fingers for us!
Back from Beijing and Dee chai duai krub to the Kovacs Family!
First and foremost, I have to give a congratulations to the Kovacs family on the birth of their twins! We can’t wait to visit everyone back home during the holidays, especially the new additions.
We’re back home in Bang Lamoong after a pretty awesome trip to Beijing and a nice Sunday to ground us back to the heat. With the humidity, it’s close to 100 degrees again. Beijing was a cool 45-55 degrees but Lorraine and I both agreed that getting a taste of fall was nice (and normal). I posted some pics over at flickr. I took a total of 732 pictures and chose 72 that I thought were interesting enough to show. Beijing is beautiful. Even without the Great Wall and the Forbidden City and the Peking duck, Beijing is soft on the eyes while just walking around the neighborhoods and parks.
I’ve also started to shoot HDR photography and have started a flickr set. I still can’t justify the merit of HDR as an honest photography medium. To me, the purpose of photography is to capture reality, not distort it. For now though, HDR is just a good excuse to spend more time with my camera.
It’s always nice to hear from everyone be it from comments here or on flickr and facebook. If you stop by, please say hi! Lorraine and I are always starving for contact from the western world 
Ni hao!
Well, after having our 1am flight out of Bangkok cancelled (seriously, enough with the cancelling), we made it to downtown Beijing last night. We’re at the palatial Capital Hotel and upon our arrival we were treated to a lovely night of smog. A lot of smog. So much that you couldn’t see farther than 2 blocks from our 11th floor window. So much that you could taste it.
We ventured out to the streets to find something to eat and boy did we pick the restaurant we were hoping we wouldn’t pick. The engrish was spectacular. Such awesome dishes as “Pig bowel stirs the broccoli in the hot bowl” and “Seared beans fry the duck chin”. Lorraine ordered a bowl of sweet and sour tofu soup and it was at least a gallon pot they brought out. Holy shit, let’s finish these huge Tsingtao’s and get the fuck out of here.
It just seemed that yesterday was angry day in China. Maybe we are too used to the “Land of Smiles”, but no one was happy, everyone was short and unwelcoming. Meh.
This morning everything turned around. The sun was out, the smog was gone and it was turning out to be a beautiful day. We befriended a wonderfully pleasant chinese dude while walking down to Tiananmen Square. He was excited to talk with us and share the walk down Qian Men West. This was a most needed turnaround from last night’s experience. From that moment on, our time in Beijing was only going to get better.
We then bumped into a very pleasant girl who escorted us to the beginning of Tiananmen Square and directed us to the ZhengYang Gate (of course, for 10 yuan we entered in through the gate and through the museum).
From there it’s through Chairman Mao’s mausoleum and the People’s Hero grounds before finally coming up to the Forbidden City. Not much can be said about Forbidden City other than you find yourself thinking “holy shit, I’m in the Forbidden City!”.
After exhausting ourselves from the 3 hours of walking and taking in everything there is to see we hopped on a rickshaw which took us as far as he could through the sidestreets and back alleys of Beijing only to stop short of bringing us back to our hotel due to it being rush hour and “no rickshaw rush hour!”. The funniest part of that experience is we walked from the Forbidden City to his house about 5 minutes away. No better way than to see how the people of Beijing live but to go to their neighborhood’s outside of the tourist areas. And, we were fortunate enough to have been dropped off in the most picturesque neighborhood.
We found a killer restaurant which seemed to be in the hip part of town.Picture Elmwood village but in Beijing. Long story short, we attempted to walk and wing our way back to the hotel and of course, became a bit disoriented and had to ask for some direction back. No problem, follow the Mao picture in the distance and you’re on your way.
A short moment or two back at the hotel, some espresso and we were back out on the street. This time we opted for a taxi. We just arrived back after heading to Old Beijing Street and the Wangfujing shopping district. Picked up some very cool gifts and some stuff for around the house. This area was so awesome that we think we’re going to go back tomorrow night.
Time for sleep now, the Great Wall and the Ming Tomb’s are bright and early tomorrow morning. Pics and more stories afta-afta!
