Stuck on Thong Lo

Posted on 28 February 2009 by christao408

The north end of Thong Lor (Sukhumvit Soi 55) gets really backed up with traffic, especially on weekend afternoons. Lots of shoppers going to lots of shops and sometimes you end up sitting for several minutes. Yes, these moments of stuck traffic give me amazing opportunities to really see this fascinating neighborhood in which I live.

The street is about 3 km (2 miles) long with a Skytrain station at the south end. There is a special transit system, a fleet of aging Mercedes Benz busses that spew coarse black smoke, that run up and down the soi, picking up riders at the Skytrain station, several stops along the way, until terminating at the khlong (canal) pier on the north end of the street.

These bright red unairconditioned busses park at the north end of the street when they are not in use. While sitting in traffic, I watched as two men refueled one of the buses in the most ad-hoc manner: gravity-fed through a rubber hose connected to a plastic fuel jug.

The color and the composition both spoke to me but I was equally fascinated that the younger man was smoking while doing this. I wondered if I kept the camera ready, would I be able to capture a good picture of the explosion without losing my life in the process?

I never found out as traffic started moving and there was, to the best of my knowledge, no explosion.

Also along the street, which is known for its abundance of wedding boutiques, I saw a plant vendor pause in the shade in front of a window displaying a wedding gown.

Again, a wonderful contrast that exemplifies this neighborhood: it is called the Beverly Hills of Bangkok, but at the same time all segments of the socioeconomic spectrum are represented here, both living and working. That is something I really like about Krungthep: there is a huge gap between the haves and have-nots, but the gap isn’t physical.

Thai Sakura

Posted on 18 February 2009 by christao408

The longer I stay here, the more aware I become of the changing seasons. This requires a much higher level of attention because the changes are more subtle than in regions further from the equator.

Expats in Thailand often jokingly refer to the three Thai seasons as “hot,” “hotter” and ‘damn hot”. This year we enjoyed the coolest winter in a decade and so the transition into ruuduu rone, literally “hot season”, is more pronounced than in the past few years. Likewise, the springtime burst of blossoms is more noticeable, too.

Above is an example of dtonmai chompoo pantip. They are everywhere in Krungthep this week. While less delicate and refined than the Japanese sakura (flowering cherry trees) that blossom each March and April in the land of the rising sun, these Thai sakura give us a week or two of beautiful and festive color. Our soi is littered with pink blossoms.

In other news, we have a neighbor somewhere in our condo complex – a few stories above us, I think – who seems to really like stinky tofu. Once or twice a day they start frying it up, turning on their kitchen fan to vent the smell, which then pushes it into our kitchen.

To say that it is overpowering is an understatement. While I appreciate that everyone has a different sense of taste and I don’t claim to the be arbiter of what should and should not be prepared, every day is a bit much. Tawn has climbed the stairs to try to figure out who the offender is. But the problem is, since the smell is vented into a central air shaft, you can’t smell it out by the front doors of the units.

So the mystery remains. Might be time to go talk to building management and have them post a “no durian or stinky tofu” memo.

Tawn and I are off to Kuala Lumpur this weekend for a few days, our first time. May not have a lot of entries over the next few days but I’ll update as soon as I can.

Dell Laptop Repair

Posted on 16 February 2009 by christao408

I’m having the strangest experience. I’m sitting in my living room here in Krungthep, Thailand and across the dining table from me, a Dell computer technician is taking apart my Latitude 610 laptop, replacing the LCD and the mother board. All under warranty at no cost to me.

I know that Dell hasn’t had the best customer service reputation but, except for the fact that the conversations have had to be entirely in Thai (you’d laugh if you heard the translation of how I explain the problems my laptop is having), their service has been pretty amazing.

Of course, the repairs are still underway. We’ll see what happens when he’s done!

This is my work laptop, provided by my employer back in the US. Hopefully my IT department doesn’t read this as their suggestion was to ship the laptop back to them. Last time I sent a laptop FedEx between continents the cost was ultimately north of $400, thanks to various “customs charges” and “convenience fees” that get charged here on the Thai side.

The problem (most of you may not want the technical details, so you can skip down a paragraph or two) is that the external video signal cuts out intermittently. To spare my eyes, I use a 17″ LCD monitor resting on a small altar table that straddles the laptop keyboard. In essence, a homemade docking station. But the image cuts in and out and some tests suggest that the problem is the computer, not the monitor.

Also, when using the built-in LCD, sometimes the image jumps for a second and I’ve had a few stop errors in the past week, leading me to believe that bad things are coming

My in-house IT guy’s response: if it isn’t a company external monitor, it isn’t my problem. Thanks.

So I called Dell’s local service number Friday and explained in a rudimentary way what the problem was. The agent took my information and said he’d have a technician call on Monday. Monday morning I received a call, which I had to forward to Tawn once it became a little complicated. But by the late afternoon the technician arrived with two boxes in hand: a replacement LCD and a replacement motherboard.

Since the computer was still under warranty, they figured the safest thing to do was just switch all the potential trouble parts out. Makes sense, right?

When the News is For Sale

Posted on 13 February 2009 by christao408

I fired off a letter to the editor this morning when I discovered that The Nation had used a quarter of today’s front page to give free advertising for the opening of “Chicago: The Musical” in the Big Mango.

Tawn, as a PR professional, admired the success of whichever agency handles that account, but was shocked at how blatant the placement was.

You will recall that a few weeks ago, I took to task one of the paper’s columns, “Ask the Pros”, for asking the owner of a beauty clinic that performs colon hydrotherapy (enemas by another. sexier name) to play the role of unbiased expert in responding to a reader’s questions about the safety and efficacy of colonics.

But this seems to have reached new levels of journalistically unprofessional conduct. A quarter of the front page with the following caption: “BEC-TERO Entertainment paid more than Bt100 million to bring Broadway’s ‘Chicago: the Musical’ to Bangkok. The play took the stage last night at the Muangthai Rachadalai Theatre in The Esplanade shopping complex and runs until February 22. The 50-strong cast is led by Michelle DeJean and Terra C. MacLeod. Tickets cost Bt1,000 up to Bt4,000 each.”

Now, I want you to know, I am a fan of the musical Chicago. In fact, Tawn and I are joining a group of friends to watch the show on Saturday. So it isn’t that I dislike musicals or don’t believe that coverage of a new musical’s opening isn’t news. I am pretty certain, though, that we have more pressing things to report on the front page.

You may not have heard, but there is actually quite a bit of real news going on here in Thailand:

We have a police investigation into the New Year’s Day pub fire (resulting in 64 deaths) that is revealing some alarming things about public safety, tax evasion, and corruption of public officials.
We have a new Prime Minister (our fourth in a year) who is trying to steer the ship of state in rough political and economic waters.
We have a nationalized airline that is bleeding money while giving its employees large bonuses and raises.
We have an Agriculture Ministry that is requiring that tumeric, lemongrass, and ginger (among other things that farmers use as organic and safe pesticides) be listed as hazardous substances, a move that undermines organic farming and opens the doors for the large chemical companies.

Any one of these – plus a dozen more – could have provided some much-needed news reporting, investigation and analysis. But the editors felt that the biggest news in the Kingdom was the opening of an expensive show from Broadway. One of several shows that open here every year.

I’ll let you know if the editor deigns to respond to my letter.

When “is” isn’t “is”

Posted on 12 February 2009 by christao408

Moving from one culture to another is a big transition, especially if you want to make an effort to really understand the new culture. One could argue that, try though you might, you’ll never fully understand it. But over time, your understanding will at least increase.

We have a friend who moved here a few years ago. He is making a lot of effort to understand Thai culture, reading books about Thai relationships (he has dated several Thais) and has taken some Thai language classes.

Along the way, he often has questions about specific situations, general practices, and other aspects of the culture. Some questions are asked of me or other farang who have Thai partners. Other times the questions are asked to Tawn or one of the other Thai partners.

I applaud his effort to learn about the culture. It is an obligation, in my opinion, of someone who lives in another culture to make every effort to learn about, respect, and play by the rules of that culture. The world is not our playground.

The challenge I face – and I want to point out that his intentions are wonderful because he’s asking because he wants to understand – is that he is a very analytical person, someone who sees things in a logical, rational, black-and-white way. And the culture about which he is asking questions simply isn’t a logical, rational, black-and-white type of culture.

Tawn and I have discussed this a lot as we want to support his quest to learn about Thai culture. And one of the things we’ve concluded is that any question you have about a culture rarely has a definitive answer. There are no absolutes. There may be generalities, but trying to conflate a generality with a certainty results in missing the finer nuances of a culture. And it is within those nuances that the essence of the culture really lies.

It’s kind of like when you are learning a new language. You are tempted to ask, “What does this word mean?” But as Mme. Morel, the French-Vietnamese linguist who taught me several months of French at The French Class in San Francisco put it, “Words don’t mean anything. The question is, how is the word used?”

Take the Thai word เป็น (“bpen”). While it is often translated as “to be” or “is”, that really fails to capture how the word is fully used in Thai. It is also used to indicate an ability to do something, the state of being afflicted with a malady, the state of becoming one thing from another, the state of being alive, and it is also used as a qualifying conjunction.

Helen James, author of Thai Reference Grammar, goes so far as to bold the text in her explanation of the word: “bpen is not a verb ‘to be’ … [instead, it] identifies a relationship between two noun phrases or between a noun/noun phrase and an adjective/adjective phrase.”

In short, เป็น isn’t “is”. It is so much more.

In the same way, Thai culture isn’t this way or that way. It identifies the relationship between people and between individuals and the institutions that make up Thai society.

Given the unique relationship Thai society has with water – the heart of the country is essentially a flood plain, after all – the water motif is a suitable metaphor for the nature of Thai culture: a fluid thing that “is” one thing but is also so much more.

Day trip to Pattaya

Posted on 11 February 2009 by christao408

First of all, let me make this clear to those of you who might think we’re running around enjoying adventure after adventure: these blog entries are not chronological. Instead, there is a delay as I process photos and videos and then I arrange entries to provide some variety.

With that administrative tidbit out of the way, let me share a day trip we recently took to Pattaya, the beach side city of sin located less than two hours to the southeast of Krungthep. I’d never before been to Pattaya because its scuzzy reputation (although the beaches are supposedly gorgeous) kept me disinterested.

“I wonder how long it will be before we see our first fat farang on a scooter with a tiny Thai girl behind him?” Tawn asked as we pulled into town. Within two minutes, we had our answer.

We didn’t go to Pattaya to explore the town or even to try and dispel my perceptions. Instead, we went to exchange some silk that Trish had purchased from the factory in Nakhon Ratchasima province that, upon inspection once we returned to Krungthep, turned out to be 1-ply instead of the 2-ply for which she had paid.

The factory owner has a retail shop at a recently opened faux floating market in Pattaya, so we arranged to meet her there to do a swap.

While there, Tawn wanted to find a boulangerie that had opened recently and had been featured in Thai Vogue. It looked very cute in the magazine but of course we left home without noting its address and location.

Using the tiny internet browser on Tawn’s phone, I was able to find another boulangerie called, appropriately, Le Boulange. Turns out it is the cousin (or sister location?) of one on Convent Road in Krungthep, owned by a real Frenchman. The Pattaya location is just a modest storefront and is mostly a bakery, producing for stores and hotels in town.

While there, we witnessed the chef talking with a French expat and his Thai fiancée about a wedding cake. In this case, the expat was much closer in size to the Thai and they were not riding a motorbike.

The sandwiches – only available combination is baguette de jambon et de fromage (ham and cheese) were très authentique. A robust crust that fought you back when you bit into it and a wonderful textured crumb. And for only 35 baht (about $1) for a mini baguette, a real bargain.

Left, Tawn poses with his baguette as a local woman looks on. Or, at least, pretends not to.

The desserts were less spectacular, but what can you expect? At least we enjoyed a good lunch.

The chef came over after settling wedding cake decisions and asked how our lunch was. Answering him in English, he quickly apologized and explained in French that he only spoke French and Thai. So we continued the conversation in Thai, since neither Tawn nor I remember enough French.

Afterwards, with the disinterested local’s directions, we drove to the outskirts of the city to Talat Naam Si Pak – the Four Regions Floating Market. Floating markets are very much a part of central Thailand’s culture, as the myriad waterways in this flood plain made waterborne transportation the easiest way to get around until the 20th Century introduction of the traffic jam.

For the tourists – and, most noticeably, for the Thai tourists – Pattaya now boasts an entirely artificial floating market that runs from dawn till dusk, every day. Located to the south of town around an manmade lake, the shops and boardwalks connecting them are ostensibly divided to represent the four regions of the county.

Sadly, there is little to distinguish the regions as the building are identical except for tiny emblems on the roof line meant to evoke the different regions. From a central cooking area, vendors paddle their boats around the “canals”, offering authentic Thai food (and two-litre bottles of Pepsi products) for sale. The Thai tour groups we saw seemed to love it, setting up mats and eating in the shade, reveling in a near-cultural experience.

While wandering about, we located the Silk merchant’s shop. As it turns out, she changed plans and decided to come to Pattaya the following day, but had not called Tawn to tell him. When Tawn tried to call her, she didn’t answer. After explaining the situation to the clerk in the shop, the clerk called the merchant, who answered the phone promptly.

The clerk then handed the phone to Tawn as he proceeded to read her the riot act in a polite, nice way – as Thais can do so well.

She promised to bring the correct fabric to us in Krungthep the following day, so we left the single-ply fabric and a sample of what the correct fabric should be. Needless to say, she never showed up or called Tawn, and we’re now two weeks later with no resolution.

We decided not to waste any more time at the floating tourist trap, but on the way back to the car park we found something endearing: a pen of baby goats and one sheep, all three months old. They were the center of everyone’s attention, young and old alike, and for twenty baht you could feed them a bottle of milk.

Here’s a brief video showing the scene as Tawn fed them… and plotted to shear the sheep so he could make a wool coat!

We were back in Krungthep just after sunset, delayed by my exploration of the route near the airport that Peter, Stuart and I would ride the following day.

Saturday Night Chili and Games

Posted on 10 February 2009 by christao408

Saturday night we invited a few people over for a pot of turkey chili (finally finished up the leftovers from Thanksgiving!) and some games. In my mind, there’s nothing more fun than an evening spent playing board games and cards with a group of friends, supplemented by a simple and satisfying meal and a few bottles of wine.

Left to right: Tawn, Darrin, Kobfa, Si, Matt, Ken and Chris. Chai, unfortunately, was off in Cambodia so couldn’t make it.

The menu was simple: turkey chili, a loaf of “almost no knead bread” (recipe from Cooks Illustrated – I wanted to compare it to the NY Times’ recipe for “no knead bread” I made a week ago), and a large green salad.

The bread looked beautiful and wasn’t as wet and sticky as the NY Times’ recipe. But the crumb was more even and didn’t have those gorgeous large bubbles inside. Somewhere between the two lies the perfect “no knead” bread recipe. I’ll continue to experiment. Kudos, though, to Cooks Illustrated for having some helpful techniques that kept me from burning my fingers this time.

The pot of chili was good but I ran out of cumin, which I consider a key ingredient in the flavor profile of a “pot of red”.

Also, I didn’t have any masa farina – corn flour – and the handful of polenta didn’t add the same flavor or thickening that I’m used to with masa.

Most important note with chili, one I failed to heed this time: make it a day in advance. the flavors are so much better after they’ve been able to mingle.

While seven people made the seating at the table a bit tight, I completely agree with Nina Garten when she says that small tables that are a bit crowded always feel more cozy.

After dinner we broke out the Aggravation, which Si and Matt brought. Fun game but since only six could play and we were seven, we switched to Uno afterwards. Uno is a fun game in a crowd and we played seven hands before calling it a night. Right, the money is hidden so we’re not in violation of any Thai anti-gambling laws.

Along the way, we had some dessert: homemade chocolate cake (Stephanie’s recipe – the absolute moistest cake I’ve ever eaten) with raspberry coulis and some of Si’s homemade strawberry ice cream, which was utterly fantastic.

Certainly an enjoyable and inexpensive Saturday night. Next time, maybe homemade pizzas? Actually, I’ve been thinking of trying to make my own pita bread.

News of Tawn. While in the US, Tawn picked up some rubber boots for when it rains. Or maybe just for when he “gardens”.

Above, Tawn in his gardening outfit, tending to the plants in the hallways outside our front door. He looks like he should be pruning roses (or taking tea) in an English garden, no?

Delayed Chinese New Year Dinner

Posted on 8 February 2009 by christao408

On Friday, Brian and Geng invited us for a delayed Chinese New Year dinner at Jae Ngan, a nicer Chinese seafood restaurant deep down Sukhumvit Soi 20. Since it was the start of a long weekend (the Buddhist holiday Wan Macha Bucha, celebrating the Buddha’s first sermon, is Monday) the restaurant had only a few customers, resulting in a super-attentive staff.

Above, Geng, Brian, Tawn and me sitting in this funny hexagonal private room with a huge table – could have sat a dozen, easily.

We had a really fantastic meal with lots of tasty seafood. Here’s a run-down of the dishes. Sorry for the poor quality; lighting was not geared towards picture taking so I had to use a flash.

Tom Yum Goong – Spicy Thai-style prawn soup with curry and coconut milk.

Stir-fried morning glory (not the same as the morning glory flower in the west) with lots of garlic. At this restaurant, they only use the stems, peeling off the leaves. Very tender and very labor-intensive to make.

Black pepper crab with lots of fried garlic and shallots. Tasty!

Cellophane noodles fried with prawns, which are hidden in the “nest” of noodles.

Sea bass steamed with soy sauce and spring onions. Not a very pretty picture but the fish was gorgeous.

Their famous “with everything” fried rice, probably the best fried rice I’ve eaten in Thailand.

For dessert, sticky rice with mango, artfully arranged.

So nice to have a pleasant dinner with friends.

Chris the Handyperson

Posted on 3 February 2009 by christao408

A few Sunday mornings ago, I was sitting at the computer working on something, when all of the sudden a large crash! came from the kitchen. I looked over and saw nothing amiss.

It wasn’t until I opened a cabinet later in the morning to get my oatmeal pan that I saw the problem: the top anchor of the shelves had detached from the wall, right.

Under the weight of the pots and pans, the shelves were leaning away from the wall and stressing to the bottom anchor, too. I quickly removed everything from the shelves and placed it on the counter, eliciting quite a shocked look from Tawn when he woke up later in the morning and sauntered, bleary-eyed, into the kitchen.

“What happened?” he asked. “Are you cooking something?”

When our handyman installed the the Haeffle wire swing-out shelves, he behaved in the manner most familiar to Thai handymen: pure improvisation. The corner of the cabinet to which the anchors attach isn’t truly 90 degrees. Instead, it has a lip. As a result, one side of the anchors does not have a flush surface into which the screws can go.

I noticed this during the original installation, but the handyman assured me it wasn’t a problem and shooed me away. That was back in the days when I still trusted a Thai handyman’s words. No more.

His solution was to create a small piece of wood to fill the gap, gluing together several layers of the veneer used on the cabinet until they were thick enough to fill the gap.

He then screwed the anchor into that glued veneer. But the layers of veneer were never actually attached to the structure of the cabinet – just sort of clamped to the lip of the cabinet!

Left, the top anchor of the shelf, still screwed into the layers of veneer that are glued together. Notice that the holes on the left have been stripped out by the heads of the screws, as the shelf pulled away from the wall.

This left me with a bit of a dilemma: how to repair this problem? Calling the handyman back didn’t seem a very good idea, but the essence of his fix – finding something to fill the gap created by the cabinet frame’s lip – was sound. I just had to figure out what to put in there and where to find it.

Unlike life in the United States, Canada and other western nations, Thailand doesn’t have any Home Depot, Lowe’s, Orchard Supply Hardware or even Ace Hardware stores. With the exception of some completely useless “Home Pro” stores that sell lightbulbs and sinks, all of our hardware is sold from small mom-and-pop (mostly pop) stores.

The first thing I needed was some wood. Again, no obvious place to go if you need a few small lengths of wood. But I recalled that in the old city, the area surround the Golden Mount temple is a woodworking district, handcrafting teak doors. We headed there after brunch with friends.

It was already mid-afternoon. Many of the shops were closed and the few open ones looked to be closing soon. At the first shop, a grizzled old Chinese-Thai man listened as Tawn explained the problem and looked around his shop. He wanted to sell us a length of teak wood – about 3 meters long (10 feet) – when all we needed was about 15 cm ( 6 inches).

We walked down the soi to a shop where they were still out on the sidewalk, sanding a beautiful teak door. The trio of men listened as we explained the problem and one started rummaging around the shop, wonderfully crowded with pieces of wood of all sizes, and found a few small scraps. We tried them out and found a width that was a close fit, then he cut it down to the desired length, leaving us with two 15-cm pieces.

“How much?” Tawn asked the owner. He laughed with a half-toothless smile. “If I wanted to sell it, I would sell it for 10,000 baht (US$285). But I’ll just give it to you.”

We thanked him profusely and walked away with our two pieces of wood that, given the difficulty we were expecting to encounter in finding a solution, we would probably have gladly paid 10,000 baht for.

Returning to our neighborhood by canal taxi just a few minutes before 5:00, we rushed to a hardware store around the corner, just as they were pulling their wares inside from the sidewalk. We explained what we were looking for – longer screws with larger heads and maybe some washers, too – and the owner browsed the shelves lined with tattered paperboard boxes of various sized hardware until he found eight of each item we were looking for.

Back at home, I pulled out the power drill and started the fix. First, screw the piece of wood to the cabinet lip, creating a flat surface and ensuring that there is something solid for the shelf anchor to mount to.

This was a little difficult as I couldn’t face the work area head-on but had to hold the drill from the side. Not so good for my neck.

Next, with Tawn holding the anchor and the shelves in place, I screwed the anchor to the cabinet, starting with the side that had the new piece of wood. This processes worked pretty well, and although the wood split near the bottom screw, it seems to have a firm hold as the screws I used for the anchor actually sank through the stop-gap piece of wood and into the cabinet frame itself.

I decided that before loading things back into the now-secure shelf, I should reconsider just how much weight I was putting on it. This required a complete reorganization of the kitchen cabinets, moving several heavier items (especially dry goods – flour is much heavier than a skillet) to the cabinets above the countertop.

The resulting arrangement – which is more organized in real life than it appears in the photo above – places heavier pots and pans on the lower shelf and lighter items on the higher shelf, including the backup stash of vodka in the Absolut disco bottle!

Meanwhile, I used this opportunity to tidy up all my other cabinets and complete a labeling project I started when we first moved in. This is similar to how my maternal grandparents have their cabinets organized – lots of plastic storage containers, each with a printed label. This sort of anal retentiveness actually appeals to both Tawn and me. Arranged from left to right as you look at the area above the stove:

The big white thing in the center cabinet is the overhead vent for the cooking surface.

So there’s another project done by Chris the handyperson.

The Bike Ride that Unexpectedly Doubled in Length

Posted on 1 February 2009 by christao408

Peter, who is visiting from Suzhou, mentioned that he would enjoy going out for a bike ride and seeing some of the rural outskirts of Krungthep. I borrowed Markus’ bike (since he’s moved off to Germany and isn’t using it) and cajoled Stuart into joining us for what I promised would be only a 30 km ride in Minburi.

Located just north of the new airport, Minburi is a largely rural community with a large population of Muslim families. Rice growing is the main industry there and that means lots of wide open places to ride. The night before the ride I mapped out the route and actually drove part of it, to confirm that the streets were wide enough and smooth enough to safely ride.

Sunday morning came. The three bicycles were loaded onto the bike rack and about forty minutes later we pulled into the grounds of a temple under the flight path of jets landing on Suvarnabhumi Airport’s east runway. With just a few minutes of pedaling, we left the wide, traffic-choked city streets behind and were out in the country. We could have been 300 km away from the city, not just 30.

We explored several dead end lanes, crossed several small canals, and even followed an elevated concrete footpath along one of the canals, where an old man and young boy who were fishing advised us to take the next bridge and ride through the local one-lane village.

We continued along the path until it came to an end, crossing a very rickety looking bridge. Below, Stuart treads a steady path, knowing his bike won’t float in the canal below.

After about two hours we had completed a nice 31-km circuit. After loading the bicycles back on the rack, we set out for home. Very shortly, though, we encountered problems. The plastic pieces on the rack that lock the bicycle rack’s arms perpendicular to each other, failed. Despite having spaces for three bicycles on the rack, the plastic could not handle the weight of the bicycles and the edges of the fasteners actually bent, resulting in the bicycles’ tires dragging on the road.

We quickly pulled over to the shoulder and evaluated the situation. There wasn’t a way to fix the rack right there and there wasn’t a way to get the bicycles into the car or even into the trunk of a taxi. And I wasn’t going to abandon my guests and make them ride back to the city on their own.

I called Tawn and he took a taxi out to rescue us, my knight on a white stallion. He drove the car back home and I led the ride back to the city, and additional 30 km that we weren’t originally planning on.

Along the way we stopped for lunch at a newly-opened restaurant with a rooftop terrace. Nice breezes and two bottles of Singha beer eased the discomfort a little before we returned to the road. Below, Stuart and Peter stop for some fresh-squeezed sugar cane juice. Who needs Gatorade?

Finally, about 3:00 – some seven hours after picking up Stuart and Peter – we returned home. Thankfully, we had some sunscreen and plenty of water, so other than some sore muscles, we weren’t too much the worse for wear.

christao408

The adventures of an expat American who moved to Bangkok for his husband.

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