Following the capitalist imperative

Sunday 29^th

In other words – more shopping.

Another lazy start to the day, with a swim about 8am. This time I made sure I was down to breakfast well be fore it closed. As usual for these places there were a multitude of selections with eggs, other hot food for the American breakfast such as waffles and pancakes, a pastry section, a salad selection, cereals and yoghurt, Asian, Indian and Muslim sections.

The cityscape is the daylight equivalent of the photo taken the other night. In the background is the tallest building in Bangkok, although from this angle it looks smaller than some of the nearer buildings. It has a huge ad for BMW on its side.

About 11-30 I headed for Chatachuk Weekend Markets on the underground train. This hotel is situated about 500m from both a sky train and a Metro station. It takes about 30minutes to get there and costs about $1.05. This is a huge version of the local markets seen around the city and most towns in Thailand and is frequented as much by the locals as by tourists. It has a couple of streets in a sort of a pentagon shape, with stalls lining them and then between these are under cover pavilions with a grid of lanes and smaller side lanes. The stalls are grouped into similar types so there are various areas of different sorts of clothing, home wares, arts and crafts, books and so forth. It can be quite hot and oppressive inside.

There are numerous places to eat and drinks as well. It was about 4 hours till I got home and although I spend a fair bit of time there I didn’t buy all that much – some golf socks, a book, a watch and food and drink. There were lots of jeans stalls selling (probably) copies of Levis and other brands. I wasn’t prepared to buy something I couldn’t try on and most of the women’s jeans were hipsters anyway. Since most Thai women on the train barely reach my chin, it is difficult finding clothes that are likely to fit. I was looking for a particular book - a pictorial dictionary -but didn't find it.

After cooling off I headed to the corner for a foot massage. For this style, you sit in a reclining chair while they massage your feet and calves mostly. However with the 1 hour massage, I also got my arms neck head and shoulders done as well: More or less everywhere but the back.

Somewhat more relaxed, I loaded up my laptop in its bag, with virtually nothing else so it wasn’t too heavy, and headed back to Pan Trip Plaza. There the guy I had seen the day before explained how to get the pirated games working, if you were to buy them. I also looked at some other mp3s and DVDs. The newer ones are obviously videoed in the theatre and are poor quality. I also scouted around for SD cards for the camera but as it was after 8, most of the shops were shutting or had already shut, so no luck there.

As I was heading back to the sky train, I discovered a Big C department store (Think Target+Coles combined) that I hadn’t noticed yesterday. Here I did buy some cheap jeans, since I could try them on, and also a T-shirt as I’d some how miscalculated and didn’t have a clean one left for tomorrow. Next - a visit to the supermarket section for drinks and nibbles. It was a bit of an effort carrying it all back to the hotel and I was quite hot and bothered by the time I arrive. I downed a litre of water in nothing flat.

I’d had some corn from a street stall betwen Pa Tip and Big C so I really didn’t feel like eating anything else once I'd got back and unpacked the shopping..

I’m getting up at 6 tomorrow, so once I finish this, it will be time to pack and head to bed.

…The tough go shopping

Saturday 28^th

It’s now about 6-30pm and I am back in my room with a scotch and coke by my side.

I got up about 8 and went and had a swim, followed by a spell in one of the pool side lounges reading. I came back to the room and spent some time on the net before getting in the shower. It was luxury after the instant heater in WB, where you get to choose between pressure or heat but not both. I enjoyed it so much I only just got to breakfast before it closed.

I then got the concierge to call me a car from the Gems Gallery and in the half an hour or so I wandered up the street to Asia books, which was open this time where I bought the famous Nancy Chandler’s map. This is aimed at foreigners and describes what is where for shopping and so forth and has maps of various markets.

The car turned out to be a Mercedes and after crawling up Sukumvit we eventually got to the tollway and it was quite quick from there on.

I got my bracelet fixed and cleaned while I was shopping. Last time I was in Bangkok I was planning to but some different coloured jewellery since most of mine is sapphire and silver. However I got side tracked by the very nice and relatively expensive bracelet I bought (the one that got fixed today). This time I did a complete set in Garnet and silver. Ruby is obviously a better class of stone to go for in the red stones but it tends to look a bit washed out in silver as well as being a lot more expensive. Anyway, I bought a bracelet, necklace, pendant, earrings and a ring that more or less match in the garnet. The ring had to be resized twice. The first resizing was actually a size too big. While I waited, I sat in the lounge, which is one of the places where you can take photos, and they supply you with complimentary tea, coffee or, in my case, soft drink while you wait. They have a couple of aquariums there but not quite as spectacular as the ones on the sales floor and a wooden carving of a jungle scene.

I decided to go to Pan Tip rather than back to the hotel and left in a mini van. Not sure whether that was because I didn’t spend enough or that it was just the next available. Pan Tit Plaza is a 5 story IT mall and I’m sure Jonathan would have loved it. Apart from a vast number of hardware shops, both generic and branded, there are also a very large number of stores selling pirate copies of movies, music, games and software. Of course I would never buy anything illegal but if I did I might have bought a number of movies, a few composite CDS of music mps, some X box games for David and a game and some web editing software for the PC. A lot of the fakes you can buy at least pretend to be real with the labels printed on them but these were plain Cds without even a hand written indication of what was on them and very badly printed single page front covers.

I also bought another key board. The one I have been using in WB is ok for carting between the office and the hotel but is just a bit too big to fit in the laptop bag and get the zip closed and I found one slightly smaller for under $10. It will be handy once I get home and go into one of my clients, as I always find using the built in keyboard a bit challenging, especially since it does not have a separate numeric keypad. I am using the new one now and it will take a bit of getting used to. The keys are slightly smaller and in particular the spacebar is not as wide and a bit more to the left. I have hit the Alt key quite a lot by mistake.

By the time I’d done all that and resisted the urge to buy SD disks and external hard drives it was after 4pm. I walked to the next intersecting road and turned towards Sukumvit, buying some corn on the cob to eat on the way. I got to the Zen/Central Mall on the corner. After taking a photo of the shrines, I was just buying some char grilled chicken from a road side stall when it started to rain. Like everybody else I ran for the shelter by the mall. It was quite heavy and left the ground covered with pools of water, but only lasted 10 minutes.

I then wandered around a photo exposition – “The earth from above” which had many spectacular shots. This is not Google Earth but I think many of the shots were from a helicopter or plane and they were about 4 by 3 feet in size. These were outside the mall surrounding a fountain on the corner where two sky train lines come together.

I then hopped the sky train back to the hotel. The traffic was again horrific. The sky train runs above the road with elevated walkways for some, but not al,l its length. The station is marked so that you know where to line up. The boarding passengers line up either side of this and the departing passenger have a clear path to get through. I was thinking how clever this was but when my train pulled up, it was misaligned by a couple of metres and everybody had to shuffle along.

(Later) The photo is of the shrine in front of my hotel.I had dinner at a a small restaurant in a small hotel just around the corner. Garlic spare ribs and fried rice and a drink -$5. Chatted with an English guy staying there, who recommended the ribs. I had decided to get a manicure and pedicure but hadn't seen a place all day so I headed the other direction down Sukumvit to the next Soi (side street) and eventually found one. It was after 9-30 by now and by the time she had finished it was well after 10. Unfortunately although my nails looked very nice the nil polish was still tacky and I kept smudging it or getting my hair caught in it when I brushed it off my face. Even after using the hair dryer they still weren't hard. I had intended to get a foot massage as well but decided that would be pointless with wet toenails. In the end I gingerly got my wallet out , paid slipped on my thongs and left. Not as good a result as I had expected and evn at 1am when I went to bed they were still not dry, although they seem to be theis morning - dry but smudged.

To the big smoke

Friday 27^th

The term Big smoke is a bit too literal in Bangkok with a haze hanging over the city most of the time. It’s just after midnight, so technically it’s Saturday. After heading for bed around 9pm back in the bush it’s good to have enough to do to stay up late.

We were supposed to leave about 2 but by the time the driver arrived and we’d got our bags from the hotel it was about 2:45 when we got underway. It is a noticeably long trip and it took us 2 ½ hours to cover the 280km from the Wichian Buri hotel to the motorway exit nearest my Bangkok hotel. Given that the speed limit is 90 and we had a number of traffic light stops and a bit of a traffic jam just North of Sara Buri, you can probably do the maths and see we weren’t sticking to the speed limit. In fact we hit close to 160 in patches, mostly when another car dared to overtake us. Most of the time it was 120 to 130. We did pass some police, (not quite at that speed) and one of them waggled his white-gloved hand at us as a measure of his disapproval. The first 150km, had barely any traffic but even when it built up nearer to Bangkok, he managed to maintain the speed, swapping lanes all the time. At one time we hit a series of speed signs going from 80 to 60 to 40. The car did not slow so at the end we were doing more than 3 times the speed limit.

The last 3km from the motorway to the hotel took ¾ hour, so I wonder whether it was worth it.

The hotel room is certainly a number of very large steps up from the WB one. I have a separate sitting room with a small bar in one corner. The passage way past the bathroom also has the drawers and hanging space. The bedroom is very roomy and I have TVs in both rooms, but have not actually watched anything, other than the repeating hotel information channel.

Once I’d unpacked my first order of business was to find a book store, although I did check out the swimming pool and gym area on the way down. The Asia Books group has a store about a km from the hotel so I headed for that along Sukumvit Road. This is one of the main thoroughfares and has the sky train running along it to Siam station, which is an interchange point for the 2 lines. There are also 4 big shopping centres and other smaller ones as well as the National sport arena in that area. The street stalls were just being set up along the side of the road near the hotel with the usual mixture of cheap clothes, pirate CDs etc. I came across a Robinson’s department store and had a quick look but didn’t buy anything. Then I found a chemist and popped in to get some Immodium.

When I found the bookshop, it was closed but I remembered reading in the Bangkok guide that there was another one in one of the “Siam” malls. It turned out to be the Siam Discovery mall, which was next door to the one closest to the sky train station (it was too far to walk from the closed shop.)

I bought book 2 of an anthology by George RR Martin (I bought the first in NZ) and another Pern novel by Todd Macaffrey plus a book of essays on Thai history and culture. Each essay is about a page in length and is printed in both English and Thai. It was just over $5 and the other 2 were under $15. One of them had the UK price of 9 pounds showing, so they were about 40% cheaper.

I had a brief look at some of the other shops but wasn’t really in the mood so headed back to the sky train station and caught one back to near the hotel. It is about a 5 minute walk at the end. After unpacking I took a couple of photos of the night view from my 19^th floor window.

I headed downstairs again and had dinner just across the road from the hotel. An entrée, fish for main, and 2 MaiThai cocktails for under $18. I starting talking to and then joined 3 American guys who are also here installing software for one of the big telecom firms. They had about 3 days notice and consequently only have tourist visa. They had just been to Cambodia to exit the country and re-enter to get another 30 days visa (for the second time since arriving). Apparently they officially went on a golfing tour of Cambodia but never saw a golf course. In fact, all they saw was the restaurant just across the border where they had brunch while someone else got their passports stamped for them.

We finished our meals and parted company. I went a few metres up the road to the massage parlour I’d seen earlier and had a 90 minute Thai massage. For this one you change into something like PJs and lie on a mattress on the floor. The massager then moves around you to get at you at different angles. There was a combination of hand and foot massaging, including a walk up my back as well as different stretches. She did a fair amount of work on the area of my back that has been sore but in the end I don’t think massage is the solution. Again this cost less than $15.

All in all a different evening than the last 10 days.

Wan paruhat is wan Barbeque

Thursday 26^th

Thursday is BBQ night and again there was a feast. I started with seafood – crab, prawns and fish, followed by steak, pork steak, spare ribs and chicken drum stick. I also had bakes potato and garlic bread which I’d missed last week. You might think I’m a bit focussed on food but once I leave work, eating is all there is before I retire to my room - usually. However, tonight I sat and chatted with Narwin and Pairor for a bit.

Work proceeds at a steady pace. Pui has the system on her laptop and is working on the tanker shipping data. This is proven to be a real challenge and may be the hardest part of the project. Apart from the (oft mentioned) problem with the spelling of Thai names, there are other errors such as numbers swapped, trailer and trucks swapped and so forth. It makes it difficult to work out how to write a routine to sort those errors out.

Preedaporn also turned up today. She is the IT lady from Bangkok that I exchanged a few emails with before I left.

I have decided (and have Jim’s nod of approval) to go to Bangkok for the weekend. Pui is going anyway, since she has a dentist appointment so we will be travelling together. My normal driver is taking us, so lots of overtime for him.

I have booked into the Windsor suite hotel via the Internet. I used the same online booking service I used in NZ and have a Minister suite for A$91 per night. The “normal” price is $365. It is supposed to be 50 sqm. With a separate living and sleeping area. It is just off Sukumvit Road which is supposed to be a main shopping area and the sky train and metro stations aren’t far away, so you can get to anywhere of interest reasonably easily.

I will definitely have to buy a book or two, since I’m nearly finished my last and was starting to look at the Gideon’s offering as a last resort.

I have also changed my ticket to next Friday night, so I’ll have the whole week to finish off. If that’s enough I can go start from here after work and get to the airport in time for the 11-30 flight. I’ll get home about 7am. Too late for pennants but early enough for hockey. It will mean I’ll miss Wednesday’s vet’s game, unfortunately.

Don’t take that lying down

Wednesday 25^th

Another long day at the office, leaving about 7:30 this morning and 5:30 tonight. If I worked these hours at home I could make a lot of money.

Pui arrived from Bangkok late morning and is sorting out well, filed, site and licence data for the system.

I revised all the name tables. Making sure indexes were correct, the look ups worked and so forth and then worked on the tables for the well test.

As we were leaving I commented to the driver there were no cows today. This turned out to be premature as they were not that far down the road. Not as big a herd as yesterday and we were able to get past them. The excitement of looking at cows backsides wears off pretty quickly.

I got the driver to stop at the 7-11 on the way home to replenish my stock of fattening nibbles and soft drink and then had a quick wander through the market a short distance down the street. It was mainly food stalls and seeing the number of flies on some of the meat was not really very encouraging.

On the way home we went through some different streets and came to the reclining Buddha in the grounds of a temple. This would have been about 30 metres long, possibly more. On the other side there was a seated Buddha about 5 m high. I also took some photos of an old building and a new one in the area.

I ate from the Thai menu tonight. Some duck and fish dished and some crumbed chicken. I was chatting with the supervisor after that but we were both starting to scratch from insects, so he headed back to work and I went to my room to finish the crossword.

Instant noodles

Tuesday 24^th

I’ve been here a week and I’m not sure whether I’m halfway through the work or not. Today was similar to yesterday, sunny and I spent the entire day in my office. An engineer (female) from the Bangkok office is coming up tomorrow to help with the data collection and so forth. I met the driver who bought me here at the canteen tonight. He was about to head back to Bangkok arriving about 10pm I’d guess He will then leave again at 7 bringing up the engineer.

As I was leaving the office this evening, I saw a herd of about 40 or 50 Brahmin cattle heading towards the office area. There is a trackm a few metres wide that runs between our area and the rice paddies. Of course, by the time we got our of the compound they had filled the road so it was a slow journey till they turned of a km or so later. There were quite a number of calves in the herd.

I decided I should be eating more of the Thai, rather than the western choices, on the menu. Tonight was interesting. They had a selection of ingredients which they cooked in the hot (temperature) soup. Noodles, green vegetables, bean sprouts and chopped pork were the main options. When they were done, they spooned some of the broth over. There was also a chicken in source as well.

Nose to the grindstone

Monday 22^nd

Really just got stuck into work today. It was sunny again but I was indoors so it hardly mattered.

I redesigned a number of tables and imported the “definitive” lists of driver names, trucks and trailers, plus the default combinations. I then re-ran the correction routine and resolved 90% of the spelling variations on the Thai names and handed the list to Narwin to solve the rest.

I was so caught up in work that it was nearly 2pm before I broke for lunch. Then back to work till late in the afternoon when I did a bit of internet browsing before heading home about 6.

These shots were taken around the office. The office has 2 buildings. The original on the right was the site manager's home but has been converted to offices. The newer building on the left, where my office is was designed for work.

There are a row of shed/workshops to the right of the office (as we view it) and behind it is more storage space for equipment and such.

This area is surrounded by farmland with small areas used for drilling sites. The final photo shows the farmer, doing whatever he does with the mini tractors with an oil rig in the background.

Up and Down

Sunday 22^nd

The sun was shining again this morning as I headed to the office. I was having a meeting with the 2 supervisors to give a heads up to Jim who was taking over and a last look to Spencer who was leaving. It was just after 10 before they were free so I had time to knock up a couple of flow charts and a summary document that I’d hand written about 5-30 this morning. Sometimes it easiest to do whatever you are thinking about that just toss and turn. At least once it’s done there’s some hope of getting back to sleep.

My Driver Pairot picked me up about 11-30 and I found my lunch had been delivered to the office already. I took it back to the hotel and ate it there. Narwin, one of the locals from the office had mentioned the night before that he had a map of the tourist attractions in the mountains. I hadn’t realised that he and his girlfriend (I think) Pairor were also coming. The four of us headed back to Petchabun and then a bit further North before turning West into he Khao Kho area, “The Switzerland of Thailand”.

By this time it was drizzling on and off and some of the mountain tops were shrouded in mist. The road was as steep as the mountains we saw yesterday, which were to the East of Petchabun. In many cases the driver was using second gear both to go up and come down the hills and occasionally shifted to 4 wheel drive.

The first stop was the Royal Palace, one of many through the country. This is a set of modern buildings covering ¾ of a circle with a rose garden and a tall flagpole in the centre. There entire area was filled with plants that fortunately had little signs telling us what they were. A couple of times I read the Thai names only to find they were just transliterations of the English name. It started to rain heavily just after we arrived but it cleared up and the sun shone through by the time these shots were taken.

The next stop was the Weapons Museum, set on an old firing range control area. There were a number of vehicles and weapons in the open air including 2 helicopters and some bunkers with displays in them. They also had a plant stall. It was a bit weird seeing someone dressed in Khakis selling pot plants to my 2 companions.

A bit further up the road on the crest of the hill is the war memorial, a tall obelisk in a garden setting. The views were quite spectacular with mountains and farmland. We continued north passing a Wat. This was mainly white and more in the style of those in Cambodia than the usual colourful ones seen here.

Our last tourist spot was the waterfalls. There was a row of a couple of dozen stalls lining the path from the car park to the falls but only a couple were in use. I guess it is not the busy tourist season. There wasn’t even anybody in the ticket booth to collect the entrance fee. We walked through some bamboo groves to the top of the falls area. After viewing the falls from the top, we climbed down the path and across a small wooden bridge to some rocks where we could see the falls from the lower level.

From there, we basically headed back, with a brief stop at Lotus and the petrol station on the way, getting home a bit before 7.