Thai Business Trip 2008

In the jewellry category, the winner is........

2008-09-19T08:36:00.000-07:00

Topaz!

Friday 19th (updated and finished on Monday 22nd)
My breakfast in bed arrived pretty much in time but it was really breakfast in my room as I had to get up to let the maid in and I ate it at the table anyway.

By the time I'd got ready for the day and more or less packed my bag it was nearing 10. I asked the front desk to contact the Gems gallery for me and since they were supposed to be 20 minutes away I went to bget some more Thai currency. I had to wait till 10 before the exchange bureaux open but was still back at the hotel in time for a 30 minute wait.

Once there I went to the silver counter to first find a pair of stud earrings to match my garnets. Last time I bought some drop ones, which are quite nice but not for everyday wear. Fortunately I found a matching set.

I then looked at other colours and after looking at both peridot (light green) and the topaz decided on the latter. I bought a set of ring, pendant and studs and then foudn a matching bracelet.

I was thinking of getting dropped off at Pan Thip Plaza again to do some DVD and computer shopping but in the end went straight back to the hotel.The traffic was so bad that it was a challenge getting there by 12, which was check out time. At one traffic light I saw a bus conductor open the rear door and have a cigarette. Obviously there's no smoking on the bus so she basically held her hand outside and stuck her head out to smoke it. She'd finished half of it be fore the bus moved off. Once back at the hotel, I basically just packed my back and went downstairs. Once there I checked my email and then headed out again, sans pc case.

I went to Pan Thip Plaza as the first stop, getting some lunch on the way from roadside stalls - noodles, a chicken drumstick and a sweet corn. Once there I got some DVDs and exchanged the "wrong disk" from last time. The actual disk didn't match the cover. I also bought some software and 4gB versions of the memory for my camera and on a USB thumb drive.

I then wandered the half dozen malls along that part of Sukimvit, in the end only buying a light blue dressy top that might be OK for one of the dinners. I headed back to the hotel about 6 and my back was aching from all the walking. I unloaded my purchases into my PC case and headed to a nearby massage/reflexology place for a back and shoulders massage. It actually felt much better afterwards. I then wandered over to Soi Cowboy again just to take some photos and then back along the main street. It started to sprinkle lightly as I left the hotel but cleared up shortly afterwards so I walked further down the street through the roadside stalls. The rain returned more heavily and I headed back to the hotel, getting a little damp on the way.

I needed to use the loo, so I went to the one in the foyer. Some bright spark had designed this with almost full length mirrors on every wall. I don't know what you think, but I don't need to see infinite reflections of myself in those circumstances.

The hotel staff called a cab and I was soon heading to the airport through the rain. It cost a fair bit less than they'd suggested. I guess they were being conservative to make sure I wasn't short of local currency. We'd just got on to the freeway when I realised my bracelet wasn't on my wrist. There was a moment of panic, but I found it on the seat beside me. I'm going to need a permanent fix for this.

Unfortunately they have closed off most of the taxi drop off area at the international terminal so you get dropped off at the far end near Aisle S. I then had to walk all the way back to Aisle B. Annoying more than anything else. Check in was quick and once in the lounge I had a drink and some noodles and mini pies to eat, since I hadn't had dinner. (not sure I had enough for dinner and cab fare). My free massage was a foot massage this time and very relaxing it was too. It was like the sort of massages most people associate with the word whereas most of mine usually involve a degree of pain as I'm trying to get some sort of sporting injury sorted out.

After that I got on the net and wrote most of this blog. I packed up and headed for the departure lounge. When I looked at the board I couldn't see my flight so I started to worry and was running around looking for terminal E. I got to the main cross roads and head down one leg, realised it was C went back to the centre then upstairs to E. At security they told me I was leaving from C so back I went. This time as I passed the departure board I saw the flight was still boarding so I slowed down. Still, by the time I'd got through the security check, there was no one waiting in the lounge and I walked straight on. I wasn't the last though. We were informed later that 2 people still hadn't turned up and they'd located their luggage. If they didn't turn up soon the luggage was going to be offloaded. Didn't hear the final result but we left shortly after that.

I had the dinner and once that was over went to sleep, not waking till the lights came on for breakfast. I was only about 4 hours. I didn't even bother with duty free and was through passport quickly, got my bag which was in the first few off and out through customs. This time I declared my golf shoes but said I hadn't worn them so they Xrayed my bag but didn't require me to unpack it.

Since the plane was more or less on time, I wasn't rushed and got to golf with plenty of time and even hit a bucket of balls on the driving range. I was ready to buy that driver till I realised it was $499 not $399. Turns out the Supersports 12,500 Baht was actually cheaper. I started well with a par, then a couple of bogies and a birdie on the Par 3 4th, which was also the nearest the pin. After that things deteriorated with a couple of 4 putts and even a miss to finish 10 over my handicap. Concentration didn't last I'm afraid, although I did get another nearest in the 3rd last hole, only to have it disallowed because I wrote my name ion the B grade sheet instead of the A grade. ( statement at start of previous sentence).

Don't go away. I'm off again in 2 days for the Vets championships, visits to friend in Queensland and family in South Australia, followed by a few days sightseeing in Tasmania before the Mensa conference. New blog to follow.

Conan the civilised

2008-09-18T04:18:00.001-07:00

Thursday 17th, evening

I had contacted the Mensa guy Mark and was waiting for him while I did the last blog entry. Once I finished, I went downstairs and did the crossword until he turned up. He uses the nickname “Conan” and as soon as he walked in I knew why. The ceiling in the foyer is relatively low but even in a normal room he’d dominate. He is nearly 7ft tall and had to stoop to avoid hitting his head. He works as an actor in action movies. He made me feel quite petite, which is quite an achievement.

We went to a Thai restaurant not that far from the hotel and just across the main road. He said the food was good but the service was slow, but that wouldn’t be a problem as we’d be talking anyway. We both agreed that eating on your own with slow service was pretty bad.

He has been based in Thailand for 3 years, with the usual foreigner’s trick of leaving and returning every 90 days. His work takes him away reasonably often anyway. He had some interesting comments about living here as opposed to just visiting and had experienced some discrimination on some movie sets. The fact that he’s stayed 3 years indicates these problems are not deal breakers.

While we were there, an English guy at the next table made some comment to Mark and it turns out the Chinese owner (elderly woman) keeps all the tips and doesn’t pass them on to the staff. As Mark said, there’s no incentive for them to give good service.

I had curried crab meat and rice and as we were still talking an hour or so later Mark said he was going to order some more and we both had a serve of fried vegetables with chicken. (400 B in total, about $15 and including 2 soft Cokes) He was heading to the gym and I thought I’d visit Soi Cowboy, which was only a few 100m away. This is a bit of a tourist attraction and I hadn’t got there last trip. I headed back to the hotel first and when I came out again 10 minutes later it was pouring again so I went back to the room for my umbrella. It just a small fold up that I actually found in a taxi in Brisbane last year but it helped a bit.

I realised I was a bit short of local money but by then (nearly 10pm) the exchanges were shut. I headed to Soi Cowboy anyway and it soon became obvious where the name comes from. It’s a bit of a red light district with gogo bars with (names at least) a Cowboy theme. Rawhide, Long gun etc. I went to the Cactus which Mark had mentioned, wander in the door and was confronted by nude pole dancers. Not my scene and I quickly retreated. There were 2 guys at the front both called John, one the owner and I mentioned Conan. They said I could get a drink there but they didn’t make cocktails but on their recommendation I headed to the Old Dutch restaurant at the end of the street where I had a Pina Colada for 220B. That was enough and I headed back to the hotel and watched the end of an Adam Sandler movie before going to sleep.

Its now nearly 7am and I have been awake for an hour or so. I'd better get back to bed soon so I can have my "breakfast in bed". Part of the service.

Actually this style hotel, like the one in Hong Kong, only has a ground floor reception area and the rest of the building is rooms. No restaurant, gym, pool, meeting rooms etc. It's probably more economical to have staff deliver breakfast to the room than to maintain a dining area.

Wet, wet, wet

2008-09-18T04:18:00.000-07:00

Thursday 18th

It poured again last night, at least it was raining from 2am to 4-30 which was when I was awake. I finally got back to sleep and woke at 8. I’d only just got in the shower when the driver knocked on the door. It was about 20 minutes before we left and I skipped breakfast.

You could see that the river had risen another metre since last week and a creek by the side of the dirt road to the office had overflowed and was covering the road.

I mostly worked on finishing the selected listing reports but didn’t make ant major changes. Today they were doing some maintenance on the office PCs – virus scans and so forth so the operator couldn’t get his data in. I had lunch about 12 and then went back to the hotel to pack and check out. We came back to the office and the data was in and everything looked fine with the daily report.

It was about 2 when we left and since we have the cases already went via Si Thep rather than back through Wichian Buri. You would really not be aware of the oil field on the normal hotel to office trip but, heading the other way, we passed numerous drilling rigs, nodding donkey pumps and storage tanks and even a depot full of tankers. This is the reality that my software is modelling and I hadn’t really seen them as such.

The heavy rain had turned a lot of the fields alongside the road in to lakes and as usual there were kids swimming and also people fishing – both with poles and nets.

My driver seems to have been caught speeding since the last time as he was quite sedate all the way to Bangkok today. It was more like 3 hours than 2 ½ when we turned off the freeway. I did manage to catch a couple of the buses with the airbrushed art work on the side this time. It helped that it was earlier in the day and the sun was actually shining for the first time this week.

The hotel is quite nice. The room is not quite a suite but has a kitchenette so it’s a bit more than a basic hotel room. Unlike the Windsor where I stayed before, there is absolutely no view.

I have made contact with the Aussie Mensa guy and he will be over shortly and we’ll go for dinner.

The attack of the killer ants

2008-09-17T06:13:00.000-07:00

Wednesday 17th
Bloody spell checker, that should have been Kilo-ants – there were thousands of them.

It was raining again this morning and it looks like the river is still rising. It was a busy day. I finished updating the manual and did a test for tank farm features. Normally each group of tanks services several wells and it is the usual practice to have to split the production into these tanks between the wells using an allocation algorithm. That's why companies need software like this in the first place. However, here each well has had its own tank so the production into the tank = the production out of the well.

When I was here last time they were just about to start up a tank farm. That still hasn’t happened but it could be starting any day (or week or month) now. Any way I made up some test data as if it started a few days ago to test the software. I found and fixed some bugs and then had to redesign the daily report. Usual stuff – always in a rush at the end. Anyway, I think it is all done now although I was late leaving the office. It was already dark and still threatening to rain so no run tonight.

There is still the morning for them to test the new version, ask questions and fix any last minute glitches. Then it's off the Bangkok, hopefully soon after lunch. Last time we arrived about 5 and the traffic, once you left the freeway, was horrific, so I'd like to get there a bit earlier.

Jim (the field manager) said he was going to email his old boss in Syria about the system. They apparently are also running on multiple spreadsheets and could do with a consolidation into a proper database. You can’t beat word of mouth for finding new clients.

Oh the ants. I guess the wet weather has driven them inside and there were so many on my desk and getting on the keyboard I had to hunt up some insect spray. They weren’t very big but it got really annoying.

Dinner tonight was pork steaks or mackerel. I had the pork. Lunch was a lemon chicken.

I've added some more then and now photos from the hotel They have knocked out a section of the wall which makes the trip from my room to the canteen very much shorter. Quite an advantage in the rain..

Plans are made

2008-09-16T06:44:00.000-07:00

Tuesday 16th

Last night I went for a run again. This time I ran to the other side of the bridge to add the extra distance to make it 5 km. It took me about 38 minutes.

My laptop connected to the network in the canteen but the internet was down so I couldn’t do as much as I had planned. However, the internet had reconnected by this morning so I downloaded my emails and was busy writing replies when my pkone rang. My driver had arrived early and I hadn’t even had a shower. I had a quick one then a quick breakfast and we were off.

We are still discovering new problems with the software, most of them are related to the data collection rather than the code but I added a number of new features and fixed some bugs as well as working on the rest of the help screens. The latter are now up to date.

One of the operators kept coming to me to load his data from a spreadsheet on a memory stick that he said didn’t work on the office PC. When I tested it there I realised the spreadsheet was covering the program so he couldn’t see a confirmation dialog. I spent a few hours replacing the system dialog with a customised one that sits in front of the spreadsheet.

I also added a step by step summary of what they need to do each day to the manual. This turned out to be a 2 page, 13 point list.

I tried to call Thai airways to change my flight to Friday night. This will give me a day to shop and relax before I go home. I couldn’t get through on the phone so I sent an email. After several hours I had no response so I tried to send a fax. I was n’t sure if that was getting through so I asked one of the office girls to ring the number so she could work out what the recorded message was saying and eventually I got through. Apparently they had received my request but according to them the flight was booked. Interesting, since I’d already checked the flight and there were business class seats available. Later they called and confirmed my flight change.

Next I booked a hotel. I would have gone back to the Windsor Suites but the price for the same room as last time had gone up from $91 to $127. A lot of that would have been due to the fall in the exchange rate. Instead I booked another hotel One block away for about $90. This one doesn’t have a pool but has free WiFi.

I have also been in contact with a former Mensa member from Australia who is living here. He actually contacted Mensa Australia about something else and when I responded he told me he was in Bangkok. I’ll try and catch up with him for lunch or dinner before I go.

I finally took a photo of the desk of one of the office girls. My friend Lynda from hockey will no doubt be jealous of her pink PC.

Dinner tonight was Pork Gordon Blue (sic) plus the noodle soup they cook up for you. Lunch was a hamburger or rissole with gravy vegies and mashed taties.

I saw another westerner today on the way to work, a guyon the back of a scooter. Apart from the people at work, I have only seen one other, at the market on Sunday. It's definitely not a tourist hub here.

Then and now

2008-09-16T06:37:00.001-07:00

Monday 15th

I have been unable to get wireless internet connection using the password I used last time I was here. For some reason they have tightened up and wireless has to be set up by the IT department. There is now wireless at the office as well but I have been using a cable up till now.

When I got in this morning I called Preedaporn and she eventually managed to set me up. It took quite a while for us to work out how to do it since I have Vista and the other PCs she has set up have been running XP. Rather than give out the password they actually need to log in remotely to you PC and they set up and enter passwords. Anyway it’s done now and I am using the wireless in the office and will hopefully have access back at the hotel as well.

A few minor improvement and fixes so far today, so I will start to work on the back log of help screens and reports.

Another busy day has passed. I updated many of the help screens and made them potentially bilingual. Ie I have made provision for someone to translate my help information into Thai and to swap between the 2 languages. At the moment those screens juts say “No have Thai translation”. This I worked out by myself, with some help from a dictionary but the Thai staff still are amazed that I can read and write/type Thai even if my vocab is limited.

Today I did go for a run, another 5km/38 minute effort. It had rained earlier but was dry during the run itself. More than I can say for myself. The perspiration was dripping.

Chicken steak for dinner, spaghetti for lunch.

Scattered through are some comparable screens from my first trip to now. The rice paddy next to the office wasn’t even planted when I was here then. The scrubby area in front of the office has been cleared and gravelled for parking and the nearby potato fields seem to have plants 2 or 3 times larger than before. The river is probably several metres higher as well.

No Golf today

2008-09-14T20:35:00.000-07:00

Sunday 14th

I was hoping to get a round of golf in today, but alas it didn’t happen.

I got an SMS from Nicola this morning saying they had lost the prelims so not grand final appearance this year. On the other hand it takes the pressure off my return trip, although I do have a dentist appointment on Monday and then leave on Wednesday next week so I can only have a short extension.

I was hoping to just run through the data entry procedures with the operators and then leave about 10 or 11. The weather looks like it would have held but it was 12 and we were still working through things with a need to talk further with the Field manager. Since the golf course is about an hour away it was really too late to get there and finish before it got dark.

So here I am still at the office, although the last hour or so I have been writing blogs and addressing emails, rather than working.

Still here at 4.30. I have had time to look up my running distance on Google earth and Google maps. It seems its just a tad shy of 2.5km so about 4.7 km return. I’ll run across the bridge next time and that will get me to 5km.

In the end I didn’t run because my Achilles was still sore from the previous night. After dinner I watched the formula 1 on the TV by the canteen. I wouldn’t normally bother at home, but apart from having nothing much else to do here, one of the English guys at the hotel is an enthusiast and his comments and explanations make it more interesting than otherwise.

I went to sleep about 10 but woke up in the middle of the night. Un able to get back to sleep, I finished my book and wrote a review for the book club before finally drifting off again.

I have been taking photos of scenes I photographed last time. When I get them organised I’ll pout up a then and now comparison.

Girl about town

2008-09-14T00:30:00.000-07:00

Saturday 13th

On Saturday I went to the office working with the operators and sorting out some problems. I left about 2 and Pairot took me for a bit of a drive through town. At one stage we saw a snake cross the road, only a block or so away from the main street.

We revisited the temple complex that has the reclining golden Buddha. This statue is over 40 metres long, because this time we got out and walked around so I could step it out. The original shots of this area were shown in the entry for 25^th June.

The road in goes passed the lake on the left with this golden image of a goddess of some sort. I saw a similar figure at the golf hotel last trip. On the right is a seated Buddha and the wheel. Again the wheel is familiar as they had one in the historical park I visited the first weekend of the last trip, only that one was unpainted stone.

There is a new temple being build behind the lake but the road turns right past the old temple which is looking a bit neglected. We got out then and walked around the statues. As well as the reclining and sitting Buddha images which I saw from the road before, there is another statue with 3 figures from history – Malaysian, I think, if I understood Pairot correctly.

From there we went back to the hotel where I changed into trainers and picked up some water, a soft drink and an ice cream. I was then dropped in town so I could wander around for a while. It was about 3pm. I walked down the main street and bought some small items in a stationary store and then wandered through the markets, mostly browsing, although I bough a peanut and seed honey cake.

I then headed along the main road and found a beauty parlour where I had a manicure and pedicure. This took some time and even then the nail polish wasn’t quite as set as I thought when I went to put my shoes back on. A touch up on some fingernails meant a further wait.

I didn’t walk too much further down the road before turning down a side street and from that to a dirt track heading back towards the market. This lead to a couple of lakes or reservoirs which seem to be a centre for exercise with a number of people jogging, walking or cycling around them.

At one corner there was a gate into the temple complex, which allowed me to walk back to the markets through the main gate. I then called Pairot to pick me up.

It was about 6 and I changed to go for a jog. It started to rain then but was only a light drizzle so I decided to go anyway. I figured a light rain was probably an advantage over just being humid. This time I ran another 400m or so passed the kilometre post to the next bridge and then a bit further in the opposite direction, taking 35 minutes or so all up.

Dinner was crumbed chicken drumsticks, chips and carrots. Lunch was sweet and sour fish with rice.

After dinner, I went back to the room and read on my bed for a couple of hours.

On the move

2008-09-12T18:40:00.000-07:00

Friday 12th

Narwin arranged for me to move rooms. The room I stayed the first night was one of the wooden buildings – pine floorboards, walls etc. as well as the furniture. And the latter was the problem – not enough of it. No cupboards or drawers and no desk to use the laptop on.

The bathroom was interesting, quite small and the drain was at the opposite corner from the shower nozzle, virtually ensuring the entire floor got wet. It did have an exhaust fan so that was one positive. Can you count how many different sorts of tiles they used? I guess they just used whatever was around.

I moved to C3, next to the room I had last time and a mirage image in layout. There are 2 main differences – 2 singles rather than a double bed and no power point on the wall at the bed head. I have to run the power board from the other wall. Fortunately, unlike Australian power boards, which some corporate bright spark – no doubt an accountant – decreed that the cord should only be one metre long, this one is 2 or 3 metres and can actually reach far enough for my bedside lamp to plug into. This is the same lamp I bought last time, which I gave to the camp manager to store for me, just in case I came back.

I didn’t leave the office till after 6 yesterday. Its amazing how easy it is to work long hours here – not as many distractions as at home I guess.

Once I’d moved rooms and unpacked I changed and – wait for it – went for a run!!! Ok, maybe a jog is more accurate, but with only 2 weeks before the Australian Vets Championships I need to do some exercise. It stopped raining mid way through the day so that didn’t provide me with an excuse not to run.

I headed towards town and after 5 minutes was nearing the end of the streetlights. I’d just passed a Distance sign (ie a milepost but in km), so I thought I’d turn round and run back past the hotel until the next one the other side, thus giving me a good estimate of my distance. I in fact ran another 10 minutes past the hotel in the other direction, without seeing one, before turning back. 30 minutes wasn’t a bad start. If I can keep it up, I will get back some of the fitness I lost in the US where I did stuff all exercise, other than 1 run on a treadmill and 2 games of golf. I had planned to do some running before I left but didn’t think to put in the watch with the timer feature I’d bought specifically for running. I also probably should have sprayed myself with mossie repellent.

It was approaching 7-30 by then and I drank 2 bottles of water trying to cool down. Eventually I recovered enough to have dinner, since the canteen closes at 8. I just had a salad with a couple of crumbed prawns and pieces of fish and then an ice cream cone. The icecream cabinet is a new benefit, which has arrived sometime since my last visit.

Lunch was spare ribs with potatoes and cauliflower, cake and grapes. I skipped the soup.

Another thing that has changed is the countryside. Fields that I saw being planted with rice now have plants a foot or 2 high and the sugar cane and potato plants I recall seem to have grown several feet as well.

My driver arrived as I was writing the last bit and I am now in the office. I asked him to drive down to where I ran last night to get a measurement but his odometer only displays whole km so it’s not very accurate. I’d guess it was something like 4km in total.

Pyramid schemes

2008-09-11T22:44:00.000-07:00

Thursday 11th

I am now back at Hotel Pyramid for another week. The trip was about 16 hours from when I got up till when I got to the room.

I left home about 6-45am and apart from a bit of heavy traffic just before the airport turn off had no problems getting there and again was quickly through checkin and passport control. I had time for some breakfast in the Qantas lounge before we boarded the flight.

For a change I was flying during the day and business class was not very full so I had an empty seat beside me. I watch a couple of films – The Forgotten Kingdom, a Kung Fu movie with Jackie Chan and Jet Li and Sex in the City. In between, I redid the first chapter of the Intermediate Thai book. I also did a few crossword puzzles.

We stooped in Phuket for about an hour. It was quite confusing because they seemed to have said we could leave our bags on board but then they seemed to say we couldn’t. I took my handbag and notebook with me anyway and it was a good thing because we needed our passport, boarding pass etc, which may have been left on board otherwise. We did in fact clear customs here, which is quite a good idea even if it meant a bit of queuing. Since we were on the ground for an hour, we had time to do it and it meant we didn’t need to do it at Bangkok. I had a brief spell in the lounge there, just enough time to read my emails and prepare one to go, although I couldn’t send it.

The flight to Bangkok is then only another hour. Every other time I’ve been here the plane has parked some distance from the terminal and we have all had to get on buses to get there. This time we pulled right up and a bridge came out. Then they said we couldn’t use it and to disembark from the rear door, once again downstairs and on to buses. One of the advantages of business class is that you are up the front and first off. This time we were last off. It did mean that my bag was already on the carousel by the time I’d got there so I was straight out the door.

I then changed some money. The rate has dropped from around 31 baht per dollar to 27, which is where it was 2 years ago when I came for golf.

I couldn’t see my driver at the customs exit so I wandered left to the first exit to the carpark without finding him. I dug out some business cards from the last trip and went back inside before calling anybody and headed in the other direction. Fortunately I found Khun Thin, the driver who took me to Wichian Buri the first time.

It was raining when we landed and it doesn’t seem to have stopped since. We left the airport a bit before 6pm and the traffic from the airport was quite heavy. We did bypass the centre of the city and headed to Sara Buri where we stopped so I could do some shopping at Lotus. I bought a thin foam mattress to put on the bed, since last time I had back problems because the bed was so hard. This proved to be a bit help last night. It was about 8 by the time we left there and nearly 10 by the time we arrived. The rain got even heavier just before we got to WB and it poured all night as well. There’s a lot of water around with some of the streets in town completely covered over.

A drama has occurred with my bracelet. I noticed it was missing when I was going to bed. I double checked the room and the not book case, just in case I knocked it off reaching in for something but couldn’t find it. An SMS to David confirmed I didn’t leave it at home. If it didn’t fall off in the car then it could have happened 9in the plane, the airport or even the shops so I suspect there’s not much chance of getting it back.

Looks like some calls to the airline and insurance company may be needed. I suppose one ray of sunshine is that I bought it in Bangkok, so there is a chance that I might be able to get a replacement before I go home.

I did think to put in a small fold up umbrella this trip and used it to get to the canteen for breakfast. I picked up a washing basket, which I just realised I didn’t put out and my bedside lamp from last time.

Narwin was leaving for the office so I grabbed a ride with him. I’m back in the same office and have now organised an extra monitor, keyboard, power board and network cable. Last time I also had a printer but if I can use the network printer that will do.

I’ll put some stuff about the hotel in the next blog.

Good news! The driver found my bracelet.

Round 2

2008-09-07T03:03:00.000-07:00

I had another business trip, this time to the US, a month after I got back from Thailand. This included 2 days in Hong Kong on the way back. I offered to call in to Thailand from Hong Kong but it was decided that the 2 to 3 days available was not enough time.

I'd only been back home for 2 days and had already booked for a return trip to Thailand the following Thursday. That was the earliest day there were flights still available on Thai Airways and the only option to get a week there before my month away in the East of Australia, playing hockey, visiting friends and family and going to the Mensa conference.

Unfortunately we have lost the Semi final in hockey today so I'll miss the Prelim next week. I guess they'll have to do it without me, if we are to make the Grand final the following weekend. I will be back for that that match, if required.

Meanwhile, back in the real world

2008-07-23T03:36:00.001-07:00

Wednesday 23^rd

I left the office around 2 on Friday and had a late snack in the club lounge on the 22^nd floor of the hotel. As you can see there is not a bad view. I then packed ready to leave. It was a bit after 3 and they’d put out afternoon tea so I had some snacks, checked out and headed for the underground station. I had about 5 hours before I needed to leave for the airport so I thought I’d go back to Silom, which is where I stayed a couple of years ago. As I was checking the exit map, a couple of girls asked me where the shops were. One was from the US and the other from Nigeria, as I found out later. They also wanted a manicure so I told them to come with me and we headed to Nok beauty where I’d had my hair coloured cut and a manicure and pedicure the last day of that 2006 holiday.

Again I had a manicure and cut but skipped the colour and pedicure. It turned out the 2 girls were med students who were in Thailand for a couple of week's work in a hospital in Krabi. Of course, I then told them about my daughter who’d gone to Aberdeen on a similar trip during her med school days.

I then headed down Silom to the golf precinct in Patpong 3 and the street markets but after all that didn’t buy anything. I then needed to get he underground back to the hotel.

After collecting my luggage I got the limo (Mercedes) to the air port arriving before 9pm. I’d planned that time so I’d be able to get through the check in and customs with time to have a snack and my free massage in the business class lounge before I had to fly out.

When I got to the business class check in there was no queue at all and in fact free staff just waiting for us to arrive. That only took a few minutes. They also have separate customs check points with 2 staff there and no queue again, so the entire process took less than 5 minutes.

At the lounge they informed me my flight was delayed till 1-30, so I had 4 ½ hours to go. I guess I should have checked and I could have had more time in Bangkok. Anyway I did have a snack and a couple of drinks – JW black and coke and then a vodka and Tomato juice. I then found the spa and had my massage. In business class you choose between a foot massage or head and shoulders. I chose the latter which was quite nice for half and hour. An hour would have been even better. The first class passengers get a longer session.

Then back to the lounge for a couple more drinks and snacks. Fortunately I got talking with another woman from Perth who was heading home from Europe, so the time passed relative painlessly.

Still it was very late by the time we were off and after the meal I tried to sleep but probably only had 4 hours.

I arrived about 9-30, got home at 10 and called the golf. They told me I was off last at about 11 so I rushed over and did some shopping before heading for the course. I had no time for any practice and got on the first tee and hit probably the best drive ever on that hole, chipped on and got my par. By the 3^rd hole it had gone downhill and I wasn’t quite up to my handicap.

After golf and the presentations I had time to go home and change for a 7pm hockey game at Joondalup, at the other end of the city. It was bitterly cold – even for those who hadn’t been in Thailand for the last month. We had a win when I scored the only goal, although I should have had a couple more with the chances I had.

Sunday I checked my mail to find my car registration and insurance had expired, as had the mailbox for Mensa. Since then I seem to have been continually on the go, yet don’t seem to have actually accrued many hours of chargeable work. I have done some more documentation for Thailand.

Today I have been planning my itinerary for my trip to Houston, which will start in 3 weeks. My circle pacific ticket requires me to stay in Hong Kong on the way and I hope to have some time in San Francisco, back so that will be my next blog. Stay tuned.

A tale of 2 cities

2008-07-17T23:19:00.000-07:00

Friday 18^th

OK, one of them isn’t really a city. I’ve finally left Wichian Buri and am back in Bangkok. Shortly will be leaving the office and later tonight ,flying home.

I left WB at 4:40 after a nearly full day in the office. The operators are starting to put indata and things seemed to be up and running. Still have documentation and reports to finish off once I’m back home.

The contrast between my room up there and the one in the Sofitel Centara is quite dramatic, but then so is the cost. 600 B per night there (about $20) and 5400 B here.

Here is the bathroom in WB. It was built at a time before the Thais got the intellectual rights to those most technical of western inventions – the toilet roll holder and the shower curtain. The pressure problem did get fixed some days ago so I have been able to shower. I then dry myself about 90% with one towel. I then drop this on the floor and wipe the floor so that there is a dry space near the bowl and WC. I use the second towel to finish off.

I also finally got the laptop set up in the room comfortable.

We made good time down over the first 150km before hitting the traffic merging from Lop Buri. Once we creasted the Mountains we were ubder an ominous black clous that stretch for perhaps 100km. There were periods of very string winds but surprisingly rain was not continuous and not always heavy.

We eventually hit the elevated tollway after about 2 ½ hours and then had a good run again til we exited from it. I then realised we were in Sukumvit, which is where I stayed on my first weekend and not near the office. Much apologies on both our parts. We headed back to the freeway through the traffic and eventually I checked in around 8pm.

I was happy to give a big tip to Pairot who had been driving me for most of the month and giving me ad hoc Thai lessons as well.

My room here was a Deluxe on the top floor. I was taken to the end of the corridor which I think means I have a slightly bigger than normal room. It has a kingsize bed and I’m happy to say for the first time in weeks I haven’t had back pain as soon as I lie down. A hostess arrived with a drink a few minutes later. And there was a fruit tray waiting for me.

I shortly headed out. There is a mall a few hundred metres from the hotel and there are street stalls and lesser shopping arcades surrounding it. I had some salad (10B) a some BBQ chicken omn a stick (7B) and a drink (14) – about $1 all up for dinner. I wondered around a bit more but didn’t buy anything else. When I got back to the hotel I was able to get a softdrink from the lounge. Once again I'd missed happy hour by getting in too late. I suspect It will be too early tonight when I have to check out.

I watched some British comedies on BBC Entertainment and a bit of the golf before going to sleep.

This morning I did a bit of work from 5 to 7 then had a swim. They provide you with a robe and slippers in the room and towels at the pool. The pool is set in gardens with an ornamental pool running around the outside of them and an outdoor restaurant and a bar, that look more like a temple.

I then had a long shower followed bybreakfast in the club lounge on my floor. I got to the office around 9-30 after a short walk from the hotel. There are about 6 ex-pats in today. I fixed a few other things I had thought of to make the program faster and posted the update on the FTP site, then burnt a CD of the source code to leave here.

It’s now 1pm so I’ll post this and head to the hotel. My check out is a 4pm so I’ll have lunch and a bit of a wander before I go tonight.

A busy week

2008-07-16T05:22:00.001-07:00

Monday 14^th to Wednesday 15^th

I have a hotel booked for tomorrow night in Bangkok and a flight booked for Friday so its been nose down tail up this week as I make sure I get things finished in time. I have been spending about 10 hours at the office (including travelling to be fair) and then doing some extra work in my room in the evening. It looks like it will be OK.

I have been training the local staff and this has helped find some of the last few bugs. I have also written some documentation.

The field manager, Jim has been in Bangkok the last couple of days but will be in the office tomorrow for a final briefing and handover.

Things seem to be going well for the hotel owner with a new building going up and a couple of carports as well. There is quite a contingent of Pan Orient staff and contractors staying hear, so I guess that’s a good base for his business.

It is also sad to report that the pothole that was fixed last week now seems to have reverted to its previous state with most of the fill lost in the recent rains. And we have had a few storms in the last few days. Not long fortunately. Sunday was fine for my trip but last night the wind was so strong that the washing baskets were blown off the table, the newspaper rack was in danger of taking off and even the condiments on the tables were getting blown off. I headed to my room in case we had a downpour and I got stuck in the canteen.

I continue to be exposed to the various modes of transport here. This shot is of a somewhat full Tuk-tuk. Yesterday I must have left just that bit earlier than normal because there were heaps of kids going to school on their scooters. Some time there would be 3 teenagers per bike with the girls sitting side saddle. In one case, each facing a different direction. Supposedly you need to be 16 to ride one.

I have booked for golf on Saturday with a hockey match at 7pm. I discovered I’d missed a dental appointment and have rebooked that for Monday, since I have actually broken the temporary filling.

This last shot is of some topiary near the railway line in Chai Badan. I think they may be the 12 Chinese zodiac signs (rat, horse etc) but I’m not sure.

It is a 4 day holiday from tomorrow for Thailand, so there may just be a few ex-pats in the office on Friday. It is the start of the Rains Retreat. This is the time when the monks return to a monastery and stayed there for about 3 months during the rainy season. This allows them to mediate and so forth in a cloistered environment. I also found out that being a monk is not necessarily a permanent situation. Many Thais spend a short time as a monk before leaving and resuming a normal life. Even the King spent some time as a monk.

Sunday drivers

2008-07-13T05:12:00.001-07:00

Sunday 14^th

I spent the morning in the office, going again through the process of importing the tanker data. Several more fields have been added to the daily production table, since the information was requested by some reservoir engineers yesterday. Also we have an email from the government department telling us the old daily reports didn’t have all the info required and that we should ensure the new ones include the missing items.

Just after 12, my driver picked me up and we headed, via the Hotel to Chai Badan about 50km away and just off the main road to Bangkok. There we visited two temple complexes side by side. One is a Buddhist temple and the other Chinese. Both have brightly coloured buildings, statues and so forth.

We then headed for the waterfalls, guided only by a 1:1,650,000 scale map of the whole country. Surprisingly we managed to find them relatively easily. Interestingly enough although we saw many signs in both Thai and English guiding us towards them, the final sign at the turn off was only in Thai.

There were a lot of stalls selling food, drink and some T-shirts and similar merchandise. I bought a BBQ chicken half, since I hadn’t had lunch yet. Passing through the stalls, I came to an area with a number of statues, mostly of Buddha but also another that looked like someone else.

I could then hear water and laughter and headed in that direction. Unlike most of the other waterfalls I’ve seen both here and in NZ this isn’t a steep drop but rather a series of natural pools dropping from tier to tier. The water was not a raging torrent either but more like a water slide in a theme park, which is how the local children were using it.

Next we headed south to the dam that creates the huge reservoir in that region. On the way we passed some more large statues, including one of a 3 headed elephant. I bought some more odds and ends at the stalls near the dam parking area and then we headed vaguely back towards “home”. Eventually we found ourselves at the main road and turned north. I saw the signs to the Narai Hills Golf course so we took a detour to have a look. It turns out they do have sticks for hire, so I could have gone there last weekend. The room and 2 game package was slightly more expensive but the stick hire was cheaper so the cost would have been more or less the same, and it is at least an hour closer. From the bit I could see, it seems to have more hills as well. If I get a chance I’ll go there next time.

We then headed back to the hotel, stopping briefly while I bought out the entire stock of chocolates (or so it seems) and some soft drink, arriving at the hotel about 6.

I did get some BBQ corn on the way. Unlike Australia where you get accosted by people wanting to clean your windscreen, here at the stoplights, they have people selling things. 3 cobs of corn for under $1, hand delivered, seems like a good deal.

Saturday night's alright.

2008-07-13T05:09:00.000-07:00

Saturday 12^th

I was again cursed with a good idea at 5am and that was the end of my sleep. I have now written a host of small routines to help create Excel spreadsheets. I then converted the routines I have already written to use these routines rather than the more cumbersome fill excel commands.

I went through some of the input routines with one of the production workers and we have decided that, since they have a system whereby they produce a spreadsheet each day, rather than change their routine dramatically, we will jus import that spread sheet. I had already written the import routine to capture the historic data. Everybody wins.

I have also completed another export routine that essentially exports the entire production figures and then creates a stacked plot of the data, all from within the program.

On the domestic front, there has been poor water pressure in the hotel room. Toilets take forever to fill and yesterday I barely had enough water pressure to make the heater kick in. Today there wasn’t even enough for that. There are showers at the office but it turns out these are cold water only. Tonight there is enough pressure to heat the water so I’ll have a shower before going to bed on the off chance it won’t work in the morning.

I had a related but different experience when I visited Telfer many years ago. They had instantaneous heaters there as well and likewise you needed a minimum flow before the heater kicked in. The problem there was that the “cold” water was luke warm and you couldn’t get enough to cool the heated water back to a reasonable temperature. The trick was to get the flow just at the minimum that triggers the heater and turn it down slightly when it got to hot and then up a bit when it got too cold.

Tomorrow I hope to knock off around the middle of the day and go for a drive down south. There is a big lake with a dam, waterfalls and temples to look at.

A good Friday

2008-07-11T06:41:00.001-07:00

Friday 11^th

Today has been a good one. I was awake at 5am with some ideas of how to handle multiple users on the server, handling updates and so forth. I wrote these down and went back to sleep. Once I got to the office I started to put these in to practice. Preedaporn arrived with the server and set it up and by lunch time we had multiple users up and running.

In the afternoon I finished the monthly report, word document. I had got some of the tables worked out last night and today got the plots automatically generated and inserted into it.

I actually left a bit earlier today and the sun was shining for a change. I went for a little walk up the road towards town taken some photos on the way. Just about every body waved and smiled. The do call Thailand the Land of Smiles for a reason I guess.

I also have a new driver – Dave. Pairoj, who has been driving me for the last few weeks is actually Nick’s driver. Now that Nick is back he is going back to driving him around.

Today I have include some photos of a few of the many scooter riders I have seeen here. Despite seeing 3 on a bike all the time it has been actually difficult to get them in the camera.

There is also the shrine near the gate to the company compound and one of the guards. When our car approaches they open the gate and always salute as we drive through.

Finally there is a shot of some pots being sold at one stall just up the road and one of the nearby houses.

…to late at night

2008-07-10T08:34:00.001-07:00

Thursday 10^th

What a long day. I was still working in my room (much more comfortably than previously) till after midnight. I think I probably had about 3 hours off in the 21 that I was awake yesterday.

The day started with a session with the staff that will be using the program. I did an overview and showed them the main screens they will be using for input. We only did about an hour and will have sessions today and tomorrow.

The rest of the time was spent refining the daily report and staring on the monthly report. The latter is a word document and I had to revise the routines for writing those plus work out some new techniques, particularly for creating a Table of contents. These challenges were solved by the time I went to bed. But there is still a lot of grunt work to do.

Today is crunch time again. Should I go home tomorrow or stay on? If I stay do I take the weekend off and what can I do? I’m not sure I want to risk the weather again playing golf.

Later

It’s now official – I’m not going home tomorrow. Progress is being made and we had a second session this morning. This raised a couple of issues, which I have incorporated into the program. We have also decided to start processing of the data from the 1^st of June. There is historic data going back to 1995 in some cases but not consistent enough to allow recalculation of production for stock changes, exports etc. Data before the 1^st June will be taken as is. Of course that required some further changes to handle the initial conditions for the calculation period.

I tried to rebook my flight for next Friday but was told the flight was booked out, as was Thursday,s. The next confirmed seat was the following Wednesday. Apparently it is a long weekend and lots of people travel. However by the end of the day I had a confirmed seat for next Thursday and still wait listed for Friday.

Fortunately both hockey teams have a Bye next week so I don’t miss any further games.

I have decided to stay here over the weekend and will probably spend time in the office. If that allows me to finish early, I can have a couple of days in Bangkok. Otherwise I will have needed the extra days work to leave on time.

A quick shop on the way home. More junk food and soft drink plus, I hope, some leave in detangler / conditioner spray for my hair.

Barbeque night again. This time we had donuts and buns for desert as well. I hate to think what my weight will be when I get home.

No photos today. I have been taking some on the way to the office but they aren't very clear. Will try again tomorrow.

Early in the morning

2008-07-08T18:41:00.001-07:00

Wednesday 9^th

No I’m not behaving like a drunken sailor. I have however, been awake since 3 am.

On Tuesday, I finished another Excel report and clarified specifications for another 5 or so reports that will be required. I continued to work back in my room after dinner. Then early this morning I was lying in bed thinking about some the things I had to do, so decide to get up and do them. Normally I can then relax and get back to sleep. This morning however, it turned out to that there was enough to keep me going till 7, when I had a shower and breakfast. Not sure how alert I’ll be at the end of the day.

I had another brilliant idea after my shower. The TV was on a stand that is pretty much a writing desk. After moving the TV to the larger of the wooden tables (about 3ft x2ft) I now have a comfortable place to use my laptop. I wish I’d thought of this 4 hours earlier or even 3 weeks earlier since I have been working on the bedside table while sitting on the bed. It sort of works but I find I’m bending over which doesn’t do my back any good. Ho hum. It is better though as I’m sitting at it now.

I also seem to have broken a temporary filling. This has been annoying me for some days and last night I used a toothpick to push out some small bits of the filling caught between my teeth. I ran out of my “spray and leave in” hair product last week and my shampoo and conditioner have nearly run out as well. I already had to buy new deodorant. I think my toiletries are telling me it’s time to go home.

I’m pretty sure I won’t have finished everything, but it should only be reports and documentation still to go by the end of the week, and these can be done back in Australia.

Some other exciting (?) news from WB. Over the weekend they installed an air conditioner in the open area in our office building (where the blessing was held). This means the doors are now kept closed. I found if I left my office door open the A/c in my room attempted to cool the whole of Thailand. Also, and possibly related, the doors between the 2 office building and the other outside door in my building have had the solid panels at the top half replaced with glass, so you can see if someone’s coming.

Breaking news – the pothole in the road through town has been filled in. The excitement never ends in WB.

No photos yesterday so I’ve included- some of the various self contained units and other scenes from the resort.

Taking the long way home

2008-07-07T06:47:00.000-07:00

Monday 7^th

I had lunch at the café near the pro shop again and afterwards was wondering what to do for the next 2 hours when I saw my driver arriving early. Since I had nothing else to do, I checked out and we were on out way by 3. I asked to stop at a Lotus or similar somewhere on the way. We headed back to the Bangkok highway the same way we came in. Again we passed a multitude of places selling the bone reliquaries, as they are called, and after many attempts I finally got a couple of photos that weren’t blurred or out of focus or badly framed. We also passed a dozen or so Chinese temples as well as the usual number of Thai (Buddhist) ones.

The other things we passed a lot of were those huge buses. I kept having to revise how many we saw but I suspect it was 60 or more. Most of them are painted in bright colours with cartoon characters being a popular theme, both Disney and manga.

We skipped the turn off to Pretchabun and headed into Saraburi and a Lotus. I bought some needed deodorant and some less needed soft drink and chocolates. I was thinking of a few other things but it was so busy I decided to give them a miss. WE came out the back of the Lotus parking area and travelled down one of the main streets. It had these poles down the middle with the interesting figurines aat the top and an ornate clock also in the median strip.

Back on the road again we soon met up with the usual North bound highway and sped home. About 5 o’clock the rains just pelted down. It has of course rained very heavily on a number of occasions since I’ve been here but this was the first time I was actually in a car during a rainstorm. Even my driver reacted by slowing down to within 30 kph of the speed limit. I pitied the many people on scooters or in the back of pickups that were on the road at that time.

It did clear up and we eventually came to the white Wat on the hillside I’d noticed on the first trip up. I had since been told that Pan Orient had donated time and money towards this building and the driver again mentioned it. We decide to have a closer look and headed up the mountain in 4 wheel drive. The building is still under construction and this is much more apparent close up. Still needs painting for example. My driver pointed to the tiles on the steps saying Pan Orient and also that he’d actually helped build them. They also paid for the inside tiling. We climbed right to the top where they have 3 copies of the Emerald Buddha, one in each of the 3 costumes for the 3 seasons. The original is in Bangkok and I couldn’t get to see it when I was there a few years ago as the temple was closed for a visit by the prince. The king or his representative changes the cloths on the real statue at the start of each season.

The view from the top of the wat is commanding, as the whole plain can be viewed and I took a movie as well as some still shots. Some times you just can’t fit in the width in a photo without giving up all details.

We headed back to the main road and shortly it was raining again. In the end, with the diversions it was about 3 hours to get back – longer than my round of golf that morning.

Today I got stuck into the main daily report and have more or less finished it, although there will be some fine tuning I expect. I also was given a CD with the standard monthly reports which I will get the program to create if possible. A busy few days still to come if I want to leave by Friday.

The (Royal) Hills are alive….

2008-07-06T05:20:00.000-07:00

Saturday 5^th

We left just before 8am and took along the receptionist from the office, who was going to Lopburi. We drooped her near the turn off and proceeded down the Bangkok road rather than go through Saraburi and a short distance later turned off and headed West. The road was still 2 lanes in either direction but was in poorer condition so we had to slow down. It seems this area specialises in making the Thai equivalent of gravestones. Cremation is the norm here, but brightly coloured pointed, structures are used for the ashes. I’d seen them along the wall of the Wat we pass going to work. We also weren’t sure where it was so again the driver wasn’t going as fast. In the end we found the turn off which was well marked after all, and headed up the road for another 5 or so km before reaching the hotel and golf course. It was then about 10.30. Once I was checked in, the driver left and I dropped of my bag in my room, although I didn’t bother to unpack. My room is on what we’d called the second storey although following the American numbering its 3 on the lift. I have a great view over what I later realised was the 18^th hole.

It wasn’t too much later before I headed to the pro shop. After a bit of pantomime and some stilted Thai and English, they finally realised I wanted to hire clubs and bought out a set of Callaway X18s. Not too shabby for rentals. My green fees were include with the room as part of the package but by the time I’d bought a glove, 8 second-hand Pro-V1 balls, some tees and organised a cart and a caddy it was another $70.

They said I could hit off straight away, even though my tee off time was an hour away, but I decided to do some chipping and putting.

When I was ready to tee off, there was a group of 4 in front of me. I was playing on my own with a cart, so I was quite speedy and quickly caught up with them. On the second we decided to skip past them but saw more groups on the holes ahead so went back and decided to just put up with it. They in fact let me play through on the par 3 3^rd but the next 3 or 4 groups were actually playing in 5s, so were even slower. In the end I played through 4 or 5 groups and took just over 4 hours to complete the round.

The course is very picturesque, which is almost a given for courses in Thailand. This one is located at the base of the mountains some most holes have them as back drops. Surprisingly the course itself is pretty flat overall although most of the holes have mounds and hollows. You just don’t have to climb any hills to speak of. There is plenty of water about and as you play down the 14^th you can see the huge dam in the distance. The greens are quite hard a fast and most have definite slopes, sometimes several.

As for the golf, I played my strokes pretty well but didn’t have a very good score. Didn’t even break 100. I had no 1-putts and 5 3-putt holes and in the end got pretty tired and had some lazy shots. I really only got into trouble off the fairway on a couple of holes and lost only 2 balls. I hit 11 fairways and also 5 greens in regulation, which wasn’t bad with strange clubs.

After I finished, I headed over to the pool, which is near the golf course rather than at the hotel. It has a strange situation where the Jacuzzi is actually colder than the pool.

About 5 I headed back to the hotel and had a Thai massage for an hour. Then I headed back to the golf area and had dinner in the café near the pro shop. I met the 4-some that let me play through first. I think they were Korean or Japanese but one spoke very good English with an American accent. He said they’d played 45 holes today – 2 and half rounds. They were just getting into the hotel about 6-30 and were in the café as well.

As I headed back from the restaurant I saw 3 buses like this in the car park. There were obvious a lot of people on golf tours since they are double deckers. It started to rain as I was eating but not as heavily as it was a few days earlier in WB. Hopefully it will be dry again tomorrow.

I had dessert – icecream cake – and a margarita at the café by the hotel before getting back to my room.

MY shower was cold after golf so I thought I’d better get that sorted and a maintenance guy came and actually had to fix something, so it wasn’t just me. At least it won’t be cold in the morning.

Sunday 6^th

I got up about 7-30 and headed over to breakfast. It was packed. All the people from those huge buses had stayed the night and they were all there, it seems. They headed back before lunch as I saw them departing while I was playing golf. I think I am literally the only Westerner here. At least I have not seen any others since I arrived.

I hit off about 9:20 this morning, again a bit earlier than my booked tee off time. A pair – a man and a woman were partway down the first fairway, and not playing very well. I played through them on the 4^th and through another 2 or 3 groups later on. At least there weren’t any groups of 5 today and the course was a lot less busy. Usually when I played through, I had 2 or 3 holes before I caught up with the next group. In the end it only took me 3 hours to finish today. That’s pretty good going. I wouldn’t mind rounds that quick back home.

My golf was a bit better today with some improvement on putting. I lost 3 balls for 5 penalty shots today. Without them I would have broken 100, bit only just. I hit a lot of good shots again and didn’t have too many tee shots that put me into trouble, than the lost balls. In both cases my second shot was on the fairway. If I knew why I didn’t do that the first time I wouldn’t still be on 14.

I had already organised a late check out so I headed over to the pool then for a brief cool off and a short time in the sun reading a book. Then it was back to the room for a nice long shower. It’s now approaching 2 and I have 3 hours till my driver is due. I’m just about ready to check out.

Hopping to it

2008-07-04T06:37:00.000-07:00

Friday 4^th

Another week has passed and the weekend is again upon us. My driver asked if I was going to Bangkok this weekend and in fact most people assumed I would be. However I decided I’d rather go somewhere else and was looking at playing some golf. There is a lot of info on the net but you still have to have a map to figure out where all these courses are and whether you can reasonably get to them.

I tried to call a number of them but there was no answer, I couldn’t communicate or in one case the hotel was booked out. I talked to a German owner of a golf tour company in Bangkok who just said with only one person I could probably just turn up and recommended a couple of places and pointed out some limitations o9f others. After hunting a bit more on the web I decided to go to the Royal Hills resort and golf. Its this side of Bangkok so probably under 2 hours away. They have a special – 2 games of golf and a room for 1 night for under $100. I will need to hire clubs, a cart pay for a caddy etc but this is not much more than my room alone in Bangkok.

All this seemed to take a lot of time but I did do a reasonable amount of work as well, importing the injection data and starting on the reports.

The driver will be here at 8am and I have a 12 noon tee off booked. Hopefully this will be ample time to settle in and get clubs etc organised. On Sunday I’m playing at 10 and getting picked up at 5. Fingers crossed, the weather will be kind to me. It was sunny for most of today.

Today’s pictures are of a small temple across the road from the hotel. It seems a much bigger one is being constructed nearby. I also got a snap of one of the many frogs that I hear during the night.

Finally, there is a photo of a tricycle taxi. Most of the vehicles I see on the road around here are either 4WD pickups, mostly with dual cabs or scooters. It seems some very young kids are riding these scooters on their own. I’d guess they’d still be primary school age in some case. It is also common to see 3 people on a scooter and occasionally even 4. The tricycle was a bit of a novelty.

Spirited away

2008-07-03T05:58:00.001-07:00

Thursday 3^rd

It’s now official. I have changed my return flight to Friday next week. Another week of missed sport back home.

Today was the blessing ceremony at the office. Is a traditional event for new buildings and even so I’m told, new cars and such like. The blessing keeps the evil spirits away.

There were a number of monks there and most of the office staff were taking part. I made a brief appearance just outside my door but my knees aren’t up to sitting on the floor so I went back into my room closed the door and put on my headphones. I did quite a bit of work. Afterwards there was a meal eating on the floor, which I joined in. The food was unloaded just outside my wondow and a number of the staff were getting it ready for after the ceremony. We all take off our shoes before coming inside all the time, not just for the ceremony.

Work continues to progress, although new things came up even today that required further changes to the design.

I am trying to workout what to do this weekend. I wouldn’t mind a game of golf and there is a reort much closer than Bangkok, so the trip would be shorter. However there’s not much else to do and if it rains like last night it will be a washout.

It was BBQ night again a there was a crowd of peopel from the office with wives in some cases at dinner. I boughht my laptop over to use the net and I am now entering this directly. There are hundreds of bugss around tonight, not just the ones in my programs.

Lightning strikes again

2008-07-02T18:51:00.000-07:00

Wednesday 2^nd

It seems unlikely that the project will be finished by Friday although it is progressing steadily. The fix for reading excel files worked and I wrote another routine to import the historical production date as well as a couple of the daily calculation routines.

I created some graphs of the historical data and found that they took way too long to be printed. So long, in fact, that a couple of times I deleted the printer just to get rid of the print job. Once, when I let it run, it produced rubbish. Fortunately I found a clever way around this and now they get produced after a few seconds.

Tomorrow they are having a blessing ceremony for the new office building – the one my office is in. They have a small shrine set up and have laid down carpets. I’m not sure what impact this will have on work in general and my work in particular tomorrow.

When I left I was actually ready before my driver. Normally he is waiting for me but today I saw him washing the dust of the car with a hose. While I was waiting a butterfly about 3 inches across was feeding on the flowers. I actually managed to get a number of photos.

I had finished dinner and was watching an Aussie movie on TV and doing the crossword when tonight’s storm arrived. It was so severe that we lost the satellite signal. The laundry baskets and the food tables were hastily moved so they didn’t get wet and I moved a number of times before finding a sheltered nook. It was still pelting down half an hour later, with a lot of lightning as well. The driver who bought me up the first time eventually walked me over to my room with someone else’s umbrella and then took it back. I would have been drenched otherwise, even though it’s only 50m or so. It is still raining an hour later but not as heavily.

My attempts to photograph the lightning were spectacularly unsuccessful.

The race is on

2008-07-01T18:22:00.001-07:00

Monday 30^th

By the time I finished messing about with the computer, packed, had a shower etc. it was well after midnight. I awoke 10minutes before the alarm was due, went back to sleep and then was re awakened by the alarm on the phone. The bedside clock didn’t go off. I had breakfast and was checking out about 10 to 7 and I noticed the driver was already there. He loaded my bags while I completed the checkout. We were on the road 5 minutes later and took only 5 minutes to get to the motor way and about 2 ½ hours back to WB hotel. Heres the big BMW ad I was telling you about yesterday and yet another Budha image on the gates to a temple somewhere on the road.

Again we took the elevated tollway, which ends rather abruptly, and we descend to the main road. This is still 3 lanes each way with the 2 frontage lanes on either side also 3 lanes wide and one way traffic. You can’t exit directly from the main road and there are no intersections. You have to cross into the frontage road first and then exit from there. Because the frontage roads are one way they have these U-turn bridges from one side to the other even 10 km or so. Again you have to exit the main road to get on to the bridges.

I dozed most of the way home– or at least I had my eyes shut.

I was a bit dopey most of the day but forced myself to keep at it. I was actually quite lively by the end of the day.

I was chatting with one of the company men over dinner, a big, black guy from the states, who has been working all over the place (as so many of them do in that line of business). He had some interesting stories to tell. Apparently the rig was moving so he spent the night in the hotel. He usually lives on site.

I watched a bit of Wimbledon on the TV and did the crossword before heading back to my room to finish the unpacking. Boring!

Tuesday 1^st

I didn’t even get around to posting my blog from yesterday.

Time is starting to run out if I want to be on the plane on Friday. Today I wrote the import routine for the tanker shipment data. I got it all working, including options to record new names, trucks and trailers that are found in the imported data. When I installed it on Pui’s PC it fell over with and “old format” message. She has a newer version of Office than I do. Fortunately I could post a query on the net and had what I hope is the solution just before home time. I have put it in and will test it tomorrow.

While pui and Bee are working on the data I started on the calculations and made a decent bit of progress this afternoon. Maybe I’ll make it.

There were a number of power outages this afternoon and a heavy shower about 4 or 5. It is now just bucketing down at 9 pm. There was also a big storm with thunder and lightning last night. The monsoons are here.

While watching the tennis last night I noticed lterally dozens of gekko’s or similar small lizards running over the ceiling in the canteen. They especially seem to cluster around the light bulbs. One even was running over the TV screen for most of the night.

There are also a number of kittens about the place. This one was curled up under the paper rack.

This morning, I found out that you can get wireless internet connection in the canteen. Can’t get it in my room though and its too wet to go over now.

Following the capitalist imperative

2008-06-29T09:00:00.001-07:00

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

2008-06-28T05:03:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-27T10:53:00.001-07:00

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

2008-06-26T23:05:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-26T22:59:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-24T17:55:00.001-07:00

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

2008-06-23T18:54:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-22T18:39:00.000-07:00

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.

Out and About

2008-06-21T21:05:00.000-07:00

Saturday 21^st

This morning as I was about to leave my room I had to make a quick about face to get my sunglasses. After 3 or 4 days of rain and clouds it was a lovely clear and sunny day.

I had breakfast and headed for the office for a few hours. I had some ideas about recording and calculating tests for multiple zone wells that I crystallised and also had time to check my email, fix a bug in one of the systems used back home and call Mum and Dad using Skype.

About 10 my driver was called and he took me back to the hotel to drop of my PC then to a Wat near town. This seemed to be devoted, if that’s the right word, to animals and especially chickens, but to a lesser extent elephants and horses. The temple was surrounded by statues of the aforementioned animals, with a particularly large collection just outside the grounds. There must literally hundreds of statuettes ranging from about 1 ft upwards in size.

We then headed back past the office to Sri Thet, where there is a historical park. There are a number of ruins of approximately 11^th century buildings and a large mound akin to a pyramid. In addition, about 20 years ago they found remains of a number of bodies as well as implements and jewellery dating back 2000 years.

We headed back to Wichian Buri and, since it was about 12-30 or so, we stopped at the office again where our lunches were waiting for us. Some crumbed fish and a tuna salad today.

About an hour later we were heading for Pretchabun, the nearest city of any size and about 100km away to the North. We past the hotel again to get back to the main highway, where we travelled at speeds of up to 130kph. Technically we would have been hooning if we were in WA since the limit according to signs, was 90kph for cars. Most of the way was on dual lane highway scarrying very little traffic o it wasn't actually dangerous.We travelled along a mostly flat plain, often seeming to head for the mountains but always turning before we reached them. It reminded me to some extent of New Zealand, since the mountains were steep and jagged and rose suddenly from the flat. Of course, there were no sheep to be seen. We passed through a couple of sizeable towns and many smaller ones. Many of the larger towns have these archways over the road. These were built to celebrate the King’s 80^th Birthday and/or 60 years on the throne, both of which occurred in the last 2 years.

Eventually we reached the outskirts of the city and saw a Lotus and a Big C (I though the driver was saying “Pixie”) next to one another. I opted for the Lotus shopping centre and bought a power board that would take Australian plugs (as well as most others) for $3.30, a bedside lamp for $10, a phone charger for $4 and some food and drink. Although I have a converter plug for my Australian power board that I brought with me, I can’t fit it into the wall socket without unplugging the fridge, because it’s too big.

We then went into the city proper and visited one of the larger temple areas. As well as several temples there is a school for monks and other buildings, all of them very colourful.

I then wanted to see the mountains, since Spencer said the scenery was spectacular. We had passed a sign to some waterfalls so headed for them. Eventually we turned of the main road onto a road leading up the mountain. The sign said it was about 20km to the falls. The road was very steep and we seemed to not be doing more than 30 or 40 so its was looking like a long trip. We reached some checkpoint and after the driver a conversation with the man there headed off on a side road. This took us, including a 1 km section of dirt road before reaching another sealed section, to the top of the mountain where it ended. On one side you could see the plains all the way to the far mountain range and on the other just mountains receding into the distance. Unfortunately it was quite hazy so the photos don’t really reflect the view very well. We headed back down that steep road to the checkpoint and turned back to town. I was told the road to the falls wasn’t in good condition.

It was nearly 6-30 when we got home, so that was late enough. During the trip I practiced my Thai with short and stilted conversations with the driver and by trying to read various signs. I practice by reading street signs as we pass them and I am still struggling to read more than the first 2-4 characters.

A rose by any other name

2008-06-20T19:54:00.000-07:00

Friday 20th

This morning I again had scramble eggs toast and bacon for breakfast. However unlike yesterday they were hot. This was achieved by a little known device called a microwave oven. I guess if I stay long enough I’ll learn all the tricks. For example the big screen flat TV in the canteen is a company one and has dozens of cable channels include a lot in English. However, I found too many channels as bad as none when trying to decide what to watch so gave up and went to my room.

The building with the carvings is the private home of the owner of the hotel. This morning I could get a better picture. However some of my first shots turned our “fuzzy” because of the condensation on the lens. The same thing happens to my glasses every time I leave the room, which is air-conditioned (if I remember to turn it on).

I took some photos on the way to the office. The town itself is fairly boring but there is a temple just as we turn to the road to the office. The drive is excitement itself with vistas of rice paddies and potato fields. kaao and man farang. The latter I think translates as “western thing”. There are also quite a number of these minitractors on the road. They use them to pull the cart as a means of transport and once they get to their fields, unhook the trailer and use it to plow or whatever farmers do with tractors.

Today was all about names – field names, well names, site names, truck, trailer and driver names. I wrote most of the edit screens and reports for those tables and started getting some of their actual data in. I used a monthly summary of tanker movements as my source and after sorting filtering and collating got a list of trucks and trailers that seems ok and a list of drivers that has the same driver multiple times with different spellings. I have the “definitive” list from the service contractors but it looks like a manual job to match up the multiple variations with the “correct” version. And they say programming is dull!

I am having most of tomorrow off and going to Prechabuan, which is a small city about 100km from here in the mountains. I have a driver and car for the day but not till 10am, so I’m planning a few hours in the office beforehand.

Jim arrived back and Spencer will leave Sunday afternoon so they have their handover tomorrow. Sunday morning I’ll meet with them both to discuss the program.

I left my phone charger at home so I’m hoping to find a replacement here and I wouldn’t mind getting a cheap bedside light. I also found a few days ago that my bracelet had broken. Can’t quite see how that happened as I wore it one day, took it off and the next morning a link had broken, Anyway I bought it in Bangkok the trip before last so I hope to get it fixed before I leave.

Let the work begin

2008-06-20T02:10:00.000-07:00

Thursday 19th

After finishing my blog last night I decide to read a bit before going to sleep. This revealed 2 problems. The light switch can’t be reached without getting out of bed, which sort of defeats the “read till your eye close” method of dropping off and the bed was very hard.

I have had some back problems from several weeks before I left for NZ. These paradoxically occur when I am lying down and it’s fine when I’m moving about even engaged in vigorous activity such as sport. The hard bed didn’t help much but I did get a reasonably good night’s sleep. It’s just getting up at the end that’s painful. I woke briefly a few times but the final awaken was caused by a rather heavy rainstorm about 6:30. I have adopted the guideline that if it’s too dark to read the time on my watch, it’s too early to get up anyway, so I rolled over for another 45 minutes of kip.

I had showered and dressed and was heading for breakfast about 10 to 8 when I saw my driver coming towards me. It seems my attempt to add the half past to the 8 o’clock in Thai last night had been missed (or mis-pronounced). Breakfast was another buffet or that somewhat less luxurious than in Bangkok. I had ham, scrambled eggs bacon and toast, most of which was coolish.

We arrived at the office about 8:30, where I checked my email and so forth. The pictures show my office, the passageway outside of it with a view of the adjoining farm land and part of the nearby yard, a mixture of farm and oil field elements.

I then started on the first minor modification – allowing the user to define the directory where the data is located. This approach is used in several of my programs but not in this particular one and will be necessary so that different users here and in Bangkok can all access the same data. This seemed straightforward but some how something I did cause a weird error that stopped the program from running. In the end, I had to recopy the original main file and manually redo the changes to get rid of it. Just one of those strange things that happens occasionally.

I then started looking through some of the files I had been given and in particular the ones that record the tanker trips. This displayed the problems caused by the romanisation of Thai names, as one driver had 4 or 5 different English spellings. I was still finding some other typo errors in the file when one of the women came and said lunch was ready. It was nearly midday.

Sure enough, individual lunches had been sent from the canteen. The western version had a plastic bag of tomato/macaroni soup, braised steak and vegetables and apples in platic containers. The Thai version had soup and several stir fry type dishes and rambutan and longan for fruit. I don’t think I’ll starve here.

I caught up with Spencer as he was eating his lunch in his room and then we moved to my room with a whiteboard and projector. We had a good session and I had enough info to do most of the data design once we’d finished, deleting tables from the UK system that were not required, adding others and modifying some of the rest. A lot of this is due to naming conventions, which vary from company to company. In some ways this is more like the Indian system than the UK one.

I left the office around 5:30 and found my driver already waiting. We stopped at a 7-11 in the town on a street perpendicular to the one we use to get to work. There was a reasonable number of shops of various sorts there and a bit further on, so he said, a market. There may be somewhere to explore in a few days if I get some time off and can work out how to get there. He also told me that Wednesday is BBQ night and there was indeed a veritable smorgasbord of delicious BBQ food. I had crabs, prawns, pork spare ribs, chicken drumsticks, steak, mussels, snapper with a sauce that turned out to be quite spicy and some salad. Afterwards there was fresh fruit and caramel broule. (see note above re: starvation, danger of) I am attempting to learn the Thai words for the food I’m eating and this included sapparot, taeng moh and kha nun for pineapple, watermelon and jackfruit.

I then read or perhaps re-read, some of yesterday’s Bangkok post and then wandered around the hotel area. Its name by the way is Hotel Pyramid. Some of the buildings are made from pine logs (or at least have a veneer of them), looking quite rustic and one large building of unknown purpose has some wooden carvings of hunting guns and various animals (baboon pictured) on or around it.

The canteen itself is an outdoor pavilion with some interesting carving and a couple of wooden lounge/sofa sized chairs, which are themselves pieces of art. It is now 9 o’clock and having made the mistake of lying down reading for as while before writing this, ( and suffering when I got up again), it is time to do so again and get some sleep.

Prawn to King 4

2008-06-18T20:39:00.000-07:00

Wednesday 18th

The business class on Thai (or at least on that particular type of aircraft used by Thai for the Perth to Bangkok route) is nowhere near the level of those on Qantas or Singapore Airlines when I flew to India. However, it is still much roomier than the economy seats with just a 2-2-2 configuration. There is plenty of leg room and you do have your own mini screen, although like the Qantas flight from Sydney last month, you can change channels but you can’t rewind or pause your movie. I watched “Penelope” and the “Spiderwick Chronicles”. The food was reasonable with several courses and a choice for the main – I had snapper.

We left 20 or so minutes late and caught up some but not all of that delay. Getting through customs was quite quick but there was still a long wait for our bags, even though mine was one of the first cozen or so off. It was very easy to find the hotel rep and the car – a Mercedes – was called. It was still after midnight by the time I arrived at the Sofitel Centara Hotel.

This is a luxury hotel and I had a deluxe room on the 20^th floor. The top 4 floors are Deluxe and you actually need a key to get to those floors on the lift. They also have a lounge on the 22^nd but after midnight was a bit late to use it, although this morning I had a peek after breakfast. The weather was overcast or perhaps it was smog.

The room itself was very nice with a bit of a sitting room at one end. Again it was wasted with a late check in and early check out. It would be nice to stay a few days – maybe at the end of the trip. My room overlooks a school and the students were juts entering the building as I was looking at the view this morning.

I got to breakfast a bit after 8 and like a lot of these hotels there was quite a choice. I started with a couple of seafood skewers with prawns and fish, a small pork steak and a small piece of spinach omelette. I then had toast, bacon and a fried egg. Finally I had some fresh fruit and 2 small Danish pastries. There was fresh juice as well.

Suitably fortified, I was trying to work out how to call for a car, since it had been raining but then decided to walk instead. It was only 500m or so as it turned out. I met Chris, who I talked to on the phone and gave him a quick look at the system and was given some sample reports. I tried to create a setup program but must have missed a file since it didn’t install properly. Rather than fiddle about, I decided I’d leave till I got to the field office. A driver was called and we left in a Cab 4 Toyota ute. We stopped at a shopping mall right next to the hotel where I changed some money and bought some sunscreen, mosquito repellant and some drinks for the trip. We are getting just over 30 baht per $A now, about `10% higher than last year when I came for golf. Then we picked up my case and headed North. It was about 11:15 but then.

The trip was expected to be about 3 hours, which turned out to be about right and include a short stop for lunch about 2 hours in. This was at a small local eatery and I had some chicken curry and rice. This with a can of soft drink cost 80 baht. The trip started in the city and was mostly on main roads, usually at least 2 lanes. As we got further North we got into the country which is mostly flat. Then suddenly there were hills – rocky jagged ones – rising out of the otherwise flat plain. We passed through them and saw a temple on the side of one of them.

We drove through the town of Wichian Buri, which as I had been informed is quite small. The office is in a relatively new brick building with a number of containers and workshops nearby.

I met Spencer and James, the 2 supervisors. James left after a short time but will be abck on Friday for the next monthly shift. I was assigned an office and then headed back to check in to the hotel and drop off my bag so my driver could head back to Bangkok. I spent most of the rest of the day setting up. My attempts tomuse the network printer weren’t successful. Initially I installed the XP driver I found on a Thai download site for Kyocera. I then found a Vista driver on a website in the UK but this still didn’t work. By then someone had turned up with a HP printer which I have on my desk, together with a second screen (old CRT) and a keyboard. I got on the net without any problems and checked some emails . By the time they were sorted it was 6 and my (new) driver had been waiting for more than half an hour.

The hotel is 5 minutes past the town on the Bangkok side and about 15 minutes all up from the office. The room is quite spacious with grey marble tiles and pine furniture but definitely not the same standard as last night. It is similar to the hotel we stayed at in Pattaya last year and adequate for sleeping. It does have a wardrobe and so I have actually unpacked my case – something that never happened in NZ.

The company runs a canteen here with breakfast and dinner provided at the hotel site and lunch, so I’m told, delivered to the office. They also have a laundry service and you get your own little basket – sort of like a shopping basket with a lid. They were quite surprised when after writing my name on in English, I then wrote it in Thai as well, as I’d seen on the other baskets.

There were 2 Thai dishes and rice in a buffet style and a Western meal as well. I had some prawns in noodles and then steak, mash potatoes and vegetables plus a kidney bean salad. A banana was my dessert.

There really isn’t a lot to do once you’ve eaten (other than write the blog of course) We are too far out of town to walk there and there probably isn’t much to do once you get there. I’ve just checked the TV and there seems to be about 5 or so Thai channels only. Good thing a brought my books.

Here we go again (ooh)...

2008-06-17T00:43:00.000-07:00

Tuesday 17th

Here I am in another airport. This time it's Perth International and I am in the Qantas Club since I'm flying business class (on Thai).

It's a late afternnonn departure so I've had the morning to get ready, copy files to my new laptop, pack etc. So much more civilised than getting up at 6am or earlier. However it will be nearly midnight before I get to my hotel in Bangkok.

I have been to Thailand 5 times, two of which I have blogged. This time I'm going for business rather than pleasure.

A few months back I was contacted by Pan Orient regarding my Production Management software. This is a system that has been used in the UK for well over 10 years and the same system which I customised for Cairn India 18 months ago.

After the usual email discussions and a few phone calls I was informed tha I was successful just after I returned from NZ a few weeks back. I had a meeting yesterday so this was the first daay I could leave and stay for a fortnight. I also had to get a work visa which was organised and picked up last week. I had suggested next Sunday but the supervisors at the field work 1 month shifts and the one who would be most helpful finishes his shift on Sunday.

The office is in a town called Wichian Buri some 200km North of Bangkok. IN answer to my qury about tourist attractions shopping and golf, Spencer replied that it was a farming town surrounded by paddy fields and as for shops, I'd be in luck if I was after tractor parts. Good thing I've bought a few books.

I have been re-reading the first of the Thai for Beginners books, trying to brush up on the small amount of familiarity with the language I developed last year (and then more or less forgot). I suspect it's too little too late but anything is better than nothing. I hope this trip will give just a bit more competence than last time.