It has been a while since I don’t sit behind the wheel, but I seem to remember that it you sort of need your engine on to park… 
Any Man U supporters out there? We seem to have plenty around here, and they can get a MU sponsored Visa and get merchandise as the spend their baht away.
All a bit crazy considering that England is about 10.000 KMs away! But they really like their footie around here. Somebody was telling me that he was watching the Eurocup game Spain v Italy in some bar in Kao San. And there he witnessed some Thai guy -wearing Xavi’s shirt- fall to his knees when Spain won the game. Just as they say: Amazing Thailand.
Lumpini park is a nice park not too far from my condo -no flat, not apartment. Here it is a condo. Or kondooow as would be the Thai way of saying it. Anyway, back to the original track: lumpini. A nice big park in the centre of town. Usually busy early mornings and late at night, just when the heat is bearable. Nice green area with plenty of shade, a lake and even some little lizards (they are about half my size).
People go there for a walk, a run, meet up for their choir practise, play cards, practise tai chi and all sorts of other things you might or might not to expect to see in a park. Last time I was there I saw this guy teaching a tango lesson. Picture it: park, 9 am, band stand in the background, 30 degrees, + 60% humidity, very serious Thai guy, Thai lady with sun visor, tango music coming out of very old tape player. The couple dancing away with passion to the loud music. Hmm quite and image for before breakfast.
If you come to town you might want to visit Lumpini. One of the few green areas around and you will certainly get an snapshot of Thailand’s culture and it’s people.
Eating and enjoying food at any time of the day or the night is very much part of Thai culture. Bangkok has an outrageous number of places where you can buy food. And I don’t call them restaurants on purpose. You can get food from street carts, garages-come-food halls and of course there are restaurants too.
On Saturday night I had the chance to enjoy dinner at one of the finest restaurants in town. Appropriately named Vertigo, the restaurant is at the roof top of the Banyan Tree hotel, that makes it a floor 61. I took some photos but my camera is crap at night so better put somebodyelse’s photo.
We weren’t too sure on how the food was going to turn out as some of the reviews we had seen online weren’t great, but the setting is so impressive that we had to try.
As well as an extensive a-la-carte menu with plenty of complicatedly named dishes they offer several degustation menus. Went for one of this and had some caviar, crab bisque, wild salmon, Kobe beef, and a few other things. Small dishes but delicious. Out of these delicacies what I enjoyed the most was the mashed potato that came with the salmon. Weird, I know, but I hadn’t had potatoes since I arrived and nearly had forgotten how much I like them. That’s not to say that the rest of the food wasn’t delicious. We enjoyed our dinner very much, it wasn’t at all as the reviews we had seen. May me we just got lucky
And this is what some would call “proper” thai places, certainly you can get some amazing food providing you are not too fuzzy about they hygiene of your surroundings..
Tom Yun Kung pizza, and please don’t forget the lime
For the last two months and the coming three we are on rainy season, the monsoon. We get rain just about everyday for about 2/3 hours. When it rains it means business, no silly annoying drizzle like in the UK. Today was no exception and we had rain, but this afternoon’s storm was something out of this world.
Somebody mentioned World of the Worlds, I agree. A big grey/black stain of clouds started to get close and low. From the 27th floor it felt you could touch them. In twenty minutes we went from normal day light to near complete dark, even the Thais were amazed and brought their cameras out. I couldn’t be any different, this is what I was seeing from my desk:
About half an hour after the photo was taken I couldn’t even see the golf course. Amazing to watch.
This city have tons of shopping malls, within 10 minutes from my apartment I know 8. Massive building with hundreds of shops inside, you can find anything from Versace to Zara or even buy a Masseratti. But clothes shops are clothes shops, I don´t get all that excited about them.
Pantip plaza is a different kind of mall. Many say it is a geek´s paradise, I wouldn´t push it that far, but certainly it is quite cool to walk around its shops and being able to buy all sorts of IT equipment. Come here to shop for that new mother board that you know you need, hard drives, cases, laptops, printers… even the stickers “intel inside” that would make you home made PC look just like any other out of the shop (although you probably wouldn’t like that) You can get software too, in fact Pantip plaza is like one massive “Top Manta”. It is one of the most renowned places to get counterfeit software, games and movies. You can get the latest blockbuster for 100 B, if you can’t make it to the cinema you can pick up the movie from here and watch it at home. Just that easy.
Sign seen outside a restaurant, would you eat there?
image copyright mir
and that refers to be on the road in Thailand.
This weekend I headed down south for a bit of R&R by the beach. To get there my choices where fairly limited: 4 hours by train or 2.5 in a mini-van. Decided for the mini-van not knowing that I was signing in for an adventure sport.
Most people in this country walk slow and aimlessly, meandering pointlessly. However, give them a car and their kamikaze side comes up.
There are no rules on the road. Overtaking takes place on the right, left and even using the hard shoulder. A 2 lane road can easily cope with 3 cars abreast, this afternoon I had the pleasure to be in the 4th car in such a road. The technique to pass another car seems to be quite easy: you get very close, very very close to the point that you can see the mileage dial on the other car, you get close on the right, then you move to the left and very soon the other driver realises that the harassment means that he should move out of the way.Easy.
Lines on the road are carefully followed. Cars use them as guidance, they drive in such a way that half of the car is to the right and the other to the left. If somebody comes in front, oh well, we might move…
Can’t possibly describe with words how it really feels to have so many near misses in 2 hours that you loose count. On behalf of the daredevil Thai drivers I must say they have amazing skill and after the first half hour i stopped clinching my teeth and I actually got to enjoy the drive. Guess it didn’t hurt that I fell sleep 
what you are saying