I'm OK!!

Hey there. Well I just checked on CNN.com and apparently there were some blasts in Bangkok. Just to be clear, I'm OK and no where near Bangkok right now! I'm on a small island about 5 hours away from Bangkok. You can call me if you're worried. Peace and Love to all, New Year's is about 3.5 hours away for us :)

Going to Koh Chang

Hey all, just wanted to give a quick hello and say that I'm going to Koh Chang tomorrow morning, bright and early. 6:30am Saturday morning is 3:30pm PST friday afternoon. I may or may not have a connection to the internet during this time but I will have my cel phone. Good 'Ole Asia has cel phone reception everywhere, even in the middle of the water in between islands. So I'll be good to go on the mobile. Sacha and I are going, we've already booked our bus ride out there. It's about a 5 hour bus ride (could be 7 or 8 Thai hours).

I hope everyone has a great new years celebration. I'll get to celebrate it 15 hours earlier than you folk! Cya Tuesday...

Lost in translation part 1

Hey! Ok, so it's quite late here, like 2am here. I tend to work better at night when I have just my thoughts and my laptop. I'm going to grab some V8 and I'll be right back.

I've been drinking nothing but V8 juice for the past two weeks so I can "cleanse". Hahahaha who are we kidding, I just love the food here too much to ever do something as silly as that. Today I had some really good Cashew Chicken and vegetarian Lasagna at what was called a "Thai Oldies" restaurant. It was ironic because the restaurant had all kinds of Asian cuisine but yet it was styled as an old diner such as one you'd see in the movies or at a modern "old style diner" you'd see in the US.

I know the title is Lost in Translation but I wanted to fill you in on my day today. After dinner, Sacha and I met up with Hong to go to "Health Land Spa" to get an authentic Thai massage. This was just amazing. We literally went to this really nice spa-esque building and had a full 2 hour massage for the equivalent of:

350.00 THB Thailand Baht = $11.4814 CAD

Yup, you got it, $11.48 after conversion. This is kind of expensive actually because we only get 30 baht per dollar and we used to get around 33 0r 34. I was stretched and bent into all kinds of shapes and the best part is when they twist your back around them and you hear your entire back cracking, I burst out laughing because it literally sounded like it would in the movies, where the guy bends his head to the side and you hear the cracking (which is totally fake by the way) however in my case my back really cracked and all 30 vertebrae or whatever cracked within a second. Haha too funny.

Ok onto my lost in translation depiction. This is to illustrate the attempts at possible Thai to English translation and what it really comes out as.

It's interesting to see some of the billboards and displays and advertisements out in Thailand. Ones such as "I'm cool because I speak 'Wall Street English'". I mean you just wouldn't see a sign that would blatantly tell you that you'd be cool if you spoke "Wall Street English". I mean sure North American Media will forever tell us that wearing sunless tanner will make us beautiful, however it doesn't do so by directly saying that in writing, it tries to brainwash us with imagery. Why use imagery when you can just get to the point and say that you would be cool only if you spoke "Wall Street English". Sorry no picture for that one.

Ok so the next item speaks for itself. This isn't a very good example I know but it's funny to read this stuff on a daily basis.

Or how about this one. Do you think this would entice me to "stop by" and see the sale?

I don't even understand what they're trying to get across. "Imagine very sales". To provide some context for this ad, behind the sign is a huge outlaying of various music CD's that people seemed determined to purchase.

Ok, this next image is above a payphone. It's offering a way to dial international calls and "save money".

"The Extremely Save International Call by 007". 007 is the prefix you'd dial. I guess what they're trying to say is that if I use this service, I'll save extremely? Interesting...

Ok I know that was lame, I guess I thought it was funny but my examples are limited as I don't always have my camera with me for the moment of the hilarious billboard ad. I'll practice due diligence on my part to have a camera with me more often to capture those shots. Luckily my phone has a camera.

Merry Christmahanukwanzakkah

Well hello everyone! I hope everyone had a great Christmas and I truly hope the new year is great for everybody. All the best.

So I've been in Thailand for a month now. I've met some great people and had some good times. Last weekend I was in Pattaya, about a 1.5 hour drive away (if you're on north American time). If you're on Thai time, it may take up to double that. Our bus broke down on the way there so we were stuck on the expressway. Luckily they dispatched a new bus for us... My friends Blue and Hong have a friend in town from Seattle and he likes to stay at nice places, places I couldn't normally afford on an income of nothing. So he rented a hotel at the Sheraton in Pattaya. This place was so beautiful I was amazed.

Now the middle picture is one of only two rooms that have the exclusive pool inside your room so we didn't stay in that. The third picture is of the lobby and its so incredibly beautiful. I was really grateful to have been there.

This is Hong and I on our way to Pattaya. I swear I have a tan but because of the light editing it makes him look darker and me look more pale haha.

Next week Sacha and I are going to Koh Chang, it should be great. Apparently it's a beautiful island, one of the largest in Thailand too.

Well that's all for now, my next post will be "lost in translation". I just find it hilarious how the people here try to translate or put up billboards in English but it just doesn't quite work all the time. Ok, off to find an apartment. Bye :)

New Mobile number (66) 850 210 567

Sorry everyone calls them "mobiles" here so when I say "Cel" they're like "WTF". So I have a new mobile number. For the price of a cup of coffee I can buy a new cel phone number here with an entirely new company just by putting the sim card into the phone. No contracts, nothing holding you hostage like North American wireless. It's great. So my new number is +66 850 210 567. Send me a message or dare to call me. This new number is on DTAC which is great. They're soooo cheap, we're talking like a penny a minute. Anyways, just a quick hello to all, I'm well and enjoying the Curry!

Ciao!

Ko Samet

Well hello there. Ok I know it's been a while and you're asking, "What has Jeremy done in Bangkok so far...?" Well this is the first of a few posts to answer that question. It's been a while since my post and I do apologize. I had been waiting to post because I had hoped to have some good pictures to include in my blog.

Ok so this first post is to talk about my trip to Ko Samet with Julie. I was pretty excited because the reason I came to Bangkok in December was to travel with Julie after she was done school. So we ended up going to Ko Samet on the weekend. It involved us meeting at Ekkamai station on the BTS (http://www.bts.co.th). The BTS is a skytrain that is quite efficient. It's nice to be able to get around Bangkok using the public transit system because it's pretty efficient and quick. Traffic is disgusting in Bangkok at the best of times! They also have an underground Subway system that is only a few years old and also quite efficient. So I've been trying to find an apartment to live in that is close to a station as I would NEVER own a car here and using taxis all day could get a bit expensive.


So we meet up and head over to the bus station and we load up on goodies at the local 7-eleven. Note: there are 7-11's at every street corner throughout Thailand. It's great, at 4am if you're craving a loaf of bread, you can go and purchase one. We have a 3 hour bus drive out of the city to get to the Ocean where we then would head on a ferry to actually get us to the island. The image on the right is a view of the area once we get to Ko Samet. It's very beautiful. Hard to believe that we can go from the crazy busy-ness of Bangkok to a quiet island only in a few hours drive and boat ride.

Once we get there, a truck drives us to a resort where Julie has stayed before. It's called Tub-Tim resort. Once we arrive, we find a nice bungalow just off the beach for about 600 baht/night. We go walk around and are surrounded by hot white sand and blue water.

We spend the next 2 days lying on the beach and going out to nice restaurants. All these resorts are right along the beach and at night they have the most romantic setup on the beach. They turn the beach into these lay-down tables with mats where you can dine and drink. This is definitely the island to take someone for a romantic getaway. We just sat there in awe of the beautiful shoreline and the pleasant warm air while eating our wonderful sauteed chicken and cashew with peppers and onions on a bed of rice or sweet and sour chicken. I think my breath was taken away a few times that night as it was so beautiful. I'm sure Julie was wishing her guy back at home could have been here.

Check this out! Here is a google map of the island of Ko Samet:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=&ie=UTF8&t=h&om=1&z=12&ll=12.561266,101.46492&spn=0.163531,0.31929

Welcome to my blog

Hey everybody,

Just a quick note to say hi and thanks for visiting. You can email me at iamjeremy@hotmail.com.

Please note the oldest post is at the bottom so you may want to start there and work your way up. Don't be afraid to leave comments also after each post.

--Jeremy

I made it into Bangkok

I know i'm a few days behind but I'm trying to get all caught up with my postings. So I made it into Bangkok. I got in at 12:30 mid day on Nov 27. I arrived in the new Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok, which is their huge brand new airport that was surrounded with political issues during construction. It's now up and running and I honestly wasn't too overly impressed with it.
It just looks like a big concrete and glass building. Very grey really. Apparently they're still putting the finishing touches on it so maybe they have to still make it look pretty.

Ok I just did some googling to find pictures of the airport and maybe it does look more impressive than what I was able to see in my quick arrival. Apparently it's now the largest airport terminal in the world! It also has the tallest control tower in the world.

Once I got there Sam (the driver) found me. I was lucky enough to have Darrell and Lynn's driver pick me up so he could take me back to their apartment. They offered to let me stay here for a bit until I get settled into a place. I must say it's pretty nice. The address is:

Jaspal Residential 2
Penthouse Suite 1
82 Soi 23 Sukhumvit Rd
Klong-Tonnua Wattana
Bangkok, Thailand 10110

They live in the penthouse suite with 2 floors. It's nice, I must say. They also have a housekeeper come every day (6 days) a week and clean the apartment. She does laundry, sweeps, mops and does all this each and every day. The apartment is always spotless. Wow how I'd love to have someone cleaning my place each day.

So for a few days afterwards, I was overwhelmed again and kinda depressed. I dunno, I mean I was happy to be here but it finally sunk in that I'm here, not in Canada anymore. I was all alone in this big city to do whatever I wanted. It was a scary feeling. So I spent the first few days exploring around the larger areas; I went to MBK Center. This mall is great. Its five huge floors of anything you can imagine. It's not like a normal mall with nice shops and whatnot, no its all kind of random people selling whatever it is they can (clothes, cel phones, bootleg music/movies/software, copies of every brand of clothing you can imagine, etc). All the prices are negotiable (as is the way with almost everything in thailand and is a part of the culture to bargain). And, they have a huge food court with every type of food you can imagine. The Pad Thai is to die for. I'll make a special trip from the skytrain to the mall just for their pad thai. It was the first thing I did when I got off the plane was go to MBK for pad thai. Heh anyways...

So after I got my fash-on at malls for a few days, I got a hold of Julie and Sacha (both Canadian friends from Kelowna but also in Bangkok) and we all went out for dinner to "Sizzler". This is a "westernized" restaurant. I quote westernized because they never quite get it right, the food is usually close, but it's missing something. Oh well, it seems close enough to the real thing for a lot of people. After going to Sizzler, we went to a night market. Now a night market is different from most things we'd see in Canada. A night market is a huge gathering of people selling random stuff again (mostly all clothes) in an open space in the city. Oh yeah this whole time we're in a place called "Pinklao". It probably won't mean much to you other than that it's an area closer to Julie and somewhat outside of the Bangkokian area. That was fun!

I can't remember if I did this next part before or after Pinklao, I think it was before. I went to a mall called The Emporium. This is a nicer, chic designer mall with lots of very unique and interesting stuff. The prices seem to be all fixed as with most higher end malls. The reason I came here today was because I needed a cel phone, or as asians call it, a "mobile". I knew this was going to be expensive because I'm picky when it comes to technology. I looked around for a while checking out Nokia's store. Sony had a store too. I was almost going to buy a Sony phone but looked at the new Samsung Slider SGH D-900 and had to buy it. It's a great phone with so much functionality. It slides to have a small profile. It comes with a 3.0 megapixel camera, a built in MP3 player with stereo headphones that double as a headset if you get a call. I was quite impressed with the features, including the little things you don't normally look for in a phone but are glad you have when you use it. I paid 15,290 baht for the phone (about $466 CND) which includes a sim card with AIS 1-2 Call. The cool thing with Asian cel markets is that you can buy a SIMcard for about $8 which gives you a phone number with the company. You then load and "top-up" your service with pre-paid cards that you can buy at almost any store in Thailand. If you don't like the cel company, you can hop to another mobile provider by buying a new $8 SIM card. If you ever buy a new phone, you insert your SIM card and immediately your contacts and phone number carry over with the SIM card. It really is a smart idea, too bad Canada's phones are locked.

Continuing on the adventure to Thailand

Ok... Let me resume. So my last real post was me talking about getting on the greyhound bus to Vancouver because my Westjet flight was canceled. So yeah, that was incredibly annoying; It was difficult to sleep because the bus stopped at literally every little city on the way to Vancouver. Merritt, Hope, Chilliwack, Langley, Coquitlam, Abbotsford, etc. So I arrive at about 6:30am with almost no sleep. Andrew was nice enough to pick me up. So he picked me up and Crystal also wanted to see me before I left, so the three of us went to Moxies for breakfast. It was freezing in Vancouver and I was just counting down the hours until I was going to be in a hot climate. At that point it was about T minus 22 hours until hot weather. Crystal, Andrew and I then go to the airport and I get ready to check into my flight.

Ok, so I decided to fly Air Singapore again because they are an amazing airline. Last time we went to Thailand (Andrew, Josh and I), we flew Singapore and were quite impressed. The woman serving us on the planes were incredibly beautiful too. The service was great and the food was also delicious. I should be a spokesperson because I've been telling everyone how good the airline is. So they hug me as shown in the image above and they leave me to check in. This was the first moment of me being totally by myself. I had given my Canadian Cel phone to Andrew and now I felt completely naked. It's weird not having a phone as your life-line. So I check into the flight and make my way over to the secured area and wait to board. Now that picture of the multiple planes is actually when I arrived in Singapore, but that's a minor detail.

So I hang out for a bit and they finally board the plane about 30 minutes late. It was packed. So I get into my seat and get all arranged. I was sitting in the middle aisle seat. Nothing too exciting really, we get our hot towels before takeoff and they go through the safety video. Air Singapore is great because we each get our own TV in the headrest of the seat in front of us. We also have our own personal entertainment system with a remote and access to hundreds of on-demand movies, tv shows, music albums, etc that really make for an enjoyable flight. They also feed us quite a bit. I was afraid I'd be starving on the flight but nope, they fill ya up. So we have our 10 hour flight to Incheon Airport in Seoul South Korea where we stop over for an hour and re-fuel the plane. The flight there was fairly standard. We have to de-board the plane where we just pass through security again at Incheon and get to wait in the airport for about 30 minutes. Incheon's airport is very nice, it's definitely one of the cleaner/newer airports. Seoul isn't very warm, I think it was about +5C. We head back onto the plane for the rest of the journey to Singapore. The flight is about 8 hours from this point on. We get back on and they stuff us full of delicious chicken, salad, buns, cheese, wine, crackers, and even ice cream for dessert.

So we eventually land, I didn't really get much sleep because of the noise/interruptions/meals/etc. So at this point I'm quite tired because I've been up for the last 36 hours with only a few hours sleep. I arrive in Singapore airport which is one of the nicest airports in the world (in case you haven't figured out yet, the above blue links will link you to the subject I talk about. Click Singapore airport and it will take you to the webpage). I arrived just after midnight Singapore time and I have to wait at the airport for the next 10 hours because Singapore air's connecting flight is then. I am not allowed to leave the airport because I can't clear customs and also Singapore Air is holding my luggage from the plane until the connecting flight. So that's ok, the airport (called Changi airport) has an abundance of activities and shops to entertain and allow weary travelers to rest. I hang around for a bit, and find a spot where I can pay to use a shower and other amenities. This places comes complete with internet access and small food items. So I rest in the lounge for a bit and then use the internet and watch an episode of the Amazing Race. I swear this was the longest 10 hours of my life. It seemed to take forever, even with a shower it still feels weird to be in the same clothes for the last 36 hours. Eventually Subway opens because by this time it's like 6am. I grab some breakfast from there and then get ready for my flight. There are a lot of people sleeping in the airport. I was too paranoid that I'd miss my flight if I slept, so I didn't really get any sleep before this flight. Luckily this flight was only about 2 hours...