My Grandpa!

I just wanted post this as a tribute to my Grandpa who has recently passed. I will always love him and he will forever be in my heart. Grandpa, I'll miss you!

Nonthaburi Province

Hello again. Wow 2 posts in one day. I'm hoping for a third, we'll see if time allows. This is a smaller post. Last week Hong, Sacha, Mai (pronounced 'my') and I went to Nonthaburi Province (not too far away from here) and we saw a little more of the Thai culture. It was interesting because it was more of the "native culture" not spoiled by huge shopping malls and farang. We were the only white people around. The island we specifically went to is called "Koh Kred". The dominant trade in this area of Thailand is pottery. There was quite a bit of pottery and we were able to see some artists shaping and moulding their artwork into some nice clay pots. The image below is a picture of Mai, Hong, and I (Sacha is taking the photo). The gesture we're doing with our hands is what the Thai do to show they're handsome. Haha it's a Thai thing I guess...

King Naresuan

Hey. Ok time for some serious posting. So ever since I moved here, with each movie I've seen, before the movie there is ALWAYS this preview for a movie that is being heavily promoted in Thailand. The movie is called King Naresuan. I think I've seen the preview over 100 times between the previews in theaters and the trailers while on the BTS Transit and at other public areas.
I almost wasn't going to watch this movie but I'm glad I did. The creators had hoped this movie would be hugely successful in Thailand because it is the first of a trilogy and it touches on the culture of the Kingdom in the mid 1500 AD period. I believe the hope is that if this movie was successful, it would promote Thailand and make its history more well known others around the world. This movie mixes in a lot of impressive action with quite a bit of history (which I'm assuming is quite accurate as it portrays Thai history). Although about 1/3 of the 3 hour movie was devoted to the civilians paying respect to their king, which does take quite a bit of time each time you have to bow down and show respect or be executed.
The above image is of the young, soon to be King Naresuan on the left learning the teachings of a monk.
As you can see, the people have to show respect to King. The King would always sit physically higher than anyone else. Anyways, that's my plug on the movie, they were hoping if it was successful in Thailand that it would show worldwide, so hopefully you guys can see it one day.

Lack of new posting

Well hello, sorry I haven't said anything exciting lately. I was kinda in a negative mood so I had to vent with my opinion on the airport. Then I was ticked off about the political happenings with the ousted PM Thaksin and the current Government censoring the media (so much for a democracy). The initial ousting of PM Thaksin, although most Thai would agree his ousting was necessary, the way in which they did it was sneaky and very un-democratic. Basically the military had secret funds of millions of taxpayers dollars, collected by a democratic government and used the money to fund a secret anti-democratic coupe against a government that was democratically elected. I just find it all very interesting to see this stuff going down. So I think I'm done bitching haha.

Anyways, I went to a city called Ayutthaya yesterday. It was really awesome! Lots of Thai temples. I'll post an entry about it tomorrow cause its late here. I'll put up photos too! Anyways, I wanted to include this video below to "tide" you over until I can post something interesting. This is funny, enjoy:

A great way to network!

Hey, ok so I just got my facebook profile all setup. It's a great site to network with friends and share pictures and stuff!

Suvarnabhumi Airport...

Well, it's been a few days and I think it's time to update my blog. There's a lot going on in Thailand right now, political happenings for the most part. I think it's important to be aware of what's going on around you because people have the ability to impose change. I'm often finding myself wondering if others are as questioning about some of the current situations happening around us.

The new Suvarnabhumi airport (pronounced SOO-wanna-poom in english) has been plagued by problems since before it even opened. The word Suvarnabhumi actually means "Golden-land" and is supposed to usher in a new era of truly international travel for Thai citizens and attract much needed foreign-currency into the Kingdom.

According to an article I read on nationmultimedia.com (A Thai-english newspaper), Sumet Jumsai (a professor/planner and well-known international speaker) goes to say that the planning of the airports location was done quite poorly. He mentions that the land is quite undesirable and due to certain environmental issues such as global warming, the airport will be 3 metres below sea level in the next 3 generations.

This is a quote taken from him:
"The Suvarnabhumi development in Cobra Swamp is the sum total of everything that should not have been done. But because it has been done, we have to do our planning in light of its reality. Nonetheless, nature was substantially sidelined when the project to develop the area started. Huge investments in infrastructure work became necessary, mainly as corrective measures in an area that is basically a 5,200-sq-km lake. It also meant building on top of the worst subsoil conditions, and a watery terrain that will eventually be three metres below the mean sea level. This event is projected to take place in three generations' time and the factors involved are global warming and rising seas, and the subsidence of the swamp." --Sumet Jumsai (http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2006/08/28/opinion/opinion_30012103.php)

This is an excerpt from Mr. Sumet's closing speech at the recent International Symposium on Suvarnabhumi organised by a group of Thai universities led by Silpakorn University.

I was shaking my head when I read this other article of a "traveller's lament". He identifies many issues with the new airport due to its faulty construction. I found the article quite interesting: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2006/10/01/national/national_30015084.php

Their was a fire in the catering-facility during construction which was 90% complete. There was also a major crack identified during construction in the passenger terminal, which caused "problems".

Literally a month after opening, the Airports of Thailand president acknowledged a major problem with the lack of toilets for travellers due to the scathing criticism by the public. They approved spending 40 million baht (about $1.3 million CND) to increase the number of toilets by 200. How could the planning of something so basic be so lacking? They happened not even a month since the first flight comes into the new airport.

I could go on and on about the problems faced by the Airports of Thailand authorities.

It's interesting to see the problems faced. I mean we're not talking about one or two minor mistakes but multiple mistakes probably costing people way to much money to fix. I find it very interesting to see how a society and culture deals with these problems and I wonder if anyone is learning from these mistakes as gathering from the opinions of others, it would appear mistakes are continually made like this in Thai society. There are many cultural implications which I won't pretend to understand nor am I criticizing, however I believe this idea of Thai culture facilitating the concept of non-confrontation in the wake of a "problem" contributes to some of the societal and political issues that develop when huge projects such as the Suvarnabhumi airport are undertaken. More to come... :)

In my next post I'll talk about the latest happenings with the ousted Prime Minister Thaksin and the so called democratic government censoring the media.

Check it out

Just to let you know I've updated my blog with something called "RSS feeds". This cool, fairly new concept comes at a time when people were becoming annoyed with having to manually update their website with breaking news. So the solution was that you can put a piece of code in your website that will pull the latest news/information from the source you want. On the right of my page you will notice "understory.ran.org" and "NationMultimedia.com". The cool thing with the headings I have on the page is that as soon as the two websites update their news, the links automatically get updated on mine and everybody elses page that subscribes to it. So you can always check my page on the right and see the latest Thailand headlines from The Nation newspaper or see the latest environmental news updates that I am trying to stay on top of.
Ciao
Jer

New apartment, Blood Diamond

Hey there. Well I finally have my own apartment. By apartment I mean a 30 Sq M cute little studio. It's nothing fancy that's for sure, but it'll do the trick and it's closer to the way in which a Thai might live. The website for my apartment is http://www.rpguesthouse.com/ but keep in mind the webpage does a great job with trick photography and lighting to make the rooms look so nice.

So I've pretty much settled into my apartment, it's nice. I have to be more cognisant of costs now such as water and electricity. Electricity doesn't seem to be very cheap. It's quite expensive to be running air conditioners all the time. I'm interested to learn how Thailand acquires its power because I'm sure it consumes quite a bit. Hopefully the power comes from clean sources such as wind or solar but I'm somewhat doubting that. I'm trying to be ever more energy-consious. I'm not sure if you've heard but in Texas, plans are in the works to fast-track the approval process for 11 new Coal burning power plants. The power plants are in the works to be approved before the legislation comes into affect to mandate tougher restrictions on the effects of pollution caused by operating such plants. The problem is that these 11 plants would use the cheapest and most pollution causing technology on the market. I could bitch about this for a while but needless to say it's important these plants don't get approved. These 11 power plants by themselves would contribute to the equivalent of 10 million Cadillac Escalades being on the road. Boo.

I highly suggest visiting sights such as www.ran.org to stay current with some of the world problems affecting the environment.

On another note, I saw "Blood Diamond" tonight with Hong. Happy birthday Hong! It was quite thought provoking and defnitely opened my eyes to a worldwide problem I hadn't really known existed. I know, how naive of me... I'm trying to better myself through intellectual conversation and via the news and other articles, so it's coming along. I must say I enjoyed the film for the main fact that it opens viewers eyes to a global issue that has been going on for some time now. It's entertaining but also delivers a strong message. I highly suggest watching it for its portrayal of ethical and moral dilemna in the modern times. I'm not sure of the historical accuracy, however the official webpage does direct us to many external sources for additional information: http://blooddiamondmovie.warnerbros.com/

Ok, sorry no pictures this time, hope everyone is well. :)

Koh Chang!

Hello once again. I hope everyone is enjoying the near freezing weather in North America. I had the luxury of spending the new year's weekend on Thailand's second largest island Koh Chang. Directly translated, Koh Chang means "elephant island". Sacha and I took a bus and ferry over there and it was quite relaxing. I'd compare it similar to Koh Somet in terms of the quality of the beach and the atmosphere. It was nice to visit there because there were quite a few more native Thai people hanging out and vacationing. Usually when you go to a beautiful beach, it's full of North American, European, Australian, or other non-natives.

We had decided not to pre-purchase a room beforehand because everyone we spoke to in Bangkok said they were heading up to Chiang Mai because the Thai like to visit the "colder" areas of Thailand for Christmas/New Years. (Colder in Thai terms is like 20C) We bought our bus ticket from Khao San Road for 350 baht including the transfer from the ferry to the island. To give you an idea, 350 baht roughly converts to about $12 CND; keep in mind this is a 5 hour bus ride. So for $12, you get a bus and ferry ride totaling about 7 hours of travel time. What a deal!

We arrived on the island later in the afternoon so we quickly tried to secure a room for ourselves. It was difficult as almost every place was full. We finally found a place in a little bungalow for 300 baht/night or roughly $10 CND. See the picture below of our cute little bungalow.

The first night we were there, we saw the most incredible sunset ever. The whole sky was lit up as shown in the picture above. It was really a marvelous sight, this is the actual image, I didn't enhance the colours. The entire sky was lit up with beautiful pastel shades of pink and orange. We took a bunch of pictures and they almost look fake because it just looks to amazing to be true.

We stayed on Kai Bae beach, an area of Koh Chang. The funny thing was that for every hotel being fully booked, the bars and restaurants at night were almost all empty. There was almost no one visiting the Kai Bae area at night. We definitely weren’t complaining however because it meant more peace and quiet because Bangkok is just so noisy and it was great to get away from the crowds.

We spent New Years here which was nice and quiet; both Sacha and I didn’t really care too much for partying it up for New Years so we spent it at a local bar called the “Sweet Witch Bar”. We went to bed pretty much right after midnight because we wanted to get up somewhat early the next day to explore more of the island.

The next day we went to one of the main beaches to explore the beach there and we took many pictures and hung out on the beach getting a bit more of a tan.

Because this island doesn’t have metered taxis everywhere like Bangkok would, it was surprisingly difficult to find a taxi to take us back to the pier where we could take the ferry back. The taxi’s on the islands usually consist of a small truck with the back of the truck outfitted with seats to carry up to 12 or 14 people if need be. We waited and waited and as we were waiting a British couple who was also waiting for a taxi back to the pier joined us in the hunt for a taxi. They were needing a taxi back to the main land to get to Cambodia. We exchanged stories and it turns out the lady, Lis, used to teach English in Bangkok a few years ago. She gave me the number to the company she worked for as she said she had a great experience with them. We hopped on the ferry and went back to the mainland where we caught a bus to then take us back to Bangkok. Overall it was a nice visit but Koh Samet was just as nice and the bus ride took about half the amount of time.

Regarding the situation in Bangkok

Well hello once again. I'm sure you're thinking "Jeremy, come back home, Bangkok is dangerous..." Well I guess it is; driving your car to work is also dangerous. Golfing during a storm is dangerous. Changing a light bulb is dangerous too. But not to worry, I'm keeping an eye on the situation and if it looks like things are getting out of hand, I'll head for the hills.

P.S. Often the situation is over dramatized in the media. The Canadian Government website advises against travel to Thailand but it's really not as bad as it may sound. :)