Snowy IslandCam

There’s nothing like looking in on the snow-encrusted streets of Charlottetown, via the IslandCam while sitting in the swelter of northern Thailand. Makes the whole Internet thing appear even more freaky than it usually does.

Valerie Pringle is not Thai

Monday morning, faced with a sleepy Oliver (and thus sleepy selves), we slept later than usual, therein making the prospect of bus travel (10 hours) from Bangkok to Chiang Mai seem an insurmountable obstacle. So we plucked ourselves out to the airport and tried to book passage on Thai Airways instead.

As it turned out, this was harder than we imagined it would be, as the flights for Monday were all full and we had to fly standby. We were initially on the list for the 11:15 a.m. flight, but it flew full. Next was 12:15, but that was full too. Finally we got seats on the 1:15 p.m. flight, which required miltary-style precision to coordinate: get notification of our seats from the standby desk, take stamped chit across the terminal to the ticket office to buy tickets, come back to the standby desk to check our luggage and get boarding passes, then make our way to the gate. All in the 15 minutes remaining before the flight. But we did it.

It was during the run up to the 12:15 flight that we encountered Valerie Pringle, perky (her universal TV adjective) former co-host of Canada AM on television. From the look of her entourage, she’s in Thailand on some sort of assignment — camera gear and burly looking soundman types abounded. And on this day she didn’t make me proud to be Canadian. There we were all gathered at the standby desk — probably about 12 stressed out people waiting to see if our names would be called — and Valerie Pringle is hassling the clerk about how she can get her Aeroplan miles for the flight to Chiang Mai credited to her account. She made it be known that she is an Aeroplan Super-Elite member, and pulled out her special gold pass as proof. The level-headed clerk quite properly suggested that there might have been a better time to worry about such things, which appeared to result in considerable exasperation in Ms. Pringle. Later she and Catherine were standing side by each, and she moaned something about how “they need to get a better system than this.” All in all, she came across like a jerky prima dona.

Which stands in contrast to our day to day experiences in Thailand where people seem, if not efficient (although often they are) at least completely unflappable, and always in good humour. The Oliver love-fest continues: Oliver has now had conversations (so to speak) with police officers, security guards, monks, flight attendants, the boy who manned the shoe booth at our shoeless restaurant and countless others. Tonight I am out on the town by myself while Catherine and Oliver sleep, and I’m irked to find that without Oliver in front of me in a stroller, people’s eye’s no longer light up when I enter a room. Sigh.

The flight to Chiang Mai was uneventful. Thai Airways service is about 300% better than Air Canada’s on a comparable short-haul flight (i.e. they’re nice, and they actually still serve food). I was sitting beside an orange-robed young monk and was somewhat concerned that I might commit some religious faux pax (i.e. point my fork at him, or not point my fork at him, or something…) but I seemed to do okay. Catherine and Oliver were seated across the way and Oliver slept for the entire flight.

We’re staying here in Chiang Mai at the Galare Guest House which was recommended by a friend of my mother’s. It’s very plesant — a nice garden, on the river, decent restaurant, friendly and helpful staff. Chiang Mai is plesantly cooler than Bangkok, at least in the morning; afternoons get quite hot. Our Tuesday was spent eating lunch in a Chinese shophouse cum art gallery cum restaurant, then travelling my pickup truck taxi to a park/children’s playground where we rented a mat and sat beside a fetid pond for 1/2 hour in the shade of palm trees. Later we visited the largest temple in town, and had iced cappucino’s at a place called Cafe Chic.

Tomorrow we’re off to explore the wonders of the so-called “home industries” — silver, silk and other factories with demonstrations and factory shops.

I’m off to the Night Market tonight to see what I can see, a briefly single guy in a steamy equitorial paradise. Oh the possibilities.

Chatuchak Weekend Market

If it’s not the heat that’ll kill you, it’s the heat: this is the theme of our time in Bangkok so far. We left snowy Halifax last Monday in the middle of a blizzard, with a wind chill of -30 C. Yesterday it was 34 C here. That’s a 5-day jump of 60 degrees in our surroundings.

Mostly what this means is that we have to learn to pace ourselves, take frequent breaks, douse wee Oliver with water, and head out early in the morning. No crazy New York-style travelling here: walk slowly, stay in the shade, don’t breath in too much of the street-level pollution.

Both Catherine and I have had a couple of “melt down” instances since we arrived, thankfully not at the same time. Sometimes the heat and the humidity and the crazy urbanity of it all just gets to you. I think we’re both getting better at spotting the signs and warding off the worst, though. That’s a Good Thing.

Yesterday we managed to get out and buy Oliver a sun hat and a pair of sandals, went to the Government-sponsored crafts marketplace, and eat lunch. Otherwise we slept, ate, drank, repeat. Last night Michelle, Steve’s wife, kindly babysat Oliver while Catherine and I headed out to dinner. Unfortunately we broke the cardinal “before you head out into the crazy humid heat of the night, have some idea where you’re going” rule, and in desparation ended up eating at a western-style barbeque place called “Sizzler” where we had mediocre burgers. Oliver slept throughout his visit with Steve and Michelle, although I did catch him watching CNN while reclining on the couch while we debriefed our hosts after dinner.

This morning we headed off very early to the Chatuchak Weekend Market, which is quite simply the largest, most crowded marketplace either of us have ever seen. To imagine it, in some small way, take the Charlottetown Farmer’s Market, raise the temperatire 30 degrees, make it 100 times bigger (really), and include everything from fighting hens to goldfish to bolts of silk to orchids. Surprisingly, we found the market easy to navigate — although we only saw maybe 1/16 of it — and Catherine honed her haggling skills and got 12 meteres of Thai silk for about $10.

This afternoon we’re off with Steve and Michelle to their Sunday church meeting, then to the closed-off Silom Street which has been described to us as street party cum children’s festival.

Tomorrow we’re off to Chiang Mai in the north, and then later in the week south to the beach before returning to Bangkok next weekend in prepartion for our flight home.

Many more adventures to be had, I’m sure…

Accessing the Web

Steve asked how I’m accessing the Internet here in Bangkok.

Right beside our hotel, by coincidence, is a 24 hour Internet/video game centre that charges 10 baht (about 50 cents) for 30 minutes of Internet. The bandwidth feels about 56K, but it’s hard to tell because I’m mostly accessing sites that are on the other side of the world.

The weirdest thing about surfing here is that most of the other people around me are actively engaged in killing each other through various virtual methods; as I type this, there is the sound of constant machine gun fire, a woman’s voice calmly saying “Unit Ready” and “Unit Locked” every couple of seconds, and the occassional speech from a GI Joe-like commander in chief.

Tuk Tuk

Hot and humid today in Bangkok, where it’s 11:00 p.m. on Thursday evening as I write this, and something like 8:00 a.m. Thursday morning back home.

So we have lived Thursday and our neighbours and friends at home have it to come.

Today was our “get the lay of the land day.” Steve (as Harold is called by everyone — somethings you can’t learn via email) introduced us to his wife Michelle, and their Korean friend Susan, and we all went up to the Sky Train together.

The Sky Train is a wonderful piece of Bangkok’s public transportation network — indeed it’s part of complex series of things that led Steve and Michelle back to Bangkok from California a couple of years ago. It is essentially an elevated transit system, similar to the one in Vancouver in both design and name (but cleaner and better run here). In a city as congested as Bangkok (and truth be told, it doesn’t appear as congested as the guidebooks would have you believe), something like the Sky Train is a tool for social revolution; while it’s obvious that it hasn’t completely caught on yet, it’s also obvious that it’s starting to have a dramatic impact on the way that the people of Bankgkok get around.

Sky Train lessons done, we headed to the Oriental Hotel in the riverfront, where one of Steve’s books, At Home in Asia, is being buried in a time capsule this week. In the lobby of the hotel, while Steve was up with PR folks, Catherine and I and Oliver plunked ourselves down.

Now keep in mind that the Oriental Hotel was 10 times voted the best hotel in the world. And there we gruffy three sat, Oliver wanting to putter around, Catherine going hunting for a bottle of water. And we felt at home. The staff came over and picked up Oliver and carried him around, showed him the lily pond fountain. And when we left they all waved at Oliver.

This is a constant theme here so far: my son is more popular than I am. Everywhere we go — everywhere — Oliver is treated like a prince. At restaurants he is spirited away from the table so as to not need fuss while we eat. On the riverboats he flirted with the ticket taker. At the grocery store the clerk looked blankly at we when I walked in, and then when she spotted Oliver on my back, her face lit up brightly.

And it works at airports and in customs lines too — faced with a line of some 500 people at Bangkok International last night we were spirited ahead by an official to the special “Diplomatic” line.

After the Oriential Hotel, we headed out to the street for a bowl of miso soup, and then out onto the river. Another of Bangkok’s transportation methods is riverboat — ferry boats that run up and down the river stopping at various places. The fare is 10 baht — about 50 cents — and the experience is indescibable but to say that Oliver didn’t fall off.

This last point is relevant because last night Steve told us that the only thing we had to worry about was the water. In my bleary-headed post-flight fog, I said “falling in, or drinking it?” Both he and Catherine looked at me like I was an idiot. Which, of course, I was.

After the river, we Sky Trained back to our hotel for a rest, and then joined Michelle, Susan and later a couple of guys, Sri and Sunam, from Sri Lanka, for a spaghetti dinner. So there we were, three Canadians, a Korean, a Philipinno (albeit with a Thai passport) and Korean, talking about hamburgers, Anne of Green Gables (nobody had heard of), snow (everybody had heard of) and Quebec separation. This is why it’s good to travel.

After supper we took Steve’s advice and travelled the 5 blocks back to our hotel by tuk tuk (basically a 3-wheeled motorcycle with a passenger compartment in the back), Oliver asleep for the whole thing. And this is where Catherine and Oliver are, hopefully enjoying their first Thai sound sleep, as I write. And where I must now go and join them.

More later.

Other side of the world…

So here we are on the aforementioned other side of the world. It takes a long, long time to get here. And for those of you who think that once you’re in Tokyo, you’re in the neighbourhood of Thailand, well, you’re not — there’s another 6 hours to go.

Oliver was the best flyer of any of us — he just ate and slept and flirted with the flight attendants. He can go anywhere. I, on the other hand, came close to melting down from the lack of sleep of it all by the time we reached Narita; thankfully Catherine kept us going, as she somehow eluded exhaustion.

Wonder of wonders, we met Harold at the airport in Bangkok — nice of him to trudge out there for midnight! — and made our way to our hotel.

Today we’re out to explore the world of Bangkok. More later.

Wild Blue Yonder

Off we go, our little family, to the other side of the world.

It’s -8 degrees celcius here in Charlottetown this morning, and the streets are alive with the “beep… beep… beep” of snow clearing equipment trying to dispose of the 2 or 3 feet of snow that have gathered over the last few weeks.

Today in Bangkok it’s 33 degrees celcius, hot and humid. We’ll be there on Wednesday, fates willing.

Before you have any tinge of envy, recall that between here and there is 30 hours of travel with 16-month-old Oliver.

Updates as opportunity presents.

Take care of the Island for us.

Movie Trivia

Little know fact: in the 1993 film Sleepless in Seattle, there is a scene near the end where Sam Baldwin, played by Tom Hanks, is flying cross-country from Seattle to New York in search of his son Jonah. If you look carefully at the man seated next to him on the plane, you will see that it is none other than Charlottetown lawyer Alan Scales. It’s a small world.

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