Diamond Jubilee

This weekend as seen huge celebrations all over Thailand. The occasion being the Diamond Jubilee of the King.

The King of Thailand is the longest ruling monarch in the world, it is amazing the respect and love the Thai people have for their royal family. They do stay in the background; they don’t have ex Fleet Street Spin Doctor’s telling what would be best for their public image.

When the King does speak, people listen! Recently he told the two opposing sides of a political problem that as plagued Thailand all year to sort the problem out. Next day they began to get things together.

In Thailand it is illegal to defame or ridicule the King, no spitting image dolls or tabloids running round making Mercedes cars crash in Paris Tunnels. The flip side is that the Thai royal family don’t give them cause to anyway; the worst thing that as happened in the past is the Crown Prince got a divorce.

The King is very well known for his environmental projects all over Thailand, he used to direct most of the projects himself, and he is also an accomplished musician, writing the King’s Song, which always heralds his arrival.

Unfortunately, this last week as been torture if you are a non Thai. The TV coverage as been 100%, all the Thai Station’s showing exactly the same thing with the same commentary. Worst of all, I missed the first twenty minutes of the England Paraguay match for yet another re-run of the days proceedings.

Generally he seems a pretty cool guy, a lesson maybe our royal family should take.

The second picture is a very famous one, showing the King talking to an old woman, it captures what the King is all about.

England 1 - 0 Paraguay

England 1 – 0 Paraguay

I suppose a win is a win, it would have been nice to say we played them off the pitch, but after the first 25 minutes we didn’t.

Beckham played well, Crouch had a very good game despite being kicked all around the pitch. Owen didn’t get the service and the back four thought they were Brazilian. Trying to get the ball away with short, tricky passes that never worked.

The whole midfield played to far back and Gerrard should have stayed in the dressing room for how much good he was.

This is what I would do;

Let the midfield play midfield, let Gerrard have a floating role. Keep Owen and Crouch up front. Feed aerial balls to Crouch and let him either score or feed it on to Owen. The back four should get the ball up pronto! No passing to each over with attackers bearing down on them.

Next up is Trinidad & Tobago, if we win this then we will guarantee going through to the next round.

Come on England!

Bangkok Life May 2006

May as been a hard working month, I have done a lot of work in the garden, or should I say to get the garden ready for putting turf down.

Working in these temperatures is no joke! After around three tonne of hardcore moved and eighty bags of stone put down I feel knackered. Unfortunately Nuch doesn’t think I have done it quick enough, and is becoming impatient for me to finish. Maybe she was right and we should have got someone to do it.

I did my first MTB race early in the month, this as really affected my body in a bad way, and I should have done some training for it, not just waded straight in.

Rainy season is now with us, the temperatures in the day are climbing and in the evening it is pretty much a given that we’ll experience a hard shower. The storms are fantastic.

Hua Hin is now my favourite coastal resort, I would love to go and live there. It as everything you need, nightlife, restaurants, white sands, clear sea and superb Hotels. I will try and get back there as often as possible.

Travelling will start to become not so frequent now, Nuch, who is five months pregnant is beginning to feel uncomfortable on long journeys, so our trips out will become less frequent.

Got to go, I’m going to meet Phil who is over in Bangkok with his friend mark trying to sell one of his Condo’s.

Speak to you all soon.

Urban Legend

In this modern era of conspiracy theories and urban legends. I’m now in the position to substantiate a popular Bangkok tale.

“My mate slept with a Lady boy and didn’t know it”

To save the blushes of the poor bloke I will change his name, for the sake of this tale I’ll call him Mark, his two so called friends I will call Chris and Phil.

It was Marks first time in Bangkok, and being a bit of a lad was ready for a night out in the seedier side of Bangkok. Go-Go Bar after Girlie bar was visited on his first night, only being off the plane for a couple of hours, the stronger Thai beer had a quick effect. Alex’s Bar, The Dubliner, Long Horns, Sharkies! All the usual places were visited. Phil then suggested a trip to Pat pong, which is now a famous tourist trap were a lot of the Lady Boys work.

Anyone who doesn’t know what to look for in a Lady Boy would think he had just walked into a bar with fantastic amount of lovely looking ladies, alas this bar is 80% Lady Boys. They do look good, but they are blokes at the end of the day. Within five minutes Mark had a bikini clad man on his knee. Obviously his two mates knew straight away what was happening. Fine pert (silicon) boobs, fairly tall, way too much make up and big feet. All the giveaway signs.

Another five minutes had passed, and Marks date had her civvies clothes on, bar fine paid, fee agreed and off Mark went to his Hotel for a night of errrr!

The following morning his friends were more than keen to find out what occurred the previous night. Well! Mark explained that the woman was a nymphomaniac, and this is were anyone with a sensitive nature should stop reading. She used a lot of KY gel and loved bottom sex more than conventional sex; this was worth as she gave a good blow job! She was also a fantastic kisser. Upon being told he had just spent the night with a bloke, Mark seemed fairly none plussed, he just didn’t want it spreading around.

So the moral of the story is “Choose better Mates”

Wot! No World Cup

Since England qualified for the world cup i've been looking forward to the tournament with eager anticipation.

This morning the UBC TV Magazine came through the door, straight away I knew there was a problem. Instead of Bobby Moore gallently holding up the world cup, there was a picture of a gay tennis player on the cover and the words "The hottest sport of the month" eeerrrr, I don't think so. The French Open might as well not be taking place, as I believe the final clashes with one of the group matches of the world.

Why they are not showing it defeats me! All year we have had the build up and profile of the teams on the sport channels. It looks like I will have to trawl quite a few seedy bars bars in downtown Bangkok to find a TV with it on.

As a footnote to this post, I have found out that one of the Thai terrestial stations will be showing most games. alas this means a Thai guy doing at very bad impression of Andy Gray and adverts during the game.

This is not good, not good at all!!!!

The Da Vinci Code

Like most people in the west I read Dan Browns "Da Vinci Code" a couple of years ago and throughly enjoyed it.

The plot, and the way it linked various conspiricy theories together were an eye opener.

I have been looking forward to the film for ages, Tom Hanks being a great actor and Ritchie Cunningham being a top director.

On the eve of the release of the film, the Thai Censor board bowed to the Facist Christian minority and issued a warning at the beginning of the film stating that the film was not a true story. They also proposed to cut the last ten minutes of the film.

Censorship in Thailand is very bizarre! Pornography, Smoking, drinking and bad lanquage are not allowed. You can show a group of Thai teens in a reality show based in an old Cambodian Death Camp being ripped to bits by ghosts which really pissed the Cambodians off. You can also show sickly sweet romantic flicks that should be banned.

The distributor of the film called the bluff and appealed stating that if the film was cut, they would pull the film from Thailand. Obviously a message was passed down and a few palms greased with silver, because an hour later the film was back on with only the disclaimer at the beginning.

After all this, the film wasn't that good anyway. It did not have the great story telling of the book, missing large swaves of the book out. Most of the characters portrayed themselves well, apart from Tom Hanks whose portrayal of Robert Langdon bordered on piss poor. So after all that I give the film 3/5 and the Thai Censor Board 5/5 for the forsight for money making.

Thai Websites

Thailand is awash with web sites offering information, Hotels, resorts and good laughs. I have used many of these in the past for the above reasons.

I’m going to put them in a list on this page and also in the contents bar at the side under “Useful Thai Sites”

Have a good look at them, like what you see and get over here to see me.

Sites about Thailand by Expats;

Stickman Bangkok

Mangosauce

Baron Bonk

Thailand Stories

Thai news with a brilliantly funny twist;

Farang Affairs

Good Websites for hotels;

Bangkok.com

Expedia

Asia Travel

Thailand Tourism

Spy on your loved one;

Thai Spy

There are also plenty of guide books out there for sale. Unfortunately due to the PC nature now endemic in the UK. You only get the sanitised version of Bangkok. Most only give you details of Floating Markets and Temples, plus all the expensive, safe restaurants to eat at.
I have not come across one that tells you how much a Lady drink is in Soi Cowboy or what do you get for your money at a ping pong show down Patpong. As far as eating goes, there are ten billion places to eat in Bangkok! Most of them serving good, cheap food 24 hours. The usual guide books shy away from this, being as they were probably written by a guy in the Transit Lounge at Don Mueang Airport.

Lastly, I’m always here for any questions, you or your friends have.

Hua Hin

Hua Hin is a large resort about 220km west of Bangkok. On a good day you can do it three hours. You go through Cha Am to get to it, being a further 20km south of there.

On my visit to Cha Am last year, Nuch and I had visited Hua Hin; in all fairness I didn’t like it much. A little like Skeggy.

The race I did last weekend was very close to Hua Hin so we decided to find a hotel in the south of the resort. The hotel was very nice and right on the beach. The Hua Hin I had been to before was the central/Downtown area. It was a little run down and shabby. Most of the rest of the resort is very modern and as plenty of good restaurants and plenty of nightlife. Cha Am is a very nice resort, but a bit quiet on the nightlife front.

The beach our hotel was on as got to be the best beach I have ever been on. Classic white fine sand, no litter, very few people and lovely hot clear sea. What more do you need?

We found a small market where we ate very nice fried noodles, and later found a restaurant in a little Bay, the food was great.

I could definitely live in Hua Hin. It is the centre of the Thai Golf resorts, loads of places to ride my bike. The prices for new condos are still fairly cheap. A one bed Condo for around £28000.

On the way back, like most Thai roads there are vendors on the side of the road. They seem to do a good business. The produce they sell will change from district to district. We started off with Lychee sellers, and then came the sea salt sellers then the roast chicken sellers. To finish off there are the sellers of a strange fruit that can be squeezed to make almost pure cane syrup or squeezed and then dried to form sugar cakes. Strange fruit! Nuch isn’t sure of the name. The picture shows Nuch buying a kilo of Lychee.

Haew Narok Waterfalls

During my trip to Khao Yai, I visited the Haew Narok Waterfalls. They are very close to the entrance. There is a good Car Park and several places selling drinks and food.

Be warned, the 1km walk to the falls is not for the faint hearted, the last 200m is down an old near vertical wooden step arrangement, quite dicey.

All the way down, the air around you was filled with 1000’s of butterflies like the one in the picture, they were almost tame they came that close.

The waterfall is well worth the hike; they drop about 50M in a big gorge and then split off into smaller falls.

Unfortunately, the climb back up the steps is exhausting! Each step feels like it could be your last. One poor Thai woman was in tears, it looked liked she was telling her husband she couldn’t go on. I know how she felt.

Khao Yai

Khao Yai is the largest of Thailand’s National Parks. It is located about 150km north of Bangkok.

I had planned to go there because I had heard there was a good network of mountain bike trails. There may be, but I didn’t see any. Some of the climbs up the mountains reminded me of the climbs you get on Mallorca.

The main entrance is not very well sign posted; I kept the mountains in front of me and literally stumbled on the Park entrance. The car costs 50baht and the price for Thai nationals are free. Farang (Foreigner) have to pay 200baht. Don’t get me wrong! I don’t mind paying extra. I just wish they would do the same thing in the UK Stuff like the Tower of London should be free to Brits and let Johnny Foreigner pay the high admission prices.

The roads in the park were in first class condition; I drove to the centre of the Park and had a bite to eat at a fried rice Joint. I stopped at a lay by that said it was a panoramic view. I opened the car door and the noise of the insects in the Jungle was staggering, nearly unbearable. I began to trapse off into the jungle when only 20M in, there was a huge spiders web with a juicy spider in it spun between two trees on the path. Disgracion became the better part of valour and I gave way.

I drove up to highest point in the Park, the road got a little bit dodgy towards the top, but I persevered. The view at the top was stunning, and the air was a lot colder. Maybe 5-6C colder than down in the valley.

On my way back I stopped at a waterfall, I’ll do a set post on them, they were well worth it.

So make a day of it in Khao Yai. It would be worth getting out of the city for the day.