Saturday, January 29, 2011

Octoberfest? (mack)

Our friend June took us to a gigantic German brewery in the middle of Thailand *AJ we will take you there.
Imagine the Paramount Theater, but with tables and chairs instead of just rows of seats.  Then, put the craziest, loudest, vaudeville/talent/entertainment show on the stage while everyone (yes, all ages) is chugging 3 liter pitchers of beer and eating the hottest Thai food, and strangest German food on the planet.  AWESOME!  Honestly, the place was huge! It probably fit 4 thousand guests.  The show was awesome, great singing, great lip syncing, cute girls dressed up like bunnies dancing to Lady Gaga in giant clock's hung from the ceiiling, ripped dudes dancing around them straight out of the movie Burlesque (which as a matter of fact, we saw here.  Me and Chelsea have been watching a lot of movies here to escape the heat, not to mention it is a better deal, and way more fun to go to VIP movies!)

The German food - Pork Leg with what seemed like Kraut and Mashed Potatoes (with red Thai chili's on top of them).  Potatoes?  Horrible!  All the Thai people loved them.  Actually, they were not that bad but they were loaded with sugar.  Sourkrout?  Just weird.  Fried Pork Leg?  Way, way, way too tasty to be associated with traditional German food.

The acts were great, especially the real singer and the live bands.  They really put on a great show, and held the total attention of the audience.  Smooth transitions between numbers, good MC's.  My favorite part was between songs the MC's would call out the name of a song, then pull random people up on stage in front of 4000 screaming crazy drunken people and make them sing it.  If they could do it, they would win a big prize - money, vacations, a new car, etc.  Really funny.  A Thai singer laid out some Whitney Houston and killed it.  Best Thai musician I have seen yet!  Throughout all the comedy acts me and Chelsea would just laugh along, although we had no idea what they were saying.  If the four thousand laughing Thai's didn't clue you in on when to laugh, they play the stupidest sound after every joke.  BBOOOOIIIINNNNGGGG!

Oh, and the Thai version of Happy Birthday - "Happy birthday to you.  Happy birthday to you.  Happy biiirthdayyyy to you.  Happy birthday to YOU!"

Loved it.

Check out the website for this place.  Really glad we have a lot of local Thai friends to take us around, we never would have found this place on our own!  Who would have googled German Brewery, Bangkok Thailand?

http://www.tawandang.co.th/

Monday, January 24, 2011

Bang Bang Bang --- Your Dead! (mack)

    After staying in Bangkok for a few more days, it was time to go.  That city is insane!  We had a good time there, but we both felt a little overstimulated.  All hours of the day, the most chaos any eyes from the small city of Seattle have ever seen.  Ads, ads, ads.  Some of them the size of apartment buildings, some of them small, but stacked as tall as buildings.  Traffic is nuts!  Cabs everywhere.  People walking all over the place, everyone stopping to stare at me and Chelsea as we walk.  Tuk-Tuk drivers yelling, "You want ride?" and cab drivers telling us that their meter does not work, then charging us 80 bht for a 40bht ride. Whatever, they can have the extra $1.30.  We will go back there one more time this weekend, I am performing as a guest artist at the end of the Yamaha School of Music student recitals this Saturday.  Band is ok, I tried to give them charts to some originals but they wanted really recognizable standards in the set.  Makes sense I guess.  Then it is on to the Thailand International Jazz Conference!  Super excited to go, but way to late to have tried to get a slot to perform or to play in the solo competition.


Sharks!  Dont touch by the mouth!

This is almost an everyday occurance!

Thai Boxing.  Super intense, these guys were 102 lbs each, fighting for division championship.  Betting is crazy, hand signals.  Personal bets, nobody in control.  One guy on one side might shake his hands at someone across the stadium to place a bet with one other guy.  AWESOME!


   Anyways, today we took the bus (air-conditioned tour bus) two and a half hours west to the province of Khanchanaburi, then to the city of Khanchanaburi.  We are staying in a small guesthouse called VN Guesthouse (I think VN stands for Very Nice).  It seems really cool, very tropical, laid back.  We can rent bikes, book taxi's and shuttles, eat/drink and we are right on the river for about 400 bht. ($13.30 a night).  Tomorrow we are going to explore the town, were about 1km from the Khanchanaburi strip.  I am interested in a sign that said "Get Drunk for Ten Baht!" or thirty cents.  I bet that is the best Ruphedrine(sp) laced Singha beer anyone has ever had!  Anyways ahead of us here - Tiger temple, where supposedly the tigers run free.  The monks have trained them ( I am skeptical ).  Also, there are huge World War II museums, we are very near what was called the Death Railway.  The Death Railway was a railway built through Southeast Asia by the Japanese during WWII, using basically slave labor.  Hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives, mostly asian prisoners and British/Australian troops.  It is interesting that I have never heard of the DeathRailway before - I guess in school systems when they choose the horrors of WWII the holocaust overshadows a lot of things, even some very big things.  Oh, and the Bridge Over River Kwai is just up the street.  The famous bridge from the movie is part of the Death Railway.  Excited to chill, but looking forward to some intense exploring over the next few days.  As happy as this place seems, it has some dark secrets.

Sorry for that last sentance, I have been busting through some very cheesy yet super entertaining thriller novels, the last one "The Breach" by Patrick Lee.... crap I think that was the authors name, I just gave that novel away!

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Thai Traffic! (mack)

     I do not know why there are lines in the road here in Thailand.  As our friend Tang drives us around I keep trying to figure out if there is some system as to which side of the road you drive on.  Over all it is european driving, driver sits on the right, and drives on the left side of the road.  However, 40% of the time we drive on top of the yellow line in the middle of the road.  You would think that as soon as a car starts driving towards us, we would appropriately return to our own lane.  Not the case.  It seems that the Thai driving style is to just do what you want, or to continue what you are already doing.  No sudden changes, and I think that this actually is what keeps them from getting in accidents.  Everyone who sees you driving knows that you will keep going your own route, thus giving time to everyone else to go around you.  It seems like the rule is to yield to everyone - at twice the legal speed limit.




Sunday, January 16, 2011

Fishing

    Yesterday me and Chelsea rented a charter fishing boat to take us out fishing for the whole day.  Juke, Erk, Samsong, Wipa and Lamp came with us.  I wanted to do something for the guys since they have been looking out for us this first week and driving us around, cooking for us, and bargaining for us so that we get the best deal.  The captain looked like Jack Sparrow - and although he spoke no english he sure understood when we told him that!  We hit three different fishing spots off the coast amidst a million of these little islands off the Navy base.  The first one, was forty meters from a big rock sticking out of the ocean.  We dropped our lines and immediately were catching tons and tons of fish.  Little tiny guys, the size of a small bass.  You can keep any size of fish you catch here, so we were loading up on all sorts of tropical, six inch fish.  I asked Lamp what they call the fish and he said they have no name, so I could just call them "Spiny Yellow Fishy".  Ok!  Chelsea caught a bunch, I cought a couple and Erk was going to town.  At one point, Juke caught two at once!
    The second spot was on the other side of the rock - not much luck though.  Deeper, a few different types of fish.  I cought some sort of red fish that was supposedly worth a couple hundred Baht in the market.   Since nobody was catching anything, we busted into the food.  Juke had prepared for us a feast (as everyone we have met here has).  It was deep fried chicken and pork ribs, sticky rice, Long Gong (fruit that is like those little jello cups from uwajimaya) and varius deserts and beers.  We ate and ate and ate, all day long.  I told him that his fried chicken was better than KFC, but not better than Ezell's.
    Then we went to the deep water spot in order to catch big fish.  Now the action slowed down.  Erk cought some sort of deep water monster rock fish, and I reeled in (after Jack Sparrow hooked it) some sort of expensive fish, similar to a tropical salmon.  About 4 kilos, said it was worth over a thousand baht at the market.  We took that fish back to Juke's house, small, navy housing, and he turned the one fish into a feast for ten people.  So much food, we ate and ate and ate, then sat as people took pictures with us.





Friday, January 14, 2011

American breakfast for two..? (mack)

It has been a few days since we have been in Thailand now, and I finally feel like the travel/culture shock is subsiding.  There is nothing in particular that has been absolutely 'shocking' it is just fairly overwhelming to be around people who are speaking Thai, reading Thai, and Karaoke(ing...?) in Thai.

We went karaoke(ing) with our Thai family the other night.  They rented us a private room at a bar, it was super fun.  Unfortunately for me and Chelsea, our song selections were limited to Spice Girls, Elvis, Neil Diamond and BeeGee's, oh and the Cranberries which all of Wipa's family LOVE.  So, in a room of ten people, we were limited to those bands to sing songs from.  The other 8 people were singing Thai songs - Karaoke is much more interesting when the screen looks like it is decorated in cake frosting : ).  Stem, Ice and Gwan loved singing these catchy teen pop songs which had choruses like, "dah, da-da-dat da-da-dat da-da-dat WOO! dah, da-da-dat da-da-dat da-da-dat Woo!"  and since that was the only part me and Chelsea could sing along with, they would hand the mic's over to us for those sections.  We drank a lot of Leo beer that night!

This all happened in Rayong Province Thailand (near Pataya).  This is where Wipa lives, and has a restaurant.   Her family owns a huge chunk of land in the jungle along a river.  Watch out for Cobra's, no joke.

Now we are at the beach just hanging out.  Super nice and warm, took a break from Bangkok for a few days, but getting ready to head back to the big mango.

Bangkok - tons of smells, super hot, sssuuuppppeeerrr rich, super poor, giant billboards the size of condominiums on capital hill.  Chaos!  Fun!

We went to a huge shopping mall with about 25 up scale jeweling companies in it - selling the most expensive jewelry I have ever seen.  This mall put those fancy malls in Bellevue to shame : ).  It was really interesting to see how a country with a fairly poor population can build these super malls that basically cater only to tourists.  All the shops were empty while we were there.  Lila, we saw a 3 karat diamond ring for 2 million baht....

Anyways, our Thai family just showed up so I need to wrap this up, but I feel like I can write some blogs now so keep coming back to get updated!

Oh yea, the title.  Wherever we go everyone assumes that we want the American breakfast.  Two eggs over easy, white bread, disgusting hotdog and good bacon.  We really keep trying to eat Thai breakfast, but they just keep on bringing us the "American breakfast".  I feel this will haunt us while we are here for a while...

Sawadee Krap!

Mack

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Day one: Chelsea

I am in Bangkok. The city is steamy, smelly, and buzzing with life. Mack and I are staying in a hotel called the Siam Palace. 600 baht a night (20$) with all the comforts of home, we even have pets here....well ants.

Yesterday I went to the grand palace and saw the Jade Buddah,Went to Wat Arun and saw the laying Buddah, and experienced Khao San Road. 

The day was beautiful, but my most memorable moments from day 1 were on Khao San Road, I saw/heard:

1) woman/man with unknowing white dude... Wipa confirmed for me that the woman was a man, she said she could tell because the girl had manly feet.

2)10-15 invitations to the ping pong show....

3) legless man on skateboard

4) DOGS DOGS DOGS & CATS CATS CATS

While out last night mack and i also had algae eaters clean our feet for 15 min. definately the highlight of my night. I sat at a large cool fish tank and plunged my feet into the fishy bath. Instantly hundreds of little slimy sucker fish danced along my feet cleaning away the days trek. I screamed and giggled,  with white dude, manwoman, mack, and a couple from Holland.  suprisingly after my feet were very soft. 

Time to go this thai computer is telling me that every word I type is spelled wrong, because it is not Thai. SO MANY RED SQUIGGLES.

Pictures soon.

XOXOX

Chels

Saturday, January 8, 2011

CRAZY!

Me and Chelsea are two days away from leaving, and all of a sudden it hit us!  So much to do!  I just finished the majority of the work on my taxes and bought our travelers insurance.  Now we just have to pack our stuff together, take pictures of all of the stuff we are taking, play a gig for Paul Allen, go to Clark's engagement party and catch a early morning flight on Monday.


Had dinner with a bunch of friends tonight, teriyaki salmon is soo good!  We will miss you all, and hope you all keep in touch while were out and about.

Holy cow!


Cheers,
M

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

you found us!

hello friends and family! We are doing taxes...yuck! packing and giving lots of kisses to stella and beefy. 4 days until we leave.....ah!