Visions of Bangkok........

So after my little investment the other day I decided to go out and capture what I thought were typical Bangkok scenes.... things that Dan and I encounter on an everyday basis that don't really seem all that strange anymore. So we took a bit of a trip down to the Chatuchak weekend markets which are really close to our place. They are just HUGE.... I can't begin to explain how big it is, but in comparison to something that some people might know it's about 5-10 times the size of the Queen Victoria markets in Melbourne. It's really densely packed and really really hot! Think of a tin shed on a really hot day and you might get the idea! Here's Dan parusing some of the Thai silk stalls...

You see heaps of things at the markets... in particular you see a lot of school kids out busking. I'm not sure what the deal is with education in this country, but it seems like a lot of school children rely on their musical talents (or lack thereof) to put themselves through school. It's a bit sad really, and I can only just imagine what kids in Australia would think of this. This little girl was actually really good at playing this xylophone type instrument...

There's plenty of food to sample as you walk around the markets... if you're game. I was dying to come across one of the fried insect sellers at some stage, but alas we were in the wrong section yesterday! This little old lady looks like she's of Burmese descent, and gave me the loveliest toothless grin when she realised I was taking her photo. I didn't want to intrude on her anymore than I felt I did so I gave her a big smile back and moved off...

This next photo is your typical Thai version of fast food. I haven't been game to try anything from stalls like this (one dose of salmonella is enough for anyone!). When you walk past these stalls you either get hit with a really huge dose of smoke inhalation or choked by the smell of spices or chillies.

The markets are really popular with tourists and locals alike and they get really really busy on the weekends. The next few photos show the public transport problems associated with moving so many people.




But within all this madness you sometimes find your pockets of peace.... near the markets there is a big lake where a lot of people go to relax. Even though you can hear the roar of the city happening outside the fences it still seems to be one safe haven of tranquility and reminded me of how lucky we really are as Australians to have so many wide open spaces like this. If you notice on the building in the background of the picture there is a photo of the King. He is so revered here, and I can't imagine Aussies being so enraptured with anyone. He has been quite ill in hospital lately (he is 80 afterall!) and I'm not sure what will happen if/when he passes away.

Thinking of home.....

I was going through some piccies yesterday and sorting out a whole stack of them to get blown up and printed cheaply while still in Thailand. While it was cool going through some folders that I hadn't seen in a while, it also had a negative effect in making me a wee bit homesick (like the photo above, taken just down the road from mum and dads place). I always seem to get a bout of it about a month after I leave home each time. I would love to live in a place where I could have the best of both worlds, but unfortunately there aren't many world class mineral deposits back home!

So here are a few of my favourite pics that I found.

This is George and Banjo. Poor George (the kelpie) is a bit arthritic these days so he leaves the jumping to Banjo! There's something about this picture and the position of the shadows that just cracks me up!

This here is Freddy.... we have no idea how old he is as we inherited him on our farm, but he's a cool bird! Has a tendancy to only say "hello", but if you wind him up enough you can get some cool words out of him! I'm about the only one who can get him out of his cage without being bitten!

Been a long while!!

Ok... so it's been ages since I posted on here, and there are numerous reasons... A) Facebook... the biggest procrastination tool around and B) the fact that eBlogger has decided to change everything into Thai so I can't figure out how to post easily anymore!

But... back to reality! You may notice the big bloke with the moustache in the picture above! Dan and I were lucky enough to attend the Australian Chamber of Commerce Grand Final Brunch on the weekend, and the special guest was Merv! So I just had to get my photo taken with him!

In other big news... I'm an aunty as of the 20th of August! My sister gave birth to a beautiful little boy, and I can't wait to see him again when I get home in December.

Nothing much else to update right now as I'm trying desperately to get my head around my thesis! Once I get 5 minutes to spare I'll definitely write a better blog!

Singapore Slideshow

Bangkok traffic...

Getting around Bangkok is easy... as long as most of the places you want to go are along the BTS (skytrain) line and the MRT (underground train) line. Otherwise you end up sitting in a taxi for ages, or choking on tuk-tuk fumes. But we haven't had any major hassles since we've been living here. The PT system here is pretty awesome with skytrains coming along every 5-10 mins or so. The best thing is we live at the terminal station so we are pretty much guaranteed a seat whenever we want to go anywhere, which is a real blessing in the heat let me tell you!

Rain.... again

Friday night frivolities... and more fishy anecdotes

Wow... it's been a long time since I've been back on my Blog site... mainly because when I go to post something new all the instructions come up in Thai so I have to guess which buttons I have to press!! But, now I'm going to make up for it by doing a ridiculously long blog, but with the added bonus of some new pictures :)

First up... we had quite a few of Dan's work mates cram into our tiny little apartment on Friday night for a few after work drinks. Of course, after quite a few glasses of some nice Aussie reds, and many beer cans later we were all starting to feel quite a bit silly which resulted in the following photo with some gorgeous girls....

Dan heard on the news this morning that there had been another explosion in Bangkok on Saturday. At the moment we don't really see a risk in being here, but if something big happens I don't think there will be any hesitation in getting out of the country as soon as we can. Apparently it happened outside the King's residence. I don't think they are targeting tourists at the moment, but it's still a little scary all the same.

Going to the gym is my new stress relief at the moment... With the added incentive of having to fit into a nice dress for a wedding I have to go to in August, I thought it might be a way to take out all the daily frustration of my thesis. Unfortunately my muscles are paying for it, but hopefully it will bring some good results... if only I could stay away from chocolate!

Getting to this point in my PhD has made me think about the future... where I want to work, what I want to do... it's a scary prospect considering I've been at various unis for the past 9 years of my life! Time to get a haircut and get a real job I think! Better get this thing finished first I guess.

Ok... now the saga of the fish tank continues... recently we had to put one of our favourite fish out of it's misery, so we went and bought some awesome looking puffer fish (sorry for the crap piccie!!)

Anyhow... they looked really cool swimming around the tank, and eating all the snails which were eating all our plants so we were happy... up until our one and only shrimp made a dash between his rock and a plant and promptly got attacked and eaten right in front of us! It was awful! Then... about two hours later we went to check out how their progress in the tank was going and we noticed that all of our fish had humongous chunks taken off their fins! Particularly our orange platy fish... poor buggers... almost all of their fins were gone!! Next thing we see a puffer fish gently sidling up to one of them and then turning on it and ripping bits of fin off!!! So... after that performance we've had to transfer all of the babies from their baby tank into the big tank and hope that they are big enough not to be eaten by the other fish now, and the canabalistic puffer fish have been segregated to their own tank... I don't even care if they eat each other now... little devils!!

Speaking of the baby fish... here they are enjoying the nice new spacious surrounds of the big tank....

Dan and I were coming home from the pub the other night and got caught in a doozy of a storm... we couldn't be bothered waiting for hours for it to stop so we took our chances, without umbrellas, and this was the result... yes... hilarious I know :)

And now for some more Bangkok visions... I've decided that I really need to document my time over here a little better so I just went and took some pictures of the various views you get from our apartment in the early afternoon with the storm clouds building.

The first one is the street that runs down to our apartment... you can see the Elephant Building (the big white one) in the background.

This one is from our bathroom window... I love the lush green look of the treesThis is the complex that Dan's office is in... they are pretty impressive looking buildings, and are good landmarks when you have to figure out where you are!!

Announcing the arrival of......

I was sitting in front of our fish tank feeding our fish yesterday and noticed that our now slightly big baby (the only one from 11 who survived) was hanging around in one particular plant. Next minute this tiny little thing with big black eyes popped up in front of him! As I looked around another one joined them, then another, and another!! We have new baby fish!! There are 7 of them in all, and I have a feeling the mumma was giving birth I was sitting there as one of the platys was acting all weird. This time, to see if we can get a slightly higher percentage of babies to make it we've taken the babies out of the tank and put them in a container sitting in the top of the tank. It's hard to see exactly how tiny these things are from the pictures but they're about 7mm long at the moment. Unfortunately our tank really can't support any more fish, especially those the size of the platys, so we'll have to give them away (if they survive).

This is the proud mumma (I think!)... hard to tell when both of the platys look exactly the same!

This is the big brother... well, can't really tell if it's big brother or sista, but I'm calling it brother for the moment. This guy was from the last batch of babies born in the tank. Hard to tell it's size, but the fish at the top of the photo is a neon tetra which is only about 2cm long, if that!

Uncle Rocky, the catfish, doesn't really know what to think of this whole situation. The worrying this is that while we were away on holiday and the last lot of babies were around he suddenly started getting really fat, and the babies started to disappear at a rapid rate. It may just be that he was comfort eating after the loss of the babies.... but me thinks not!

This is one of the new additions to the tank- meet Frank the puffer fish! He's one of 2 puffer fish that we got from the markets on the weekend. Not the greatest photo of him, but since they are so shy at the moment it's hard to get good shots. They're getting much better now though and starting to participate in feeding time... even if the platys do get a little bit obnoxious when there are worms involved.

Holiday fun....

It's been a fair while since my last post, but it's mainly because my parents have been visiting and we've been touring the country. We had such a fantastic time, apart from mum getting bronchitis, and we saw some amazing temples, people and animals. They arrived on a Thursday night and we hit the shops on the Friday. Dad took advantage of the low priced humourous t-shirts that are in abundance in Bangkok, while mum picked up a few nice pieces of clothing as well. We headed up to Chiang Mai by train on the Saturday, and I just want to say that if you are ever thinking of doing a 12 hour train trip- DONT. My head was still rocking hours after we got off the train and it wasn't fun! We almost didn't head off on our booked tour the next day as mum was feeling really crook, but she managed to pull together and we headed off on our Northern Thai adventure. Elephant rides were first on the agenda, along with a really cool show that the elephant trainers put on. We also got to interact with the elephants after the show, and mum got cheered up from her sickness by the elephant kisses (see photo!). They put their trunk on your face, suck and make this big smooching noise. It was soooo cute!

We went and visited a few of the hillside villages which you can find around the north of Thailand. Quite sad really- they are refugees from Burma and live in very poor conditions. There was a bit of National Geographic action which Dan spotted (ie. women washing in the open) but I just found it really sad. Especially the kids. When we visited our guide helped us buy a stack of snacks for them and handed them out. I didn't particularly like doing it because it felt like a bit of a sideshow, but it's just one of those things I think.

We stayed at one of the most beautiful resorts I've ever been to... really gorgeous rooms with bamboo walls, and the most awesome bathrooms! They had floors with stones all over them with big stepping stones to get across them. It felt like you were in the outdoors. Quite awesome.


After visiting a stack of temples and going on a really relaxing raft ride on the river (boring according to Dan, but nice for me!) we headed back to Chiang Mai via a snake farm. Although the show was pretty entertaining and as much as I hate snakes the poor things were really mistreated which made the whole thing a bit disgusting. When we got back to Chiang Mai and checked into our accomodation we almost ended up going back to Bangkok early because mum was quite crook- but after changing to a much nicer hotel, and getting a doctor to check her out she was feeling a bit better.


So, the next day we headed back to Bangkok, and then the day after we headed off on our second tour to the Bridge over the River Kwai, and Hellfire Pass. The trip was.... well, weird!! We got picked up by a driver who spoke no English whatsoever and proceeded to get really lost while trying to get out of Bangkok. He kept doing U-turns and when we came up to a split in the road he would turn the wheel left, right, left, slow down, stop, call someone and then take an option! It was ridiculous. He even got pulled over by the police at one stage for doing a ridiculous manouvre in the middle of a busy freeway, but after money exchanged hands and more than a few giggles from him we were on our way again. On top of that, our airconditioner wasn't working (and our driver didn't know how to use it in the first place and had to, once again, call someone on his mobile to try and understand it!).... so after the 400th u-turn I ended up ringing up our tour company and yelling at them about our crappy driver, the crappy van, the crappy airconditioning and the fact that we were supposed to be at our destination in half an hour and we hadn't even left Bangkok!! So, we spent about half an hour sitting in a mechanics workshop while the aircon was being fixed and then we tried to set off for our destination again... and got lost again! At one stage our driver even pulled over and handed his mobile phone to a policeman for directions!!! It was the biggest load of crap ever, and instead of it being a 3 hour drive it took us 4 and a half hours!! We changed vans at our destination and finally went off on our tour of the War Cemetary in Kanchanaburi, and then off to another elephant show (which was crap compared to the other one) and a train ride along the Death Railway which was pretty cool. We were then dropped at a resort for the night and we were the only ones there! Firstly, it wasn't the resort that was advertised on the site, secondly there was no where we could go for entertainment.... and at one stage we were going to entertain ourselves with the karaoke machine in the dining room but thought it was cruel to make the 7 staff hang around just for us! So we ended up just getting a few more bottles of beer and playing cards all night!


Next morning we headed off to Hellfire Pass early in the morning, and it was amazing. There was this eerie atmosphere, and it was just us there for about an hour. It was so strange to think that almost 70 years ago the prisoners of war were making this railway cutting under atrocious conditions. Apparently a life was lost for every sleeper on the Burma railway. The museum was fantastic, and some of the images I will remember for a very long time.


After that we headed to a place called the Tiger Temple. It's basically where these monks have taken in orphaned baby tigers and raised them. They are currently working on a project to make a tiger island so that the next generation of tiger cubs can be taught how to live in the wild and then released. It was so amazing to be so close to these big pussycats, and I can't wait to get back there again.






So after a pretty amazing 10 days I put my parents back on a plane, and now I'm attempting to get back to some form of normalcy!

Fishies!!

Dan and I decided that we needed a pet or two here in Bangkok, and after thinking for a while we decided that fish would be the easiest thing we could give up when we went back to Australia. So after getting a great tank from the fish store, and waiting a week for the water to settle we finally have fish!! Mine is a gorgeous little siamese fighting fish, and we have no idea what Dan has because the name on the tank was written in Thai! But his two are definitely entertaining, considering they keep trying to beat the hell out of each other! We had a particularly scary moment last night when the two actually locked lips for about 20 seconds and they wouldn't let go! They are now sulking at opposite ends of the tank... probably trying to recover! Next week we'll get another couple of fishies... probably a catfish to take care of the algae in the tank (and because they are cool) and probably some tetras so that we have some nice schooling fish. We'll see :)

Funny stuff....

This is one of the reasons I love Bangkok. When you can go to a restaurant that's open til "24:30" (and here's me thinking that 24 hour time ended at 24:00!), when you can order spaghetti "carbonala" or how about some "orderves".... you are guaranteed at least one giggle a day :)

I celebrated my birthday yesterday (I can't believe I'm 27 already!), and I had a wonderful day and was really spoiled. We even had a yummy chocolate icecream cake.... another reason for going to the gym this morning! All in all it was a wonderful day, and my first ever birthday spent abroad.

Dan and I bought a fish tank yesterday... can't wait to go to the markets to get a few cool fish to put in it... but we'll have to wait til next weekend for the water to settle in.

Hmmm... thats about it for the moment. I'd better get back to writing :)

Bangkok Sunrise....

I thought this picture might be appropriate... my first sunrise in the land of smiles. After arriving in a cover of darkness on a Friday night, I was pretty keen to see what my new home city looked like... and I wasn't really disappointed. The spectacular sunrise is mostly due to the layer of smog that hangs around the city, but I just thought it was pretty :)

So far, Bangkok has just been a miriad of sights, sounds and smells.... and not all of them good. Monday was probably the biggest day for contrast. Dan took me to a shopping complex called "The Emporium". Think chandaliers, designer clothes (the real stuff, not the fakes!)- Luis Vitton, Chanel etc.. So we stepped off the Skytrain into this complex, had a look around (and died at the prices) and then went to go and grab some dinner.... so we step out onto this street where the concrete has eroded so much that you could fit your shoe down the holes, there are people cooking meats of various origins (oh yeah, you can get the normal lamb and beef and chicken, but you never forget the sight... and smell... of squid) on portable hot plates, there is this disgusting smelling water flowing off the pavement into the enormous gutters (remind me again why I was wearing flip-flops on this particular day... ewww!), and you have to avoid the various motorcycles who are racing along the footpath to try to avoid the peak hour traffic!! There are these white lines on all the footpaths which are about 4 feet apart... and we still haven't worked out whether they are where pedestrians are supposed to walk, or where motorcycles are supposed to go!! I must ask a local sometime!!

The first four days of this experience have been amazing... I'm exhausted from walking everywhere and checking out shops, and my brain is fried from trying to remember our apartments address in Thai so that the taxi drivers know where to go.... but so far I have had the most wonderful time... especially for the fact that I'm now reunited with my boy.

I will try to take some photos of the markets on the weekend, but until then drop me an email (which is still my Uni addy) and let me know what is going on back home, or wherever you are in the world :)

Big hugs and kisses xxxx