My So-Called Blog

I’ve just uploaded some more pictures to the Gallery. I’ve taken these over the last three or four weeks at the hotel where I’ve been staying (The Bedrooms on Sukhumvit 77 Soi On-Nut) and its immediate environs. This is a really nice place, and if you’re looking for accomodation for the medium to long term, I highly recommend it.

Here’s a direct link that opens in a new window, and without the inline frame, because I made the reductions too … well, not quite reduced enough to fit in the frameset very well.

The photo on the right is Wat Tai, just down the street from here, as seen from a bridge over Soi On-Nut.

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The first batch of photos from the current visit can now be viewed in the Gallery (direct link). These are from a boat ride down the Chao Phraya River, stopping at Wat Pho (home of the Reclining Buddha), Wat Phra Kaeo, Wat Arun, and the Grand Royal Palace, that we made on 15th September.

I’ve some more — from last week’s visit to Krabi Province and Koh Lanta Island, as well as from just around the neighbourhood here on Sukhumvit 77 on Bangkok’s Lower East Side — that I’ll try to finish editing and to post sometime in the next couple of days or so.

Practically everything and everybody that I’ve seen in this city has been worth photographing. It’s probably a good thing that I’ve only two memory cards and two sets of batteries for the camera, or I’d get nothing else done.

Oh, if I only I hadn’t had to go back to work this week… Mike, where’s that tripod?

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I was on holiday most of this week in Krabi Province, where I awoke Wednesday morning to find nothing but films about the King running on the all Thai channels and reports on BBCWorld that there’d been a coup d’état in Bangkok. Needless to say, I was a bit taken aback at news video showing tanks around Government House, but all in all it seems to be about as much a non-event as such things can be.

I don’t really know the ins and outs of Thai politics, and as a guest here, it’s not really my place to speculate very much, but so far the new bosses haven’t been very heavy-handed, and most people that I’ve spoken with thought something had to be done about the previous régime, which they’ve said was increasingly corrupt, divisive, and ineffectual. On my return to the capital yesterday, I took a taxi all the way across the city from the airport (dropping off Nui in Ladprao before going on to On Nut), and saw exactly two soldiers the whole time — they were standing guard at an expresway tollbooth and looking extremely bored.

So far, at least, there doesn’t seem to be much to get excited about. Life in Bangkok appears to be going on pretty much as normal, and I’ve decided to carry on as usual until I see a reason to do differently.

(Which for me means catching up on about 800 emails and posting some holiday photos to my gallery, which I’ll try to get done over the weekend.)

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I arrived Friday night in Bangkok, where I’ll be spending the next 10 weeks or so. It’s still much as I remember it — hot, humid, and alive in a way I’ve seen nowhere else.

One thing that was quite different about my landing this time — as opposed to my two previous visits — was the reception I received at the airport, which was quite personal and enthusiastic, thanks very much.

Following his side trip to Singapore, my co-worker Morgan arrived Saturday. We originally had reserved rooms at the Gold Orchid Hotel on Vibhaphavadi Rangsit Road, not far from the Chatuchak Weekend Market, but we soon discovered that the WiFi was not only not free, but was also hideously expensive (about 10 times more than what would be considered reasonable back in Oz) and wasn’t very reliable. After a couple of calls to our travel agent and a fortuitous chance meeting with a Thai limo driver who got us in to see the right people at the right apartment-rental office, we decided to bug out, and today moved to The Bedrooms on Sukhumvit 77, not far from On Nut Station. (Don’t let their website fool you, it looks like a good place if you’re looking for somewhere to stay in Bangkok for longer than just a couple of days. Most important for us, the WiFi here is gratis and appears to work quite well.)

Between dealing with the accomodation situation and trying to get a bit of work done despite being stuck offline, I’ve not had a lot of time for getting out and adventuring just yet, but Morgan and I did have some fun whilst wandering about in search of a better place to stay. In fact, if this photo’s any indicator, I think that he might even be considering a career change… ;)

I’ll get out and take in some major sites soon, but for now I’d best turn my thoughts back to more mundane matters — such as slogging through the 500+ emails I’ve just downloaded, and figuring out where I’m going to do laundry, which needs to happen Real Soon Now®.

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I’m headed to Thailand in September (along with my friend and MySQL colleague Morgan) for an extended working holiday. It’ll be my third time there, and each time I visit, I fall more in love with the place. The culture is fascinating, the food is marvelous, and the people are some of the nicest I’ve met anywhere.

Since we’re planning to be there for a while, we figure that we can take a little time out from work and play to do some Open Source evangelising and networking. We’ve already contacted Open Source Thailand about the possibility of participating in any events they’ve got planned for Software Freedom Day. (Actually, Morgan got the ball rolling on that.)

However, we’re not limited to that particular event. Either one of us (or even both of us) would be glad to meet up with and speak to your group about MySQL, Linux, or Open Source Software in general. We’ll be staying in Bangkok for the most part, but may be able to travel to other places in Thailand. (I’m supposed to be going to Krabi for a week at some point, but I don’t yet know exactly when that will be.) So if you’d like to get together, just get in touch with one of us through the mailing list, and we’ll see what we can arrange.

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