Today
November 15th, 2011And thus ends the week of Thailand. You might have missed the second to last episode “One day in Bangkok” because I managed to schedule it the same day as the Entertainment one. Well done me.
This week has been dominated by a few things. Teeth, partly. Tuesday I started suffering from massive toothache on the “Why don’t I own a hammer” level. Emergency dentist on Wednesday filed it down so I stopped biting on it and told me to come back in a week. Continued to hurt massively until Sunday, and by Monday barely hurt at all. Still got the dentist on Wednesday, though. They speak of Root Canals, and terrify me by doing so.
Work continues. We’ve released this great new course based on Pearson’s “Market Leader” textbook, so if you know someone who could use a Business-focused English as a Foreign Language course , let me know. I might even be able to wrangle you a discount.
Summer was spent larping, as generally it is. I’ve started to build a reputation as someone who can competently man a ref-desk for reasonably large events. I was doing this for Odyssey in my role as ref, and for Winter in the Willows as Admin, and it worked well, I think. I’m not sure if I am actually good at it, because it isn’t something I actively work at having to try hard to do, and is therefore obviously easy for everyone. Brains are strange.
My Keystone larp, for want of a better term, is ending next year. Maelstrom was the first large event I ever turned up to, and has been absolutely awesome, and I like that it’s ending rather than going on forever. The new one from the same people also looks great, to the point where I’d kind of like to help run it and make other people’s games better. It would, however, mean I’m no longer actively playing any large events, only crewing, which bothers me less than I thought it would. It’s not a decision I have to think about for about a year, and there’s a high chance that if I say “I’d like to crew” they’re going to say “You and that army, play instead”, though. Plus, I’m having a lot of fun satirizing the discussions on what players want out of the game, and I’d feel guilty doing that if I was on the inside.
This weekend, I spent over a quarter of it playing Skyrim, and I’m pretty sure Steam is low-balling that number. It’s awesome. I should write a review, or something. If I stop playing for long enough.
Thailand Trip – Postscript – Entertainment
November 14th, 2011I have another five hours in this tin can.
I have watched The Mechanic (Jason Statham plays Jason Statham in a Jason Statham movie), the same half an hour of the Green Hornet that I watched on the way out (Because it’s awful) and “I am number 4″ a fantasy origin story for an interesting universe that is probably not quite good enough to get beyond the origin story. (I later discover that a) it was a book first, and b) I’m wrong)
Over the holiday, I’ve read:
The first three Felix Castor books by Mike Carey (Still good urban fantasy novels)
I haven’t really reviewed any of these in any opinionated depth. Most of them were chosen on recommendation from friends, and because my friends are all awesome I loved every one of them. So you can take it as read that if you like the sound of the summary, you will probably like the book.
Court of the Air (Stephen Hunt), an original and great fantasy universe hosting a stock chosen-one plot, which is a comment rather than a complaint. Elements of steampunkery and well-realised and *different* factions who all believe they are doing the right thing, rather than an obvious moustashe twirling villian tying the world to the railway tracks.
Naked (Audiobook, David Sedaris) is a series of autobiographical novellas, almost. I first heard of Sedaris on This Amercian Life and The Moth, basically applying weapons grade anecdotery, which is pretty much what you get here. Living as a somewhat obsessive-compulsive child, growing though the death of his mother, and finally how to survive a weekend as a naturist. I liked this a lot.
Singularity Sky & Iron Sunrise, (Charles Stross). I’m not much of a scifi reader, but I am a fan of Stross’s horror/spy/geekset Laundry series, and I enjoyed all of this. A somewhat whimsical universe with a rock solid base, it is Scifi as a platform to tell stories of how a new world works, rather than explaining a new world though stories.
13 Blue Envelopes is something I got free, and wasn’t expecting a lot from it. It’s a story of a shy american being given a box of said envelopes as her aunt dies, and the instructions within that take her out of her element and across europe. It’s well written and fluffy, even thoughout the occasionally dark subject matter.
Cryoburn (Lois M. Bujold). The most recent Miles book is mostly a swansong for the Miles The Imperial Investigator cycle within the grand sweeping arc of the Vorkosigan series. It follows the template – Miles is sent to investigate something. It’s bigger and more complicated than it looks. Hijinks ensue. It’s wrapped up, but not quite neatly enough. It’s still a very good story, and I’m not knocking the formula, but a lot of it appears there – especially a somewhat dechekoved special guest appearence towards the end of the main plot – to drive towards the massive kick in the balls that constitutes the last chapter, which spins the series into a new cycle, for which I can’t wait. Due to Bujold’s tendency towards non-chronological novels, it’s not even the last book with Miles in this position, but it spins up and resolves both itself, a few dangling universe threads, and several huge overhead arcs.
Rivers of London (Ben Aaronovich). Urban fantasy set in London. Absolutely wonderful from beginning to end. Run, do not walk, to your nearest bookshop or virtual equivelant.
Side Jobs – Stories from the Dresden Files. (Jim Butcher) A series of short stories set in the Dresdenverse, ranging from the standard formula condensed into fewer words to explorations of bits of the universe Dresden can never see. Plus, it has a never-published-before short story which is What Happens After The End of Changes, which is worth the price of admission on its own, although doesn’t resolve the important question. Though the title of the new book – Ghost Story, coming in July – might.
Four and a half hours left in the tin can. I think I need to go for a short walk.
Thailand Trip – One Day In Bangkok
November 14th, 201114th May
It’s impossible to see all of Bangkok in one day, and I know, for I have tried it.
With my family we went around some of the more shopping-focused bits – they’ve been before and had seen most of the stuff I was interested in – and then I split off and wandered in search of Bangkok.
I like cities an awful lot. I live in London, but mostly I live in London because I moved to Sunderland and realised that everything I’d never liked about living in a small town wasn’t an absolute. Then I moved to Cambridge and found new things I liked about cities, and now I live in London because I like there being more people and culture and stuff and things than I will ever live to see.
So I walked though Bangkok and small a small fraction of that.
I saw a city dragging itself upwards. The monorail extends though the central city like a giant overpass, all concrete and functionality, over the top of shopping malls and snaking around massive skyscrapers dedicated to international companies. It’s busy, and it’s big, but it’s not.. full. Between belts and areas very close to the centre are large footprints with the forest reclaiming burnt-out old buildings, cheap housing butting against sleek western-focused condominiums.
I spent a couple of hundred Baht (four quid) on a Tuk-Tuk (You know how in some cities you get the cute little cyclist-taxis, with a two person seat behind the cycle? Like that. Only with a motorbike instead of a bicycle. Terrifying at medium speed, useful in traffic) across the river to the more traditional tourist bits. I saw, and dutifully photographed, the Giant Swing, which is suitably giant and impressive, but distressingly Health & Safety’d.
Next to it appeared to be something interesting, so I went and looked. It turned out to be Wat Suthat (Which my brain parses as “What? Sue That!”) which I looked around the outer courtyard of, but couldn’t get inside because those tricksy Buddists were using my tourist attraction as a place of worship! It’s the saturday of the week long celebrations for the Buddha’s Birthday, which is apparently a big day. The outer courtyard was surrounded by a covered walkway on all four sides each with statues of Buddha (When I refer to Buddha at any point here, unless specifically mentioned, I mean Gautama Buddha. Not to be confused with Budai, the short, fat, and misspelt “Laughing Buddha” image). I still don’t know what the horses mean, either.
Talking to a tour guide outside – we bonded over my ability to pretend to be interested in the FA Cup Final – he asked how much I paid for my 10 minute ride from the centre. He fell over when I told him, marched over to the nearest Tuk-Tuk driver, and told him to charge me 100 Baht – native rates are that per hour – to take me here, here, here and here and wherever I wanted to go. Which, considering I didn’t really know what the key things to see were, I agreed to. What the heck, it was two quid.
He was as good as his word, too. We went to a temple dedicated to Bhikkhuni, Female Buddist monks, and how the Buddha ordained a thousand, but they don’t exist anymore (which turns out to be a political question, but that’s what the sign by the temple said). The main temple has, surrounding the traditional gilded statue, several dozen Bhikkhuni before him, rather than the more traditional place for the priest to speak from.
We went to the Marble Temple, Wat Benchamabophit, which was beautiful, and has 52 statues of Buddha from all over the world. It’s always interested me that statues of Buddha – once I could separate them from statues of Budai, which is distressingly recently – are usually in one of a few poses, and I wondered if they meant anything. They do. The cross-legged most common pose (left palm up, right pointed down) is called “Buddha defying Mara“, for example, and represents a specific story/happening/thing.
There’s a Billy Connoly monologue about music lessons, where he laments “Music Appreciation” classes where his teacher would play something on the piano and shout “APPRECIATE! APPRECIATE!” at them, as if merely thinking about the music hard enough would impart some meaning without some kind of guidence as to what they are listening to or for. Well, kind of. The monologue itself kind of devolves into discussing the breasts of the teacher in question, but that’s because comedy is only partly philosophy. It’s kind of what I felt wandering around the temples, as important as they are I only have a vauge understanding of Buddism as a concept (It was half a lesson in R.E. at school, between a week on Judism and another half a lesson on Sikhs), and as I allude to above, the difference between the handsome, calm and collected Buddha and the more visibly iconic and sort-of-corrupted “Laughing Buddha” was a bit of a confusion to me until recently. The experience made me feel stupid and touristy, as I wandered around important holy relics with my fujifilm digital camera and my laced trainers. I don’t like feeling stupid, so I need to learn more about what I’ve already seen. Travel broadens the mind, possibly, but I’m finding more it shows me places it isn’t broad enough already.
I learnt important lessons also. For example, my shoes:
Entirely inappropriate for wandering around temples in, which require taking them off to go into important bits. When I was doing all the photos of the statues in the marble palace, I took my shoes off to go under the walkways – as you’re supposed to do – and then made the mistake of attempting to go barefoot across the clear, smooth and recently-rained-on marble courtyard. I nearly went arse-over-teakettle several times. It was not a shortcut.
My Tuk-Tuk driver took me from place to place, and occasionally to places I hadn’t asked for but thought I might be interested in (From the temple of female monks mentioned above to a place where he said straight out that he’d get a commission if I bought a suit. I nearly did, too, the prices were very good), and eventually to the Skytrain – the Monorail – which took me back to the hotel.
The hotel – The Tai-Pan hotel – is nice, and the breakfast is good. It’s kind of in a ex-pat area, so walking down any street you can find traditional English Pub Grub, the finest Italian restaurants, french cuisine or anything, unless you would like to eat Thai for your final meal here. We eventually found decent Thai food in a dutch bar which prided itself on its Aussie steaks.
I’d say we fly out tomorrow but at this point – it’s 00:30 – that’s later today, so I really should sleep. At some point when I get back I should wrap this up into some soul-searching and life-affirming conclusion, but right now I’m pretty sure it doesn’t extend much further beyond “Remember how you like travelling? Do that more, you stupid bloody moron”.
Thailand Trip – The Wedding
November 11th, 2011There was a wedding.
My brother and his now wife were married in a ceremony that was by turns touching and confusing.
We got on site on time, around 8ish in the morning, to find the cooking and partying underway to a large extent, and started as we meant to go on, with iced beer and freshly barbecued pork. A few hours later, and the ceremony started. This probably has more significance than I attach to any of it, and I probably miss important bits that are vitally symbolic, but here we go.
There’s a bloke outside the front at a table with a book, and he’s collecting envelopes and names from people who are invited, and who invite themselves (the envelopes generally have some money in them). I’m going to have to identify these people, so I’m calling him Michael. He has a real name, but I didn’t catch it.
Me and Matt – older and younger brother of the groom respectively – are each given a tray. Matt’s contains three white envelopes, mine a towel with an orange blob of flowers. Me, Ben, Matt and two of Ben’s friends – Marc and Russell – are sent to meander around the village for a while while stuff happens back on the homestead. We tour the tiny farming village for a while – stables made of wooden beams and corrugated iron, thatched houses on stilts, roosters informing us that it’s FUCKING MORNING NOW YOU BASTARDS WAKE UP. We come out at the top of the road and a procession forms behind us whooping and hollering and singing as we approach the home, where our path to the house – where the ceremony will be – is blocked by two girls and a golden jump rope. Failing to jump it, and our passage blocked, we attempt to work out how to solve this puzzle. As with all good adventure games, the clue is with a seemingly unrelated object picked up along the way. The inbuilt hint system – Pear’s sister, I think – was invaluable in this regard.
> USE ENVELOPE WITH JUMP-ROPE MANAGERS Pass, Friend. You continue up the path until the way is blocked by another, thicker golden jump-rope. > USE ENVELOPE WITH JUMP-ROPE MANAGERS That doesn't work. > HELP! There are two people holding the rope. You have two envelopes. > USE ENVELOPES WITH JUMP-ROPE MANAGERS Pass, Friend. You continue up the path until the way is blocked by another, thicker golden jump-rope. You are in a twisty-turny maze of jump-ropes all alike. You have no envelopes. > HELP! Nuh-uh.
This confused us for a while, until the taxi driver said we needed to pay the jump-rope holders 100 Baht each. This involved wallets and negotiation of trays, but was eventually solved. Something borrowed, indeed.
The next bit was kind of an endurance test. We had to kneel down around a ceremonial tree made out of banana leaves with string all over it while Michael spoke and occasionally sang in Thai. After a while, my knees hurt. Then everything stopped, and everyone looked at me. My time had come, but I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I had a ceremonial towel.
I was told to pay him.
I had no money.
I was told to open the towel.
I did this, and discovered quite a lot of money. I was surprised, as this was not one of the traditional reasons I should know where my towel is.
I paid the man. He continued. He tied Ben and Pear with string, and them to Ben’s friends and Pear’s family with loops and coils, and spoke at some length again. Then other people got shorter bits of string and tied them around the couple’s wrists, saying things as they did so. These turned out to be blessings said as you tie the string, and my family tied our own knots, and in turn had blessings bestowed on us by string. And they were married, and the drinking began in ernest.
Hours later, there was Karaoke – in both English and Thai – and long conversations about bullshit and real whiskey and rum and the world’s most awful rice whiskey and lots of beer and pork and seafood. Then we slept. Then we spent a long time in the same minibus that took us up there. Then we were in Bangkok.
Thailand Trip – Pattaya
November 10th, 201111th May
I missed out Pattaya entirely, and will have to backtrack though that.
We stayed in Pattaya in a resort far out from the central hub, but close to the beach. In the end, that didn’t help, as Pattaya is almost entirely concentrated in the central hub, and so most days we took taxies into the centre.
Pattaya is a textbook example of western cultual tourism. It started as a small fishing village when a US Airbase opened nearby, and quickly became a R&R destination for that. Throw a rock and you’ll hit a bar, mostly owned by a westerner who has sold up and moved here for the cheap cost of living. Even the places we ended up in for my brother’s stag party – of which more when my autobiography comes out or one of those involved needs a reminder – charged no more than 100 Baht for a gin and tonic (around two pounds at a decent exchange rate). The entire city is a fount of energy that doesn’t appear to have any soul at all, from the open-front bars named after the owner (sometimes with a sequel number) up to the sucking heart of the place, the largest beachfront mall in Asia, Central Festival. A massive monolith to high fashion culture, the shops inside – Armarni, Benneton, MissSixty etc. – could have been in any city from New York to Oxford Street, London. It was quite depressing.
A few lights in the darkness. Some decent resturants, and places like Hoph, a traditional pub with its own on-site brewed wheat beer on tap, and a house band with a trained italian opera singer on drums (who floated though a generic italian love ballard of the “Girl from Iponima” type, before belting the last lines out with enough style to shake the house and enough power to light it up. It was glorious).
We were there for five nights, before moving on to a 8 hour taxi ride up north to the site of the actual wedding.
As we travelled north the humidity dropped noticably, though that may have just been the weather, and the tendancy for streets and shops to be labeled in both Thai and English slowly faded out. The sight of such obviously non-thai people is apparently cause for concern and careful observation.
We got to Ben’s Fiancee – Pear’s – house early evening after checking in at a hotel, where we had some wonderful home cooked thai food – first non-resturant thai food ever – and beer while watching the hired flower arrangers entirely fail to plan putting up a gantry to hang them on, then setting it up in the wrong place, then cutting the wrong bit of twine and all the arrangement falling to the floor. Somewhat cruelly funny. They bought a pig for tomorrow, which was executed and butchered – I didn’t go with the people who went to watch that and, from their recounting, am glad I didn’t. All the bits were brought back in a series of huge buckets for preparation and cooking for tomorrow.
Ben picked out a cow for the same purpose a few months ago, but the family – who were looking after it until it was ready to be slaughered – got too attached to it to think of such an act. Thus the pig.
We’re staying in a hotel a short way out. Actually, we’re staying in a “short stay” hotel a little way out. Separate hotel cottages of no more than a bedroom and bathroom each, curtains around the car-port so you can’t see the number-plate of the vehicle inside. The combination of the single-purpose hotel room and the bright, cheerful, kids cartoon decoration is a little distressing.
The wedding gets underway at 8am and is expected to last until the early hours of the following morning so, since it’s coming up to tomorrow, I should attempt to get some sleep to be ready for the 6:30 start that will get us there on time.
*yawn*
