Sleeping Outside the Box

I’ve got some money floating in Kiva. The last person I loaned it to has paid it back and so I’ve loaned it out once more to this person:

Kiva is way cool. It’s not an investment system, use prosper if you want that (www.prosper.com) but it’s a cool way to keep some money tucked away and have it benefit someone who really needs it while you don’t.

Times when a 100 Baht (US$3) watch will break:

1. When taking it off
2. When looking at the time
3. When wondering what time it is

Times a farang (westerner) will get a sunburn:

1. When going outside without sunscreen
2. When going outside with sunscreen
2. When going outside
3. When thinking about going outside
4. When being farang

I’m in South Korea now, Incheon International Airport. It’s nice. There are a few internet lounges around and after searching for the best exchange rate (all the currency exchange windows throughout the airport give different exchange rates) I finally paid my 3,000 Won (or about US$3) for 1 hour of internet.
Of course, that 1 hour has now become as long as I like
Here’s the flaw in their logic:

First, the machine is running Windows XP Home Edition instead of any flavor of Linux or OSX.
The desktop always has the user logged in but it’s running an app on top that locks out keyboard access and takes over the whole screen. Basically a glorified screen saver.
Once logged in, the time tracker application minimizes to a little ticker app in the bottom right hand corner of the windows desktop. Windoes itself is set to disable access to ctrl+alt+del and to running proccesses like c:/windows/taskman.exe so people can’t just click away and kill the application that tracks your time. However, it did not protect the process itself beyond that. So, with the help of an alternative process killing application (I use taskill but there are literally hundreds). After a quick glance through the list of running processes, it didn’t take much to deduce that the time tracking application was called Client.exe.
Killed.
Timer goes away, my purchased account number is booted out of the reduction queue and the windows login remains open with all my applications still running. Viola. Free internet. Now I can actually survive this 10 hour layover.

Well, here it is, 40 hours of travel ahead of us (with a 12 hour layover in Korea) and our last day to shop and hang in Thailand.

We discovered something very interesting yesterday. We decided not to go back to the backpacker area of Banglampoo and instead stay near the Skytrain so we could wake up early and go to Jatujak weekend market this morning. That was the plan.
Shortly after checking in in the Siam Center area, we walked around to refamiliarize ourselves with the area. Having the rest of the day ahead of us, we were in no hurry and we stopped to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix at the Scala Theater (Bangkok’s most classic theater–more beautiful and comfortable than any theater I’ve been to in the USA). The movie was nice because we spent many nights on Koh Samui island at a place called Will Wait Restaurant, watching pirated movies with our dinner. Most were ridiculously low quality theater recordings but it was funny to watch the bad subtitles that must have been generated by speech-to-text software in the TV. It was also nice because for the best seats in the house, it was about $3.50 US to see the movie. Aside from the 3 ushers with flashlights who kept guiding latecomers to their seats and shining random spots of distracting brightness all over the place, I’d say it was an excellent movie going experience.

Oh, but before the movie started, we went to Pantip Plaza, which was a little hard to find on foot but we asked directions from many street vendors (and at a 7-11 where we purchased some awesome movie snacks–yummy candied tamarind).
Pantip Plaza is the Tech Mall (I have pictures I will upload later). What you find when entering Pantip is that it’s 5-6 floors of pirated software, movies, music and games, electronic goods both new and refurbished and just about any other geeky thing you can imagine. Imagine a pirate mega-mall. It was cool. I was a little disappointed upon further investigation that the new items were the same price you would expect to pay in the USA (after doing the conversion)–some were even more expensive. When it comes to high-end technology, the equivalent value formula for cash consciousness goes crazy.

Anyway, after the movie, we decided to check out MBK, the shopping mall that we didn’t make it to last time we were in this area. We gave up early last time because Siam Center is a very expensive yuppy area. However, we were delighted to find that inside MBK, on the Skytrain entrance level (the 3rd floor, I think), was a huge area just like Jatujak market, in which the hawkers bargained just as low and sometimes lower than we experienced anywhere else including JJ Market. We were blown away. Last time we went to JJ weekend market, we almost died because it’s all outside in non-air-con huts and there are so many people, you almost get trampled trying to find your way around the maze. And here in Yuppyville MBK was the same set of cheap items at the same prices. So, of course, we went crazy and blew a couple thousand baht. Then we decided to ditch JJ market in the morning and simply go back to MBK. This decision was amplified after we realized that we had spent over 2 hours just in the 3rd floor market and that MBK is actually a MEGA-mega-mall holding at least 6 floors, each about 1 kilometer long. We had dinner at the food court–complete with 2 beers–for 170 Baht together (or about $5 US). Shockingly the mall food was as good as any other food we’ve found around the area.

Today, we went back to MBK and found that the market stalls weren’t open at the same time as the rest of the mall. Were they setup, the booths were closed off with garage door covers that were themselves covered in graffiti. I took as many pictures as I could and cursed not arriving before the dozen or so who had already opened, thereby concealing the amazing art on their closed doors. Oddly, the Siam Center area as classy and yuppy as it is is also the spot in Thailand with the most graffiti. I found another car park that was covered 360 degrees on the inside. I’ll have to go back there today.

Well, we are off again to explore the rest of MBK. I need to get a couple more awesome shirts and whatnots. There is also a music store, which had guitars for between 1K-4K Baht or about $30-120US. I’m tempted, even though Lena claims my accordion, harmonica, drums, and electric guitar don’t get played enough. But I’m thinking I should sell my electric guitar and get an accoustic

I know this is a little disjointed but I’ll be writing much much more when we get back and I can upload all the photos. We’ve seen so much and there is just too much to write about. I’ll need about 12 hours of solid computer time…maybe more.

If there’s one thing I can say to someone visiting Thailand, it’s this: Walk. Walk as much as you can. We’ve been here almost 10 days and we have only taken 2 taxi rides, one from the airport on the first night and one back to Banglamphoo district from the train station–after walking from the former to the latter.
Walking around Bangkok, we’ve found more interesting things than we imagined. The hidden bangkok is really not far from the tourist streets but there are no tourists there. It would seem that all tourists take a taxi or a Tuk-Tuk to get anywhere. Just a couple blocks from the main roads, we found rows of market stalls and restaurants with more authentic foods, people and goods than the tourist traps held.
On the flip side, now that we are on Koh Samui, we’ve found walking on the beach a wonderful way to spend the day but trying to get anywhere is pretty tough on foot. But again, just a couple blocks inland from the tourist resorts we found flea markets and food centers and even a really awesome Thai style BBQ buffet for 89 Baht (US $2.62). It’s the best food we’ve had so far.

The lights on Khao San Road make the trees look artificially deciduous. The streets are full of fish. Feral cats and dogs wander, searching for scraps left by the food vendors and lazy tourists.
I’m actually growing a taste for beer–or, at least, my physical aversion to it is waning and I now find some beer drinkable. Now it is Leo beer. All I know of it is that it’s light and the label is totally in Thai. While we drink, we watch American Dreamz on the restaurant television. It may or may not be pirated, but the odds are in favor of the former. Watching the people around us tends to be more interesting than the movie, which is a little on the silly side. Perfect choice though for the American tourist. An American movie that makes fun of the American way. It sort of feels like Khao San Road itself. Even the restaurant owners speak perfect English. It seems that English is the middle man language of tourists here. I heard a chinese woman saying something in English to the Thai pharmacists the other day. Germans, Greek, Russians, Ukrainian, Dutch, Norwegian, and French. They are all speaking English to the Thai natives. Aside from on Koh Samui, where many signs are in Thai, English and German, it seems English is everywhere and the only middle ground. It’s a convenient system for those who speak English natively, but I feel a little bad for all those who don’t. We’ve met several people from different countries and they always apologies for their English. I always reply with the same, “It’s better than my Czech”, or Dutch, or Norwegian or whatever it is the other person speaks.