Shop-pinggggg

Made it to an amazing weekend market in Bangkok, Chatuchak market, HUGE market, home of hundreds of 10foot square cubes, stall after stall of home made fashion, really cool (size medium) T-shirts, and unique girls clothes, 2nd hand clothes and piles and piles of 2nd hand shoes (all size 9 or less). Puppy dogs, paintings, food food food every other stall and carts chasing you through the streets, fashion: home-ade and hand-made, musical instruments, ripped dvds and mixed cds, crafts and culinary, Buddhas Buddhas Buddhas sitting/standing/walking, hammocks and plastics, rugs and fried bugs, custards and curries, statues, clever and creative, fresh and fried. Sensory overload inducing, anything and everything. The fashion was really impressive, lots of hand made stuff, screen printed on some 1st, some 2nd hand clothes. Plain and printed, shirts and skirts and scarfs and shorts. Long Ts, tight sheaths, nickers to the knees, thick fleece, full lengths and short sleeves.

Back alley bound, deafly disorientated with a carb quazi coma on the wounded winding route,



"is the sun still shining?"

I think my camera is pissed at me

About a week ago it started getting some weird lines on the LCD screen so i couldn't see the whole screen. Then a couple days later a couple more. A couple days, a couple more. It must have expected me to get more upset about it or something cause then a big black dot came up on the screen. No matter if its on or off there is a big black dot taking up about 1/6th of the screen. So the combined deficiencies leave about half of the LCS viewing area. Ive been fliping it over to see half of the pic im taking and just hope for the best, and maybe Ill need to use a bit of cropping. So then I think my cam started conspiring with my memory card cause now I cant remove my memory card from my camera!?!? Figured some peice of metal bent out or something. I can still use the camera cause if i get a USB cable i can plug the camera into the puter, the only way it wouldnt work is if the memory card was locked. Whatta ya know, its locked (locking a memory card is used when you want to make sure you dont copy over some important pics or something, it doesnt allow you to add or delete any photos from memory) So I got a bunk screen with only about half visable, a memory card that is locked and stuck inside the camera so i cant replace it, O O, and did i mention that the zoom is only working sometimes. I have to coax the lens back in every time i turn it off!

FYI
Panasonic DMC-FS62
Worked pretty good while it works but dont get on her bad side cause she will turn on ya!
If Murphy was right, the warrenty probobly ended yesterday :)

2 Cameras down...

It might be worth the extra coin for a drop/water/dustproof camera

Red shirts

Whenever you take a bus somewhere the driver always takes you to an area where some of his friends are waiting with a taxi, tuk tuk (little 3wheeled motorcycle/taxi/go-kart thing), or travel service, or hotel hawkers so they can get a piece of the tourist pie. So this particular morning, we got to Bangkok at about 3am and I was met by snickers and pointing fingers. I thought they where laughing at my shirt cause I was wearing a red Japanese baseball jersey i found 2nd hand in KL. The graphics are kinda falling off so I figured they were laughing at my silly shirt. Come to find out there is a red shirt rally going on in Bangkok right now and unbeknownst to me I was backing a post government official who was fired then convicted of corruption sentanced to hard time and fined somewhere around a billion baht bucks (3B). So after his trial and conviction he took off so he didnt have to pay the fines. Then he starts stirring up the red party to try and get his spot back in office. He and the red party have a boatload of money so they are funding the delivery of supporters of the red party, who are primarily in poor rural communities, to be brought to Bangkok to attempt to influence the government by slowing down the city because of the protests.
The red shirts have shut down 4 major streets that lead to a round-a-bout located at the democratic monument. There are people everywhere down these streets, they are just camping out, hanging out day and night with even little tarped off showering facilities. There are vendors selling 2nd hand clothes, food stalls, people cooking food for their family on the curb, men, women, children, grandparents, and everybody else sleeping on blankets laid over the ground, I just saw today some guys with flame thrower looking devices that where aimed down in the sewer to smoke out, what im sure to be, oceans of cockroaches waiting for their chance to storm in.
From my hostel I can hear angry speeches all hours of the night. There has not been any confrontations yet between the red shirts and police or military but the government has set up precautions in case it comes to blows.

I have been taking advantage of a sweet deal on cheap tuk tuks. The government is giving out free gas to tuk tuk drivers who take tourists to the tourist travel centers so that they will get the hell out of Bangkok. Then the tuk tuks will take you to the sites for like 10Baht! The weird thing is that they have the same deal for tailoring shops. I was told that the gov is doing this to promote the sale of Thai silks and suits made here but that sounds kinda fishy. I never really get the whole story is SE Asia when things are being explained with a THICK accent and in broken English. Along with them not knowing all the facts and coming from whatever motivations they have.

So anyways, thinking bout skidadlin up to Chang Mai for a bit and check out some treking!!!
Some long walks with maw nature and cool mtn air sounds amazing

(more(?)) Success!!!

Can you believe it (you, as in, my make believe friends out there in interwebland that I imagine care about my day to day ramblings)
I was searching searching searching for a replacement pair of sandals to somehow replace the vacancy in my heart. And, whadaya know....

Same color even!!! So, needless to say I was pretty ding dang stoked!
till of course.........
I saw the price tag...................ouch, ok ok, not toooooooooooooooo bad.........
then I asked for what sizes they had..................damn!

And Some might say I am putting waaaaaa aaaa aaaaaayyyyy too much emotion and effort into all this. Well listen here Mr/Mrs Some, if thats your real name! You have not been around me enough to realize the difficulty I have had and continue to have with my feet!
Between the time I lost my super sweet love sandals till now Ive endured:
-1 pair of cheap knock off Teva sandles that made my feet bleed in 5 spots that i can see from here
-1 pair of cheap knock off Converse that gave me shooting pains in my heals and made my ring toes bleed
-I walked about 12 miles a day through downtown and surrounding Bangkok area with the heals of my feet hanging out the back of said "Converse", THEN a friend dragged me to some overpriced club with Beds all over and was expected to partake in a Redbull induced shaking of goods till 4 in the morning
-I have asked damn near every shop, stall, and 2nd hand sidewalk entrepreneur in Bangkok if they have ANYTHING above a size 10
-1 pair of authentic Clark shoes (maybe?) which has been about the closest Id come to replacement but then after about 2 days the TOPS of my feet started hurting me, and not like "ow, what was that", more like "ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, rest... ow, ow,ow,damn,ow,damn" etc...

Poor me!!!

Getting through all this tribulation and torture was made a little easier by seeing these amazing Buddhist statues, and being reminded of some great ascetics. Ones who STOP running for pleasure and away from pain, then turn around and start chasing away pain.
Keeping these ideals in mind, I continued attempts to accept the pain, without it effecting my emotion or mood, then taking the next step (heh) in getting a new pair of shoes.

And a bit of Hong Thong Thai wisky didnt hurt the process :)
Cheeeeeeers!!!

(partial) SUCCESS!!!

Back-story:
So I got a problem with wearing traditional flip flops aka thongs aka sandals aka etc, not sure if its the sweet cliff toes i got going, or I am just a super human freak of nature, or maybe everybody else figured out the skill and I havent, It did take me longer to learn to ride a bike :) The whole time Id been in Thailand Id heard of people getting their flip flops either left somewhere when they went out, lost, or stolen. Its difficult to keep track of them because you are expected to take off your shoes whenever entering a building. Whether it be a shop or home or hostel, basically anywhere except for 7-11.

Ive been abstaining from alcohol for a few weeks now (from binge drinking anyway) because of cost and the possibility of leg cramps while taking my open water certification. So when I met back up with a couple of guys from England and an Australian guy I decided it was about time to represent (heh, ego). It was a damn good night and getting better, one of the English blokes was celebrating his B-day so there where shots all around. Then there was no more, a bit here a bit there but after the second shot of cheap local wisky my body was on its own. I woke up the next "morning" with the casualties being my recently bought T (super sweet shirt that i was still trying to figure out what it meant) and MY SANDALS!!! I had been worried for weeks that this exact situation would play out (because of my inadequacy with flip flops and because Id heard so many others in the same situation). One of my few possessions that has treated me well and been with me since the beginning of my trip. I woke from my drunken stupor at about 4 O'clock the following day to this horrifying realization. Stumbling to the door I tried to remember what the hell happened the previous night but recalling only a few abstract instances, more of ideas of where id been then actual objects/people. So I dragged myself barefooted up and down the beach in unrealistic hopes of the ocean coughing them back up. After a couple hours without any result I decided to give it up for the day and try back "fresh" in the mornin. In my initial search I found a couple piles of lost flip flops and picked through for what was closest fitting. The next day I was a little less cloudy and remembered playing around near a tall hotel building that was under construction, and I know I was on the beach cause my pockets where full of sand and salt. So walking down the beach damn near aimlessly, on the verge of tears, I looked in a little dingy and saw what might be, is IT? IT IS, one of my sandals!!! It took me a minute for it to register because I didnt think there was any way Id see either one again. I thanked the guys lounging around who owned the dingy and offered them my right replacement flip flop. Before they stopped laughing at my enthusiasm I was in the water searching for my long lost sandal. After a thorough once over of the surrounding waters I decided to end the search. I continued to keep an eye out for it on door steps and shorelines but finally gave up on it. I dont know how ill ever replace them, we had so many good times, and they treated me so well. If there is one thing that can help me feel better its

BANGKOK!!!