not an auspicious start to my blogging career - as this is only my second. However, I have been busy on my website and as this blog is partly to inform of updates etc, that's a good excuse. If you're a returner you will have noticed the total reformatting of the Wanderings asia site - hopefully making it more user friendly and navigable. I intend to use the same template to update the africa pages within the next few weeks.
Although having lived in Thailand for the last 4 months I still haven't managed to add a Thailand page (hence the empty link) but hope to add a page on my trip to Ko Samet in November and also may have a few 'home' photos up and running soon. Similarly Malaysia is empty - but I hope to put on a page about Penang soon.
It's going to be a busy time as it's Christmas hols now and we're off to the north of Thailand on Friday - exploring Sukhotai and on to Chiang Mai - so another page in the offing.
As a Brit I've always got to sign off with a weather report - it's amazingly cool her e in Bangkok at the moment. No fans no a/c at all and a bit nippy first thing in the morning. - I doubt if we'll have snow though!
Anyway that's all for now - Happy Christmas and look out for further updates to globalwanderings in the new year.
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Thursday, December 01, 2005
Bangkok intro
Welcome to my humble blog which accompanies my humble website Globalwanderings. Originally, I just had a website to post pictures and travelogues of my times spent in various countries while working for the British Council. But upon arriving in Bangkok, I thought it was time to join the billions of other self obsessives and start a blog – so here it is. A bit late in starting as we arrived in Bangkok almost 3 months ago, but better late than never.
I hope to post something every week about little quirks of living in Bangkok, little bits of trivia and minor culture shocks which seem to occur every day.
Of course the first thing about moving to a new country is getting settled in the job and finding a house – boring. My first real job was to get a new computer, so I headed down to Panthip Plaza. It was gobsmacking. I am no computer geek but even I had my chin on the floor when I saw 6 floors of wall to wall computer shops surrounding an inner atrium, lights flashing and dodgy blokes whispering ‘sexy movie?’ to me. As well as providing tons of hardware – there were also tons of accompanying (pirated) software, CDs, DVDs etc. So much for Thailand’s crack down on piracy. Even ignoring everything but desktops there were still simply too many shops make any disciplined choice. So I just picked one at randowm, gave them my specs and picked up my computer the next day for a fraction of the price in the UK. So far (2 months down the track) I’ve had no problems. Since then I’ve hooked up to 24 hour broadband at home which costs an amazing 500Bht (£7) per month and I’m away.
Managing to stay away from my new toy at home has been tough, but I have managed to do a bit of sightseeing which I’ll cover in my website, but the trip from my house to the skytrain station (Ari) and on to work has been interesting in itself. During my second week here I happened to be walking down the road as normal in my own little world when I noticed that everyone else was stock still on the pavement, what was going on? Had time frozen? I could also hear some music and then it dawned on me – it was the national anthem. I was later to hear that at 8am every morning and 6pm at night, the public address system blares out the national anthem and everyone within earshot stops stock still for about 20 seconds. Bizarre. The traffic never stops though – it still continues at a crawl.
I hope to post something every week about little quirks of living in Bangkok, little bits of trivia and minor culture shocks which seem to occur every day.
Of course the first thing about moving to a new country is getting settled in the job and finding a house – boring. My first real job was to get a new computer, so I headed down to Panthip Plaza. It was gobsmacking. I am no computer geek but even I had my chin on the floor when I saw 6 floors of wall to wall computer shops surrounding an inner atrium, lights flashing and dodgy blokes whispering ‘sexy movie?’ to me. As well as providing tons of hardware – there were also tons of accompanying (pirated) software, CDs, DVDs etc. So much for Thailand’s crack down on piracy. Even ignoring everything but desktops there were still simply too many shops make any disciplined choice. So I just picked one at randowm, gave them my specs and picked up my computer the next day for a fraction of the price in the UK. So far (2 months down the track) I’ve had no problems. Since then I’ve hooked up to 24 hour broadband at home which costs an amazing 500Bht (£7) per month and I’m away.
Managing to stay away from my new toy at home has been tough, but I have managed to do a bit of sightseeing which I’ll cover in my website, but the trip from my house to the skytrain station (Ari) and on to work has been interesting in itself. During my second week here I happened to be walking down the road as normal in my own little world when I noticed that everyone else was stock still on the pavement, what was going on? Had time frozen? I could also hear some music and then it dawned on me – it was the national anthem. I was later to hear that at 8am every morning and 6pm at night, the public address system blares out the national anthem and everyone within earshot stops stock still for about 20 seconds. Bizarre. The traffic never stops though – it still continues at a crawl.
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