My Life

A lot of times I think we become overwhelmed with things that we could do in this adventureful land. Mel and I like to plan our adventures in advance to help avoid any problems with our trips. I guess we aren’t very spontaneous when it comes to weekend trips. Mix that with our love of being simple and taking it easy and you get mostly weekends spent in the City.

This weekend was another weekend in the city which was simple, but very fun. Friday night we were going to go to one of the films at the film festival that is being hosted near MBK, but instead we ended up just having dinner at Outback and going home and watching a movie. It was very pleasant, as we just took it easy and didn’t stress about having to be anywhere at any specific time. I think that wears us out more than anything and it gets old fast.

We had not planned anything for Saturday, other than a Starcraft II day for me and Dance for Mel. Mel ended up spending the majority of the day submitting a very frustrating manuscript to an unforgiving web form(As a CS major I was quite perturbed for her at the poor quality of the submitting process they had on the site…). We had wanted to at some point go to Hajime, which is a Japanese Sabushi type restaurant. The only catch is the waiters are robots!

Don’t believe me?

This is the video I took while the robot was dancing.

The system is pretty neat. You have an LCD touch screen menu that you select meats, fish, shrimp, veggies… and soon the robot comes down the isle and swings around and drops off your tray of selected items. You then either BBQ or cook in broth the meats/veggies it brought. When you first get there you have to select from either BBQ or Broth to cook with. The restaurant is very fun.

After the restaurant we went back and watched a movie at the apartment to conclude the night. Sunday was filled with our typical routine of Church, On8 Cafe, Wasting time, Frisbee. I highly suggest that if you are ever near Nana that you stop by the On8 Cafe which is just down the stairs from the Nana BTS. The food is great and very fairly priced.

Have you ever had one of these scenarios

More than likely you have had a similar experience to the cartoon. I believe this scenario stems from the days that GPS were not so prevalent. Now people don’t expect you to be able to pull up maps their neighborhood and pinpoint their house between almost precise street maps and satellite imagery.

So lets step back a bit and think about the next time that you give directions.

Usually you send out an invite using letters or Facebook or email to your event. People still tend to think that their house or event is hosted in some unexplored part of the world and nobody but them can give the directions to this new place.

You have to go over the railroad tracks and then take a left at the big brown house(Ya thanks because big and brown houses only exist there).

Then you turn right at the big yellow sign(Again poor description)

We are the little blue house on the left

Ok, I’m not going to completely smash these directions as I’m sure you have dealt with similar ones before, instead let me show you how you can show somebody very easily

View Example Directions in a larger map

Done! No need to give crazy directions relative to obscure objects. They can see all the ways that might be easiest for them to get where they need to go.

They could even see this on their mobile phone using the Google Maps Mobile

Today we traveled South East to do some zip lining at the Khao Kheow Zoo. Basically a 15 minute hike up a mountain and then 22 zip lines and 2 repels later we were back where we started.

This was a very fun adventure. I was very surprised at how safe I felt on all of the platforms given how high they were. I’m pretty sure that knowing that you are buckled in makes you feel much safer.

Ok buckle in this is the fast version of the trip

First we saw a large lizard

Then they put us in some harnesses

Mel made a cute face for the camera before our first zipline

This is what it looks like when somebody ziplines

These are our two friends AnnaRae and Fon that went with us

2 times we had to repel down

Finally something alive that was taller than me

Rhinos!

Well that is the speedy version of our Flight of the Gibbon adventure

Here are the rest of the pictures

Ziplining

A simple way to explain what I do

I figured I would start this short post with a good XKCD comic which I feel describes any Computer Person’s life

It’s still hot here

That is all

Last week Mel had to travel up to Kamphaeng Pet to do some training for where she worked. I was stuck alone in Bangkok Monday, Tuesday and Thursday all alone. On Thursday after I finished teaching my class I started an adventure to travel up there as well. Mel’s transportation up there had been prearranged through her work so we didn’t have any info other than I needed to take a bus to get up there.

I figured out where the bus terminal was only to be immediately overwhelmed with options of different busses. The bus terminal I was at was the Mo Chit Northern Bus Terminal which apparently services a lot of different companies and routes up to northern Thailand. I wondered around trying to read signs until I finally just walked up to a booth and repeated Kamphaeng Pet until I thought I had a ticket going there sometime soon. I looked over the ticket and figured out what bus number it was and then wondered around until I found a bus that had the same number and hopped on. It was a fairly comfortable bus and I just hoped it was the correct one and going where I wanted it to go. Turns out it was. The trip there wasn’t terrible except the sun was beating through the window and the curtains on the bus were very thing so it was very hot. The bus had A/C, but it wasn’t on very high so really didn’t do much. I think I left around 1:30pm and arrived around 7:30pm. Somewhere around 5 to 6 hours it took. Once I arrived at KPP I now had to figure out how to get to the Hotel Mel was at. In most cities you just grab a taxi or Tuk Tuk. There were neither in this town apparently so Nexus One + Google Maps to the rescue. I marked where her motel was and started walking. 1/2 hour and a gallon of sweat later I made it.

The hotel was pretty fancy for American standards, but fairly cheap. Regardless I think the bill was on Mel’s work so yay.

The next morning we walked back to the bus terminal and managed to catch a bus to Sukothai which was our intended tourist destination for the weekend. This trip was only an hour and we thought it was going to take two which was suprising. Here we managed to get a taxi/pickup truck thing to our motel/resort. The place we stayed at was Tharaburi which turned out to be super nice. We have had very good luck staying at these little Thai resort places. The staff was amazingly friendly and helpful. They spoke very good English which helps so much. We are working on our Thai, but we just are not to the level that is needed to communicate efficiently. I’m sure there is a website out there that is the opposite of engrish.com that we probably would fit the profile of.

They had bikes that you could rent out front for like 40 Baht and we decided to try them out. It was pretty nice biking around. We biked up to the entrance of the ruins park and then around and back to the resort.

The next morning we walked to the park to see the ruins. I’ll let the pictures tell the majority of the story.

Here is an excerpt of the photo album from our trip. To see the full album go here.

Also note that if you are reading this in Facebook there is a good chance that the images don’t show up. You can check out the original post at http://www.tygertown.us/blog

At the end of the day I captured this video so I could show people how crazy hungry fish are here in Thailand. All you have to do is throw food in the water and fish come from everywhere and freak out.

On the way back we learned that not all busses are the same and that paying more for a ticket does not mean you will get a better quality bus. The bus was nice that we got on, but it was defiantly designed for shorter people. I actually could not even sit in the seats properly because I didn’t have enough leg room to even fit my legs in, but it got us home.

Well I’m back to Thailand and very jet legged apparently. I keep waking up at like 4am and get super tired around 7. Anyways I thought I would write a little about my month long trip back to America.

My Agenda that I had from my last post

So, onto the agenda for my time back

1. Bucking Horse Sale
2. Visit Glendive and eat a bunch
3. Move stuff out of apartment in Bozeman
4. Visit Glendive more and eat more
5. Bozofest
6. Work week @ MSU
7. Fly back

So after the BHS I drove back to Glendive on that Sunday and stayed there for the better part of two weeks. I’m sure I gained at least 10 pounds thanks to mom(See picture below of her freezer and you will understand slightly how the feeding process works)

I spent some days working at the kitchen table on my laptop for MSU while being constantly reminded that the treats that were on the table were for Wilbur, aka Grunt. Basically he sat on the floor for hours on end just staring at me and grunting until I gave him food. For the times he wasn’t doing that he was doing this

I’m sure glad I’m not a dog so I wouldn’t have to have such a rough life.

The first weekend after BHS we loaded up the van and drove up to Bozeman where we met my brother Greg and sassy sister Nikki. We spent the next few days moving my stuff out of my apartment and into a trailer to haul back to Glendive. The weekend went by so fast I couldn’t believe it. We also celebrated my Dad’s birthday while everybody was together.

Back to Glendive to eat more or less I’m not sure it was basically a blur of eating constantly. It’s too good not to.

That Wednesday Nate drove down from Miles City and picked me up and we headed back to Bozeman for Bozofest. The weather was suppose to be rainy and cold just like every year. Well it was..sorta. Saturday we woke up to snow. Once we got to the fields it had stopped snowing and was fairly decent. About half way through our first game the sun popped out and it started to get very warm. Then a storm rolled in and rained and the wind kicked up. This repeated all day. We ended up only winning 1 game that day, but still had a blast.

Day 2 was windy but very sunny. It wasn’t very warm so I didn’t realize that it was so sunny until I got home and took a shower. Of course then I realized that it was sunny out as the hot water ran over all of my sunburns.

Tue, Wed, Thur I spent working on Campus just like old times and it was really fun. Jade and I haven’t had the chance to work together in a long time so it was a lot of fun. We didn’t exactly get everything done that we wanted to, but we did get a lot done

On Friday William drove me to the airport. The flights all went really well. I had no layovers at all anywhere which was fun. I got off the plane in SLC and walked almost directly onto the next flight to Tokyo. I got off at Tokyo and was escorted by Delta representative all the way to my JAL flight where I basically walked right on that one too. Somehow they gave me a Business class seat on the JAL flight which was awesome.

Now, I’m back and I’ve been working on straightening away my new teaching position which I will post on soon.

Well I’ve made it back to Montanimerica safely. Just in time for the protests in Bangkok to go wild. Somehow I had this weird feeling that as soon as I left things would get more interesting over there. I think it is good to note though that I don’t feel completely worried about leaving Mel there though, as our apartment is far enough away that she is safe. I do worry about how she is stuck alone in the apartment all the time though and I get to venture out and do fun stuff, but I’ll be back soon enough.

So I don’t have a phone either so getting a hold of me while I’m back is really fun. Facebook or Email is the easiest.

So, onto the agenda for my time back

1. Bucking Horse Sale
2. Visit Glendive and eat a bunch
3. Move stuff out of apartment in Bozeman
4. Visit Glendive more and eat more
5. Bozofest
6. Work week @ MSU
7. Fly back

Videos from Bucking Horse Sale

Just messing around with my new camera and Photoshop

Here are the answers to all of those common questions I’ve been getting

Am I getting a job here in Bangkok?

I’m currently in the process of squaring away a teaching position at one of the universities here in Bangkok. I would be teaching a Computer Science class for undergrads. It is not formalized nor set in stone yet, but sounds very hopeful.

When am I coming back and for how long?

Just booked a round trip ticket from May 12 – Jun 4 in/out of Bozeman

What am I doing while I’m back?

First two days I’ll be recovering from the jetlag and cramming as much stuff into my car as possible. That weekend I’ll drive to Miles City for BHS. I’ll spend the 17th – 27th in Glendive. Come back to Bozeman for Bozofest. Then I don’t know how I’m getting my car back to Glendive while staying in Bozeman for my return flight on that Friday the 4th of June.

How long am I going back to Thailand for?

Until I’m elected king…j/k. Until Mel is finished here which will be up to 3ish years.

Do you have an awesome new phone that is better than any other phone you have ever had?

Why yes I do. Thanks for asking. I bought a Nexus one and have loved it like a small portable electronic child ever since I got it.

Do I have a very special great Aunt that reads my blog?

According to a little birdie I’ve been told that my great Aunt Kitty has been reading my blog. Thanks for spending the time to keep up with what I am doing.

Tyghe

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