The Morning in Mourning

I just went on a little trip in eastern Thailand to do surveys for the past 5 days.

We did over 500 surveys in the Bangkok area, then we did 125 surveys in each of the following provinces: Chonburi, Rayong, Chanthaburi, and Trat. We ended up getting everything done ahead of schedule so we were able to spend the night on the island of Koh Chang and spend a day in the sun and swimming in the Gulf of Thailand.

What are these surveys you ask? Well since my semester ended, I have working on my Nuclear Feasibility for Thailand research project. A huge part of our work is public opinion, so we have been gathering just that. As a group we have no surveyed over 1000 Thai people and now we have to start tallying and analyzing the results.

The phrase from this title sounds like: "dichan pen naksusa techno bahngmod chuay grough ka moon di mi ka?" or, for my English speaking friends, "I am a student at KMUTT, will you please help me by filling out this survey?" Although we surveyed 1000 people, we probably asked at least 2000 people who were too busy, confused, angry at the subject, or illiterate.

Now, back to analyzing all this data!

Oh yeah! The reference of the title "the morning in mourning" is due to that I went to aerobics and ran laps this morning but I wore all black. Everyone in Thailand is wearing black today because the King's sister died one year ago today, and today will be her cremation. It's half mourning half celebration of life.

Pride

Obama wins!!! I celebrated at the Roadhouse BBQ and Bar from 9am-11am to watch the results as the polls were closing back home. Friends were buying rounds of beer early in the morning to celebrate and I couldn't have asked for a better place to enjoy the company of fellow Americans in Thailand. I wore my "Bangkok for Barack" shirt with glee.

I am proud of:

p1. North Carolina votes for a democrat president for the first time in 32 years with Jimmy Carter. Yay Barack Obama!

2. North Carolina has a female governor for the first time in history. Yay Bev Perdue!

3. North Carolina has a democrat senator for the first time in at least 30 years. I'm sorry madam dolie. Yay Kay Hagan!

Times they are a-changing. I'm so sorry Uncle Rick! I love you!

Nicholas Family Fun Tour 2551!

October 17: my parents, my brother Andrew, and his girlfriend Jenn arrived sleepily from 18 hours of airplane fun and I met them with sign in hand "Nicholas Family Fun Tour 2551" with matching t-shirt on. We walked around the Nana area and had dinner at the India Hut before getting some much-needed sleep at the Manohra Hotel which was quite nice with a rooftop garden.

October 18: bus ride to Kanchanaburi. We booked two rooms at the Noble Night Guesthouse in town after much ado with bungalows we found that were too crappy or too luxurious. We ate some good Thai food (ahan thai) and walked around a Chinese cemetary for World War II casualities in Thailand that was in utter disrepair. We poked around a weird spirit house garbage pile.

October 19: met up with a tour guide and now good friend Anngee that took us to a geothermal hot spring next to a cooling river that was nothing like I'd ever seen or swam in before. We visited a huge waterfall, rode on a old train, visited the Bridge on the River Kwai, crept in a Buddha Cave, and walked through Hellfire Pass that was park of the slave-labored railway construction of World War II.

October 20: back to Bangkok, we stayed in a huge family room at the Grand China Princess in the heart of Chinatown. Immaculate room, amazing view, and revolving restaurant on the roof. We ate a late lunch at the Shangrila where we ate a very delicious Chinese meal and where we accidentally devoured and paid for a $125 King Lobster. Don't be fooled by the dainty words 'by weight' when you don't know what you're getting yourself into. Delicious little fella though. Happy Birthday to Phillip on this day!

October 21: we spent the morning on a ferry boat on the Chao Praya River past Wat Arun (Temple of the Dawn) to the Grand Palace and Wat Prakao. I got in free with my student idea and a lot of smiling. We flew to Chiang Mai in the far north of Thailand and booked a room at Penon Peng Guesthouse that was family-run, adorable, and very quaint. We ate dinner at The Zest where my father realized his love of any food served in a pineapple. The band at the Zest was two men, one with guitar and one with banjo. I told the man I loved his banjo and that I have one of my own to which he responded by dedicating the ballad of Old Susanna to me next.

October 22: a taxi driver gave us a tour of some of the major temples in Chiang Mai's "old town" inside the moat area that was once used as defense against neighboring armies. I released several birds from a cage at a temple for good luck. We ended up at Doi Sutep, a temple on the top of a mountain that made for some amazing views and incense-fueled spirituality. Dinner at El Diablo's Heavenly Burritos was exactly what the doctor ordered.

October 23: Outside of town we went to an elephant camp where we rode on the backs of elephants, travelled by oxcart, watching an elephant trick show, and took a bamboo raft down the river. My first time on an elephant! One elephant was trained to lift people up with its nose between their legs and my dad just walked right up to it and did it! I was too chicken at first, but I couldn't let him show me up. Went to the Night Bazaar to explore the trinkets and excitement.
October 24: back to Bangkok, we booked a room at the Zenith Hotel on Sukhumvit Soi 3 and went to Siam Ocean World in the center of town. The huge aquarium was one of the highlights of the trip with more undersea life than I could have imagined existed. I will have to go back! Afterwards it turned out, much to the happiness of my brother and his girlfriend who are both graphic designers in New York, that we accidentally ran into the Bangkok Design Festival! Very cool artwork at the Bangkok Center for Cultural Arts. I also ended up showing the family around my campus a little bit at KMUTT and having a mediocre lunch at The Frog.
October 25: Andrew and Jenn flew back to New York while my parents and I grabbed a flight to Phuket, the largest island in Thailand in the Andaman Sea. A lazy afternoon of eating food on the beach, shopping, and relaxing around the Sugar Palm Resort. Note: every towel on the grounds is printed "SUGAR PLAM".

October 26: a boat cruise in the Andaman Sea of the most gorgeous karst landscape I'd ever seen. We visited the James Bond Island where "The Man with the Golden Gun" was filmed. We canoed through several bat caves and grottoes that were perfect. At one point we jumped off the boat and swam to an island where two monkeys were sitting on the sand and we fed them oranges. On the cruise back to Phuket, two of the boat's crew members ended up dressing up as Ladyboys and performing a quite strange sexy dance on board. I met a very nice girl from Israel on the boat and I hope to stay in touch with her. Apparently Israelites travel to Thailand all the time, as one Israeli guy on the boat said "If I wanted to see this many Jews I would have just gone to Tel Aviv." Happy Birthday to Zena on this day!

October 27: sunning ourselves on the Haad Kata and Haad Karon, I ended up going parasailing as part of my birthday present. Very exciting to see the island and water from so far up! We bought some nice sarongs and went to the FantaSea cultural and lights and dance show. Pretty gaudy and much like Disney World on the outside, it was a nice experience but a bit too much going on.

October 28: flew back to Bangkok then took a chartered car from Suvarnabhumi Airport to Ayutthaya. We stayed one night at Baan Lotus where I stayed months ago with my friend Greg. Very quaint, great teak homestead with very kind family owners. We took a tuk tuk tour of many temples at sunset and saw them lit up at night in an eerie beauty. We ended up at the Night Market for dinner and smoothies along the canal before turning in for the night.

October 29: after sleeping in and nursing my mom's cold, we took the public bus back to Bangkok and a taxi to my apartment. I gave my parents a tour of campus and we ate Mama Tom Yum at Ann's noodle shop at the Girl's Dorm. My father and I bought matching windbreakers with the name of my school in Thai on the back. We stayed at the Grand Mercure Park Avenue on Sukhumvit Soi 22.

October 30: spent the afternoon at Muang Boran just southeast of Bangkok where we rented a goftcart and travelled through mini-Thailand in park-form. It was a ton of fun and my parents realled loved it. It was very comfortable outside although we ended up getting caught in the rain and instantly soaked. Bought lots of nifty gifties. That evening we ate dinner at the Andaman Restaurant on Thanon Henri Donut and bought some beautiful scarves at Jim Thompson's Thai Silk store.

October 31: we toured Baan Jim Thompson and admired his gorgeous teak home from the 50s and 60s. He opened the international market for Thai silk decades ago and at the height of his fame, mysteriously disappeared in Malaysia. I gave my parents a tour of the park near my apartment and took them to the roof of my graduate school building for a nice sunset view. I sent them back to their hotel so I could prep for a sweet Halloween/Birthday Party. I dressed as a Zebra (in Thai: Ma-lai) and was absolutely proud of how it turned out. We had a bunch of friends over and then went out to Kao Sahn Road (mini-Franklin Street for Halloween as it turned out) and had a really great time. I didn't pay for anything all night and we met these really funny Thai students at one bar and danced with them all night. At midnight I was screaming "WON GERB CHAAAAAN" which was "ITS MY BIRTHDAY!!!" and fun was had by all.
November 1: My official birthday, my parents flew back home in the morning and I relaxed with my friends all afternoon. Nothing's more fun than celebrating your twenty first birthday in Thailand dressed as a zebra. We will celebrate my birthday again on the second so we've got bookends of happiness around my bday.

Hello Juvenile Thornback Cowfish!

I took the photo above from the front page of the Bangkok Post. Seems pretty intense! Two were killed in police/protestor riots earlier this month, one from a car bomb he set off himself, and one girl killed by impact of a police shotgun fired canister of tear gas. Her Majesty the Queen attended the girl’s public funeral.

I spent the past 7 days in Koh Tao, an island in the Gulf of Thailand. This island is directly north of the island I previously visited in June, Koh Phangan. The week was very eventful because I took full advantage of my Open Water Diving certification for the first time since I received it in May in the Florida Keys. I went on a total of 6 dives which was about all I could afford, but I went to the following dive sites around the island: Aow Leuk North, Aow Leuk South, Chompon Pinnacle, Twin Peaks, Shark Island, and Southwest Pinnacle. Underwater visibility was variable and the currents weren’t bad except at Twin. My favorite dive was at Southwest Pinnacle though, a series of underwater rock formations that look like mountains but don’t even break the water’s surface.
To list a few of the species I was able to identify: Queenfish, Blue-ringed Angelfish, Black-and-white Clownfish, Scorpionfish, Jan’s Pipefish, Elegant Sea Slug, Scribbled Filefish, and Remora. Let me tell you a little story about a Remora that I came to hate with a dreadful passion. The Remora fish are known as “suckerfish” because they find something interesting and nibbled on it. Yes, it’s true, apparently I’m interesting. There was one Remora that wouldn’t leave me alone and even when I would bat it away underwater it would come back from more tastes of my thigh. Eventually I moved along and he stayed back, but lord knows I’ve had enough of that little guy.

My dive master Mel from Big Bubble Divers was a load of fun and we hope to keep in touch through email. Our whole trip, with Kevin, Angela, Elizabeth, and myself: our accommodation was a little bungalow 10 feet from the water for 6 nights for a total of about $35 per person. Mind you, that’s the total for all 6 nights and we got to go snorkeling with the Big Bubble boat for free if we didn’t want to dive. Controlling my buoyancy underwater was a lot of fun and we even watched Mel cut some fish net off of the reef and save a trapped crab.

We took one day off during the week from diving when Angela finished her certification dives and we rented 2 motorcycles to check out the rest of the island. Elizabeth hastily jumped off the back of Angela’s at one point and burned her leg on the spinning tire, but aside from that, it was easy going. I absolutely love driving the motorcycle. This was probably my last time though, don’t worry momma. We closed our trip with some healthy drinking at Bubbalo Bar on the beach with some friends we made from Austria. We smoked some shisha (we call it hookah in the US), and ate many an American-style breakfast for sure.

I will not update my blog for the next 2 weeks because: Nicholas Family Fun Tour 2551! My parents, brother, and his girlfriend are arriving in Thailand this very evening. My parents will be here 2 full weeks and my brother and his girlfriend just the first week, but I’ve got a lot of fun trips and adventures planned. I’ve done some vigorous planning so I’m very excited about going to places I’ve never been yet! This is the longer time frame in my entire life that I’ve gone without seeing my parents! I can’t wait to see their shining faces and get some jetlagged hugs and kisses. I can’t help but wish Philly Cream Cheese was hopping off the plane too…Enjoy the rest of the pictures from Koh Tao! Once my family leaves I will be off break and back into hardcore research. I have just under 2 months left in the Land of Smiles and I hope it doesn’t go by too quickly!

Obama, McCain or Numer Five???

This past Sunday, elections were held for the Governor of Bangkok, and the position went to the one and only: Number Five! Above is a campaign power of Number 8, all of which lined the streets of Bangkok wherever you went. Number Eight (former brothel owner) was the funniest and craziest, but also punched a reporter in the face last week for insulting his manliness.

These are my parents! They will be arriving in about a week for our adventure through the country. This coming week I will be going scuba diving in the Gulf of Thailand on the island Koh Tao. It will be my first dive since I was certified in the Florida Keys this past May; is there a better place I could have my first dive?
Wtih classes over, this past week was devoted to the visit of Dr. David McNelis from UNC who serves as my advisor for my big research project over here. He's the Director of the Sustainable Energy Department at UNC, and adjunct professor in Nuclear Engineering and NC State, and got his masters in Nuclear Physics. McNelis is one of the authorities on Nuclear Power in the United States and was involved in a lot of the nuclear bomb tests in Nevada in the 1960s. After working with us last week he is off to Japan to visit their nuclear reactors and give advice. Regardless, he's amazing and he is working with us on our final project here: Nuclear Power Feasibility for Thailand. He sat in on the meeting held by the Thai government this weekend on their current Nuclear plans, and reported back to us the official findings. When our report is completed mid-November we will be presenting our findings to the Nuclear Power Program Development Office of Thailand who is in charge of the official plans under the Ministry of Energy. Very legit. Let the work begin!

Also, this past week I went to Roadhouse Barbeque in central Bangkok to watch the Vice Presidential Debate. To quote my father, "Joe kicked ass", and I agree. Palin just isn't ready to be that close to such an important position. Everyone in the bar toasted and drank whenever she said "maverick", it was hilarious. After the debate I hit the town with my friend Rick who I met in the airport in Kunming, China. We went to a bar where the Thai waitresses were dressed as belly dancers and the bar was literally made of ice. Chilly!

Also, I've been reading Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire aloud at night to my roommates. They enjoy the story and I enjoy storytelling so we're all winners. Because I saw the musical a few years ago, I'm glad to finally have time to enjoy the book.

This is my brother Clay.

Park that baby in Neutral!

This entry is full of anecdotes and factoids that you will likely find amusing and informative!

1. As it turns out, every single person in Thailand parks in neutral. Parking lots are mobile. You see a lot of double parking and people blocking each other in down cul-de-sacs, but it doesn't matter because everyone parks in neutral so you can roll your neighbor's car out of the way and put it back once you've pulled out!

2. When it rains, it pours. No, it floods. Our neighborhood sometimes has a foot of water in the street if its been a horrible all day and night rainstorm. There are gutters but the water table is so high that they cannot sustain the floodwaters. It's monsoon season so it rains almost every night after 7pm until 4am or so, and because its so hot, evaporation takes care of most of the water before I'm out of bed.

3. Bed is a loose term. We all sleep on squishy mats on the floor. They were only like 12 dollars so they're pretty crappy, but its not bad because with our fans on the floor, we get the straight shot of air.

4. My advisor from UNC arrived last night and he will be intensely helping us with our research project. Professor McNelis is an authority on Nuclear power in the US and will be helping us with our Nuclear Feasibility report on Thailand that we will be working on until Christmas.

5. There are 5 Thai children in our house right now. They are all under the age of 8. The kids are always running around the neighborhood and now they've started to just walk right into our house. The Farang Fortress needs a moat. These kids are fun because their English is on par with our Thai. We covered our walls with paper and the children draw and paint on them when they come over. They like to listen to our music and dance around and giggle and learn words. Some of the parents want us to legitimately give them English lessons but its more fun to goof around. The ham of the group, Ken, is 8 years old and a total showboat. He puts on our high heels and dances around with hands over his head and moving his hips like an absolute stripper. He's hilarious and oblivious to the world. It's all fun and games until you try to convince them that they have to go home. Pai Baan dai mai ca? Can you please go home? Response: closing themselves into our bathroom. I wonder where they're parents are.

6. Korean influence is really popular right now in music and style. All of the Thai boys have these kind of metro mullets and spikey hair and very girly bangs. It's fun to see so many styles and whatnot especially because the undergrads where uniforms so their hair is a great way to stand out.

7. I will be going to Koh Tao in 2 weeks to go on my first legit scuba dive adventure in Thailand. I got certified right before I came on this program in May so I can't wait to check out the Gulf of Thailand's coral reef situation. YAY!

8. I am making my best friend Phillip register me for my classes in 2 weeks because I am so unfortunately going to be on a tropical island. My schedule will ideally involve:
-Political Economy of Southeast Asia
-Playwriting
-Electromagentics: Physics 117
-Statistics
-Groundwater Geology

9. Went to a really cool Iranian dinner last week and smoked Hookah for our Iranian friend Ali's birthday. He is studying with us at JGSEE and a really fun guy. He told us a lot about Iran and Persian culture. Turns out that you can still be arrested for dancing in public if you're a woman. They will take you to the police station and tell you parents are stuff but usually you won't go to jail... wild.