Bowling

On Monday night we went bowling with Clay and Jessica at Siam Paragon mall and their new bowling alley. On the second game I managed to knock out seven strikes and three spares (plus one open) and got a 227. My all time high score up to that point was 196 back in high school, that stood for over 20 years. This one might stand for another 20.

Every kid's dream

Sunday in Yasothon was the big day of the Rocket Festival. We figured they'd shoot off a few big rockets and call it a show, but for five hours they launched rocket after rocket. The rockets had some kind of explosive packed into PCV pipe and who knows what else. Most were smaller, about four feet long, but some were ten feet long or so. They didn't look too fancy but they had extraordinary force and launched thousands of feet up into the sky. The good ones popped a parachute and floated back down but most just landed a couple kilometers away in somebody's field. The big shot of the day was a huge rocket, a good 15 feet long. It looked like Cape Canaveral as it lit up and started off the launch ramp. But soon thereafter the rocket turned over and went horizontal, shooting off across the landscape like a cruise missile. A few kilometers away it went over the horizon and landed hard. The next day we saw in the paper that it hit a mango tree and exploded, pretty close to some houses. So close to a disaster.

Rocket Festival in Yasothon

Last weekend we made a spur of the moment decision to head up to the small town of Yasothon in the northeast with our friends David and Huyen for the annual Rocket Festival, which none of us had ever heard of the day before we decided to go. Yasothon's just a little town but they pull out all the stops for this show. Saturday afternoon the town closed down the main street and had a parade of lots of traditional dancers and pretty much anybody else who wanted to be in the parade. By Saturday night the street was still closed but now there were stages all along the street, each one packed with people dancing to their own music over massive speakers. The whole town was going nuts. Sunday was even cooler.....

Kodak Falcons

Every year the Kodak building somewhere in New York state (Rochester?) hosts a couple of falcons that return each Spring to make a nest on the roof. Kodak has webcams set up so you can watch the eggs hatch and the little ones grow up and finally learn to fly and leave the nest. The eggs hatched a couple weeks ago and the little guys are growing fast.

www.kodak.com/go/birdcam

The Exploited

We were driving back from a weekend at Ko Samet and passed this pickup truck full of Thai workers. I saw this guy's T-shirt and had to grab a photo. Classic.

Beijing and Tokyo

We got back from our trip a few weeks ago but finally got some pictures up on the blog. Start at the bottom and come back up!

We've got all the pictures here: http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLandingSignin.jsp?Uc=13pcj927.54fapnd3&Uy=-mt1wb0&Upost_signin=Slideshow.jsp%3Fmode%3Dfromshare&Ux=1

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The Ayalas

In Tokyo we stayed with Mateo and Deanna and their little girl Sasha. They used to live just a block away from us in our old neighborhood in Virginia. Mateo's finishing up his language training in Tokyo before going fulltime at the US Embassy for a few years. We hadn't seen them since last August and Sasha's gotten a heckuva lot bigger. We'd always wanted to go to Tokyo, but with Tokyo prices so high there wouldn't have been any way for us to do it without these guys putting us up and showing us around town. Thanks, guys!

Nikko

In our last day in Tokyo we took a day trip on the train out to Nikko, site of one of Japan's more famous shrines. It was a big complex and we spent the day walking around to each part. It was a few hours to get out there, but nice to get out of the city for a bit and get a view of the Japanese countryside from the train.

Shinjuku

This has got to be the busiest intersection ever, at least for pedestrians. When the light turns green a thousand people on each side launch themselves at the other side. Like nothing you've ever seen. Up top of the intersection is the busiest Starbucks in the world.

Memoirs

Recreating a scene from Memoirs of a Geisha!

Sakura

We missed the peak of the cherry blossoms by a couple weeks, but one day we went down to the best places to see them anyway. There were still some blossoms out, and you could get a feel for just how beautiful they would be in full bloom. We took this shot along a canal, the cherry trees lined it for blocks and blocks.

Trung Nguyen

Right in the middle of Roppongi there's a Trung Nguyen coffee shop, Vietnam's version of Starbucks. Who would've thought.

Noodle shop

One of my goals for the Tokyo trip was to get some real noodles in a real little noodle shop. We found just the right one in Shibuya, a real little hole in the wall with just a few seats. A couple groovy guys ran the place.

Harajuku Girls

Harajuku was the funkiest part of Tokyo. The street just out of the Harajuku train station was jam packed with people, but not your ordinary shoppers. Your average Harajuku shopper has got some real style and is looking for more, but the real attraction is the Harajuku girls, just regular girls who come down on Sundays and dress as wild as they can. Goth, little bo peep costumes, you name it. Ever heard Gwen Stefani's song Harajuku Girls? That's them!

On to Tokyo

Beijing was interesting, but Tokyo had the funk. We loved this city. It was all very compact, in some areas you'd see thousands of people all fit into a small area. Every alleyway had little restaurants, shops and bars all tucked away for you to discover. This shot was taken in the Ginza district, probably the most expensive real estate in the world. It was Saturday and this street was turned into a pedestrian street. We never figured out why, but that day we saw dozens of women wearing their best kimonos walking around Ginza and even on the subways. Classic.

China

This was our first venture into China, but just a few days in Beijing isn't enough to get to know the country. We'd heard all the stories about China and the economic boom and had to see it for ourselves. Parts of it did look quite nice, well planned with wide streets and impressive buildings. But you can still see some of old China, with plenty of people still riding their Flying Pigeon bicycles in the lane next to the Mercedes. A lot of top flight people, too, but then lots of other guys with really bad hair and cheap plastic shoes. We're going to have to take a look at some other parts of that country and figure it out.

More street food!

Nearby where we picked up our first foray into Beijing street food we found another street a couple blocks long lined completely with little food stalls. We went to probably half a dozen and picked up their specialty and called it dinner. Just eating on the sidewalk and joshing with the food sellers.

The rest of the Great Wall

At the end of the restored part of the wall lies what I suppose must be more typical segments of the wall, slowly falling apart. Some areas that we could see were just overgrown with weeds, but other parts were in virtual collapse. I couldn't help thinking that if something like this existed in the U.S. there would be Rotary groups along the length of the wall volunteering to restore their parts, and kids taking a few months off from school to hike the length of it the way we hike the Appalachian Trail in the U.S. It's an incredible national treasure that extends for thousands of miles. It's amazing more of it hasn't been restored.

Climbing the Great Wall

We set up with our hotel for a tour to a part of the Great Wall that is less traveled, but due to a screwup with the hotel the tour bus came and left without us. We quickly jumped on another tour, though to the more touristy part of the wall. No matter, it was very impressive anyway and most other tourists were so badly out of shape we were soon by ourselves on the wall. As President Nixon said when he visited China, "It sure is a great wall."

Confucius Tea House

After a bungled dinner on Sunlitun street, a strip of clubs and restaurants (my idea), we went off to Confucius Tea House (Dung's idea). It was a quaint little place where the girl showed us the proper ritual for preparing and drinking tea. We just kicked back.

Down the hutong

One of my favorite parts of Beijing was after taking a jaunt down a street packed with crafts and art, we took a random turn and headed back toward our hotel down an alleyway. Out on the main streets of Beijing it's a modern city and you may as well be in Chicago, but take a turn down one of these "hutongs" or alleyways and things haven't changed for 100 years. A different slice of the city and much more quaint.

Street food on a chilly night

There was a great pedestrian street right in downtown Beijing, and one of the alleyways just off of it had an abundance of noodle shops and street food. It was bitter cold, I bought a hat and scarf as my Beijing souvenirs. About 10:00 we even got some snow flurries. Couldn't believe it, just a day out of Bangkok where it was in the 90s. We missed chill weather a bit in Bangkok, but not that much.

Tiananmen Square

Tiananmen Square is directly across from the Forbidden City. Seems smaller than what it looked like on TV back in 1989, but there it was. Looking at some old pictures of that time it seems familiar, yet odd imagining what it looked like then compared to the placid scene while we were there.

The Forbidden City

First stop was the Forbidden City. We did a big loop around Beijing before we realized we were just a few blocks away from it. Couldn't seem to get our bearings. We tried to rent The Last Emperor before we left but no luck, but really wanted to see it more what it was like 100 years ago. Lots bigger than I thought, dozens of buildings over acres, all beautiful.

Into Beijing

The Thai new year, Songkran, gave us a couple days off and an excuse to take off for an extended vacation to Beijing and Tokyo. Beijing was first stop after a short detour to change planes in Singapore. Added a few more hours to the trip, but when you're flying on frequent flyer miles you take what you can get. Here's our first morning in Beijing having a late breakfast/early lunch.....