Bound for Rome

At midnight tonight Dung and I are taking off for Rome for a week's vacation or so. Dung has a semester break from school this week so this is our only shot at getting over there, with just barely enough leave to let her get away. We've got three nights in Rome, three nights in Florence and two in Venice. Neither of us has ever been so we're getting psyched. We got the Lonely Planet, a phrasebook and have been combing the Internet at night to get ideas on what else to do. I have a whole pile of stuff. So far everything looks set, but most of our plans are pretty loose, we'll just see what we find!

The ongoing coup

Things weren't all that much clearer this morning. The political section was busy trying to figure out what was up after having been up most the night. Most of the guys only got an hour or two of sleep. The generals say they'll set up a civilian government within a couple weeks and they probably will. Thaksin probably won't return. The econ section kept busy figuring out what the economic impact would be. We called banks, investment houses and businessmen to see what they thought. We were surprised that no one was too concerned, everybody seemed pretty happy with how things had developed. What would be an incredible crisis for us was a pleasant turn of events for Thais. The general opinion seems to be that the political situation was intractable and this was the only way out. There is an election scheduled for November, which one would think would be an opportunity to change leadership, but everyone is convinced that Thaksin would win again thanks to support up country and the political crisis would continue. Tough cookies, says the democrat in me, but there is a point. What do you do when a democratically elected leader rules undemocratically?

Coup

We got a call from a friend in New York at about 11:00 wondering what was up in Bangkok. We were actually snoozing on the couch and had to go to the net to find out that a coup was underway. I'm at the Embassy now, it's 2:00 am, but getting ready to head home. Hopefully this will all be clearer in the morning.

Singapore Ultimate

The official pictures from the Singapore Ultimate tournament are in. Over a thousand pictures of all the teams in action, but only one good one with me in it. There's a few other team shots, but this is the only action shot. Nothing spectacular, just marking my guy, but it's still a good shot. If you want to see some more, here's the link: http://suo2006.album.sg/.

Singapore Ultimate

Bangkok Ultimate sent two teams to Singapore last weekend to compete in the Singapore Ultimate tournament. Teams from around SE Asia always make it in, this is the premier tournament of the region each year. The Soidawgz are our A team, Soicowboyz the B team, and old man that I am I made the Cowboyz. Our team had good skills and experience but we were playing teams with lots of youth, including some Singaporean and Malaysian university teams. We beat them, but they wore us out. In the end we took three games and lost three, not too bad. The Dawgz did better, but didn't make the finals again. We didn't see much of Singapore other than wandering around the first night trying to find the hotel to register. But we'd all been there before, we just came to play.

Bungalow and the cliffs

I tried to get a shot of our bungalow that we stayed in Railey Beach after everyone else left, but couldn't capture the enormity of the cliffs on two sides of it. We had an outdoor shower where you could really get the full view.

Rock climbing on Railey

Krabi is well known for having the best rock climbing in Thailand. All over that area are these huge karsts and cliffs sprouting out of nowhere. They make outstanding climbing faces. There are a number of places that give you the basics, the teachers are all big climbing enthusiasts. We saw guys like this when we went diving. When they're not teaching people how to climb, they're out climbing on their own. When they go on vacation they go climbing. Can't shake the addiction. Paul and I spent the afternoon doing it, climbing three faces and holding ropes for the other guys in our class. I did this back in Mexico and don't remember it being so hard, but my arms were ready to give out after just the first climb. On the second one I barely made it up, I literally couldn't close my hand to hold on to anything. The last one I realized that you could take a little break and hang on the rope for a minute and get your strength back, enough to make it up to the next hold and move your feet up where you can rest. Fun, but not easy. Time to get back on the weights.

Railey Beach

Dung and I took off for Labor Day weekend down to Krabi with the rest of the traveling gang here in Bangkok. We rented two houses on Railey Beach, a short boat ride away from Krabi town. We'd always wanted to do this, get a whole bunch of people together and rent a beach house rather than hanging out in hotel rooms. This way we had our own kitchen, living room, balcony, etc., and all about fifty yards from the beach. This is a shot of all of us at dinner at the house. The manager of the house had set up with a cook to come out and cook dinner for all of us, but somehow the cook forgot. David and Patrick walked over to a nearby restaurant and brought back bags of food and it was all the same anyway.