Voting Day

We filled out our absentee ballots a couple nights ago and mailed them in. A week and a half left before the election and looks like we might actually get an election fight in Washington. Senate race should be close and the house race in District 5 just got more interesting. Cook Report (www.cookpolitical.com) says the incumbent just went from Solid to Likely. Which means she'll still probably get reelected, but it's not a safe seat anymore. We'll see on the 7th. This is Dung's first general election (we did the primaries a couple months ago), we better win or she'll lose faith in democracy....

Pai

Last weekend we had yet another three-day weekend, this one courtesy of Constitution Day, I think. Or maybe that's next month. At any rate, on Friday night we flew up to Chiang Mai with seven friends, business class by the way 'cuz coach was sold out and may I say it was totally worth the extra 1000 baht. Next morning with dramamine in hand we took a long van ride into the mountains to Pai. Pai is a small town in the middle of beautiful mountains, verdant green valleys, and lush rice fields that people found out about some years ago and ruined. Now its full of dirty hippy backpackers, of which I used to be a proud member not too long ago. Lots of guest houses, cheap restaurants and bars. But still beautiful scenery and we got out of Dodge as often as we could to see it. We did a one-day trek up to a Lahu village and down into a pretty sizable natural cave. We spent a couple days riding motorbikes around the countryside, checking out waterfalls, hot springs, odd canyons and lots and lots of rice fields. The rice was just hitting harvest time so it was high and beautiful. Lots of farmers out making the first cuts in the field.

Happy Birthday, Lam!

Since I know Lam will be the first one to see this today, October 10, this is the best way to say Happy Birthday! Lam is of undetermined age, but at least 40, officially an old man. This picture is of a younger, more innocent time, when Brandon was still a baby. Why is this the most recent picture I could find?? Time to reorganize my pictures.

Lowman

A bunch of us guys headed off to dinner across the river last night, an area known as Prapadang. We ended up playing a horrible yet endlessly fascinating game John made up known as Lowman. The game is essentially to think of something you wouldn't do unless you were paid a good sum of money to do. Everyone has their price and the goal was to find out what that price was. We went around the circle, each person had to either lowbid the person before them, or declare their willingness to put their share of the money into the pot to pay that sum. The first challenge was to drink a shot of fish sauce. The winning (or losing) bid got lower and lower until Suzy dropped to 240 baht and the rest of us decided it was better to pay than to volunteer to do it for less. Easy. Then the challenge moved up to walking to the bar shirtless, ordering a beer and serving it to the other customers in the restaurant (1200 baht for Norbert), then doing the same but wearing boxer shorts and Suzy's spaghetti strap top (1200 baht for John). Last one was mine, jumping in the Chao Phrya river right next to the restaurant. To me that was substantially easier, but most of the rest shied away from it. I picked up 1000 baht for a nice dip in the river. I woulda dropped to 500 easily.

FS-2

Promotion list came out on Saturday morning our time and turns out I made it, moved up from FS-3 to FS-2. I was pretty sure it was coming, I'd just missed the last couple years because I was hanging out at FSI in training and not doing anything too useful, all I needed was one good year overseas and I figured I'd make it. Now I won't have to worry about promotion for a few more years, I have to be at grade for at least three years before being considered again.

Last night in Venice

Here's a shot from dinner on our last night in Venice and Italy. Overall a good trip, we saw and did everything we'd really wanted to do in Italy, though we left enough behind to make another trip worthwhile sometime in the future.

If this is the first Italy post you see, go down to the bottom and work your way up!

Venice

We jumped off the train at Venice and didn't see a car for a couple days. Venice is an island crisscrossed with canals but no roads, at least not for cars. We walked everywhere, boats for everything else, including the taxi to the airport. We took about a hundred pictures all about the same: cute little canals with cute little boats. The one thing we didn't see were any actual Italians, at least none involved in the tourist industry. The whole island was given over to tourists.

More Meat

Just before we left Florence we stopped at this shop to pick up some outstanding salami and cheese. The place had meat hanging from the walls and the ceilings and cheese stacked off every available place.

U.S. Consulate Florence

One of the best deals we had on the trip was staying for three nights at the Consulate. The Consulate has a couple TDY suites in the back of the building with a separate entrance. FSOs can rent the place when it's not being used for official visitors. For 20 Euros a night (about $25), we got a great room, complete with a little sitting room. It would have gone for $400 in town for sure.

Il Latini

We stopped by a restaurant the Consulate had recommended, Il Latina. I took this shot when it was just the two of us waiting for a table. Within a couple minutes there was a crowd of 20 waiting outside. Turned out to be a very popular place, we got lucky to be first in line, though we still waited about 30 minutes for a table. The owner brought out glasses of wine and cheese for everyone to keep folks happy while they waited. Probably the coolest place we ate in Italy.

The Man with the Red Pants

Why does every Italian man own a pair of red pants? One of the many mysteries of Italy. We saw lots of guys in red pants, sometimes pink or orange. Never seen that anywhere else in the world.

Holding up the Leaning Tower

Sure enough, the Leaning Tower of Pisa has a serious angle to it. We'd always seen pictures but it really is hard to believe the thing never finally tipped over and squished the neighborhood around it. Thanks to Dung, it stayed up for a few more minutes.

Space

In a non-descript warehouse about thirty minutes outside Florence lies one of the Meccas of fashion, a legend spoken of in whispers among women: the Prada Outlet. The highest of high Italian fashion, brough down from insanely expensive to merely shocking. Dung combed the store and walked out with a few pair of fabulous shoes. High point of the trip.

Up to Florence

We headed up to Florence next, another incredibly cute town with little twisty streets that constantly got us lost. I swear we never walked anywhere without getting thoroughly lost, even hanging onto the map. But Florence is a great walking town, we walked just about every block (many while being lost), and kept turning corners and running into beautiful architecture, museums and statues.

Good picture of a bad day

My great idea was to rent a Vespa and cruise around Rome a la "La Dolce Vita". Rome was built for scooters, little tiny alleyways and lots of traffic. Only soon after we started a driving rain started coming down and refused to stop. We hung out at a restaurant for several hours before finally giving up and returning the bike. It kept pouring all night, flooding the subway stop that connected to the best parts of town. We ended up at a little trattoria down by the train station then packed it in early. Total wash out.

Gelato

Endless gelato, too. There are gelato stores every few blocks and we made ample use of them. Pretty much every afternoon we'd stop in to one and ruin our dinner.

Prosciutto

We ate so much prosciutto on this trip. Endless amounts. In fact we had meat three meals a day in Italy, salami and bread for breakfast, pizza or a panini for lunch and usually some meat dish for dinner. Meat, meat, meat. This shot was at a morning market in Rome where we picked up a bunch of Italian seasonings, too.

Trevi Fountain

Another famous site in Rome, and the start of one of the best nights we had. From Trevi Fountain we walked for about 20 minutes to Piazza Navona. On the way we walked through picturesque little alleyways on the way, past the Pantheon and some other 2000 year old buildings, through to Piazza Navona where artists sold their works, then to the back alleys behind the Piazza where some of the best little outdoor restaurants. We noodled around and found ourselves a good one, probably the best place we ate in Italy.

The Sistine Chapel

When we got to the Vatican the line for the Vatican museum and the Sistine Chapel was blocks long. We figured we'd skip it, but as we got ready to leave we noticed the line had disappeared. That Sunday admission was free, so the crowds were moving in faster. So we got in with no cost and no wait. It was still crowded inside, but we got to walk through the whole thing in a pretty short time. I'd always thought the Sistine Chapel was just the one ceiling where Michelangelo did his work lying on his back, but the place was huge. It took us almost an hour to make it to the famous ceiling was, but passed through who knows how many other fantastic paintings and sculptures on the way. We're not real aficionados of that, but could tell just how much work was put into all the art that fills the Vatican.

The fearsome Vatican guard force

Not so fearsome. Who designed those uniforms??

In the Vatican

We took a morning to go over to the Vatican, not really planning to go inside but just go see the place and take some pictures. We saw the line to get in to St. Marks and thought it didn't look too bad, maybe worth waiting in line, then noticed that the line actually stretched around the square for just about forever. So we took a bunch of pictures as planned. if we were Catholic we probably would have done the line, but well we ain't.

Spanish Steps

The Spanish Steps are one of the big sights in Rome, a nice place to hang out in one of the nicest parts of town. We took a few breaks here and one night after dinner hung out on the steps with a bunch of other people and sang along with a few guys with guitars.

Back 2000 years in Rome

Dung and I landed in Rome at about 6:30 am and went straight in to action. We grabbed a train in, dropped our stuff off at the hotel and by 9:30 were in front of the Colisseum. We were lucky, that weekend was EU appreciation day or something and all Rome's sights were free admission. Instead of the usual two hour line we waltzed on in with hardly a wait. The Colisseum is pretty amazing, as big as it looks in pictures though still a shell of its former self. Lots of bricks were dismantled from it over the years to build other buildings in Rome, that's why it's got the odd gaps in the high walls. It had been used for things other than gladiator battles over the years as well, and the main field in the center was built up, for what use I have no idea. But it was hard to imagine Russell Crowe doing battle down there with all the brick walls in the way. Impressive just the same.