The Highway Wedding

Planning a wedding (I'm guessing) is all about compromises. Your family wants to invite 300 people, you can only afford 200. Your fiance wants filet mignon, you settle on chicken fingers. Reception on top of the gondola becomes a pot luck in your back yard.

Somehow Thai's are able to stretch a wedding budget in ways we would never conceive. Need a venue for 200 people? No money to rent a place? No room in the backyard (or no backyard)? Have it in the front yard. Only have a 6 lane divided highway in front of your house? Move the wedding tent into the first two lanes of the highway. Put some cones up and blast some music to cover up the sound of the traffic. Problem solved. Check out the venue: video here.

Like any good Thai wedding it did not fail to disappoint. The bride's family was so sweet to put eight of us up for two nights- room, board and some of the nicest company I've ever kept. Check out the updated photo gallery for some highlights- including the cockroach crawling up an unsuspecting wedding guests shoulder. Some day I might be nice enough to take the roach off before I photograph it. Today is not that day.

The Rainiest Season

So I showed up 2 weeks early to surprise Pui this year. I didn't have a specific plan, but I though I could wing it when I got here. Unfortunately, I totally botched the surprise this year by inadvertently calling her office's cell phone. After she saw the caller id, she knew I had slunk into town early. That being said, she was still surprised, just not a blog-worthy surprise.

This is my first time back in Thailand for the rainy season; and September is as rainy as it gets. The deluge that pours forth from the sky can turn into a sketchy flood pretty quick. Last week it went from dry streets to shin deep rainwater in about 20 minutes. It's a little disconcerting when you realize that some of that water is overflowing from the sewers.

If you're riding your motorcycle, you can either brave it out (and hope you don't get any splashes), or do what I'm becoming fond of. Pull the bike over to the closest Thai masseuse and go for the 3 hour massage.

Even though it can be hard to get out of the rain, I'm definitely making up for it by catching up on all of the craptastic reality tv I ever wanted to. Click here for the Paradise Hotel 2 homepage. Or don't.

Always Leave a Party Wanting

I had a really hard time trying to decide between titles for this entry. It was either going to be this title, or 'Best Summer Ever'. The title I chose is comes from one of my favorite quotes from Jeff Burke. The basic idea is that whenever you are really enjoying some thing, some place or some experience, it's a good time to leave. That way you'll always want to come back.


When I came back to Jackson this summer I was so not ready to leave Thailand. Life was good in the land of smiles and I didn't want to jump back into the fast pace that my U.S. lifestyle is. Oddly enough, 3 months later I'm not ready for that fast pace to stop. From snowboarding early season, going out with friends, hiking the classics, spending time with family, hitting the music festival weekly, to swing dancing at the cowboy and shutting down the bars every night, life was very full this summer. I have to give most of the credit to my partner in crime, Erin Roy, who was always up for a good time. Here is the video of us dancing at the Cowboy. Watching it definitely makes me nostalgic.

One of the tools that made this great summer possible was my new monster truck. Purchased for $5000, this 1995 Forerunner on a liftkit was nothing short of 'high school awesome'. At 13 miles to the gallon, standing 7'2" tall with the biggest subwoofer you've ever seen, listening to nothing for 3 months except for this hip hop group out of bozeman, EightTrack Mind; it provided me with hours and hours of entertainment.


Finally, my summer was spent growing out my ridiculous haircut. What started as some misguided attempt to be the first person to actually try to grow a comb-over, turned into a full on obsession. Now I'm stuck somewhere in the middle of bad high school teacher hair and full blown clown hair.