Look at the Cute Little Puppies!

Wait a second? How did a dog crawl into the kitchen cupboard where all of my beloved Cliff Bars are stored, rip them open, and then have a litter of puppies in there? Wait a second! Those aren't puppies! Those are baby rats!! Some fat, slutty, pregnant rat was squatting over my Cliff Bars and pushing out these little pieces of disgustingness. These are the same Cliff Bars that I bring over from the states every year (50 lbs. in a suitcase of their own). The same Cliff Bars that Pui once quoted me as saying that 'I think I might love Cliff Bars more than her'. The only thing that might be worse is if those baby rats were conceived in my Cliff Bar drawer.

Anyways, after puking my guts out at the sight of these things, Pui and I went through and cleaned off every single one. We found 7 of the creatures in total. One of the most satisfying things I have ever witnessed was tossing them into the canal behind my house and watching an enormous fish coming up and eating one of them whole! Let that be a lesson to all would be rat mothers that plan on desecrating my Cliff Bars with their fetid offspring.

Our First Houseguest

After you've finally got everything unpacked- the office is all setup, dishes are in the cupboards, toothbrushes are in a little jar next to the sink, the utility room has all the boxes of extra stuff packed away that you won't see until the next move; you get that first night that you can just hang out and relax. We ended up spending that night reading. The interior of the new place is so relaxing and nice. It's very western in style and if I had one adjective for it, I would say it was 'clean'. So it was such a peculiar moment in my life when I looked up over the rim of my book and made eye contact with a 12" rat that just sauntered into the bedroom. Moments later, it reversed itself as Pui started squealing. So now I'm in the position of having to deal with a rat problem. I hate new houses.

So I go to the super store and go to the rodent ailse. For some god awful Buddhist reason there are no hinge-swinging rat traps. All they have is these 14" pizza plates with this special rat glue. You basically put some bait in the center, the rat goes for it and wallaa, you've caught yourself a rat.

What the box doesn't tell you (but of course you know it's going to happen), you don't just catch yourself a rat, you catch yourself a live rat. So now I have to figure out how to kill this huge thing. Pui (being the sweet little Buddhist that she is) wanted me to try and get the thing out of the trap (outside of course) and see if it could get away. After just about putting a broom handle through his stomach, I was able to dislodge him; only to have him get helplessly stuck to the broom. There was no way this thing would ever walk again. So I'm like, o.k., I'll put the end of the broom under the water in the canal behind our house, come back five minutes later and deal with it. Only the thing that happened was that 5 minutes later that little bastard somehow crawled up the broom handle 2 feet to get it's nose about 1" out of the water. At this point we figured this thing could probably survive anything, so I kindly scraped him off the broom onto my neighbors fence and waved a unfond farewell. That would suck so bad if my neighbors read this.

One More Time

Back in my college days it seemed like I was moving around all the time. An average year would start with me living in one apartment, moving home for the summer and then going back and finding another apartment in the fall. After I became a homeowner, I was kind of hoping these days of moving were behind me. So I find it a little exasperating that I've ended up in occupying 5 different residences in 2008. Pui and I just lost the sublease on the 'greatest place ever' and had to start apartment hunting. It's also funny that every time I move, I end up going through all the crap I own and getting rid of about 1/2 of it. Which means by now, I should only have about 10% of my original belongings. For some reason though it keeps getting worse instead of better.


So the new place is much nicer than the last one, 3 bedrooms, washer/dryer, entertainment room, patio, a stream in the back yard. I haven't shot a video of it yet, but I will soon. Until then, here is a photo album. It's got some really weird extra stuff. Imagine if you had money to do any crazy thing you wanted to do to pimp out your house - this is that place. A good example is my office. It has this 200lb. pocket door that when you slide it closed, 16 black fluorescent lights that are mounted in the floor come on automatically. You can also toggle it so the lights come on when it's open and off when it's closed. Who would ever do such a crazy ass thing? Every room is wired for surround sound through a central amp. These are the kinds of superfluous amenities that I'm trying to escape in America. It's so ironic that I ended up in a place that has them.

Anyways, the place is pretty sweet, the location isn't quite as good. We ended up buying a motorcycle for Pui so she could get back and forth to work. If the economy ever turns around in America, we might try to buy the last house we were in so I can cut my number of residences back down to two.

Rinse, Lather, Repeat

Thailand makes one thing very easy for me- being happy. I get to wake up every day and pretty much do whatever I want. I was just looking through photos from last year around this time and I'm doing pretty much the same things, taking Thai language classes and climbing (or ziplining as this photo would indicate) . As far as the Thai class, this class was the 4th level class so you would think that I would be getting pretty good. I would say I'm definitely getting better, but I've got so far to go. I love the reading and the writing so I keep focussing on that. There is nothing I love more than watching a really bad American movie and trying to see if I can read the subtitles in Thai at the bottom. I'm at about 30-40% right now, but that is much better than my 20% from last year. As far as speaking, that hasn't improved much, but my listening is good enough that Thai people can't gossip about my hair without me knowing about it.

As far as the climbing, I'm trying to go about 5 days a week. I've had some far off goal of climbing 5.12 ever since I was probably 15, and I think this is going to be the year. I'm getting cut up, freaked out, and exhausted every time I go out, but I keep asking for more. Pui has also been out climbing a lot more. She red pointed a 5.10b a few weeks back that has been her nemisis for the last two years.

The Lawsuits We Would Have

Now and again I'll see things that are so incredibly negligent. Today I was driving the motorcycle on one of the major highways - 6 lanes. Up ahead there was a road crew putting in a telephone pole. Instead of blocking off a couple of lanes to do the work (like they might do for a wedding), they suspended the concrete telephone pole right across all three lanes of the side they were working on. The crane holding the pole up was using some kind of hemp looking rope that didn't look like it could support a kite, let alone a 2 ton concrete structure; the workers looked like got a job from the temp agency that morning. So anyways, usually in these situations you want to get through it as soon as possible; which in this case means hitting the accelerator and getting to the other side. Just as I started to drive under it, one of the workers dropped a bolt the size of a baby's arm about 2 feet off the left side of my bike. Driving at 50mph, this entry just about didn't make it into this blog.

Domestic Disturbance

As many of you know, there are few things that get under my skin as much as a spiders- particularly ones residing in my house. So it was to my particular chagrin when I came home to find a palm sized one hanging out next to our dish drainer. There are few times that I have a hard time living the Buddhist lifestyle as much as when I am forced to follow the rule "Thou Shalt Not Kill Spiders". Of course it would probably be easiest to just ignore that I ever saw the thing and move on. However, just the thought of that thing coming out from a dark corner when I least expect it, well, it's just too much.

So the next 1/2 hour would be spent trying to trap lightning in a bottle, without touching it of course. The whole thing got a lot more complicated when it escaped into the underside of the cupboard that holds all the coffee cups (it has a slotted bottom to allow them to dry). After covering up the slots with a cutting board, I went through the most terrifying task of lifting each coffee cup, one by one, bit by bit, hoping against hope that the giant spider wouldn't be faster at getting out of the cup, than I would be at slamming it back down.

Not even close. A scream, a dropped cutting board, a broken cup later- the spider dropped down into the sink. What was so interesting was that the little monster couldn't pull itself out. It looked exactly like the little spiders that you find in your bath tub. I was able to eventually put a plastic bucket over the top of him and ferry him over to my neighbors yard. I only captured a little of it on video, but I feel like it shows the drama of looking for the spider pretty well.

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.

The Things That Go Bump

Ever since I moved to the giant house in the old city I've been cataloging the zoo that my house/front yard is. From gecko's to squirrels to bugs to you name it, we've got it. You can sit out on our front porch and just watch the nature come to you (or crawl on you, as the case may be). I updated the photo album with the highlights from the last 4 months. I also got a pretty sweet video of a gecko eating right outside my office window.

Any Given Sunday

So I got back from Japan about 2 weeks ago and I haven't had a thing to write about since. I got this great quote from a friend in China: "Visit someplace for a month, you can write a book, 6 months you can put out an essay, in a couple of years, you're lucky if you can squeak out a sentence." As it goes no matter where you live. The things that once were mind blowing have a way of becoming pedestrian. So I looked at some photos I've taken recently and tried to recreate the last 2 weeks.

• The Return of Song Krang. A week long water fight dressed up as the Thai New Year celebration. The old city of Chiang Mai is surrounded by a 6km moat. About the most fun you can have is getting up around 9am and walking the perimeter with a bucket. For the next 8 hours you enter a shoulder to shoulder procession of the walkers vs. the drivers. Continually getting hosed down with ice water from the backs of trucks while in turn dumping on them the grossest, dirtiest water you've ever seen on them dredged out of the moat. I think maybe the most important thing is to make sure that you keep that moat water out of your beer. Video of the festivities.


• Zip-Lining throughout the forest. Usually reserved for moviestars and reality tv-show contestants, a zip-line company opened up in Chiang Mai about 6 months ago. Honestly it isn't half as exciting as it would appear on TV. I think the most exciting thing that happened was my shoe came off during one of the flights. Actually, here is a video of Pui. This is what happens when you don't carry enough speed to make it between platforms.


• Hiding in the masses. I really appreciate the anonymity that living in a large city affords you. I can now grow the mustache that humility would never afford me in Jackson. And really why stop there? I let my hair grow back for the first time in 4 years so I can shave my girlfriends name in the back, just like I always wanted.

I Love my New Neighborhood

Moving to a foreign country is kind of like being an infant (or so I think). The littlest achievements seem so big.


Wednesday nights find Pui working late and me all alone in the big city. (So I'm not alone, there are lots of people to hang out with but I chose to take a lone evening). On a street about a block from us, there are food stalls lined up either side. Most thai people get take away from these stalls, although many of the vendors have set up a table or two behind their place to sit and eat. I'm a little shy to stop and eat because it can be hard to figure out what it is that each stall serves. However, I haven't really found anything I don't like to eat (except maybe that chicken foot floating in my bowl of soup the other day) so I decided to just try whatever this particular stall has. The guy was really nice, told me to sit down and brought me a plate of rice with some of the best chicken that chickens can make sitting on top. As I'm eating an older woman sitting next to me figures out somehow that I'm not thai and kind of keeps looking over at me. So I say hi. She says hi and then starts asking me various questions in English. I answer in Thai. She just finished taking a course in English from the British consulate and really wants to practice her english. So here I am, sitting at a food stall in my neighborhood, talking to my neighbor and feeling like I belong here.


After a while, I leave the stall still feeling a bit hungry so I go to another stall that is only take away and order some Kale type thing, rice, and some amazing chile sauce all in thai. The woman serving it up smiles and waits patiently as I speak thai, and sure enough, I get what I thought I was going to get. I'm pretty much feeling like the man.


This must be how infants feel the first time they learn to communicate exactly what they want.

Location, Location, Location

I've never been much of a commuter. When I lived in Melody Ranch for a couple of years, that extra 20 minutes every day just about killed me. My house on Nimmenhamen isn't that far from town (maybe 15 minutes) but I commonly have to go back and forth 3 times a day: Drop Pui off at work, go home, drive to Thai class, go home, go climbing at the gym, go home. So basically, everyday, I'm spending up to 2 hours in some pretty nasty traffic. Here is a map of said commute.


So when a friend sent me an ad for a house in the old city I jumped at the chance for a move. My old place was basically a small studio with an attached bathroom (video of old place). The neigborhood was very urban- I could throw a baseball from my room and hit 4 high end sushi restraunts - and I've got a pretty weak arm. The new place is the antithesis of that. It's in a really quiet Thai neighborhood. I can walk just about everywhere. I've now got 2 guest bedrooms, an office, a kitchen, and a sweet ping pong table. I'm dealing with problems like spiders and chickens at 4am instead of traffic jams and car exhaust.
Here is the video of the new place. And the video of the giant spider that jumped on me while trying to get him to move.

The Bulk of it All

As many of you know, I'm about as obsessive/compulsive as you can get without getting a diagnosis. Usually whatever I obsess about has some end in site. If it is an athletic obsession, it usually ends with me blowing out my knee or something equally dramatic. If it's fishing, the end of the season comes sooner or later. Seinfeld only went for 9 seasons and then that one died out, etc.

It is to my chagrin that my obsession with learning Thai has no such quick resolution. I've been enrolled in the university since I got here. 5 days a week, 3 hours a day. On top of that I'm seeing a Thai tutor for an hour before and 2 hours after every class. I then proceed to batter Pui with questions for another 3 or 4 hours. I'm speaking a little better, I can listen a lot better, and my reading/writing is going off. My vocab is probably getting close to 2000 words which is more than I thought I would ever know.
I'm still perplexed by all the special case rules for the reading/writing. I came across the word for 'culture' the other day: wat-tha-na-tham. However the word is spelled as such: watntrrm. After applying all the special rules of what do do with 2 r's, n's followed by t's in the middle of a sentence, etc., you end up 4 syllables where before there was 1!
Also, here is a lame video of me talking Thai with Pui so you have an idea how I sound.

Paying the Bills

So I had this sweet standing desk made for like $50. It's right next to the window of my condo in the high rise, and it's everything I ever wanted in an office space. Last summer I took on a job with Vertical Media running their hosting division. Between that and working with some clients consulting in Jackson, I've got the mix down pretty good. About 4 hours total; 2 morning and 2 in the evening, with my entire days free to do whatever my little heart desires.

The internet connection this year is easily twice as fast as last year. Same phone number, 307-739-8680 and it rings right into my room here. I still think that is pretty wild.
Anyways I'm working on websites like a banshee, so if you have any updates or web work you need done, I'm your guy.

The Big Surprise

So for those of you haven't heard of my elaborate plans to surprise my girlfriend, here is the short version. Pui thought I was going to come back to Thailand about a week later than I was. I told her my incorrect return date back in May, so I've had pretty much the entire summer to lay out the deception. The basic idea evolved into having some of my friends in Chiang Mai invite her out for dinner. In a disguise, I would be introduced as their friend from Canada, Jean Paul. The disguise consisted of me growing out my beard, dying it with some pretty nasty dye (which I would end up falling asleep with), and then shaving in a 'hero' design. In addition I had my barber, Jenny Budge, (from back when I had hair) give my favorite wig a haircut to make it believably bad. After a donation of Blu-Blocker sunglasses from my brother and a padded jacket/fat suit, Jean Paul was born.

The average friend thought I would last about 10 seconds before she recognized me. For all those naysayers, I would like to present the video! (all 2 minutes of it)

Moving Back In

If you go back and read my blog from last year, it sounded like I was going to last about a week. This year was the polar opposite. I moved right back in to my apartment from last year. My landlords saved it for me when I proposed a $30/month increase in rent. In addition they stored all my stuff for free. Knowing where all the good restraunts were kept me from any more pig intestine episodes. I picked my old motorcycle at the police station which stored it for the entire summer for free. I had my Thai drivers license already, so that cut out about a weeks worth of red tape.