The Hordes have Arrived

Today's song is: Clean Bandit .. Rockabye

My buddy Shaun and I headed out for a few drinks last night (Friday) and started off by walking to the Kiwi Bar on Soi 8. The Kiwi bar has a great happy hour and just before it ends, the server comes around and asks you if you want any more drinks at the happy Hour price. You pay and you get a slip for the drinks that you can draw on for the rest of the night, so basically happy hour can run all night if you plan ahead.

Shaun and Harvey

and Mark

After 3 red wines Shaun headed off to Soi 22 and Harvey and Mark, my 2 English buddies headed off to twisters GoGo for a bit of fun. We managed to get separated at twisters and I headed off to Hillary 2 for a music set. I enjoyed the music, said hello to a couple of band members I know and then decided to walk home via Soi Cowboy.

Cowboy was sssoooo busy, inundated with tourists snapping pics on their smartphones to take back to their home country to show naughty they have been  :-)  Kidding aside, they are not the usual low season clientele. A one minute stroll down Cowboy turned into a 5 minute, weave through the throng to get to Soi 23 and then I headed home. Enough fun for tonight  :-) I prefer Cowboy from Monday t Thursday when it is not so busy.

The weather is back to normal for winter with highs of 31 or 32 and lows of 24, 25 during the night, with very little humidity.

Thavorn and Jaidan arrive back tomorrow about noonish so I headed off to Big C to buy some groceries for the next week. Ashley and Brigit arrive in 5 days and Shaun heads off to Koh Samui New Years day in search of true love, or a reasonable approximation.  Time will tell.

Thailand remains a land of contrasts and discovery. It is very different from where you come from and you are bound to discover things about yourself that you never knew.  The big Mango (Bangkok) remains as exciting as always and the LOS (Land of Smiles) is bewitching. However, as the early cartographers were want to point out, 'Here be Dragons!'

TTYL

2017 Nears the End

Today's song is: Top Country 2017 Playlist

Christmas 2017 has come and gone and 2018 is rapidly approaching. Cowboy and Nana barely noticed and continued business as usual apart from some fur trimmed red g-strings o display. Ditto for Queens Park. However, the owners and mama-sans are saying, despite it being high season, that business is down.  My seat of the pants observations would agree.

Thavorn and Jaidan seem to be enjoying the village as the whole extended Thai family was dining together in the kitchen that Thavorn and I built. Unfortunate I have no pics and I watched on LINE video.  I should have done a screen capture.

Good internet connection in the village

Chillin on outdoor lounging platform

It is cold in them there hills

My friends Phai and Harvey helped cooked dinner for Shaun and I last night and then Phai, Harvey and I headed off to Cowboy because Phai expressed a desire to view some beautiful naked women.   You have to love the mindset of Thai women, at the ones I seem to know  :-) I think at least 40% of the Thai women are bi.

Phai and Harvey being domestic

There are lots of New Year's Eve parties planned and it looks like I will be all by myself as Thavorn is taking her mother to the hospital to see if she can get her cataract surgery scheduled for while she is there to help out. As usual, her good for nothing brother is useless, but her sister is there for a week as well.  I will try to be a good boy  :-)

TTYL

Christmas Eve

Today's song is: Have a Merry Christmas  .. Christina

Christmas Eve, 2017  :-)  Time flies when you are having fun, and if you can't have fun in Bangkok then there is something seriously wrong with you.

Tonight, we will let Jaidan open up his two Santa presents, one from Thavorn and I and one from my buddy Shaun who is staying next door to us during the Christmas season.

Tomorrow morning, Thavorn's sister and boyfriend pass through Bangkok, enroute from Phuket to the village in Koksomlan, near Wichian Buri.  When they get into Bangkok they will call Thavorn and she and Jaidan will get into a taxi and go join up with them for their New Year's trip into the village.  Of course there is the usual school New Year's extravaganza and much drinking and celebration.

Shaun and I will stay in Bangkok because I have friends visiting January 4th and I plan to meet them at the airport. They are staying in my building for a month.

Shaun and I will have Christmas dinner at the Kiwi Pub on Soi 8 if Thavorn and Jaidan get picked up in the morning. If not we may end up celebrating Christmas at Cowboy which is not a bad thing. Next up is a brunch at the Novotel hotel on December 30th with the newly married John and Fon.

New years should be fun as there seems to be quite a few parties planned for Cowboy, Nana, and Pat Pong. I don't talk much about Pat Pong but it is the original naughty boy area and it is experiencing a bit of a renaissance so I hope to add some info on it in coming posts.

Thavorn and Jaidan should be back in Bangkok around January 8th as that day coincide with my return to coaching basketball. Ashley who is visiting on January 4th is an avid basketball fan and coach so I hope he will join me for a couple of practices.

Thavorn has been on a diet of late and seems determined to get back to the 47 kilos she weighed when we first met. Jaidan's birth was really hard on her as she was not used to carrying and birthing a 4.5 kilo farang baby.  Got to give her credit, she is a determined lady.

Some random pics form this week:

TTYL

Beautiful Day

Today's song is: Mash-Up from 2017

It is a gorgeous day in Bangkok.

This is Bangkok's idea of winter. Not a cloud in the sky, very little humidity and mid 20's during the day and dropping into the teens at night, perfect for carousing the bar scene.

My buddy Shaun arrives from Malaysia in the next hour and hopefully will be here for a couple of weeks. The hotels were all booked so he will be couch surfing for a while.

Thavorn and I went for a walk and stopped off at a wine bar for a glass of red wine and some wedge fries. Perfect day for sitting outside and watching the tourists walk by. We then strolled up Soi 22 for Thavorn to indulge in some noodle soup and then stopped off at Queens park to chat with An, the cashier at Popeye's Bar.

At 2:40 we started to walk down to pick up Jaidan at school and we are now at home where I am entering this blog entry and drinking a coffee. Thavorn is on the internet, probably on Facebook and Jaidan has the tablet, playing some games.

We are awaiting Shaun's arrival. I guess I should take some meat out to defrost for supper.

TTYL

Friday and Out

Today's song is: Glory Days   ..  Springstreen

We headed out to Terminal 21 looking to buy some short t-shirts for Thavorn.  Thavorn has lost at least 5 kilos and looks great, and her waist looks great and is not to be hidden. We managed to find 2 t-shirts on sale at ESP and we also picked up a jacket for her to wear back in the village. The temperature is even dropping to 21 here in Bangkok tonight.

Thavorn is heading to the village with Jaidan to attend the school's year end party for students and parents. She will leave about Dec 30 and return in a week or two.

After shopping we headed over to Country Road to share a few beers and then I left to meet up with my friend Harvey at Soi 8. The kiwi Bar has a great happy hour that ends at 7 pm but at 6:55 you can order as many drinks as you like and you get a slip for each drink that you can hand in all night long.  I ordered 4 glasses of red  :-)  There are so many great venue to enjoy in Bangkok.

Christmas celebrations are appearing everywhere in Bangkok

My buddy Ashley arrives in 20 days and I am looking forward to showing him and his gf around Bangkok. It is Christmas break for my basketball team so I get a break from the 180 minute commute to the school.  The 90 minute practice is always good, but the commute is wearing.

Wow, 2018 is appearing so quickly. Scary  :-)

TTYL

Basketball :-)

Today's song is: Up Where We Belong  .. Cocker

Well, the team was firing on all cylinders today. We beat Berkley 78-44 and looked good it. I only had 8 players (missing 1 starter) due to exams. My message to the team was, 'It's our last game before the break, let's go out and have some fun!'  It seemed to work  :-)

Berkley is an awesome campus and looks more like a resort than a school.

After the game I caught a motorcycle taxi to the BTS and got off at Emporium and treated myself to a Black Angus XT burger which is awesome. Fries and a cola finished it off.

I texted Thavorn and suggested Jaidan and her come meet me and walk home.  They arrived in due course by motorcycle taxi and Jaidan was hungry so he finished off my fries and enjoyed some chicken strips and his own cola (I know, bad parent).

We walked home and noticed a new set of Christmas lights in the park and hence some photos:

There are no more practices until January 8th when the new semester starts up. 

TTYL

Basketball :-(

Today's song is: You Can't Always get What You Want  .. Guthrie

We dropped our second league game by 6 points yesterday. Our problem remains the same. Finishing.  We keep missing the bunnies, shooting 25% from inside the paint. Ouch!

However, we have the best warm up in the league. We are starting to look like a team.

Shrewsbury has a great facility. Here is the view of the 2 Olympic size pools from one of the 3 gyms.

We play a friendly game at Berkley tonight. It also has a fantastic campus. Hopefully more pics tomorrow.

The weather was hot and humid yesterday in Bangkok. Unusual for this time of year. However, when I walk by this Thai sculpture it always reminds me of the Thai spirit of optimism.

Soi 22, just in front of the Holiday Inn

TTYL

Sunday in Bangkok

Today's song is: Puff  .. Christmas is all about Dragons  ..

If you don't believe in Dragons  .. you just won't get it  .. Here be dragons  ..

It is a quiet Sunday afternoon and I am chatting online with my buddy Shaun and my friend Phai.  Thavorn is watching movies and Jaidan has absconded with my phone and is probably watching YouTube videos or playing games that he downloads with abandon.

Christmas is staring to play out in the shopping malls.

and one of my favorite bits of art that depicts the Thai spirit of wonderment  ..

and Jaidan and I are just chillin  ..

We may get outside today  .. or maybe not ..

TTYL