Back in Asia. It didn't go anywhere while I was gone.

And thank goodness, I say. Although there was a bit of drama. I arrived at the lovely hour of "middle of the night", with a line in immigration more appropriate for a Starbucks with free PSLs. The airline did a wonderful job of losing not only my luggage, but everyone who connected in Detroit. So, there was quite a line at the office, and in the end, I had to go straight to work without sleep. And then back again after work to retrieve my luggage. Then home to die after about 48 hours without a night's sleep. But, as expected, Thai customs did not care that I was far over my limit for beer. Like always, I just walked out. SE Asia is funny like that, and they simply cannot be bothered to do their jobs when there are candies to crush and clans to clash. Nice to be home.

The beer was all consumed minus one bottle during a collective "beer tasting" sort of get together at our place. While all of the beers seemed to be big hits, Ella and Blueberry seem to prefer IPAs. I know they're getting a bit of a pushback in the states lately, but hoppy beers are not really a thing over here. So, Singha, if you're listening, put out a Leo IPA. It may be a big hit.

So, in Bangkok news a new night market opened in the middle of town called Neon. I thought the name was appropriate, especially that given this weekend Neon's in Cincinnati closed down. I have way too many fond memories for that bar, and I'm hoping this place could help to fill the gap. It's my favorite night market so far, with an interesting selection of food, lots of cute things, and probably the cheapest bar I have ever seen in Asia. They sell large beers for 60b, and they're 56b at 7-11. Not sure how they stay in business to be honest, but I'll be glad to help them out as best I could. The market has a mixture of tents and re-purposed shipping containers, which gives it a very unique and cool look. Combined with the christmasty-looking trees out front, I really like this place. I hope it does well.

Our awesome group made one more interesting stop the following day at Bounce World, a trampoline fun park. I've never done anything like that before, but since my phone was in my locker I don't have any pictures to share. Our friend Erofile brought her camera, and I'll have to wait until I get a hold of those photos to talk about it. But instead I'm going to talk about a day trip Ella and I took to Samut Prakan province, which is SE of Bangkok. It's along the Gulf of Thailand, and I've only been there once before - to visit the Ancient City. Oddly enough, right before the last Star Wars movie (loved Rogue One, btw). This time, we were going the opposite direction, and crossing the river to end up directly south of Bangkok. Aside from some very vague directions from a blog Ella found online, we weren't really sure how to get around. But what followed was one of the best days of travel I've had in Bangkok.

Despite being so close to Bangkok, Samut Prakan has that some phenomenon that Koh Kret and Ho Chi Minh has. It's just suddenly super rural. One minute your beset with 7-11s every block, markets packed with people, and then like someone drew a line in the sand, you have chickens and rice fields. Our first stop was to Fort Phrachulachomklao, at the mouth of the Chao Phraya. In the late 1800s this fort tried (unsuccessfully) to defend Thailand from the French in a thing known as the Pak Nam Incident. For a super quick summary sure to get historians angry: Thailand used to control a lot of Laos. The French wanted it. Thailand wouldn't budge. The French sailed a warship right up the river and aimed their guns at the Royal Palace. Thailand suddenly felt like budging. Fun fact - Thailand successfully took the territory back some 50 years later, and built Victory Monument to honor the occasion. That only lasted for 5 years until the French said they would block Thailand's entry to the UN unless they ceded the territory back to them.

That sucks. Sorry Thailand.


So this fort is actually on a military base, and you have to go through a checkpoint to get in. There are signs saying that you need to disembark and show ID to get in. In typical Thai style, nobody could be bothered to actually do that, so the songthaew driver just went on through. The fort itself is fine. Basically just a series of concrete bunkers connected by tunnels, full of bugs and probably stray dogs. The real star was a warship they had set up there that you could explore. It reminded me a lot of the naval museum in Qingdao, where they just set up this ship and said "go nuts". There wasn't too much that was off limits, and it was a really interesting look at what life would have been like aboard one of these. Also there was a cat with 5 kittens hanging out there, so this could've been the worst place ever and Ella would still be happy. After, we ate at a seafood restaurant that supposedly has some of the best food in Thailand. The shrimp was pretty good. Oddly enough I thought their chicken was great. It reminded me a lot of American Chinese food.

After hitching a ride back to town, the next stop was Wat Khun Samut Chin. Like the fort, this also has an interesting story. This temple used to be in a town. However, rising sea levels have made the temple into an island. The town itself is pretty much gone. The only people still there live on stilted houses, and use boats to get around. The streets are now canals, and you could only tell since they still have telephone poles sticking out. It's kind of a sad situation, and a poster child of sorts to the dangers of climate change. However for the present, it's an interesting trip. You travel along the one road in town, get off by a bridge in the middle of godamn nowhere, and suddenly under the boats there are speedboats. They take you to a pier, and from there is a very narrow causeway out to the temple. In typical Thai fashion, they have a songthaew that will take you there, that drives entirely too fast on an entirely too narrow causeway. The temple itself is pretty boring, although interestingly they never raised it to combat the water. Instead they raised the floor, which means the once tall doors are basically like little passageways. Next to it was a large Chinese temple which I thought looked beautiful, with a giant Buddha statue with his (her? its?) palms forward. They say this is to "hold back" the ocean.

Good luck with that.

Making our way back to town, we had one more destination. Baan Sa Khla is pretty much the last stop on this road. Past this, it's all land that's been lost to the ocean. I expect this village will be as well, which has likely been here for hundreds if not thousands of years,. But it will probably end up like Samut Chin and lose all of its residents aside from a stubborn few. Right now it's a neat looking town of perhaps a thousand or so, and most people commute by boat or bicycle. They were having a festival when we arrived, which just added to the list of surprises for today. Their temple was odd, in typical Thai fashion had a giant statue of the Incredible Hulk. This is one of my favorite wats in Thailand though, because inside they had a pond filled with lotus leaves. Also, one of the annexes had a Hindu temple, which I thought was really nice. Like, can't we all just get along? Why are there no churches in America with mosques attached?

They also had a Khmer-style stupa, which is only notable in that it has a pretty severe tilt to it. The pictures online made it look worse than it actually was, but as heavy as this thing is perhaps it will also fall one day. I hope that wherever we are in the world when it does, I'm still going to hear about it. Because it was a great little town, and a great little province. I remember the last blog I wrote about that a Chinese temple near the river, and how that would be a really popular tourist site if it were near downtown. I have no idea why what we did today is not listed as a day trip by travel agencies. I'm glad it's not, as I did not see a single foreigner all day. I've included a few videos below, and there are many, many more pictures on Facebook. But it was a super interesting, fun day that I can't believe no one has heard about - not even my Thai friends. Bangkok never ceases to surprise.

On the last blog (last last?) I teased about a project that I had been starting to work on. While it's probably not entirely ready for debut yet, I started another blog. This one resulted from the fact that when I was learning how to teach ESL, I was frustrated that there is so, so much bullshit that does not really help at all. "Sure, talking about theory is great. But I have to teach a class tomorrow, so how about something useful?" So, I started No BS ESL. It's still very much a WIP, but I like the direction it's going so far. Maybe one day I can turn this into something lucrative. Probably not. But it's a nice way to vent the frustrations of an industry that I love, but often has its head up its own ass.

Hello America!

So, for various reasons I found myself back in Cincinnati this past week. Which included a trip to Shanghai and Detroit inbetween. I appreciated the stopover in Shanghai if only for the chance to try some Chinese style noodles, something I've long missed. I didn't have a long layover, and the restaurants were ridiculously expensive, so I settled for some Family Mart microwave version. It was nice to be able to communicate with shopkeepers for once, and overall the noodles were pretty solid. I was making smalltalk with the girl working there while the microwave was going, when a group of foreigners came in and started speaking to her in English. She had no idea what they were saying, and asked if they could pay in Thai baht.

Seriously, guys?

So I translated and told them you could not, because I think that's pretty damn obvious. Anyway, good noodles. They also have karaoke (KTV) in the airport, in a little soundproof booth where you can indulge your voyeuristic/rock star fantasies. China, don't stop being weird.

Back in the US, it's been a time honored tradition to go to Gold Star for some chili, and that happened again this time. I also got to meet my nephew, who is surprisingly quiet for someone with half of my sister's genes. He more or less let me be, but started to warm up a little bit by the end of my stay. The next day few days of my stay involved visiting friends for lunch and coffee, as well as eating some old favorites. Mostly (fake) Mexican food, as it's quite uncommon outside of the US. There also was some (fake) Chinese food as well. Which, I don't mean to compare them to the real Mexican or Chinese. They're all good in their own way. The Chinese restaurant had "Little Buddha" beer, complete with a buddha shaped bottle. I had to think "Hmm, this would not fly in Thailand". But, definitely not there any more.

Continuing with the food and drink theme, of course being Thanksgiving there was a lot of turkey. I also brought some Thai beer with me, which had a destination. My friend Jack has a Youtube show called "Too Drunks" where he and his buddy sit around and rate beer. I suppose you could say I was a guest star on that, where we sampled Leo, Beer Laos, and Phuket Beer. If you'd like to watch it, it's here. But let's just say that I will not be making a big screen debut any time soon. If you don't have time, here's a quick summary: Leo - Pretty good, widely available. Beer Laos - Better. Phuket Beer - Actually Cambodian, not good.

Since I was spending time on the Ohio side of the river, I needed to be sure and ride the streetcar. So, my 2 cents on it - really cool! BUT... I'm glad Cincy is finally doing public transit, but this one just seems half assed. The streetcar is not in a dedicated lane, so it's still subject to traffic. It also can be about 20 minutes between cars, enough time that if I miss it, I will seek another way. Also, the route is dumb. It goes to some great spots, but it's a loop that's more like a line. The inbound and outbound tracks are only 1 block apart, so that's kind of useless. They should have made it a larger circle, as well as having a dedicated lane for streetcars, buses, and maybe carpooling to cut down on its traffic. Still, I hope it does well, and they build a lot more. Maybe a proper metro or two in the future, that would be even better.


Of course the purpose of this trip was not just Thanksgiving, though that was a nice coincidence. The main purpose was to attend Dan and Emily's wedding. It was at Rheingeist Brewery. which was pretty cool. I had never been there before, but I had tried their beers several times. And you know a couple is pretty cool when they get hitched at a brewery. I'm all for shaking up the stuffy, boring church weddings. It reminds me of when a looong time ago, I went to Dan's sister's wedding. It was very non-traditional, with a female officiant, edible bowls (bowls were not intentionally edible, just a side effect), and poems. And it was probably my favorite wedding ever, because they made it their own thing. Well, Dan and Emily definitely did that and went beyond, along with a ton of beer. If you like church weddings, good on ya, it's your day and you should do whatever the hell you want. But for an attendee? Ugh, so boring.

I suppose then, I should mention one minor, teensy, tiny hiccup that happened before the wedding, as it makes for a good story. And as I said later, I feel this story will become even better in 10, 20 years. Like many good stories, it involves alcohol on a Wednesday night. A few of us decided to go out for a sort of small get together sorts, as the wedding was Saturday. We had just begun the night more or less, getting a beer at Blank Slate before moving over to a local bar. While there, we did a round of shots and started on our next drink. Well, someone broke the window (the someone is Ryan), which should have been an omen of sorts. We moved upstairs to escape blame for someone (Ryan's) fuck up, and continued on. Well, Dan got up to go to the restroom, and Glier followed. Moments later, a girl came up to our table and said that she thinks our friend got hurt. In my mind I was thinking "Please let it be the one that is NOT getting married in 3 days", but it turns out Dan had a bit of a tumble down the stairs. There was a surprising amount of blood, and I am still not exactly sure how he managed to do that. Anyway, a doctor who happened to be there said that he would probably need stitches.

This has nothing to do with the story. I just thought we could use a break.

God dammit.

As is usual for guys, we spent entirely too much time saying how it was not a big deal when we all knew that we'd probably get into some hot water over this. But, in our defense, I am not sure how we should have avoided it. When Dan said he was going to the restroom, should we have covered him in bubble wrap? Anyway, the story ended with the bar replacing the window someone (Ryan) broke in the short time we were upstairs. Seriously impressive craftsmanship, good job guys. The end.

Alright, not really. The bride was called and came with her mom and dad. She gave us a bit of tongue lashing, which I can understand I suppose given all the stress of planning a wedding. I'd imagine they already have enough on their plate without adding "Groom looks like he lost a fight" to the mix. Anyway things started to get a bit more heated, to the point of a scene developing in the bar. I'm glad the parents were there to put some sense to things. They took Dan off to hospital land and now the four of us were feeling pretty bad, although again, what were we supposed to do? Clearly the only thing we could do NOW was to drink to forget this night ever happened. We made a good go at it too, with parking lot vomiting and a visit to Waffle House - you know, all the hallmarks of a good night. It turns out Dan's shiner wasn't really a big deal after all, with a bit of makeup it wasn't even noticeable. It certainly made an already memorable trip even more memorable, which I suppose is the best outcome possible. All I can hope is that there are no hard feelings, because I hope to see that crazy, fun bunch of people again soon.

Hopefully in Asia. Where late-night hospital stitches cost as much as the beer that gave them to you.