Pool School

Armed with my scuba book and my laptop, I'm determined to cram the last few chapters of diving knowledge into my head before I arrive in the philippines to get my PADI open water diving license. Gerrica, my diving buddy from Subic, meets me at the Manila airport and we head to the Mandarin hotel. at the bar, the back wall opens up, revealing a hidden room where a jazz band and bottle of champagne are waiting for us. Knowing that we have a big day ahead of us, we keep it civilized, and make it an early night.
The first day of our scuba class is out of the water. This part is classroom based and we have to take a test to prove that we, at least in theory, have the basic knowledge of diving. These are things like how pressure, volume change under-water creating a dangerous environment if you don't adjust accordingly, but opens up a whole new world as well. Of course we pass with flying colors and go out to Cyma, a wonderful Greek restaurant in Greenbelt to celebrate.
Day 2 was all in the pool, and it was time to apply the theories we learned in class and apply them underwater. Tests like regulator recovery where you have to rip out your breathing tube and find it again, and mask clearing when your mask comes off your face are a bit unnerving even in a pool environment. This helps build up your confidence though and helps with the natural tendency to panic when it happens to you in the ocean. Another factor that helped with the panic issue was that I knew we were in good hands. Our diving instructor Louie was the brother in law of Gerrica's boss Joey. At about 280 pounds this big guy had a gentle way about him that put you at ease immediately.

I heart Thailand

Sunday February 14 2010

It’s Valentines day and I’m getting romantic with Thailand. Everyday that I’m here I’m falling more in love with this place. My friend Brad warned me about this this, telling me that more than one westerner had dropped anchor in Thailand only to give up his former life for a culture that doesn’t have the word for work. Before I talk about this next part, remember that I’m a tough guy who hangs out with tigers ok?
The kings palace is gorgeous, an Asian version of the secret garden. As a girl, Aiola was expected to love the gardens, as I guy I couldn’t help but appreciate it for it’s truly spectacular beauty and crisp clean mountain air. While we couldn’t actually go inside the palace, the surrounding gardens were enough to impress me. Just as I was getting picture happy, my battery died. Ironically I was cocky enough to make the comment earlier that my battery seemed to last forever. No worries, Aiola had a camera of her own. Wrong. Her battery also died just as my string of curses faded away. I have to say I admire her drive to never settle. She had our driver ask everyone and anyone who may be able to help us with our predicament. Her persistence paid off, and we were able to commission a local photographer to follow us to our next destination.
Chiang Mai has a splendid amount of Buddhist temples, but the most spectacular one is Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep Rajvoravihara Temple nestled in the mountains over-looking the city. At 700 years old, this temple holds tradition, religious significance, and beauty that can only be understood at the most basic level by a visitor like myself. 300 steps separate your arrival with the entrance of the temple. No Audio guide, no tour leader, this is a living temple. Thankfully our photographer was there not only to take pictures, but to guide us through the experience, pointing us in the right direction and making sure we followed the Buddhist traditions. Admiring the gold platted spires and ornate wood carved doors, despite the number of tourists, it was easy to get a feeling of peace in this place. A subtle wave of his hand, I moved in the direction of the photographer towards a small room off to the side where a monk was seated. Removing my sandals, I dropped to my knees like the rest of the people in the room. I kneeled in silence as we received a blessing from the monk who spoke in a language I could not understand while droplets of holy water caressed my head.
I walked out and took a flower from a small girl and walked in a procession around the center of the temple. When I finished, I placed my flower amongst the others and continued on to the side where I received an incense stick and candles. Respectfully I placed the incense in the designated spot and aligned my candle with the others casting a warm glow on the temple wall.
In another small room off to the side, another monk was giving a blessing while tying several strings together around your wrist to form a good luck bracelet. Not wanting to pass up good karma, I received my blessing along with a bracelet of my own.
We finished the day at a silk factory, which in my mind was sub par. Thai silk from what I saw was inferior to Chinese silk, much courser and lacking the quality that you can tell from just feeling it. One thing that I can say was cool was the demonstration on the lifecycle from the worm to the final product.
After another spectacular dinner, we decided to treat ourselves to a Thai massage. I have to say that I was ignorant as to what I Thai massage really was. I was expecting a tiny Thai girl struggling to really get deep enough in my muscle tissue. Holy crap was I wrong. Two middle-aged tough as nails Thai women showed up and made me their bitch for 2 hours. I have to admit I yelped once or twice when they put me in a figure four position and bent my leg in the direction that it normally doesn’t bend. After that display I’ve decided to skip wrestling camp for my future son and just send him to learn Thai massage. His opponents will be crying uncle faster than you can say full nelson.
Feeling better and worse at the same time, I paid for my self-induced torture and ended another spectacular day in Thailand.

Tiger Kingdom

Saturday February 13 2010

When animals attack is the first thing that comes to mind as I step into the cage. Why was I doing this again? Aiola asked if I was scared, I say well, it IS a tiger.

When our driver asked if we wanted to go to Tiger Kingdom I was thinking that watching tigers could be cool. When he started telling me that we could actually get in with the tigers I thought that his broken English was failing him. His English was fine, it was my comprehension that was a bit slow.
Again for a ridiculously low price you too can get into a tiger cage with your own private photographer who will capture what may be the coolest day of your life. Sorry mom, I know I said I would be careful, but this was an opportunity that I couldn’t pass up. It’s intimidating to see a full grown tiger up close, even if he is laying down. 400 pounds of rippling muscle and power is humbling. Just knowing that one swift motion with his paw would spill my insides put the hesitation in my movements as I crept closer to the majestic feline at the request of the trainer and cameraman. I slowly pet his back paw and tail working my way up to his mid section. Despite being asked to lay down next to the tiger my natural instinct told me this is crazy. After a few minutes I worked up the nerve to follow the instructions I was being given. After all, what did I have to worry about, the trainers one foot bamboo stick should be more than enough to thwart any attack by a killing machine. Where the hell was the tranq gun and the whip? Swallowing my fear, I eventually got cozy with the tiger laying my weight on him and pulling my arm around his mid section. What an incredible feeling! Aiola followed suit not bothering to go through the warm up routine that I went through, feeling quite comfortable with the tiger from the start. (I’d like to think that I was brave to go first and that she was just pulling from my courage). A few more top model shots and we called this photo shoot a rap.
The rest of the day pretty much pales in comparison, but for completeness sake, we then went a jade shop where Aiola did what she does best – bargained. There was a blue Safire ring that she was pining after but being the tough negotiator she is, she walked away only to sweeten the deal with our driver who had a contact with the dealer who gave her an offer she couldn’t resist (shout out to Vito).

Suda

Saturday February 13 2010

One of the best things about Thailand is that if you aren't from there, chances are everything will seem cheap to you. Aiola and I rented a driver for the day for about 1000 bhat, which is about 40 Sing dollars. This was a fantastic move because not only did we have someone to take us where we wanted to go, we could do it on our own schedule and have a Thai guide when we needed it. The first stop of the day was to the Elephant Sanctuary. The entrance ticket included an "elephant show" to start things off. To be honest, I was only half interested expecting that I would watch elephants walk around in a circle holding each other's tails for half an hour. What I saw couldn't have been further from that. While it was true that the show started off relatively simple, demonstrating how elephants could act on command, how they were used as work animals to pick up logs etc, I quickly became amazed at how intelligent these animals were, and what they were capable of. I've posted the pictures of what I'm about to describe because words alone can not, excuse the pun, "paint the picture". The trainer gave one of the elephants a paintbrush and it walked over to an easel and started painting. What I expected was random brush strokes, what I got was definite curves, clearly with intention behind them. Soon these curves started taking shape and I was saying outloud, "doesn't it look like he's drawing an elephant?!" Sure enough within a few minutes, this incredible creature had drawn an elephant picking a flower off of a tree, and like any good artist, he didn't leave without signing his name "Suda" before he was finished.

Excited after that display of intelligence, I was ready to get on one of these massive animals and go for a ride. On the elephants back, a chair was secured down with rope from which Aiola and I sat perched looking down upon the jungle floor. At first I felt unstable as the elephant took his massive steps, but after a while it became a rhythmic movement that I became used to. After a short time, we came to a river that the elephants crossed with ease which would have been up to my neck if I were to attempt to cross on my own. We stopped along the way to feed the elephants bundles of banannas which it ate in one gulp. After tipping my elephant handler 20 bhat, he got off of the elephant and took pictures of me "driving" the elephant. In order to do that I had to climb out of the chair and onto the elephants head. It was such a cool feeling to be so close to the elephant, except for when he got close to a ridge and started bending down to pull on some foliage to eat. I thought I was going to slip off of his head and down the hill, but the trainer yelled a command and the elephant backed right into place. After about an hour we ended our elephant journey and rode an ox cart back into town for some lunch. Wanting to relax, Aiola thought that she would check out the fish spa. To my surprise this was exactly what it sounded like, a fish, spa. It works like this, you put your feet in a large tank filled with hundreds of small fish. They immediately swim up to you and start nibbling on your feet eating off all the dead skin. I put my hand in there to get an idea of what it felt like. It was a sensation unlike anything I had felt before, but I could tell that the tickely feeling would be too much for my feet and I would end up pulling half of the fish out of the water.

After Aiola finished with her fish massage, we walked back down to the same river that we had crossed earlier that day on the elephant, and started down stream on our bamboo raft. this was steered with a long bamboo poll and was very relaxing to laydown and cool down on the river getting some sun and a nice breeze. When we reached a point down the river, we exited to find our driver already waiting for us ready to take us to our next destination, the long necked village. This was something that I had seen on National Geographic, and I must admit that my expectations were high.

When we arrived at the long neck village it was really just a collection of merchant stands that the women were running. I was immediately disappointed. After some thought I asked myself what I was really expecting? AFter all, this is the twenty first century, and these people needed to make a living just like anyone else and selling small trinkets seems like the best way to make ends meet when you already have a captive market in tourists that have an innate interest in their culture. These people really were beautiful in their dress and their elegant long necks. I had the chance to pick up on of the metal pieces that they wear around their neck, and it was unbelievably heavy. I can’t imagine walking around with that kind of weight. As embarrassing as it was to ask, I had to have a picture with them seeing as this was a once in a lifetime chance.
The mild disappointment that I felt after the long neck village was made up 1000 fold with our next experience that same day…

Whatever expectations I had about the Ratilana hotel in Chiang Mai, were exceeded once we checked in. The boutique hotel was designed by a wood craftsman, and his love for quality woodwork reflected in the details of his hotel. The bathroom had a jacuzzi tub that faced a TV mounted on the wall, the main room had a sound system and dvd player built in, and we had a private deck with a daybed. The pool was equally gorgeous and it wasn't too long before we decided to get some sun in and relax. After a few laps in the pool my stomach reminded me that it was time for dinner. At the concierges recommendation, we headed into town to grab dinner at the riverside restaurant. A healthy eater as well, Aiola and I ordered 3 main entrees, Pad Thai, Fish 2 ways , and glazed duck. Everything was out of this world, especially the fish which was whole and fried. As I struggled to get the last morsels of fish off with my fork, Aiola had resolved to a more practical approach and was using her hands working with a seldom seen efficiency. At one point I just stopped and laughed out loud and called her a piranha after seeing a pile of perfectly clean bones on her plate. It was almost like watching the cartoon character Garfield swallow a fish and pull out a whole skeleton.

After our sufficiencies were suffancified we walked outside and jumped in a Tuk Tuk which is a Thai taxi is a modified motorcycle that has a wagon in the back for you to ride in. Zipping along, we arrived at Kavira where Mui Thai is held. I had only seen this on TV during a Fight Science special where it looked super bad ass. The first match we watched it really looked like they were in it for the money and trying hard to win. The other matches were demonstrated a love for the sport and a respect for their opponents. When one fighter received a good shot, he actually nodded to acknowledge the efforts of his opponent. In one match, one fighter was actually knocked out and his opponent actually rushed over displaying genuine concern for his condition. It was really enjoyable interesting to see their warm-up routine which was a mix of dancing praying and stretching.

We closed out the night with a little midnight shopping in an outdoor market and went to bed thinking about the adventures we had in store for the next day.

What's the capital of Vermont?...Bangkok

Thursday Feb 11, 2010

The nonsensical title above is a shout-out to my buddy Shanthan (do you even read these posts?).

Do I celebrate Chinese new year? If by celebrate you mean take advantage of two consecutive days off from work to go to Thailand, then you bet your ass I do! In order to make this trip work, I was going to need a bit more time, so I took an extra two days off from work. That only means that you need to cram those 2 days into your last day before you leave. I did just that and left the office at 3:30 am Thursday morning, got to my apartment at 4:00, packed until 5:00, stared at the wall in a zombie state for 15 minutes and left for the airport at 5:15am.

We got lucky when we reached the hotel at 10:00am, and they gave us our room. Sorry, introductions. Us is Aiola - a fellow MDP colleague/friend, and of course, yours truly, me. She had arrived in Singapore a month after I did from the NY office as well where we had worked together for the previous two years. Wanting to crash right then and there, we pushed ourselves to get out of the hotel and start one of the two activities that Bangkok is famous for...shopping (I'll get to the other one later).

I have to be honest, I wasn't thrilled with the idea of hours of shopping, but I can't complain too much since I did walk away with a new shirt (good quality at good a quality price) a new belt (medium quality at medium quality price) and some DVD's for cheap (I'm assuming that these work right now as I haven't checked them yet). The way I saw it, was that for the most part, you got what you paid for. Sure there were knock-offs at low prices, but from what I saw, it wouldn't be in good condition very long. Case in point, Aiola bought a very nice chinese dress, but you could tell the quality wasn't there. After the first time wearing it, it tore at the shoulder. One thing worth noting was the layout of the shopping. When we started near our hotel, there were nothing but the best (legit) stores, a kind of 5th avenue type setting only in a mall. As you got further away, the stores gradually changed over to no name stores and then eventually you end up in the back where it's more of a bazar where haggling is expected.

Back to the hotel, we tried to plan our next move, but ended up making the right decision in passing out for an hour before dinner. At my neighbor's suggestion (he lived in Bangkok for 2 years) we ate at the Blue Elephant which is considered royal Thai cuisine. As with many fine restaurants, there is a chefs section where you have the option to choose one appetizer, one entree, and one dessert. The difference here is that the three or four "options" were actually all prepared and presented to you. It was an excellent way to sample a variety of Thai food at one sitting. All of this being said, and with the ability to compare with what came next in Chiang Mai, I have to say that especially at 10 times the price, Blue Elephant has a hard time stacking up against The Riverside restaurant.

After dinner, Aiola and I went for a drink at Vertigo, a rooftop bar on the 61st floor of the Banyan Tree Hotel. The views were amazing and the martini good, but I was ready to see what the real Bangkok was like. With that in mind, we traveled to Pat Pong road where the second most notable (not necessarily in that order) attribute of Thailand was...bars with go go girls. I don't think that I had my second foot out of the taxi before some guy approached me, asking if I wanted to see a sex show. Nevermind that Aiola was right next to me, he actually had a printed off list of things that I could see. After shaking him and several other guys off, we walked into a club where there were girls dancing, fully clothed although skimpy. This club had a non threatening vibe, and all the girls asked Aiola if we were together before asking if I wanted a dance which I refused anyway. Aiola seemed to enjoy herself even more than I did, and actually danced with the girls for a few minutes, just for fun.

Not wanting to spend the whole night in just one place, we walked out to see what else was out there. We walked into another club and it wasn't until I sat down that I noticed that this place was different. Clearly there were different intentions here since all the girls had numbers pinned to their bikini's. Not only did I not like the situation, I was worried that there were a few lady-boys that I had heard about staring me down. I uncomfortably guzzled my Heineken, and we hightailed it out of there.

We stopped at another bar with live music just long enough to watch some guy fall off of a stool while hitting on Aiola, and an Australian guy take off his pants in the bar and do some crazy dancing. That about satisfied our curiosity, and we decided to call it a night.

Flame On!

February 6-7 2010

When filling out the arrival cards on airplanes, there are always a few boxes that ask you why you are traveling to X country. There is one that says business, one that says visiting family, one that says holiday, etc. I don't ever want to check just the box that says business, so of course I extended my Manila trip to include the weekend so I could see a bit more of the Philippines. After consulting a few people from the Manila office for advice where I should visit, Subic Bay rose to the top of the list given the short time I had. Gerrica of course snapped into gear organizing the details, arranging the car, hotel, and all the details inbetween. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that they weren't sending me on my way, but organizing a group outing. In total, 5 people from the Manila office decided to head out with me. It is common among upper middle class families to have family drivers, so we were lucky to have Tracy's car and driver available for the weekend.

After meeting up at the hotel 7:00am, we made the 2 1/2 hour drive to Subic Bay. It was interesting for me to see areas outside of the central business district where the Hotel and Deutsche Bank were located. One could get a unbalanced view of Manila if this was the only road taken. The other areas of Manila were clearly less wealthy. I enjoyed the ride there, as the conversation in the back of the van switched seamlessly between Tagalog to English depending on which language could express their thoughts the best. Politics entered the conversation on more than one occasion when we passed billboards with candidates faces. The Philippines have had their share of corrupt leaders in the past, resulting in candidates creating the illusion that they too came from humble beginnings and are a champion of the common man.

First on the agenda was Tree Top Adventure, a zip line course that sent you flying through the forest canopy. I had done zip lines in Costa Rica, however this one had a twist where you were suspended horizontal to the ground, explaining the very appropriate name of the ride "the superman". Clipping on my very fashionable harness (look for these on project runway next year) Gerrica and I decide to be the first brave pair to jump off the platform. It's a thrilling feeling that mixes a bit of fear and excitement.

What followed was what I had been pumped about for the entire week prior to my arrival to Manila. Arriving back at our resort, Gerrica and I headed straight for the Scuba shop. Neither of us had ever gone Scuba diving before, so the beginners course was exactly what we were looking for. After an hour on land listening to our instructor give us the basic do's and don'ts, I was faced with the task of pulling what looked like a 5 year old's onesie over my 6 foot frame. After flailing around in the bathroom for some time, I managed to get myself in the thing and did what any guy would do once this was accomplished. ...started making super hero poses of course! Looking like a character from Fantastic Four, I jumped out of the bathroom yelling "flame on!" Ahh, at least I entertain myself.

Once in the water, we had to demonstrate proficiency in the maneuvers we just learned, regulator recovery, clearing our mask, checking pressure and air gauge, hand signals etc. After getting an A+ smily face, smily face on our exam, we headed out underwater, slowly working our way down. It's hard to get over the fact that you can be in this environment and breathe normally. Our instructor pointed out creatures along the way, stopping to rub a sea urchin which shot out white tentacles once touched. Just as I was getting used to everything, the hour was up and we were running out of air and had to return to the surface.

After another traditional Filipino dinner near the beach, we attempted to check out the night life. I say attempted because the "club" we were told about was an empty diner, and the music and lights we saw in the distance actually turned out to be a children's amusement park. When we stopped to ask a guard for directions to nightlife, my window was rolled down. Seeing a white male, he sent us to the redlight district. Acknowledging defeat, we returned to the hotel where we were content to sip on a few San Miguels and enjoy the sound of the ocean and the view of the stars.