This trip to Thailand was all business, but I managed to
work in a bit of wandering around and I grabbed a few photos and a bit of
video. The visit was great fun, and I thoroughly enjoyed my time in
Bangkok. I went there to teach courses in failure analysis and cost
reduction, and if you want to know more about the training programs, you
can do so here.
One of many things that impressed me mightily was the
courtesy extended to me during every aspect of my visit to Thailand.
I
flew over on Royal Thai Airways, which is easily the most comfortable and nicest airline
I've ever enjoyed. Comfortable seats, great entertainment
systems, awesome food, and great flight attendants. I
arrived in Thailand at 6:00 a.m. on Sunday morning after a 17-hour nonstop
flight from Los Angeles (I left LAX late Friday night).
You read that right...it was a 17-hour flight, and I arrived two days
after I left, but it seemed shorter than most 3-hour flights I take here
in the US. The experience was that enjoyable.
When I arrived at BKK (the Bangkok airport), I cleared customs, picked
up my bag, and grabbed a cab to the hotel. I was in a cab within 20
minutes of getting off the airplane. Efficient. Smooth.
Polite. I was enjoying myself already. It was a fun ride, and
I captured some of it on video...
When I arrived at the 5-star hotel (the Grand
Millennium in Bangkok's
Asoke area), I checked in, and I felt like royalty. The pretty young
lady behind the counter put her hands together and bowed her
head. It felt a bit strange at first, but everyone in Thailand
does that. It's like the golden lady is doing in the above photo on
the right. It was nice.
I only had one day that I wasn't working , and I wanted to see as much of
Bangkok as I could. When I approached the counter (more bowing
to me again), I explained my dilemma. The hotel maintains a
fleet of 5-Series BMWs, and I suddenly had a driver and a car. The
driver, Mr. Dang, was about my age. I introduced myself, and he
did the same. You can catch glimpses of him in the video above.
"My name is Dang," he said.
"Dang?" I said.
"No," he said. "Dang."
"Dang," I said?
"No Dang," he said. "Dang."
"No Dang?" I said, and we both laughed. I wanted to
call him Roger Miller (as in "Dang me...").
I told Mr. Dang I wanted to see as much as possible, and that's what we
did.
They drive on the wrong side of the road in Thailand, and that nice
5-Series Beemer (diesel powered, too) was a right hand drive car.
That felt a bit weird at first (I hadn't been in a country that drives on
the wrong side since my trip to England a decade ago), but I got used to
it pretty quickly, and Mr. Dang was a superb driver.
A quick shot from my cab heading into downtown
Bangkok.
Bangkok is a huge town, with an estimated population exceeding 10
million people. It's comparable in size to New York City, and it is
a very developed, urban area.
I liked it. A lot.
Mr. Dang first took me to the river, and I signed up for a
cruise of the Chao Phraya River, which goes right through Bangkok. I
was on a boat just like this one. Mr. Dang, the boat captain,
and I were the only ones on board. It was cool. We spent about
an hour and a half on the water, and I enjoyed every second of it.
My Nikon was in overdrive.
Here's another boat just like the one I was on. One of
my former high school classmates, Elaine, complimented this
photo. I hadn't intended to create any special effects, but
the gray background contrasts nicely with the flowers hanging from the
front of the boat, which I hadn't even noticed until Elaine commented on
them.
It wasn't me, Elaine...it was all Nikon's 24-120 lens, the Hoya
polarizer, and the D200 camera.
My boat captain.
Yeah, we were all having a good time. It was still early in the
morning.
Capitalism rules...no question about that...no matter where
you go, folks are working hard to make a living. Our ride on
the Chao Phraya River was no exception.
This is great stuff, and I was enjoying every minute of it.
This young lady did not want me to take her picture. I
grabbed one anyway. I felt only a little guilty, and no, I
didn't buy that little boat.
There were scenes like this one all along the Chao Phraya
River. To me it looked like Asia is supposed to look. I've
traveled extensively in China, and there are many parts of that country
that look almost like the United States. China in some regards just
doesn't seem Asian enough.
Thailand, though...it was like being in a movie. I thought the
scenes I took in on the Chao Phraya River were amazing.
See what I mean?
Tourists on another boat. That one gal was checking me
out like I owed her money. It was pretty funny.
Another scene along the Chao Phraya River. As I took
in these views, I knew I'd be back. I want to spend more time
here and get to see more of Thailand.
And another river scene...that is a cool looking boat.
That's the King, and the smaller picture is the Queen.
The Thai people revere the royal family.
After my river tour, Mr. Dang took me to the Grand
Palace. I didn't know anything about the Grand Palace, but Mr. Dang
hooked me up with a very knowledgeable guide and I had a great
time. When I go back to Thailand again (oh yeah,
I'll be back), I'm going to hire her again. She knew a lot about the
Grand Palace, but more important to me, she knew the best angles for some great photos.
My Grand Palace guide knew that getting
good photos was important to me, and in addition to knowing where to get
them, she wasn't afraid to shoo people away so I could get an
unobstructed shot.
There are scenes like this throughout the Grand
Palace.
The Grand Palace is a large estate, similar to the Vatican or
Buckingham Palace.
I love this kind of stuff, and I love these kind of photos.
These are demons. There's a story behind them. I
need to learn more about it.
Usually, when I visit a foreign city, I try to study the area before I
go so that I can appreciate what I am seeing when I tour. This trip
came about so quickly, though, I really didn't have time to do
that.
Next time.
Gilded gold buildings, with magnificent figures.
A closer photo of one of the figures in the above photo.
Another detail shot on the Grand Palace grounds.
More demons.
More color.
More great photo ops.
More scenes from the Grand
Palace. The photo ops were awesome.
Check out the repairs these workmen are making to the tile
roof on one of the Grand Palace buildings.
Look closely.
No safety lines.
My guide explained to me that these are well-trained tradesman, working
on one of the most prestigious buildings in the country. They
earn about $9 a day.
A great shot of the Grand Palace.
This is primarily a moto foto site, so I had to grabe a few
shots and some video of the motorcycles.
Here are a couple of Tiger Boxer police motorcycles parked outside
the Grand Palace. I believe these are 150cc bikes.
Bangkok sure had plenty of motorcycle and motor scooter
photo ops.
I really like this one.
The scooter pilots in Bangkok who wear orange vests use their scoots as
taxis. This is actually a very common scene...a young lady riding
sidesaddle, no helmet, no protective gear, and slicing through traffic for
what I'm going to guess is very inexpensive taxi fare.
It was beyond cool.
I've got quite a few of these kinds of photos, so bear with
me.
This one caught my attention when I downloaded it...I hadn't realized
the young lady was on her cell phone when I took the photo.
Taxi scoots waiting for fares near Su Cowboy (I'll tell you
about Su Cowboy a bit later on this page).
One night, I grabbed my Flip video and started shooting near
the entrance to Su Cowboy. It became mesmerizing.
Grab a cup of coffee and watch this one...it's about 10 minutes long, and it's hypnotic.
Another fun shot.
All of these bikes are 200cc or less; I didn't see a single larger bike
the whole time I was in Bangkok.
A typical scene at a traffic light. The bikes are
ubiquitous.
Here's a short video that shows a typical early morning
downtown Bangkok street scene.
This one is pretty cool...it's a scaled-down version of a
motard, using what appears to be a copy of the old Honda 90cc motor.
There are quite a few companies in China that make copies of this engine.
Here's another motor officer. This bike has an
overhead cam engine. A lot of them are still using pushrod engines.
This photo has drawn a lot of comments. The questions
all seem to center around "How does it steer?"
Yep.
Ride to live, live to ride.
Another typical street scene.
And another.
Protective rain gear.
Even though it was an overcast
day, the colors were popping. I shot all of these photos with
the Nikon 24-120 lens (an older one, without the vibration reduction
feature) and a Hoya polarizer.
So, enough of the motorcycle
shots...let's catch a few glimpses of other parts of the Bangkok
experience...
Food for sale on the street outside the Grand Palace.
It looks tasty.
As I mentioned before, I stayed in the Grand Millenium Hotel. It
was a fabulous stay, and the hotel restaurant was just super.
The restaurant offered four different cuisines...Thai, Indian
(Thailand is not too far from India), Chinese, and Middle Eastern
(Thailand has a large Muslim population). I enjoyed it.
Food on the grill from a street vendor in downtown Bangkok.
Some early morning photos in the Asoke area near my hotel.
There's a 14-hour time difference between southern California and
Thailand, so I was usually up at 3:00 a.m. each morning. My
work didn't start until 9:00 a.m., so I used the time to explore
Bangkok. It was fun.
Liver, maybe, with fish.
This guy was pretty cool.
There was an older woman wearing that hat and I wanted to get her photo,
but she laughed and told this guy to pose. I told them I wanted to
get a picture of her with the hat. She laughed again, and put the
hat on this fellow, who I assume is her son.
I always motioned with my camera
to check if it was okay to grab a photo while I was on the street, and
these guys were always happy to let me snap away.
This fellow was all smiles until
I picked up the camera, even though he indicated it was okay to take his
picture. He adopted a very serious pose, and smiled again as
soon as put the camera down.
The food looks interesting.
After being in town for a
couple of nights, I decided to get out and walk around a bit. I
didn't need to go far. Su Cowboy was only a block away.
I didn't know about it at first, but my good buddy Kevin (an expat whom I
met and enjoyed a great Italian dinner with during my Bangkok visit) told
me the street was famous. He said it had even been in a
movie. As I understand it, "Su" means "street"
in the Thai language. I thought it was curious that they had a
word that sounded like "cowboy" until I realized that the
dominant club on this street was, of course, the Cowboy.
I've been around a bit and a
street like this didn't surprise me at all. It's a pretty
famous area, it's only a block long, but it's got it's very own page on
WikiPedia.
The only thing I was in interested in were
the night photo ops, and there were plenty of those. I just had to
listen carefully while I was shooting for scooters zooming up behind me.
Cool stuff.
No tripod.
I just dialed in at ISO 800 and used
whatever I could to steady the camera.
It's a pretty cool area.
At one point I stopped and had a couple of beers. The night was
warm, and Thailand has a tropical climate (it was humid).
It was
enjoyable, just kicking back and watching the world go by while sipping a
San Miguel.
My two buddies, happy to pose
for a photo. They asked what magazine I worked for. I told
them Motorcycle Classics.
They laughed, they let me take a few
photos, and I was on my way.
Night neon on one of the Su
Cowboy clubs.
More night neon.
A woman selling fresh fruit on
Su Cowboy.
Nutty me with my Nikon in the
Grand Millennium's elevator.
I was in Thailand for 6 days, and 4 of those days were focused on teaching very nice folks from
Thailand and Laos all about root cause failure analysis and manufacturing
cost reduction. My hosts were super nice, and even though
everyone spoke English, I had translators providing real time translation
as I taught. It was fun. After each course, we grabbed a photo of
the course participants.
And that, boys and girls, was
it. I caught another Royal Thai flight back to Los Angeles, and even
though it was another epic journey (17 hours again), it went
quickly.
Thailand was a lot of
fun.
I'll be back.
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below. Click on the pictures to learn more about each book...
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is a great automotive and aeronautical bookstore. Visit their website
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offers great deals on motorcycle insurance. It's the only one we
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