Philippines Trip Day 4

A street scene from Epril's village.The Filipino version of a tuk-tuk.The famous Jeepney of The Philippines. (Bald tires are standard.)These are actually rather bland photos of Jeepneys. They can get much more vivid and colorful. Loud stereos and flashing lights on board mean that the tail lights and turn signals must be disconnected at all times in order to preserve battery power.Epril's niece, Doreen... my favorite kid, and cute as a button.I did my Christmas shopping today... I bought teddy bears, clothes, earrings, toys, a stereo, a television, and a washing machine.Doreen with a Filipino icon: Jollibee is the country's popular fast food restaurant, with the world's worst hamburgers.Tonight, the Basamanggas resort, where we are staying, was decked out for a Christmas Eve party. The window to our hotel room was right above the bandstand. Music finally stopped at 3:00 a.m. Went to Catholic Mass for Christmas eve as well... my first Catholic service ever actually. I was expecting Gregorian chants, and instead got guitars and tambourines. Inside were about 600 or 700 faithful, while about 2,000 more stood outside in a light rain.

Philippines Trip Day 3

There are a lot of interesting things on the roads in The Philippines. I particularly like this stainless-steel jeep thingy.The rice has been harvested already, and the paddies are empty.Some of Epril's family: (Left to right), her cousin David, sister Ednil, sister Inday, sister Dimple, and her father, Eddie.Today, we rented a boat and went out to the beach. (Actually, the boat just cost us some beer and cigarettes to ride around in, as the captain was a friend of Epril's father.)A typical Filipino fishing trawler with many booms for nets. The catamaran style seems to be the most popular.Everyone enjoying the wind in their hair.A filipino fishing village on the beach, with dozens of people floating around in the water on innertubes.Epril wading ashore from the boat, anchored in waist-deep water.

Philippines Trip Day 2

Today, I drove a rented motorcycle out to Epril's village. Epril and her sister, Ednil, rode in a taxi with all of our luggage.

Here is Epril with her sister, Inday.Nearby Epril's house, in the village of Jassan, is a newly-built resort, called "Bassamangas Resort". It's a nice enough place, with pretty swimming pools, but the prices of rooms are quite a bit high for what you get (1,500 pesos (1,200 baht, $36) for a standard room with air conditioning, but no hot water, and 3,300 pesos (2,600 baht, $80) for what I would call a "regular hotel room") and there is a karaoke machine out near the pool that is cranked up to 11 until well after my bedtime. It is the only hotel for a few miles in any direction.Here is Epril's house. It's small, but it's really cozy.A street in Epril's village. The jungle is so lush and green at this time of year, and everyone is amazingly friendly. Little crowds of kids follow me everywhere.In addition to the pool at the resort, up in the jungle hills there are two more places called "resorts", but they are just these wonderful places with fantastic swimming pools and bamboo cabanas for sitting around and drinking and eating all day for the lowest prices you could hope for. The photo below is of the Kahulugan Springs Resort, where we spent the day relaxing.I was a hit with the ladies.Epril with various members of her family.More family mugging for the camera.In the evening, we drove into the center of town and bought a big chicken dinner. The town is decorated nicely for Christmas. Below is a photo of city hall decorated with Christmas lights. Christmas in the Philippines is a noisy affair, with lots of firecrackers and... well... anything else that makes noise (including very loud stereos playing hip-hop music at all hours of the night) used to celebrate Christ's birth.The Catholic church in the center of the village of Jassan.

Philippines Trip Day 1

If you are Christ born in Bethlehem, you get gold and frankencense for your birthday, If you are Christ born at the Manila airport, you get chicken and bananas.The airport "gate" at Cebu Pacific, the world's worst airline. Well... at least it is cheap.The "Presidential Suite" at the VIP Hotel in Cagayan De Oro. It was in really poor condition, but for $90 a night it wasn't bad... and compared to the $30 rooms, it was four times better at three times the price.Epril's sisters, Susan (l) and Ednil (r) stopped by, and we went out to dinner.For dinner, it was out to Spooks, Cagayan's only kano (that's the word for "farang", i.e. Westerner) GoGo bar. Early on Friday nights, they have a family-oriented all-you-can-eat buffet for 150 pesos (120 baht, $4) which isn't very good, but it is a nice chance to socialize with the local expatriate community. I met a nice fellow named Mickey there.

After that it was out to the Divisoria, which is the center plaza of town, which on Friday nights is open to foot traffic, and is jammed with thousands of people, and there is always a concert event going on sponsored by one of the local radio stations. This little group of kids dancing was a lot of fun to watch.After that, it was out to Pulse, one of the local night clubs, where there was a live band. Unfortunately, prices on vodka tonics had gone from 65 pesos (50 baht, $1.50) to 100 pesos (80 baht, $2.40) in the 2 months since I had been there.

How About That Nuclear Option Now?

I love it when I'm right.

Two years ago, I talked about how Republicans would be stupid to use "the nuclear option" (i.e., their plan to do an end-run around the rules in Congress) to abolish filibusters, because one day they might be in the minority, and want to use the filibuster themselves.

(For those of you who don't remember, the Republicans were very, very upset that Democrats were using... no, actually just threatening to use... filibusters to stall judicial nominations and other legislation that they didn't like in Congress. You see, Republicans hated filibusters so much that they were just going to do away with them altogether.)

So who are the hypocrites now?

Oh... like you need to ask.

The Republican Senate minority today filibustered an omnibus budget bill, setting a modern-day record for blocking the most legislation during a congressional session. A new report released today by the Campaign for America's Future details the 62 times conservatives have used the filibuster to block legislation (or force modification of bills) in the first session of the 110th Congress. In just the first year of this two-year Congress, their use of the filibuster in the Senate topped the previous record, reached during the entire 107th Congress.

The hypocrisy meter will reach 100% when the Republicans start filibustering President Obama's judicial appointees.

You know: Now that I think about it, I'm almost bummed out that the Democrats never forced the Republicans to use "the nuclear option." The Democrats are such pussies that they need all the help they can get. If the Republicans had ended the filibuster back in 2005, then 62 pieces of Democratic legislation would have been passed this year that weren't.

I can't say whether or not that would actually have been a good thing, but it would be much more enjoyable to watch Republicans hoist on their own petard than just simply calling them hypocrites.

Well, maybe next year, the Democrats will put a "nuclear option" of their own on the table, and see what the Republicans have to say about that. Of course, such a move would require elephant-sized — not donkey sized — stones, so I'm not holding my breath.

Quotacious

I empathize with you bro.

Yesterday I was standing in the check-out line at the supermarket, and between furtive glances at Soap Digest magazine (too embarrassed to buy, too intrigued to look away) I had an epiphany: I plum don't like fraternizing with lower- or middle-class people.

Obviously I'm somewhere between lower- and middle-class myself, on a good day. But other people of this sort really get on my nerves, whether they're huddling around one another for warmth in the freezer aisle or organizing a rodent hunt.

I'm not like that guy who wants to own a mansion and yacht and have powerful friends who do his bidding for him. More and more, I'm appalled that I don't already have such "luxuries," and I consider this to reflect poorly on my state and municipal governments for letting me fall to such a level of poverty/non-filthy-rich-ness.

Daily Report: Camera Woes

Spent my morning in the usual fashion.

My Sony T70 camera broke again about a week ago. I took it back to the Sony repair center on Sukhimvit road so that they could effect the same repairs that they did a month ago. However, this time they claimed that the repairs that were done prior could not be repeated. (This leads me to think that they probably did something that they shouldn't have the first time around, making any future adjustments impossible.) They did, however, offer to "jury rig" the camera so that it would at least turn on when it was plugged into an AC adapter... but the battery would never work again.

When a Thai Sony technician offers to "jury rig" your electronic device so that it will "sort of work", then either one of you... or both of you... are retarded, depending on whether or not you allow that work to be done. So today I went back and picked up my camera before the Sony people could "break it with my permission".

So now I'm going to find one of my friends heading back to a place where people who aren't Thai can look at my camera to see what the problem is and whether or not they can fix whatever the Thai technicians did to it. There is nothing wrong with the camera... just in getting power from the battery to the camera.

In the evening, it was over for drinks at Stan's, and then home by 11:00.

Okay For Tourism, Not So Sure For Visa Runners

From the Travel Blackboard:

In a bid to streamline tourism to the region, Cambodia and Thailand have signed a deal that will allow tourists to visit both countries with a single Visa.

Once implemented, visitors will be able to apply at both Cambodian and Thai embassies for the new Visa.

"Tourists just apply for a single visa at one place, and they can travel to both Cambodia and Thailand," said Cambodia’s foreign minister Hor Namhong for The Economic Times. According to Namhong, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam could also eventually sign up to the deal.

The Visa was developed through the Ayeyawady-Chao Phya-Mekong Economic Cooperation Strategy (ACMECS), a joint development scheme that includes the five nations.

Now, it is a little difficult to figure out effect this will have on people who do visa runs to Cambodia.

You don't need a "visa" to get into Thailand (you can just get a stamp in your passport), but you need one to get into Cambodia. Do you get... do you have to buy... one of these Thai-Cambodia visas now to get into Thailand? Or just if you plan on going to Cambodia?

As best I can figure, you arrive at the airport in Thailand and get your 30-day visa same as before. You then go to Cambodia and get one of these "new visas", same as before... but instead of a Cambodia visa, it is now a Thai-Cambodia visa. (How many days they are good for is currently not known. We'll say 30 days.) You then come back to Thailand and when you cross the border you probably just get a 30-day stamp, same as before. (In that scenario, nothing has changed.)

I can't see anything else changing, but the devil is obviously in the details.

What happens when the visa expires while you are in Thailand? Can you just go back to the border and renew it? Can you only extend it? What if the visa is issued in Thailand instead of Cambodia? Can you get one of these visas in Thailand, cross over to Cambodia, and then back into Thailand, and still have the visa be valid? Can you repeat this process over and over again like you can currently with Cambodian visas or is the Thai government going to dictate the rules?

Oh hell: I can sit here and ponder this one all day until my head hurts. What it certainly means is that Thailand and Cambodia (and potentially Laos and Viet Nam) are going to agree to have the exact same rules regarding visa runners... and that could either be a good thing or it could mean the complete end of visa runs altogether.

As for what it means to tourists, currently: I suppose that they will only have to pay the $25 visa fee once, instead of possibly (but rarely) two or more times, while traveling between Thailand and Cambodia.

Until the third and fourth countries join the list though, it's not really too helpful, unless you go from Thailand to Cambodia, then back to Thailand, and then back to Cambodia again... before the visa expires.

Predictions About The Upcoming Elections

This all seems reasonable to me:

"The only real issue at the election will be whether or not to support ex-Prime Minister Thaksin," pro-democracy activist Giles Ji Ungpakorn, an associate professor at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University, wrote in an analysis circulated by e-mail.

Judging by opinion polls, the answer is many Thais will back the People's Power Party, where Thaksin loyalists have regrouped with his endorsement. The surveys project the party will win the most seats, though fall short of the majority that Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai Party held before the coup.

If no party wins a majority, the Thaksin grouping will vie with the Democrat Party, expected to finish second, to line up enough support from smaller parties to form a majority and name the next prime minister.

Quotacious

"The civil libertarians among us would rather defend the constitution than protect our nation’s security."

— Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Louisiana.

In case you are wondering, he said that with contempt... as in "can you believe those civil libertarians actually defend the constitution?" This is the mindset of the modern Republican party... the "patriotic" party, they call themselves. Ha.

Daily Report: Getting Ready For Vacation

I slept in about for about half an hour before Epril woke me up and then we played a game of "Smile if you want to be tickled." (Attention-seeking Poopy cat sulked around the periphery, whining, "Look, I'm smiling too!")

Work in the morning was fine. Then it was out to lunch with Stan and Lee at Valentino's (gnocchi again), and then over to Foodland, where Epril and I bought 1000-baht worth of chocolate bars to take back to The Philippines for Christmas.

Then it was back home for afternoon work, leftovers for dinner, and "The Chronicles Of Narnia" as the evening's movie.

We're leaving for The Philippines, Cagayan De Oro (PI/CDO) on Thrusday night, December 20th, and will be back on Monday morning, December 31st. Hopefully I will be blogging while I'm gone, and putting up photos. We'll see.

Just A Little Useless Information To Amuse You

Thirty years ago, in 1976, a record producer named Frank Farian created a band called "Boney M." The band was actually one of the most popular acts of the 1970s, especially in Africa, the Middle East, India and even communist Russia... all places where they were second in album sales only to Abba.

The interesting fact about Boney M. was that the people on the album covers were not the people who actually performed the music. They were just models who Frank Farian paid to lip synch to the songs at concerts, promote the music, and generally put forth a sexy image. Everybody knew this fact, and nobody was particularly bothered by it.

The "group" finally disbanded in 1986.

Twenty years ago, in 1988, two years after Boney M was finished, that same record producer named Frank Farian created another band, "Milli Vanilli"... and everybody was shocked to learn that the guys on the album cover weren't actually singing the music. You think people would have figured that one out a little sooner.

Quotacious

"Let's be clear: we have lost this war. We have lost because the initial, central goals of the invasion have all failed: we have not secured WMDS from terrorists because those WMDs did not exist. We have not stymied Islamist terror — at best we have finally stymied some of the terror we helped create. We have not constructed a democratic model for the Middle East — we have instead destroyed a totalitarian government and a phony country, only to create a permanently unstable, fractious, chaotic failed state, where the mere avoidance of genocide is a cause for celebration. We have, moreover, helped solder a new truth in the Arab mind: that democracy means chaos, anarchy, mass-murder, national disintegration and sectarian warfare. And we have also empowered the Iranian regime and made a wider Sunni-Shiite regional war more likely than it was in 2003. Apart from that, Mr Bush, how did you enjoy your presidency?"

— Andrew Sullivan.

Pattaya News Roundup

In a story that seems to sum up Pattaya perfectly, the son of one of the world's richest men had fallen in love with a kathoey (ladyboy) and was going to leave his wife. He then forged divorce documents so that he could take half of the $4 million property in the divorce which he had put totally in his wife's name. Rich people don't go to jail in Thailand over stuff like this, but that makes it no less amusing.

About 80,000 (very sober) Thai people turned up to vote at the Chonburi police headquarters last weekend to vote in absentee balloting. Next weekend, it's the same thing all over again. Pattaya has a 60-day high season, and it has to be closed for 10 of those days. With profits already down because of low numbers of people traveling, this is going to be a particularly grim year for Pattaya businesses.

Now we have a story of "My dad can beat up your dad", as two kids got in a fight, and then their fathers, who are cousins, got in a fight over the kids fighting. The unlucky fellow in the fight wound up in the hospital with a slashed neck.

Daily Report: Moving Day

I woke Epril up with our usual game of "smile if you want to be tickled". Epril just hears the word "tickle" and she starts giggling uncontrollably. She squeals and laughs loud enough to wake the neighbors when I get her pinned down and go to work on her tummy.

It was one of those Mondays where there was no work left over after the weekend to do, so I spent the morning blogging, and then climbed back into bed until mid-afternoon.

After that, I moved my office downstairs next to Epril's workstation so that we could spend our days together. (A change in venue after 18 months working in the same place isn't a bad idea either.) I then did about 1 hour of work before running into those godawful Texas accounts that I hate so much.

After that, being Monday, it was Doctor Who. Very cool as always.

Monday Vinnie Blogging

My father became an honorary Jew when he got did some graduate work at Hofstra University on Long Island. (The college is where all the balebetishen yidden study, if you get my drift.) Looks like he's got his grandson, Vinnie lined up to follow in his footsteps.

Daily Report: Holiday Cheer, Cigarettes and Beer

I got some work done in the morning, and then had some lunch with Epril (leftover Indian food from lunch yesterday... Thanks Stan!) before taking a 1-hour nap.

After that, it was out with Geoff and Honey Mae to Mini Siam. From there, we went to the beach... my favorite stretch of beach. Unfortunately it really sucked: All the beach chairs were full with tourists. (And, if you're going to go to a beach full of tourists, the least that you could get out of the deal is get some sizzlin' hot Russian babes in bikinis to ogle, but that would be asking far too much of the beach today, filled with people who made me look trim and svelte.) On top of that, the beach vendors were all out of steamed crab... except for one guy who had two left, which I bought only to discover that they were probably not safe to eat... they tasted "off". Then the ice cream guy came buy and ripped us off. (Honey Mae and Epril had already tucked into their selections before we found out the price... which everyone has to agree is the biggest mistake you can make in Thailand.) So: Overall it was a crap day at the beach.

Next, it was back home for a quick break. Then it was out to Big C where I got my hair braided and Epril bought Christmas cards. We had gotten Christmas cards this year from Geoff and Honey Mae (Thanks!) and American Jeff (sorry I forgot to say "Thanks!" at lunch yesterday... Thanks!) and Epril decided that we needed to do Christmas Cards too.

At 6:00, it was dinner at Bob's BBQ. (The 179-baht rib special is one of the best meal deals in town.) Bob traded in his I-Phone for a Nokia N95 after just a week or so. (Bob's hobby is mobile phones.)

After Bob's, it was off to Shooters to visit with Ray, but he wasn't in to work yet. So, we went over to TQ2, and hung around with the regular gang and dropped of Christmas cards.


Alf enjoys his 10,000 baht cigarette,
while Stan is sad at having missed an
opportunity to donate to the orphans.
(Thank you Alf for risking your health
in order to help the neediest people.
Good job!)Alf and Stan had quit smoking on the anniversary of Steve's death, and had agreed that whomever re-started smoking first would pay 10,000 baht to The Mercy Center orphanage as a donation. Well, I'm proud to say that Alf, after just 44 hours, managed to make Stan look like quite the child-hating curmudgeon by volunteering to take up smoking again in the interest of helping out children, leaving Stan bitter at having lost this charitable opportunity. (Thanks Alf!)

After TQ2, it was back to visit with Ray, whose 50th birthday was today, and have a couple of drinks. (Happy Birthday, Ray!) I like Shooters, because they have the largest beer selection in Pattaya... including Beer Lao Dark, which is impossible to find regularly. After a couple of drinks with birthday boy, I went home with Epril and straight to bed.

A Visit To Mini Siam Park

Today it was off to one of Pattaya's most well-known tourist traps, Mini Siam... A large park filled with about 100 miniature recreations of world-famous places, and places from Thailand that are not so famous but might be worth knowing about.


Mini Siam has a collection of
miniature replicas of places from
around the world and around Thailand.For those of you who have never been to Pattaya, and have thus never driven by the monstrous Mini Siam sign on road into town, it is located on the East side of Sukhumvit Road, about 1 kilometer north of Pattaya North Road, across the way from Bangkok Pattaya Hospital.


Epril In Paris.Entry fee is 100 baht for brown-skinned people, 150 baht for white-skinned people who can produce a valid work permit, and 250 baht for white-skinned people who are just visiting. (Nice try on the "we're not discriminating too much" pricing structure... but it is still a 'fail'.)

This is my third visit to Mini Siam, and I can manage to enjoy the place for about 10 minutes. That is because the front half of the park where you start your tour is called "Mini Europe", and there are quite nicely-done miniatures of some of Europe's most famous buildings. Honey Mae and Epril got a very nice introduction to a lot of places that they never knew about, but should have. The workmanship here is quite excellent.


Now: If admission price was just 50 baht for Thais and foreigners, and all there was to see was "Mini Europe", this place would get high marks. Unfortunately, it keeps going.

(I have to apologize: My camera's batteries died at this point.)

The back half of the park is dedicated to miniatures of places in Thailand. It starts off sort of good (though hardly as good as out front) with some temple ruins in Buriram province, a miniature of the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, The Golden Mount, the King's Palace, and a very interesting recreation of the destroyed old capital city of Ayudhya.

However, the folks who created Mini Siam still had another 2 or 3 acres to fill in, and soon you are walking past "The Women's Liberation Monument, Erected in 1984 in Pratchanburi Province", or "Channel 3 News Headquarters", or a not-even-close reproduction of Don Muang Airport (built to entertain the kids with its model 747 creaking around a chain-loop track), or a god-knows-why replica of a container port.

What is personally annoying to me is that these are the same old chipped and faded replicas, with the same old worn and scattered plastic toy blue Lambhorginis and grey Porsches sitting in the parking lots, and the same old illegible sun-bleached signs. Other than cutting the grass and trimming the hedges, not one scrap of maintenance or upkeep has been done on this place in the 5 year span between my first and this most recent visit.

I personally find it a little offensive that the owners of this place earn busloads of money from busloads of tourists every day of the year, and yet have not put a single baht back into the place to improve it or make it better. If I'm paying to see the Mona Lisa, that's a good thing. If I'm paying to walk by the tracks of a broken model railroad that hasn't seen a train in half a decade, that's not a good thing. (Heck: They are so cheap, they didn't even pay to keep their website up.)

Granted, for all the people who have never been to Mini Siam before, complaining that the place is always in the same (tired) condition each visit doesn't matter a lick. I suppose 30 years from now — barring the scourges of time and weather — Chinese tourists will still be enjoying their first visit, eagerly striking an arm-raised pose while standing next to the Statue of Liberty, and staring puzzled at the miniature gas station next to the Phra Kin Klao Bridge and wondering why something like that is so important as to merit a miniature replica of itself here in Mini Siam.

I'll still think it's rubbish... but then again I'll be thrilled that my kids or grandkids will get to see the Acropolis and the Arc de Triomphe. And as much as I bitch about it here, they'll probably go nuts at that same China Airways flight, still crawling slowly around the same tired rusty course outside of the same old airport. So yes, I'm sorry to say that I'll probably be back eventually.