Hat Yai Marching Band

I saw a high school marching band in central Hat Yai, Thailand, over the weekend. I went down to teach a class on Saturday. As usual, Thailand was fascinating.

There were many touristy hotels and a couple of malls within a few block area that included my own hotel. It was Saturday evening, and a weekly night bazaar was in progress about a block away. I walked out to get some dinner and the band was across the street. They’d been playing in front of another hotel, and they were just leaving for another location.

They were a typical bunch of high school students. They were wearing their school clothes, which had seen better days. There were only about a dozen of them. They played a few saxophones, a couple of trumpets, and mostly drums. They had some talent, and some enthusiasm, and they did seem to be enjoying themselves. They stood, marched and played with that studied casualness that is characteristic of most such endeavors in Thailand.

I heard two of the songs that they played.  They were:

1.   Jingle Bells (this was June 18^th); and

2.   The Marine Corps Hymn (“From the halls of Montezuma . . .” etc.)

“Interesting choices,” I thought, as I got more serious about dinner. 

Further Adventures In Thai Hotel Cable TV

I taught a class at a remote campus over the weekend, more remote than usual.  It was in such a sleepy little town, so far out in the rice field, that everything in town literally closes down by about five p.m.  After that there is little traffic to worry about, and if you want something to eat your choices are limited to a few street food vendors and whatever you can find at the one or two 7-11's in town.

The hotel itself seems out of place in this town.  I've stayed there a few times by now.  It's a very modern, nicely designed "economy boutique hotel," with fifty or sixty rooms.  The building is long and low, three stories, and the grounds are very nice, and very quiet.  Like the rest of the town!  The rooms are spacious and comfortable, with nice Samsung LED TV's and beautiful, modern bathrooms.  There's plenty of hot water not only in the shower, but in the sink too, which is rare.  A very adequate breakfast is included in the $30.00 price of the room.  Great coffee; free wi-fi.

The Cable TV only had two stations in English, Channel News Asia (a Singapore cable news outlet), and the English only variant of the Deutsche Welle.  Two evenings of watching these channels was a potent reminder that Singapore and Europe and very, very dull places.

Travels In Thailand: Trang

Earlier this month I had a teaching gig in Trang.  That's in the southern part of Thailand, the peninsula on the way to Malaysia.  If you know where Phuket island is, move your finger east to the coast, then south, and you get first to Krabi and then to Trang.

It's a nice place, with good weather.  It's not quite as hot as the main body of Thailand, because of the peninsula effect, large bodies of water on both sides of a narrowish strip of land.  It's a beautiful place, with pleasantly shaped green mountains (not very tall) and very nice beaches.  Not many tourists, for some reason.  All of the tourists go to Krabi, right next door.  There are a lot of snakes, bad ones, but you're not likely to run into one unless you are staying way out in the woods. 

There's a sign at the airport that says:

"A warm welcome
with a hospitality
and friendly smile"

Those articles are always trouble for English learners whose native language has no articles.

Dim Sum is breakfast choice number one in the peninsula provinces.  One of my students picked me up to take me to school on the day of my class, and on the way we stopped for breakfast at a good place.  It was a big restaurant, with fifteen tables inside and another fifteen outside, and the Dim Sum was great.  Every table was full.  All of the wait-staff wore uniform t-shirts that said on the back:

"I am server
we served fresh!"

Another case of English, served Thai style.

I stayed in a nice hotel in town, about thirty dollars.  There was hot water not only in the tub, but also in the sink.  The sink part is rare.  The TV was good, about forty channels, but very light on the English.  There was the Universal Channel (the "Law and Order Channel"), SyFy, and two sports channels.  The sports channels were a bust, one seemed to feature only rugby and the other one was showing the Wimbledon Tennis Tournament from the year 2000.  I'm always happy to find SyFy, but really there's almost never anything on SyFy that's worth watching.  A lot of those low-light ghost search shows, "there's something on the other side of the door!"  I got lucky and there was a good movie on the night that I was there to see it.  Most SyFy movies are unspeakable, but this one was pretty good.  Lucky.

Did I say, "not many tourists?"  Really, I've never seen any.  I talked to the only foreigner that I saw, at the 7-11.  She was English, and she was on a one year English teaching contract.  It's strange to me, because Krabi is literally crawling with foreigners.  I stayed there for one night a couple of years ago and the six dollar room had about twenty channels of foreign TV.  Lots of English, CNN, good sports, the Voice of America military/propaganda channel, plus channels in Dutch, Russian, Indian, Chinese, Italian and French.  It was a lot of fun listening to various young foreigners, all European, trying to talk to the manager in English.  The manager could speak English very well, but the tourists only thought that they could speak English.  Pure comedy gold.  That room had no hot water at all, but it was air-conditioned.  They kept the prices down by making the rooms so small that if you got off the bed in any direction you smacked your knees into something.  The TV was hanging on a wall.

I like Trang, the absence of Farang tourists is a big plus for me.  The more Thais know about foreign tourists, the less then like them.  I feel the same, most of these European tourists are young, have little money, and are very impolite.  (Americans can't afford the time or the money to travel.)  It was a good trip. 

The Monument To Water

This is a picture of one of the pools at Wat Muang Tam in the province of Buriram, Thailand.  It was built about eight hundred years ago by the then ascendant Cambodians, the Khmer.

Temples in Thailand can be a mixed bag as far as which religions and deities are involved.  Many from this period strenuously mix their metaphors, drawing from Hinduism, Buddhism, the prior semi-animism of the lingus/yoni religion, and everything in between.  This one is no different in its statuary, but the real focus of the place is the virtual worship of water itself.

There are big pools like this one at all compass points, and there are water channels in all of the footpaths and stairways.  These are small channels, about an inch wide and an inch deep, allowing the water to travel along the sides of the paths.  The whole place is designed so that on a certain holiday, or holidays, a managed overflow can be created, which will connect the pools and fill all of the water channels.  Controlling water was one of the ways that the Khmer kings proved their divinity.  The great temple complex at Angkor Wat is the ultimate expression of this, a water event as big as Dallas. Forgive me if I do not visit Angkor.  It is in Cambodia, after all.  I am a somewhat adventurous man, but there are limits.
 
This place is all the way out of the way, and the day that I visited I was almost alone.  Me and my driver, one local couple showed up after a while, that's it.  No staff, no admission, no maintenance people, nothing.  It was eerily quiet, you could hear leaves drop, which was totally appropriate.  The route to this place is way off the beaten path, about fifty twists and turns on small streets and through a couple of small towns and finally a ride on a two lane road through farms, almost to the Cambodian border.   There are no local buses, you'll have to hire a driver like I did.  It's the most amazing of all of the sites that I've visited, unique in my (albeit limited) experience.

I'd recommend it.  Here's a few more pix. 

Phang Nga Tourist Free Zone

Here's a picture of the "no swimming" beach in Phang Nga.  Typically deserted, one night I saw a family frolicking but that was about it. 

This part of Phang Nga was really devoid of tourists, Farang, Thai, Chinese or otherwise, nada.  The restaurants across the street were doing good business, but it was all locals.  Half of those were groups of men who probably brought their own bottles of whiskey and just sat and bought club soda and ice all day.  One group brought their own caged birds and hung them in the trees around their table, no shit!

Quiet, quiet, quiet. 

Phang Nga Hotel Shower

This is the "warm shower" unit in my $14 per night hotel across the street from the "no swimming" beach in Phang Nga.  It was warm too, the water pressure was low but it was warm, a decent shower was possible. 

I love the showering bears, Asians have an endless appetite for kitsch, good Engrish slogan too.  I especially love the "aero spacy" Grilon label, what is that, seventy years?  ten years?  Who knows?  Sometimes you just can't tell over here. 

This unit is okay with me though.  The stickers are kind of worn out, so it's been in service for a while.  It's still delivering the warm water, the low pressure is not the machine's fault.  They got their money's worth with this thing. 

My Little Corners Of Chiang Rai

The top picture is my university's building in Chiang Rai, not far from the center of the provincial capitol; the bottom picture is "our" hotel up there (the one where we get a discount).  For prof's, the hotel is 600 Baht (about $18); for you, should you choose to go, about 800 Baht ($24). 

The hotel is pretty nice too, not great but fine.  Not much in English on the TV, out of about eighty stations I think three were in English (RT, Channel News Asia and Al Jezeera).  Easy walk to the good Italian restaurant, ditto the Night Bazaar and the bus station.  

That's a little thin for English TV stations, but what really disappointed/surprised me was that there were no channels from Lao, Vietnam or Burma.  Those can be a lot of fun.

Hotel Review: Boonsiri Boutique Hotel, Si Saket, Thailand

Si Saket is a sleepy little province way out east in the Isan region of Thailand.  I came out to teach a class for our "English for Lawyers" course, a required course for our LL.M.  Over a hundred students, it went well.  I love it when they're surprised that they could understand my English.  I speak more slowly every year, so by now I'm saying one . . . word . . . at . . . a . . . time.  It might sound funny to native speakers, but foreigners appreciate it. 

I was here two years ago and I stayed at this same hotel.  At the time, it was merely the "Boonsiri Hotel."  The place has been totally remodeled in the meantime and "Boutique" was added to the name.  The price was about the same.

This is a pretty nice hotel, and the remodel was done very well.  For example, the electrical equipment in my (rented) condo was very unusual when I moved in, real high-line stuff that most people just don't spring for.  The air-conditioner was a Carrier, and the water heater was a Stiebel Eltron.  The same brands and models were in my room at the re-done Boonsiri. 

The price can't be beat.  450 Baht a day, about thirteen dollars (that's with my professor discount).  The place is clean and comfortable.  The TV has two English channels: BBC News and Vietnamese HBO.  The BBC had no sound, don't ask me why; the HBO was all in English but almost everything had Vietnamese sub-titles. 

So I missed the content of the news, but at least I didn't miss "True Blood."  Interestingly, Vietnamese HBO was heavier on stuff like "Hop," "The Smurfs," "Honey I Blew Up The Kid," and "Dogs v. Cats."  All very cute.  Thai HBO is more into adventure and action. 

So I'd recommend this hotel except for one thing: the restaurant.  The free buffet breakfast was okay, very basic and no great shakes but it was okay.  I had dinner there the first night though and it was the worst plate of food that has been served to me in eight years in Thailand.  Pad Thai with Shrimp, but it was horrible.  It tasted like dishwater, and everything was way off.  Bean sprouts should be white, not brown, and they shouldn't all have little leaves sprouting from the bulb.  There's a nice little place across the street though, so don't let the lack of a decent restaurant deter you if you ever get out to Si Saket. 

Ha!  Fat chance of that!  I'm the lucky one, I am, I'm like Johnny Cash in that song, "I've Been Everywhere." 

Shrines In A Prachinburi Museum

The shrines in this museum almost overpower the historical displays.  This large shrine to the current King is a beauty.  

This is a shrine to that important person from long ago, the local big shot.  To me it is a little odd that it seems to overshadow the King's shrine in grandiosity.  Shrines and statuary to this guy are all over town, he really must have been something. 

A shrine to a monk.  This temple is attached to a big monastery, and this fellow must be a founder or something.  The gold mottling on the bust is gold leaf applied by devotees.  On the right of the picture, above the flowers, is a new monk garment, probably so that the guy will have something to wear in the afterlife, where he has lived for some time.