April52013
Let’s see here. What did I do today?
• Made some stickers for this week’s photoshoot in Belgium with the new pro rider team for Liquorbrand
• Cut out of work early for a side gig interview
-sweated-
• Sat in a taxi and got intimately re-acquainted with Bangkok traffic for 2 hours
• Shook hands with the fellas at startup lingerie and bdsm outfit and chatted about their branding projects. Went well, of course. How do I keep getting myself into these places.
-sweated-
• Met up with ms. Cha at the airport and had some mediocre, yet supremely sufficient, Mexican food on suk 11
-sweated-
• Had a few drinks with Ms Kim and company for her 22nd birthday. This is the girl that chatted me up at immigration about a year back. Haven’t seen her in person since then, but damned if she isn’t as sociable and hospitable as ever. Good people. Felt good to have a drink with a big group of people that I don’t work with. It had been a minute.
• Then I taxied home in the night- which I always enjoy- and spent a little time stoking my wanderlust on tumblr, in preparation for this month’s trip around s.e.a.
Good work, good biz, good food, good friends, good night.
July312012
Dating in Bangkok is a far more fun, easy, and stress-free endeavor than I had originally thought. Partially because the Thai culture is a very social one. People simply are not afraid to meet strangers and chat them up. And partially it is because, well honestly, I’m a Western man, a.k.a. a farang. As it turns out, this is an attractive quality in Thailand.
It may be an unfair advantage, gentlemen, but upon arrival you will find a fairly impressive pool of single attractive, fun, well educated and (thankfully) fluent English speaking women in the city that will be happy to make your acquaintance. As a single Western guy; whatever your rating was back home, it is automatically raised 1 point when you arrive on the scene in Bangkok. Your humble narrator, for example, is now an 11.
Ha.
And contrary to popular belief, not all women here are “after your money”. In fact, not at all. I assume that’s some weird BS brought back home by the throngs of sex tourists that come over here and fall in love with the first stripper they meet.
[Side note: Don’t get me wrong. If all you have to offer is your money, you’ll find no shortage of working girls that will be glad to take you up on that the minute you step off the plane. Just know that we legit expats are over here having a laugh.]
Single ladies: I don’t know what to tell you. As I hear it, the singles scene is a little tougher for expat women here in BKK. Not sure what the reasons are there. Y’all do seem to be vastly outnumbered by expat men. Seems like a good ratio in your favor. I dunno. If you see me on the street, come say hi. We can discuss it over drinks.
It’s really too bad I wasted so much time this year hemming and hawing about the lack of farang-friendly people in my neighborhood. That was dumb. When you move to Thailand, don’t do what I did, namely being a bit of a loner hermit and blaming it on the cultural differences. Just jump into the social scene with both feet right off the bat. There is no faster way to learn the language, the customs, make friends and feel out the physical layout of the city than to chat someone up and get together for an outing. You’ll make fast friends and add another branch to your social network before you know it.
Changed my whole outlook on this place.
I’m feeling at home in Krung Thep more and more each day.
July42012
I never, ever meet any others, outside of Khao San Road.
Happy 4th of July, me.
May182012
Looks like I’ll be taking a short notice trip out of the country next week.
Thai immigration is such a tease. 5+ months and now they tell me my company paperwork wasn’t in order and I need to start the Visa process all over again.Turns out the ratio of Thai employees to foreign employees wasn’t quite aligned. Grr.
Fun fact: You can totally grease the wheels of bureaucracy in this country with a little cash… and if the wheels stay stuck, they actually give you your cash back. That’s the most honest corruption I’ve ever heard of.
Off to Cambodia, I think. Maybe Malaysia. If it weren’t such short notice I’d wait it out in Boracay. Meh. I would be really annoyed, but I get to take a paid vacation to somewhere else in Asia for a few days.
It doesn’t suck to be me right now.
May172012
May 17.
And just like that, it started raining all day.
Bout time.
… hours later, I would emerge from the gym to find myself stranded 4 blocks from home with a solid wall of water staring me down and no umbrella, farang style. The streets are canals and the upper deck is pouring the goddam Great Deluge in cascades all the way into the distance. Pretty impressive, actually.
I almost forgot about the tropical rain.
Bout to see if these $140 wicking cross trainers were worth the money.
May162012
I don’t know if it was a coincidence. There was no lightening over my neighborhood. But a massive flash, out on the horizon, was the last thing I saw before this entire district went lights-out. It was an odd sight; miles and miles of black city framed by the highrise lights in the distance.
If looking down on rivers of headlights flowing over invisible freeways was strange, watching the checkerboard blanket of windows flicker on en masse was surreal.
I love Bangkok. Even when it behaves badly.
