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8 09, 2009

Meanwhile, in Bangkok: Workplace Safety? What’s That?

Greg2016-11-17T15:48:44+00:00Meanwhile in Bangkok...|0 Comments

I've written about this before, but every once in a while you'll see something here that makes you wonder just how in the name of Jebus it can happen. Usually it's something quite innocuous like kids running around the city with no shoes, or bar girls at 3am praying at Buddhist shrines and the like. But a lot of the time, it has to do with the rather lax regulations regarding safety, usually on construction sites. At work the other day, I glanced out of my office cubicle window and was a bit taken aback when I saw the scene below.

2 09, 2009

Why Does Thailand Keep Tripping Itself Up?

Greg2016-11-17T15:48:44+00:00Bangkok, Culture, Politics, Thailand|0 Comments

scale Before I get started on this little rant, let me assure you - as I have before - that I dearly love living in Thailand and revel in absorbing the vivacious mix of wonderful and awful, inspiring and depressing, beauty and ugliness that it offers. The people are great, the landscape is beautiful, the quality of life is superb, the history is dense and the food kicks ass. But I read something recently that got me thinking that it will be a long, hard slog if Thailand ever wants to reach its full potential. No matter how hard it strains to be the great force it could be, there's one thing that the effort always trips on - greed.

27 08, 2009

Thais and “Shit”

Greg2016-11-17T15:48:45+00:00Culture, Language, Thailand|3 Comments

thumb The longer you live in a place, the finer the details you begin to notice. My first year in Bangkok was all about learning how the street food system worked, tuk-tuks, social etiquette and the language - things that you notice every day. But after a while, I started noticing the smaller details, the things that you only pick up on if the bigger stuff has become second nature. One of those things is the Thai immodesty when using the word 'shit' and the way in which it's utilized in everyday language.

18 08, 2009

Welcome to Bangkok! Don’t Forget Your Street Smarts

Greg2016-11-17T15:48:45+00:00Bangkok, Culture, Tips on Visiting|3 Comments

thumb When you travel to Thailand - Bangkok in particular - you need to bring a lot of stuff. Passport and money, sunblock and music, flip-flops and camera… the list is long and varied. But whether you’re vacationing here or living here, there’s one thing that comes in handy all the time, everyday; the only caveat is that this thing is something you can’t buy. It’s street smarts. Bangkok is a city that requires a healthy dose of skepticism and a whole lot of savviness, without which you might find yourself in a bit of a pickle.

7 08, 2009

Meanwhile, in Bangkok: Unfortunate Transparency

Greg2016-11-17T15:48:45+00:00Meanwhile in Bangkok...|0 Comments

thumb As any Star Trek nerd can tell you, if you add an extra dimension to any regular activity, its complexity will increase exponentially. In this case, it's not so much a matter of being complicated as it is an unfortunate trick of the eye on a 50% transparent window display with a large tube on display behind it. While practitioners of this art can do amazing things with simple materials, it's even funnier when it happens unintentionally, which was the case (I think) in Paragon shopping mall a few months back when I snapped this pic.

31 07, 2009

A Few Things Thailand Has Perfected

Greg2016-11-17T15:48:45+00:00Culture, Movies, Music, Pop Culture, Thailand|0 Comments

check As with most foreigners in Thailand, I sometimes get upset with the many ineffective, inefficient quirks that Thailand has; the type of day where you say "Well, they did it this way in my country, why don't they do it that way here?" The correct answer, of course, is "Then go home, whiner." But while Thailand often lacks a certain refined efficiency in many areas, there are plenty of other areas - some of them creature comforts that we're used to getting at home - that are done far better than they ever were in the Motherland. Of course, I don't mean to dis Canada, but I think it's a fair representation of most western countries. Here's some of my favorite differences.

20 07, 2009

The Yin and Yang of Thai Comedy

Greg2016-11-17T15:48:46+00:00Culture, Pop Culture, Television, Thailand|0 Comments

yinyang Before I go into a rant here, I want to preface this by saying that, as a guy with some stand-up comedy experience under his belt, I fully understand that comedy is an extremely subjective topic. One guy's knee-slapper is another guy's groaner; one girl's howlingly funny anecdote is another girl's highly offensive gutter tale. So, if anything I say in this post comes off as offensive, keep in mind it's nothing more than my opinion of a highly subjective topic. That being said, Thai comedy, specifically Thai television comedy, is an offense to the word comedy. It's not just bad, it's staggeringly awful. But amid the gloom is a bright light - the unparalleled genius of Thai commercials.

11 07, 2009

Self-Censorship in Thailand

Greg2016-11-17T15:48:46+00:00Asia, Culture, Politics, Print Media, Technology, Thailand, Web Media|0 Comments

zip2 Free speech has the ability to make you behave in much the same way that a child does after a bowl of sugar-coated Corn Flakes - once you've tasted it, going back to how you had it before is a kick in the head. Be it a rant against The Man or a punch-bowl full of sugary goodness, it feels good to exercise our freedom to speak and/or eat. (It's in the Constitution, I checked). So it was interesting a while back when something happened and I thought to myself, "I should put this on my blog" but then decided against it. But the thing that stuck in my craw was the reason I decided against it.

1 07, 2009

Meanwhile, in Bangkok: Explosive Diarrhea With Your Morning Coffee?

Greg2016-11-17T15:48:46+00:00Meanwhile in Bangkok...|0 Comments

My first residence when I moved to Thailand was a three-storey townhouse lit with pasty fluorescent lights that featured bright red, threadbare carpets, wall-mounted bugs and lobsters in glass cases, and enough cockroaches in the bathrooms to populate a new planet. My suspicion that it was decorated by a blind ex-fisherman entomologist was never confirmed, but I'm lucky that I now live in a much nicer place. In fact, over the past few years, I've noticed Thai decoration and style trends have been getting markedly more modern and tasteful - with the exception of a few knick-knacks here and there, one of which I photographed a few weeks ago at an 'in trend' store at Emporium.

26 06, 2009

A Nice Attempt at Customer Service… For a While

Greg2016-11-17T15:48:46+00:00Bangkok|0 Comments

thumb5 Dealing with Bangkok's endles variety of taxi drivers is a topic that could produce enough material for several blogs (not including Dale's cool blog about taxi decorations). I've been in taxis that stank, taxis that smelled like cinnamon buns, taxis that were older than I am and taxis that had Buddhist amulets glued to the roof. The drivers I've had have ranged from friendly old gaffers who like to practice their English to arrogant punk street racers who feel cooler with every millimeter the speedometer moves to the right. The bottom line is that getting a taxi in Bangkok is a crap shoot. So it was nice a few weeks ago when I was handed the document below as I got in a car at the MBK taxi stand.