You are currently browsing the monthly archive for March, 2007.
Give my recently found love for football (soccer), before I left for Thailand I decided to see if I could find any games there. I was in luck and found out that there was something called the King’s Cup going on at that time. I wasn’t able to find out how much tickets were, but decided that they couldn’t be that much due to the fact that they had to be affordable to Thais.
I missed the games on 24 December because I didn’t arrive until the following day. When I woke up on 26 December, I took the Skytrain to the National Stadium stop, got off and walked towards the stadium – only to find that it was a complex of a few stadiums. I didn’t care. It was sunny and warm and I was enjoying walking in the warm winter’s sun in my shorts and a short sleeve shirt in late December. Heaven!
Eventually I found the right stadium and attempted to find a place to buy tickets. Easier said than done. Searching for a person that spoke English was also quite a task. After several unsuccessful attempts, I finally found someone who at least understood a bit of what I wanted and pointed me to the box office – which wasn’t open. However, I was glad to see that the prices were 50, 100 and 200 THB.
After wandering around Bangkok for a few hours, I returned to the stadium and bought my ticket. I had no idea what the seats were like, so I decided to splurge and get a 200 THB ticket, bought a bag of sticky rice, some cooked chicken and a bottle of water (a total of 35 THB) from a street vendor (a popular thing to do in Thailand) and went in. I wasn’t sure if food from outside was allowed to be taken in, so I hid the rice and chicken in my camera bag and went in, using the bottle of water as a test to see if it would be confiscated or not. It wasn’t, and most of the Thai people that came in after me had lots more than I did. Lesson learned.
The first game that day was Vietnam vs. Kazakhstan. The game was pretty good, but I didn’t like the Vietnam team. They played dirty pool – trying to foul the Kazakhstan players as much as possible, holding their shin when they hurt their arm, staying down for too long when they fell down, etc.
The Kazakhstan team was quite interesting. Kazakhstan is an Asian country and the native inhabitants should look a bit like those in China. However, due to the fact that the country was part of the USSR for many years and had a large immigration of Russians, most of the players were as white as me.
The second game was Singapore vs. Thailand and I stayed for that as well.
I also attended the games on 28 December and was pleased to see that the size of the crowd had increased. The games started at 16:30 and I saw Singapore lose to Vietnam and Thailand tie Kazakhstan.
I ended my football time in Thailand (or so I thought) with the final game of Thailand vs. Vietnam, and VN was up to their old tricks again. It was a good game and THAILAND WON! HOORAY! It wasn’t the kind celebration like when a basketball team wins a championship in the US and the whole town goes crazy, but there the mood was very jubilant at the stadium.
600 THB (about €12) for 6 matches and a total of 12 hours of evening entertainment.
What a bargain!
Videos:
A screen shot from CBS News website:
This reporter HAS JUST DISCOVERED that child slavery is, unfortunately, alive and well in Africa? My goodness, what kind of rock has she been living under?
Let’s hope she’s not an investigative reporter.
10h – woke up
11h – went cycling
13h – had a shower
14h – made a nice lunch
15h30 – went to work
15h45 – German colleague and I decide that it’s too nice out to prepare lessons, so we cycle the confluence of the Rhein and Mosel for ice cream.
16h30 – we return to plan lessons
17h30 – teach
19h45 – return home.
Why was my day so relaxing? Due to the fact that Easter Break has started, so our daytime classes are off. Also, my 7h30 incompany class cancelled due to having too much work as did my 15h30 class, so the only class I had was my 17h30 class – one of my favourite classes.
Things are back to normal tomorrow, but the next two weeks should be filled with quite a bit of extra free time.
which is becoming normal Mon – Wed, so here are a few baseball photos from Sunday.
Of course, the Ass-Team was there.
StudentX [can't remember who]: ‘What’s a pioneer?’
J: ‘Someone who is the first to do something. Perhaps settle in part of a country or do research into a particular field that no one has covered before.’
StudentX (still confused): ‘Can you give an example?’
*I quickly try to thing of a German example, but can’t come up with anything off the top of my head. I take a chance.*
J: ‘Lewis and Clark were pioneers in the US. They, and a native American guide, travelled west and explored parts of the US that hadn’t been explored before.’
*I see puzzled faces*
J: ‘Does anyone know who Lewis and Clark were?’
*most students shake their heads*
StudentA: ‘Doch! I mean yes! Superman.’
J: ‘Superman?’
*everyone looks at her in confusion*
StudentA: ‘Lewis and Clark, right?’
StudentK: ‘Oh! That’s Lois and Clark!’
*Laugher all around*
The international part of my trip started when I left my hotel at 10h53 on 24 December. I hurried to the Koeln-Muelhim train station and hoped that the 10h59 train to the Dusseldorf Airport would be on time due to the fact that I had mailed my warm clothes home the day before. Luckily it was, so I boarded and was taken to the Dusseldorf Airport train station – sort of. It doesn’t deposit you directly at the airport like it does in Cologne and Frankfurt, so you have to hop on their ‘Skytrain’ – an elevated rail system (with the track above) that first stops at one of the parking garages and then at terminal A& B (one stop) and then terminal C. The idiotic thing is that there’s nothing on the train that advises which stop to get off at for different airlines. I was able to look down at the signs for cars that do provide that info and saw that I had to go to Terminal B and got off there.
Upon exiting the train and making my way into the terminal, I saw that there was a quite long line for British Airways, and gave the GfoS. I then saw a couple self-check in terminals and decided to give them a go (it didn’t work when I tried it with Lufthansa a few months ago).
I put in my credit card number – it couldn’t find it, so I figured that I’d have to wait in line. I then put in my record locator and it found it! A big smile came over my face and I followed the instructions. It had assigned me seats, but gave me the option of changing them, which I did with the long haul part of my trip. I love window seats, but hate being cramped in for so long and also hate inconveniencing other passengers by asking them to move so that I can get out. So, I book myself an emergency exit row seat because they have more legroom and it’s easier to get up and stroll around (recommended on long haul flights). It then had to scan my passport and then I was issued boarding cards for both legs of my journey. I turned to the people waiting in the long line, still with a big smile on my face and then headed to the ‘baggage drop’ area, where my backpack was sent off, hopefully to be reunited with me in Bangkok.
The flight to Heathrow was uneventful and on time. I arrived at Terminal 1 had to get to Terminal 4 – which the in-flight magazine said one should allow 75 minutes for the transfer. The trip down several halls, on a bus, through security again and down several more halls to the ‘airside’ part of the terminal. I had plenty of time due to the fact that my flight to Bangkok didn’t leave until 21h35. Yes, I had 6 ½ hours to kill (when I booked it, there was only a 2 hour gap between the flights, but that changed when BA’s flight schedule changed a few months later).
What to do?
Explore!
I walked up the terminal and noticed a Borders! Hooray! Borders! I went in and saw that they were having a 3 for the price of 2 sale! Double Hooray!
I left with several books. Among them:
Air Babylon by Imogene Edwards-Jones & Anonymous
I Know Your Soul – Jeremy Clarkson
FreakOnomics – by Levitt and Dubner
After reaching the end of the shopping area of the terminal, I saw a restaurant and decided that I’d have lunch due to the fact that dinner was about ten hours away (and would be airplane food). A bacon cheeseburger with bbq sauce, fries and a pint of Stella £11.05!
After that, I still had 5 ½ to kill, so I decided to plug my laptop in and do a bit of computering.
Heathrow started to come to life around 18h30 – when people started arriving for long haul flights east and south (long haul flights west leave in the morning). Tel Aviv, Sydney, Singapore, Colombo, Mumbai, Dubai, Kuwait, Bangkok, Cape Town, Nairobi, Delhi, Tehran, Entebbe, Melbourne.
I dislike long haul flights going east, mainly because they take place at night. That means you get up at 8h, spend the entire day up and then board a flight around bedtime. That’s fine for people that can sleep on airplanes, but I can’t. I usually spend the entire flight watching the movies and other videos provided and by the time I get to my destination, it’s the next after noon thanks to the dime difference. I’m usually beat, but don’t want to go to sleep to attempt to adjust my sleep to the new time zone.
The flight left on time and we were off. I flew on a 747 again, the Queen of the Skies.
I couldn’t help but wonder if any of the people on the flight were refugees from flights that had been cancelled earlier in the week (this was the first day that BA was operating a full flight schedule out of Heathrow).
The flight to Bangkok was uneventful but looooong and I saw Miami Vice movie – which I liked but it wasn’t the Miami Vice of yesteryear that I knew and Little Miss Sunshine which was I didn’t care for and don’t recommend (unless you’re on an airplane with nothing else to do for 11 hours).
I wondered about the new airport in Bangkok. It had opened on 28 September and was supposed to be state-of-the-art, which thrilled me, however I had no idea how to get from there to my hotel. I knew how to do it from the former airport, but this one was in a totally different part of the Bangkok area. I had attempted to research it on the internet but wasn’t able to find definite information, so that was on my mind.
Upon arrival, I wondered if I’d have to walk forever and a day to the passport control area like at the old airport. My hopes were placated after walking for about five minutes, past a TV crew interviewing an important person and his entourage, and then reaching the area I despise most: Passport Control.
Passport control took quite a while at the old airport and despite the lines at the new one, it was quite fast. There were toilets just on the other side of it that were clean, and then I went to exchange money due to the fact that I had not kept any from my last trip.
Or at least I tried to.
When I take long haul flights, I take a daypack with a few things in it including a small just-bigger-than-camera-bag bag for a few incidentals that I might need. I take the smaller bag out for the flight and lock the daypack and keep my valuables (laptop, passport, money, etc) in it in the overhead bin. That way I have easy access to what I might need on the flight (book, notepad, pen) without having to worry about anything important being taken while I’m using the restroom or if, by some miracle, I’m able to snooze. Usually a good plan, except for the rare occasion when I can’t find the key (which I keep in the smaller bag).
Like when I had to get my money out to exchange.
One person was in front of me and I started looking for it while waiting in line. I couldn’t find it, so I got out of line and looked. And looked. And looked. The small bag is only so big, but I finally the hiding place it had found under a battery, unlocked the daypack and returned to the line and got my money.
The bags were being presented on the carousel by the time I got there, so I grabbed mine and headed out of the security area.
Suvarnabhumi is the new airport that opened at the end of September of 2006, so I wasn’t sure how to get to the city from there. Sure, I had done some research on the internet, but it’s not always the same as actually being there and having to figure things out for yourself. I first saw a sign that said taxi, but it was really a limo service that charges 1100 THB to get to the city. What a rip off.
My next course of action was to find the airport bus to the city, but that was easier said than done due to poor signage. I wandered around for a while and finally stumbled on a taxi rank and was set to take a taxi to the city but was put off by the 50 or so people waiting in line.
It was then that I saw the sign for the airport busses, so I headed over to where they were. Luckily, it’s a similar set up to the old airport (with the same busses) and there was one that ran the same route (once it got to the city) as the one I took when I had visited Thailand before. The only difference was that the cost had gone up from 100 THB to 150 THB (€1). While that might not seem like much in Euros, I usually spend about that much or lesson dinner when I’m in Bangkok.
The trip to the area of the hotel took about an hour (as it did from the old airport), probably due to the traffic. We got stuck in traffic several times and at one point the traffic was so bad that we sat there for five minutes without moving. Fortunately, it was the stop just before the stop for my hotel, so I decided to walk and got off there.
I headed down the street to the road that runs along the river and stood there for a minute and watched the traffic go by. Traffic in Bangkok is legendary and trust me, it’s all true. I said to myself, ‘Right, how do I cross the road in Thailand again?’.
After crossing the road and checking into my hotel, I dropped my bag off and headed back to the Skytrain station. I had plans.
I love the Bangkok Skytrain. It whisks you above the traffic through and winds through that wonderful city’s towering buildings.
Having arrived at the Siam station, I made my way across the Skywalk towards Central World Plaza. I had been in SMS contact with the person I was supposed to meet and when I got to CWP, I found that she had been making her way to Siam to meet me (because of an SMS) and we had missed each other. So, we both reversed directions and met each other on the Skywalk and headed to out intended destination.
Central World Plaza has three ‘beer gardens’ (as they call them) that totally rock. They have seating for about 800 people, live music, delicious food and (of course) beer. Despite the number of seats, all the beer gardens were full. We waited by the best one (from what I remembered from previous visits). We checked out all of them, but couldn’t find a seat until we were about to give up and find a pub, and then we came across a ‘sports bar’. We didn’t care, as it had beer, food and stools to sit on.
So we did.
Binty (nickname is mostly her idea) is a Londoner that has lived in Japan for more than two years. After planning the dates for our trips to Thailand, we discovered that there was an overlap and decided to get together. We spent a couple hours catching up and chatting about various things and then parted ways – quite frankly because I was exhausted after having been up for about 36 hours – so I took the Skytrain back to my hotel and fell asleep the minute I hit the bed (after dozing on the train).
My long journey had ended with good conversation and a good friend. Perfect.
As with every Tuesday – Thursday, I woke up at 5h, had a cup of tea, a shower and got ready to go to work. Daylight happened and I glanced out the window at 6h30 and saw a potential problem.
SNOW!
OH NO!
I grabbed my things, headed out of the flat at 6h40 and rushed through the falling inconvenience to the car. Why was I in such a hurry? Due to the fact that I had to teach an incompany class in The Westerwald and on the rare occasion it snows in the city, that region gets buried.
Moderate snow was falling, but it wasn’t sticking to the streets of the city. I hopped on the B9 and was passed by a SIM registered car with about 10 cm (approx 4 inches) of snow on it (SIM is a mountainous region to the southwest of where I live).
Great.
Exiting the city on the B9, I noticed that snow had been sticking to the grass in the outer districts of the city, which didn’t thrill me. The farther from the city I got, the more stuck on the grass.
I turned onto the Autobahn and the snow intensified – but the road was only wet. Normally I like the few kilometres I drive on the Autobahn and zoom up to 130 kph immediately. However, in the snow and fog, 100 kph I had been driving suited me.
Exiting onto the B42, the road was still only wet so I continued on at 100 kph in the driving snow. No problem.
Yet.
The final major road I had to take was the B256. Until I got to that point, other than the Autobahn I had been at an elevation of 60 – 65 metres (about 200 feet) above sea level (along the Rhein). The B256 goes from the Rhein into the Westerwald and the elevation increases by 320 metres (1050 feet) in 12 kilometres (7.5 miles) to 383 metres above sea level (1256 feet). Now you can see why I was concerned.
The first km or so was fine, but then the snow started to stick on the fast lane,so I stayed in the slow lane. The speed limit is 100 kph, but I was satisfied with the 80 kph I was doing.
One of the problems with the 256 is that there’s a hairpin turn and then an S-curve on it, which could be a bit tricky if it had snow on it, so I obeyed the 30kph limit there just in case. The road was still only wet but the snow had been sticking to everything else for a while.
Luckily for me, I was headed away from the Rhein. The 256 is a main artery through the Westerwald and is very busy headed towards the Rhein (where cities can be accessed) and was barely crawling due to traffic and snow. There were only two people behind me.
The minor street I had to turn onto after that was slushy and then the raod that leads into the company’s complex had snow on it, but I made it without incident.
It snowed the entire time I was teaching and I thought it might have been snowing in the valley, like it did last time, but was pleasantly surprised to see the snow disappear and change to a mixture of snow and rain when I got to the city of NR afterwards for my next class.
A photo taken at the place I had to teach:
Video taken at various stretches of the journey:
The beach is a sentimental place for me.
Taken on 17 Feb 2007 in Cadiz, Spain. This is one of my favourite photos from that trip. A stairway to heaven.
A family member mails me rubbish things he thinks I’d be interested in from time to time. When I first moved here, I had them sent directly to my apartment, but the Zollamt (Customs House) decided that they might be able to collect some additional taxes from things being brought into Germany, so they held them, sent me a letter and I went out and picked them up. After the second time, I expressed my frustration to my employer and he told me to have them sent to the school. So I did, and that worked for more than four years.
Until yesterday.
I received a letter from them telling me that I had to suffer the inconvenience of bringing the receipt for whatever I had purchased out of town to their office so they could see if they needed to assess additional taxes for things being brought into their country. So, I did.
After giving the guy behind the counter the piece of paper I had been mailed, he told me to come with him so that he cold find the package and see what was in it. I followed.
After searching through every package despite telling him which one it was (it was the same kind of USPS packet that he always sends things to me in), he asked me for my receipt. He looked surprised when I told him that I didn’t have one because I hadn’t ordered order anything. So I told him appeared to be a gift of literature from a relative in the US, and he ordered me to open it (gift is the key word here as gifts of up to either €15 or €22 (it depends on who you ask) for personal use are free of additional tax).
So, I did.
He then told me to take everything out, so I did and showed him the three magazines, one Readers’ Digest, several newspaper clippings and a couple pieces of junk mail that I had been sent. The guy then told me that he wanted to see the card or letter my relative had enclosed with the package, but there wasn’t one. When I told him that, he looked through the things and said, ‘It appears to be less than €15, so I won’t charge you.’
Gee, I felt so honoured to have to waste my time and drive all the way out there for him to look at magazines he couldn’t understand to tell me that I was allowed to accept second-hand reading material as a gift.
Perhaps he expected me to bow down an kiss his civil-servant feet.
Frankly, if he had tried to charge additional duty on it, I would have just dumped the entire packet in the trash can next to him.
There’s something odd going on with the Zollamt. Three people (including me) at work that have had things sent from the US in the last two weeks have had to go to the Zollamt to have them checked out. However, the two packages I sent myself from Malaysia and Thailand were delivered without question.
K [trying to make a joke in English]: ‘Ag isn’t feeling well today. She’s waiting for a carpenter.’
*Puzzled looks from all four of the others*
J: ‘A carpenter?’
K [rather confident]: ‘Yes. She’s waiting for a carpenter.’
*We look at each other wondering if anyone knows what he’s talking about – nobody, including Ag has a clue*
J: ‘K, what on earth are you talking about? Why is she waiting for a carpenter?’
K: ‘Isn’t that what you call the people that take someone to a graveyard.’
J: ‘Oh! A carpenter is a ‘Zimmermann’! You mean an undertaker!’
*entire room bursts out laughing at his mistake including him*
