Bowling for Towers of Singha, 48 Hours of Kingsbury and Other Nonsense

A couple of adventures before we get onto the Andaman Sea islands. So let’s talk Bowling and Kingsbury . . .

Bowling For Singha
So bowling and karaoke are pretty big in Thailand – not as big as in Japan (Margaret assures me), but pretty big none-the-less. I bowl probably about once a year and every time I do it I have so much fun (remember the Providence President’s Day post Big Lebowski bowl-a-thon Hollie and Nehmer?) that I wonder why I don’t bowl more often (especially since there is a nice bowling alley in the mall right across the street from us).

So a few weeks back, we went bowling with friends of ours, Angie and Josh. Josh was leaving Thailand in a few days, so we did it up right, with Towers of Singha (read on). It turns out that Margaret can really throw rocks – she is quite good – I think all Canadians have to at least minor in bowling at University. Anyway – here are some scores to show you.

Now I am the most inconsistent bowler ever – I can bowl over 200 (rarely) and under 100 (not as rarely as I’d like) – but this may come from the whole once a year thing. But every once in awhile I’ll pull out a game in dramatic fashion, as evidenced here. Gotta love picking up the win with the least number of pins needed on the last bowl of the game – of course that was on purpose.We had a grand time – as the following pictures show. This is a Tower of Singha. These are pics from before major damage was done to said tower. These are picks during and after four of them had been toppled!Oh - I think I have to make this clear - I was bowling with the "15" ball until I decided to bowl the last game with an "8" ball - so no comments about using a girl ball thank you! Basically Big Lebowski style with Singha substituted for White Russians. "Ya know, this aggression will not stand, man."

48 Hours of Kingsbury
So my buddy from Grad School, Jonathan Kingsbury was in Bangkok for work and we got to hang over a weekend (Margaret was on a “girl’s trip” up north in Chiang Mai, although Kingsbury doesn’t believe she actually exists). For those of you who know Kingsbury you can imagine the tom-foolery. For those of you who don’t, maybe this will help. We basically spent every minute (whether eating, walking, touring temples, watching Muay Thai boxing, etc.) laughing about the Thai names for station stops, city districts, etc. such as: Mo Chit, Chitlom, Bung Kum, Ram Intra and On Nut. We had an interesting discussion about whether this type of humor will ever get old (shoot us if it does) and realized we had the same discussion while in Grad School 7-8 years ago.

We had great food and lots of beer. The food: street meat, lots of Som Tam (papaya salad), stir fried pork, fresh OJ, sausage, fried morning glory, Mango smoothies (yes, we were walking around the streets of Bangkok both holding a Mango smoothie), and a little western Au Bon Pain for a hangover cure on Sunday morning. Here is a picture of Kingsbury trying the local flavor.

We also decided that we had to make at least one beer stop for every temple or other sightseeing adventure – he is an example of our rest stops.

Speaking of temples, we saw Wat Rachanada and Wat Sakhet (Golden Mountain). We were just sort of wandering the city when we came upon Wat Rachanada. When we got there I made the mistake of pulling out my map to see where we were, and a tuk-tuk driver came up to us. Now I had heard the many warnings that they will tell you places are closed so they can take you somewhere else, but I didn’t really believe said warnings. Anyway the tuk-tuk drive told us that both Rachanada and Golden Mountain were closed until 3pm because the “monks were praying” and that he would take us to “Big Buddha”. We were skeptical, especially since there were people roaming around the temple. So we said thanks for the info and went on our way. So yes, the rumors about the tuk-tuk drivers are true. And for the rest of the weekend of course we kept joking that it would be nice if wherever we were was open, but no problem we could go to “Big Buddha.”

Here are some pix of the touring around. Scenes of Bangkok:

Wat Rachanada:

Wat Sakhet (Golden Mountain) – notice that Kingsbury was really into the bells:

We also saw some Muay Thai boxing, which we were both really looking forward to. There were nine fights, and we were ringside about five rows back. All in all it was pretty disappointing. I think maybe it would be like going to a normal boxing night in the States and thinking you were gonna see vintage 80s Tyson like stuff. Anyway the crowd was pretty small, and they played this annoying music all night – it kept getting faster as the rounds and the match progressed. Each bout was 5 rounds and there wasn’t anything near a KO. It seems that the fighters were almost too small to do any real damage to each other. The first bout was two kids that couldn’t have been more than 14 or so. Then the second bout had the heaviest guys, and they were actually entertaining – the second best fight of the night. The others were all pretty boring until the main event – which was good. Mr. Kingsbury wasn’t exactly awake through the middle fights, and you’ll have to ask him whether that was due to boring fights or trying to keep up with me on the Singhas! Here are some pix:

Last Few Things

• The weather has started to get hot again – like not fun hot. Gone are the days of not breaking into a sweat. And back are the days of soaking through my t-shirt. Ugh. The only good thing about the return of the hot weather is the damn mosquitos are fewer again. When it got cool here, the mosquitos were out in force. Every night I was killing ‘em in my place. No way to keep them out. Although I’d take the mosquitos if I could have the cooler weather back.
  
• For some reason Josh Groban’s “You Raise Me Up” got into my head and I couldn’t get it out. So I had to download it, and now Margaret has witnessed what happens to me when I get into a song and listen to it over and over and over again. And now she can’t get it out of her head. That led me to getting the March Madness song “One Shining Moment” in my head and so then had to download that. Honestly, Josh Groban and “One Shining Moment”? It could only be me. I love music at a click. “The ball is tipped . . .”


• Remember the pictures of the nasty “cholera” canal near us? Well – here is an update. It got worse. The other day I was walking by it and it was the usual backed up disgusting scene, except now there was a dead dog (I think) floating in it. These aren’t pretty. Anyway – maybe the FBI can stop digging up lawns in Detroit because I think Jimmy Hoffa is gonna surface in a Thai canal any day!
• And my friend Thomas who lives in Hanoi (the Thomas of the million page newsletters of past lore) was in Bangkok with his fiance Thuy - so we hung out for a bit.
• Second to last – most of you who know me well know my rant against the penny. I have even tried to take them out of circulation myself, which of course didn’t work. But it turns out it isn’t just bluster from me. This is from Gregg Easterbrook’s “Tuesday Morning Quarterback” on espn.com from 2/4/07 (I realize posting this is probably illegal, but if I just put up the link most of you won’t go to it and scroll through the whole thing – hopefully the judge will be lenient due to my sourcing). I can see rolling your eyes at me, but Easterbrook is a smart dude and he goes even further saying we should get rid of the nickel and dime! And I love how my wildly unsubstantiated claim that the penny costs more to make than it is worth is actually true!
  
  Eliminate the Dime!
  Every now and then someone launches a crusade against the penny, which clogs America's pockets, purses and cash-register drawers. One cent is a unit of currency so small as to be meaningless; the sole role of the penny is to cause needlessly complex prices such as $19.82. That shopkeepers leave bowls of pennies by checkout lines reveals the stark truth that the modern penny is of no value. The absurdity of the existence of the penny got worse in 2006, when rising copper prices meant the United States Mint spent 1.4 cents for every penny it produced. Since the Mint made nine billion pennies last year, United States taxpayers lost $36 million on penny production. Not only are pennies an annoying inconvenience – they are a net financial loser whose existence costs you money!
  
  For years they've been worthless. Now they actually cost you money!
  
  Tuesday Morning Quarterback would go further and eliminate not just the penny but the nickel and dime. The quarter is the smallest unit of currency that has significance in modern commerce. In inflation-adjusted terms, today's dime has about the same value as a penny in 1920 – and back then there were already people crusading to eliminate the penny! Pricing all goods in increments no smaller than 25 cents would simplify transactions and eliminate the need for Americans to carry coins that are, for all intent and purpose, worthless. Abolishing the penny, nickel and dime would eliminate the need for businesses and banks to process large amounts of coins with little net value. Eliminating this transaction cost would allow consumer prices to decline slightly, thus increasing national prosperity. Eliminate the nickel and dime! (Yes, sales-tax simplification would also be required.)
  
  As part of my crusade, I no longer provide exact payment for utility bills or similar invoices that come to ridiculously specific amounts such as $206.84. I round up, and pay $207. This takes less time to write on the check, and makes me feel like a Rockefeller, since I am tipping a major corporation. Probably it forces a clerk on the other end to input that I have paid $207 instead of $206.84. For the labor time it takes her to enter these numbers, she will be paid a nickel.
  
• Lastly, we just got back from a little over a week on the Andaman Sea islands – Phuket and Phi Phi to be exact. It was Chinese New Year, one of the busiest weekends of the year. So the next couple of entries will be our adventures there – any guesses as to what I think about wildly over-touristed islands on one of the busiest weekends of the year? You’ll just have to be patient.