Category: Our Wedding in Thailand

If your name is Chris, and you are Chinese (and you are studying medicine in Chicago and dating my little sister), you need to see this:
Peanut Kiss Not Cause of Death for Quebec Girl
Why the coroner waited until now to reveal this news is unclear, as is the reason why the “test results” are taking so goddamn long. We should obviously not be expecting the hit show CSI:Quebec anytime soon, I am thinking.
Anyway, Chris is a real nice guy, but I suspect that’s more of a survival requirement than anything else, since people who he pisses off can get revenge by simply shooting him with Skippy-tipped bullets… And remember, all of you – I won the right (via rock-scissors-paper) fair and square to administer the Epi-pen shot, Vincent Vega style.

Would you take sleeping pills on your drive back home? It appears that some people do.
I can attest to the fact that Ambien works – I bummed one off my mom when we were in Bangkok, partly because I was all nerves and couldn’t sleep, and partly because I was curious. I can also attest to the fact that Ambien should not be used when drinking. “Don’t take it with alcohol,” my mom said. Of course, I took it with alcohol.
I woke up sometime in the early morning and puked on my pillow, very matter-of-factly. Like in a “I feel the need to regurgitate and shall do so, calmly, right here and now on this very pillow since I do not have the strength to go to the toilet” kind of way. Then I fell asleep again, face down.
I woke up the next morning with something dry and crusty matted in my hair and stuck to the side of my face. Nam was less than amused.
sometimes, mother knows best.

Apparently, there were OVER 500 GUESTS at our wedding. We only invited 350. I love Thailand.

I must say, the overall quality of knock-offs in Bangkok, or at least in the Patpong area, has dropped greatly in every area – bags, watches, clothes. There were a couple of decent items, as well as some nice “originals” (Prada greatcoats and Jaeger-styled IWC watches), but the rest of it was shit. We were all very unimpressed.
The most recent knock-off shopping I’ve gone besides Thailand was in Korea, and the quality of the stuff there was world-class, with very hagglable prices.

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Photo by Adam, I think. Taken on Monkey Island, Hua Hin, Thailand.

The wedding photos are up on flickr (it’s nice to be able to finally use my pay account to its fullest)!
Most of these were taken by my brother Adam (my sister Merin and I took a few as well).
Warning: These photos have not been culled (except for some on-camera) or edited, and there are THOUSANDS of them. Thumbnails for ALL of the photos load on a single page, so it will take several minutes to load in entirety. Just hit the link and let the page load for a while, or dig right in and start a loooong slideshow.
Morning Ceremony Photo Set
Evening Reception Photo Set
UPDATES:
Photos Taken at Wedding Studio
FIRST VIDEO CLIP!: Bouquet Toss! (Interception!)
Photos from my cousin Yumi (shutterfly)
Photos from Lek-san: Morning, Evening (Yahoo Photos)
Sakamoto’s Photo Set (on my flickr account)
Taro’s Photo Set (on my flickr account)
Photos from Uncle Po!
Hired photographer’s Morning (Wedding Ceremony) Photos
Hired photographer’s Night (Reception) Photos
2006 Trip to Thailand – Mika’s Photos
NEWEST UPDATES:
Michelle’s Photo Set
Dave’s Photo Set
…………..
Anybody else who puts photos from the wedding online, let me know. I will continually update this post with your contributions!

Some of you are such fucking nerds, I swear! I love it!
Seriously, though, thank you for all the kind notes… Nam is coming back from Thailand this Sunday, and we hope to see you all soon.
(YT notes that she generated the image here)

click image to enlarge
After sitting on the dashboard of a Bangkok taxi for so long, who else could aspire to such calmness?
(Notice the bits of gold foil someone has pressed onto him – it’s not just for the big statues at the temples!)

I am still convinced that this child loves me.

Note: There is no hope of remembering the whole trip in order, so my travelogue is going to be patterned after the trip itself – wildly chaotic, but hopefully enjoyable.
– The day before we left Bangkok to Nam’s hometown, the door of the safe in our room got stuck and refused to open. Contents: Both of our passports and airplane tickets, most of the dowry in cash and gold jewelry, our wedding bands, my camera, my laptop, my Omega, etc., etc., and just what in the hell do we do now. Several calls down to the front desk only to be assured that “someone was coming up right away” to fix it were not very assuring after a couple hours of no-show and repeated excuses. Nutty saved the day by threatening the pissant on the other end with Vigorous Blows to Cranium, as well as demanding to see the night manager. Five minutes later, the manager, the pissant, and a chubby safecracker dude bearing a bruteforce card-cabled-to-scanner device (just like the one Edward Furlong used to jackpot an ATM in Terminator 2) showed up at our door and got that sucker open. The problem, as described by Mr. Safecracker: “You crammed too much shit in there.” Yeah, well it’s hard choosing which of my pieces of shit (comp, camera, wedding ring display case, or watch) to leave exposed to the jackals, pal. Besides, I’m providing you with work, you little hacker nerd, so shut up.
– The day after the wedding, we chartered a double decker bus to take our group of fifty or so to Khon Kaen airport, where we would all board the same flight back to Bangkok. It was sweet, real sweet – a double decker bus! With an Orientalish Santa Claus airbrushed on the side! – but we encountered a problem that I, noob to the ways of double decker buses, never even considered. The bus was too tall to pass under the ceiling of the terminal building! Panic! Only an hour until our plane leaves! Panic! The great thing about Thailand, though – most everything is for hire if you ask nicely and offer compensation. We parked the bus in a parking lot adjacent to the terminal building and hired a nearby van to shuttle people in, and a pickup truck for the luggage. It took the pickup four or five trips – completely stuffed to the gills – to take all of the luggage to the departures curb (most of our group had never quite taken to the whole “travelling light” concept). I took the last van in, again with loyal friend Nutty by my side, sure we would be left on the runway watching the rest of our group fly off into the bright blue sky… Only to have to sit and wait for an hour because the plane was delayed.
– I made a previous reference to this, but it bears emphasizing: A speedhead taxi driver, in between spurts of almost killing us during his mad dashes between road hazards and battered trucks carrying fermented soy milk packaging, kept touching my forearm and telling me I could be a boxer and how he “like a man.” Panic! Finally, right after he finished telling me how he had two sons at home (note: quite disturbing after the Like a Man confession), tried to grab at my grointifical region! Luckily, I saw it coming a mile away and grabbed his wrist! He made another grab with his other hand! Can you say Runaway Taxi? The cab careened wildly down Soi Ratchada as we battled for possession of my testiculars! Suddenly, Nam came to my rescue and used her sandal straps to strangle the speedheadcabbie-freak into unconsciousness, just as we plowed into the back of a tuktuk carrying a family of five from Munich!
Okay, not really.