Thai Society/Culture
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Capybara Buddy
This capy was so chill and friendly. He came out of the water and hung with us to munch after I shot this. We gave him all the long grass we had and then went and got him more, because he was an absolute eating machine.
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Blue Lotus
Also known as the blue water lily, or blue star water lily, which is slightly confusing since a “blue lily” is a completely different thing. The plant pictured could be Nymphaea nouchali or one of its several varieties including Nymphaea nouchali var. caerulea which contains the psychotropic substance aporphine, which lead to the outlawing of possession of the plant where tripping ancient Egyptian balls is apparently frowned upon. The lotus has roots in many countries and religions, and it’s said that everywhere the baby Buddha stepped, lotus flowers bloomed and that when the Buddha died, they reappeared everywhere that he had walked the Earth. The fullness of bloom and color of…
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The Dogs of Lad Prao
For as long as we’ve been visiting Nam’s auntie and uncle on Lad Prao 33, there have been a huge pack of dogs running the middle area of the street. During the day, they lounge around in the heat and disappear through holes in nearby gates, but at night, they run around free. It is scary walking there alone at night. The neighbors all complain about the danger and the shits left all over the place, to no avail… We’ve been going and staying there for decades, so we have probably seen several generations of this wild pack.
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Got back from Koh Chang
I took Max along on a (university business) road trip with my two pals. It was epic.
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425,000
Is the approx. number of media files I have stored locally on my main hard drive backup. The digital photos go back to 1998 or so. I have them mostly arranged by date in the file names so I can look up people and events chronologically. The 3TB HD in question is old and unhealthy, so it’s currently being synced to a new external 12TB one I picked up on amazon for a hundred bucks! The US remains the low price king for certain consumer goods, PC components being one of them. The same drive in Thailand would cost many times more, but partially because only a few big brands…
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Pennyboarding in Pattaya
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Botanical Printing at Columbo Craft Village
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DTAC International Roaming
If you are planning to visit Japan from Thailand and haven’t been suckered into buying an eSIM yet, I highly recommend buying a roaming package from DTAC/TRUE (AIS also has similar plans, but I haven’t tried them). The main reason is that it’s much cheaper, but also because I saw many travelers struggling with SIM cards/eSIMs purchased from both vending machines in Japan and online. In the space of one week, I saw at least five people complaining about weak coverage or spotty connectivity. The DTAC package we chose also came with free travel insurance for a week, which is great, but very difficult to actually find on the DTAC…
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Mina’s new Warbirds
We picked up an incomplete set of Callaway Warbirds for Mina at the Tsuruya Golf (Japan’s golf Mecca) main branch in Honmachi. It was exactly the kind of deal I like to find in Japan, because any imperfection in a product can result in huge bargains – we scored the set for less than half off because it was missing the hood (removable top of the golf bag) and a putter. Nam’s good friend ended up gifting Mina a really nice putter anyway, so we packaged the set with bubble wrap and brought it on the plane back to Thailand. Tonight was Mina’s first lesson in nearly a month, so…
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Dusit Thani Pattaya
I arranged for my cousin’s company to stay at the Dusit Thani Hotel at the end of Beach Road, and the level of service was excellent. We stayed in a spacy family room on the 8th floor and were very pleased with the renovations the hotel has completed.
