It’s not often you get to see history being made. I wanted desperately to go down to see the tanks on the streets of Bangkok and see what was really happening with the coup.
Even though I was a little nervous that the situation might be unstable, I hopped on my bike and headed down to the center of the government district to see what was going on.

The whole ride was uneventful—it was business as normal all across Bangkok—nothing out of the ordinary at all.

It wasn’t until I reached Si Ayutthaya Road, about a block from Government House, that I saw any soldiers. They had barricaded off the street. People were stopping by and giving the soldiers bottles of cold water, soft drinks, sweets and flowers—and the soldiers were taking the flowers and affixing them to the barricades. It wasn’t exactly the dangerous situation I was expecting. A large stack of goodies and water was piling up by the barricade—people were bringing far more treats to the soldiers than they could eat and drink. The soldiers were sharing their treats and water to anybody that looked hungry or hot.

Across the bridge from the barricades were two tanks. Onlookers had started to gather around the tanks. More flowers were being given to soldier and the soldiers were decorating the tanks with the flowers. People were chatting with the soldiers and posing for pictures in front of the tanks and with the soldiers. It was certainly not a war zone—it was more like a petting zoo with tanks.

I wandered around for a few hours taking pictures. Several times I was given water by the soldiers.

Tour groups stopped by to get pictures in front of the tanks. Small crowds of a dozen people gradually swelled; eventually hundreds—possibly more than a thousand—Thai and foreign onlookers started to gather. The police dropped the barricades and allowed traffic through—they were certainly acting confident that there was no threat of a counter-coup.

It all seemed very organized, very stable and very friendly. No hint of menace at all.

That was just before 11pm local time, Tuesday the 19^th of September.

I was at a friend’s condo, we switched on CNN and CNN was reporting that it appeared that a coup was under way. The Thai TV channels were all showing pictures of the King and playing music–not the normal program for the evening.

For the next hour or so the situation got very weird; rumors were flying fast and furious. There were tanks in the streets. Troops loyal to the Prime Minister had mobilized to head of f a coup attempt. No, it was opposition troops that were mobilizing to take over the government. It was impossible to make out what was happening–for every piece of observable evidence (and that evidence was mostly tanks in the streets) there were at least two or more conflicting stories coming from different quarters.

It was disquieting not knowing what was going on around me. There was no way to really know what is REALLY happening at the moment.

While the local channels were silent, the international news channels were playing the Thai coup story non-stop. Pictures of tanks filled the screens. Again, the news reports from the Internet and the international news channels conflicted wildly.

Around midnight the international news channels were blocked and an announcer came on Thai TV declaring that the military had taken over power and suspended the constitution.

Taking a taxi home at 2 am this morning the normally crowded streets were all but empty. It was a bit eerie.

Not much to do right now but wait and see what happens over the next few hours.

The simplest way to get there is to take a bus to Ban Phe, take a 30 minute ferry ride to Koh Samet and ride a sawngthaew to the beach of your choice. Cheap and easy. Busses to Ban Phe leave from the Eastern bus terminal (also called the Ekkamai bus terminal) in Bangkok every hour from 5:00am to 8:00pm. The cost is 157 baht one way or 300 baht round trip. If you are staying near the Sky Train, you can take the sky train to the Ekkamai station and the bus terminal is right next to the station.

Ferries to Koh Samet leave from Nuanthip Pier directly across the street from the bus terminal in Ban Phe. Ferries are scheduled to run hourly-but the truth of the matter is they usually wait until there are at least 20 people before they shove off.

On the Koh Samet side there are sawngthaews that run the length of the island and will drop you off at any beach-just tell the driver what beach you want.Koh Samet is a National Park. Admission for foreigners is B200 baht and is good for the length of your stay. The main town on the island lies outside the National Park, so if you go into town, bring your park admission slip so you can get back in without paying

Accommodations

No extensive list of hotels-just some personal recommendations.

Hat Sai Kaew and Ao Hin Kok at the northern end of the island are rather densely crowded-too commercial for my tastes, but the draw of many small bars and restaurants might appeal to some. The further down the island you get the quieter and less densely packed it is. Ao Phai, the third beach down the island, is a nice combination of relaxed atmosphere, yet still close to things to do. There are a few bars and restaurants, but it’s not packed wall-to-wall like the Hat Sai Kaew and Ao Hin Kok.

On Ao Phai beach two resorts are recommended:Samed Villa has nice, clean, modern bungalows from B1000 to B2000 a night. It’s a nice, quiet location nestled in the trees. Recenlty remodeled, it’s a standout on the island.

Jep’s Bungalows has more basic wooden bungalows scattered on a hillside for B600-1000 a night. No aircon rooms-they are pretty basic but clean and the setting is nice and quiet.

Things to Do

Most of the activities on Koh Samet are centered around not doing much of anything.

The string of beaches on the eastern side of the island are all but unbroken except for a few rocky promontories. Wandering down the length of the island is a nice way to kill a few hours.

Koh Samet is quite narrow; from any point on the island from Ao Phai beach south, you can walk over to the rugged western side of the island which is quite pretty.A number of resorts and guesthouses rent snorkeling gear if you want to enjoy a peek under the waves.

Nightlife

Hat Sai Kaew has a number of smaller bars scattered along the beach, some have mats and cushions on the beach to chill by the sea.

Sea Breeze Bungalows on Ao Phai beach is one of the more happening spots on the island. Loads of mats and pillows strewn on the beach-along with fire dancers-draw crowds or people for drinks and dinner early in the evening; around 10pm a little outdoor disco swings into action and goes until 2am or so.

I have been in Thailand a long time and still have not traveled anywhere—and a trip is long overdue.

Five days lounging at Koh Samet was a welcome diversion. The beaches are sugar-white and she seas turquoise green. Koh Samet lacks the large resorts—it’s a wonderfully noncommercial and filled with mid-priced bungalows that cater to both Thai and Western travelers.

Relaxing on a beach is usually not my first choice of a holiday—I usually like something more active than lazing about on the beach. Usually. There are times, tough, that lazing on the beach is just what I need.

Since the New Year I was on a high, I was feeling energized and more excited about life than I have in a long time. Just chilling at the beach in that mood was perfect.

Five days on Samet were refreshing, invigorating. Days were spent walking between beaches, swimming and just relaxing, occasionally doing some writing. Evenings were spent on the beach eating, drinking and making merry with other travelers. It was a welcome break from my Bangkok routine.

For some reason the task of writing menus is usually left to people with only the most peripheral exposure to the English language. They are filled with cryptic descriptions and colorfully misspelled words. Reading–and ordering–from one of these menus is generally challenging and often amusing.

This afternoon I stopped at a restaurant on my soi to have lunch. Even thought I have read the menu dozens of times, I still snicker when I see “Fried Rice with Crap Meat.” While the description could be accurate, I just assume it was a bad attempt at writing “Fried Rice with Crab Meat.”

Misspellings often lead to a chuckle, but the descriptions leave me scratching my head.

If you go to a Thai restaurant outside of Thailand you are used to menus that list the dishes by some sort of phonetic equivalent of the Thai name. The menu will list dishes such as “Pad Thai� and “Tom Yum Goong� with a more detailed description of dish in smaller print.

The Thai restaurants in Thailand–if they even have a menu in English–rarely follow this convention. They forgo the transliteration of the Thai name and attempt–with whatever meager English language skills they can muster–to give the dish a descriptive name.

Unfortunately, the descriptive names are usually not particularly descriptive and often contain words you might never have heard before.

The menu from the small restaurant on my soi has such unpoetically named dishes as “Stir Fried Noodles,” “Stir Fried Noodles with Soy Sauce,” and “Noodles with Gravy.” From these descriptions it’s hard to differentiate between these very different dishes (which, it turns out, are Pad Thai, Pad Siew and Rad Na) nor does it do justice to the unique character of each.

“Tom Yum Goong,” a traditional Thai soup made with shrimp, mushrooms, lemongrass, lime juice, burnt chili paste and kaffir lime leave is unjustly labeled “Spicy and Sour Shrimp Soup” giving no hint of its depth and complexity.

At the same restaurant on my soi they have a “Near Table Saladâ€? and several dishes with “scomberâ€? as a main ingredient–very cryptic.

One a dish on the menu was labeled “Fried Sugar Peap Corn Mealie with Rice (Your choice of meat).” Peap? Mealie? I was pretty sure they weren’t even words. Fried Sugar? Huh?

That was so cryptic that I had to order it–just to see what it was.

It turned out to be chicken stir-fried with snow peas and miniature corn.

“Sugar Peap” must have been a bad translation for sweet pea (which is kinda close to snow pea). Sure enough, there they were, tiny whole ears of corn, no mystery there. It was a little harder to figure out how “Mealieâ€? wound up in the name. I found out after doing a little research, it’s an obscure South African term for an ear of corn.

Ordering a meal from an Engrish menu is a crap shoot; you never know exactly what you will get.

But herein lies Engrish menu’s greatest charm: the adventure of the unknown. The most delicious meals are eaten and soon forgotten, but ordering something mysterious and finding that you can eat–and even enjoy–something as off-the-wall as fish head soup is a memory that lasts forever.

It’s not a hard question to answer if you think about at it from a Thai perspective: its fun.

Christmas is fun. Hats are fun. Wearing a Christmas hat? Twice the fun.

It’s fun. Thais know how to appreciate fun.

I had recently had an urge to do more travel photography and I had seen some OK digital panoramic travel photos that I thought were pretty cool. So when I was at a friend’s office and saw a copy of “360 Degree Imaging: The Photographer’s Panoramic Virtual Reality Manual� (copyright 2003, but still valid; web site here) on his bookshelf, I borrowed it and read it when I got home. It’s a great book that is simple enough for the layman to understand but technical enough for the most hard-core travel photographer and computer geek.

Not only did it cover the techniques of how to shoot and process multiple images into a panoramic image, it had a good overview of the tools, great tips from some masters of the art form. But what really inspired me was sample panoramic photos he had in the book, one in particular “Virgin Gorda� by Cliff Crutchfield. (Scroll down; it’s the last photo on the page.)

I hurried out to the balcony on my apartment and snapped a series of photos of the soi I am living on in Bangkok and, in less than an hour using PanoTools and PTGui for Windows, I had created this panoramic shot looking down on Ramkhamhaeng Soi 52/2. Yes, there are some gaps in the wires running across the street and a few subtle glitches that come from parallax errors due to just winging the shots by hand.

Panoramic Photo of Ramkhamhaeng Soi 52/2, Bangkok, Thailand
(Click for full image.)

I am hooked. Now only if I had a few hundred bucks to blow on some panoramic tripod gear at Kaidan.

It’s the same ol’ conundrum: when you have money, you don’t have time. When you have time, you almost always need to be making money.

“Too busy working” was why I spent 4 years in Bangkok (1998-2002) and saw far less of Thailand (and the region) than I had hoped I could.

Hopefully, the money pressure will be resolved soon and I can get on the road and have more to say.

“Frontier is the carrier for domestic segment of an international flight. I connect in LA with China Airlines to fly to Bangkok. The weight limit for international flights is 70 pounds per bag. Call your supervisor if you don’t believe me.”

Of course it wasn’t going to be easy. Nothing had been easy about getting on this flight.

I had originally booked my flight for Thursday May 12th, but as hard as I tried, I could not get everthing I needed to done on time. So on Thursday, I re-booked the flight for Saturday the 14th, but China Air could not immediately confirm the Denver to LA segment on Frontier and had told me to call back. When I called back, China Airlines reservation system was down and stayed down for 2 days. Up until the time I was supposed to leave for the airport the system was down and I could not get them to confirm I was on the Denver to LA segment.

So, since I didn’t want to go to the airport with my massive load of luggage and NOT get on a flight, I told them I would call back to rebook for a later date.

“I am sorry sir, all flight are booked until next Saturday, the 21st. The high season fares start then and we have more seats available.”

“Can you put me on stand-by?”

“Yes sir, I can, but there is a long list. I don’t know if you will be able to get on the flight though.”

“Put my on stand-by anyway, I will take my chances. I can’t wait a week.”

I spent all day calling and searching online for an alternate flight, but there was nothing availablee. With college letting out and students traveling home and fares about to go up for the high season, everything was booked. Nobody had a cheap flight to Bangkok.

On Monday morning I called the China Airlines reservation desk to see if I was confirmed on the flight.

“Yes sir, you are confirmed from Denver to Bangkok. The tickets you were issued before will be valid for this flight.”

I was good to go.

I had already called China Air and confirmed that Frontier would accept the 70 pound bags. I confirmed that I would not need to have tickets reissued. I confirmed that my bags could be checked all the way through to Bangkok. I made sure everything was in order.

So here I was, at the Frontier Airlines counter, telling the man behind the counter how to do his job.

Ten minutes and a few phone calls later he was back.

“I am sorry sir, you are right. We can check your bags.”

One bag weighed in at 69.5 pounds, the other at 75 pounds.

“That bag is to heavy sir. We can’t check it.”

“It’s just five pounds. Can’t you let it slide?”

“No sir. It’s not fair to the baggage handlers.”

So I took out three large books and put them in my carry-on baggage. Yeah, better that I haul that five pounds around through four airports than a luggage handler lift if from the conveyor belt onto the trick one time.

“Let me ask my supervisor how to book these bags all the way to Bangkok. I will be back in a minute.”

He came back, tapped on the keyboard a bit more, called over a colleague twice to confer on how to book the bags and, a few minutes later the baggage tags came off the printer.

“Wow, it looks like it worked!” he beamed.

That didn’t exactly inspire confidence…

Once the bags were tagged, the agent thumbed through my tickets.

“Sir, there seems to be a problem, these tickets are for the 12th of May, today is the 16th.”

“I know. I am booked on this flight. The tickets are valid. Check your reservation system. I should be confirmed on the flight.”

He tapped away at his keyboard for a few seconds.

“Yes sir, I see you are on the flight. But I will have to call China Airlines and confirm it.”

So I waited another 10 minutes.

Finally, the bags were put on the baggage conveyor belt and I was issed a boarding pass.

I was off to Bangkok. I felt great.

It was somewhere around Vail, listening to Four Strings’ “Let it Rain” on my iPod when it hit me: A wave of emotion rolled through me and I could feel tears welling up in my eyes.

I was off on a new life, a new adventure. I was off to do something fun and exciting. I was starting a new life that really didn’t suck.

In LA I checked in for the flight to Taipei where I would connect to Bangkok. The trans-pacific segment is a long flight, almost fourteen hours and I had seat 32J: a middle seat. The flight was full and there was no chance of changing it.

At the security screen I was pulled aside. “Please go over here sir.”

I spent the next 15 minutes be wanded, prodded, and sniffed.

Once I boarded the plane and sat down, I realized how grim it was going to be. Not only did I have a middle seat, but there was not legroom. None. None at all. I was so tightly wedged I could not even move my legs.

For fourteen hours I sat in exactly one position without moving. I could twitch my legs a bit but there was only one position that I could sit in. Forget sleeping, I could not move my body to any position where sleep was possible.

On Arrival in Taipei I rushed to the boarding counter at the gate and requested a seat on an emergency exit isle and was lucky enough to get the last one available. At least I could stretch my legs oh the last segment of the flight.

On arrival in Bangkok, my bag with all my computer gear was one of the first to appear on the luggage carousel. I expected my other bag to appear shortly—after all, how far apart could they be?

20 minutes later I was the last person standing at the luggage carousel. A baggage handler peeked out from behind the curtain and shook his head. There was no more luggage coming from the plane.

All my clothes, toiletries and shoes were missing.

I walked over the China Airlines desk and told the man that I was missing a bag. In a matter of minutes he was able to locate the bag—still in LA—and arrange for it to be on the next flight to Bangkok. But until the next evening, I would be without a change of clothes.

With my carry-on and one checked bag in tow, I cleared immigration and headed to customs.

At customs, the inspector pulled me aside. “Please open bag sir.” Beneath a sign that said “all undeclared items subject to confiscation” I unzipped the bag. Prominently displayed were the boxes for my computer and my LCD monitor. The boxes were like new and even sported an obvious price tag.

“You buy new in Singapore!” he announced.

Crap. Crap, crap, crap.

“No, this is used computer equipment I am bringing for a project.”

He pointed to the price tag on the LCD Monitor. “No it new. You just buy.”

After 24 hours on a plane and one lost bag, I was tired and frustrated. But I knew better than to get surly. I said to him, in as polite a manner as I could muster “No, it is all old. It is all used, let me show you.”

I started to open the LCD box and he stopped me. He must have seen the exhaustion and frustration and had sympathy for me. Or maybe he was eager to find somebody more willing to pony up for a bribe.� “OK, OK. Nevermind. You go now.” and pointed towards the exit.

I tossed the bag on the cart and made my escape.

In a jetlagged blur, ran a gauntlet of touts offering taxi services (a new and unnecessary annoyance, as there are plenty of metered taxis conveniently located just outside the door of the international terminal), stopped at an ATM to get some cash and got a taxi to the Woraburi Sukhumvit Hotel. I checked in about 3:00am, took the hotel tuk-tuk to the end of the soi, walked to Foodland on Soi 5 and bought toothpaste, a toothbrush, some deodorant and a small bag or laundry detergent, walked back to the hotel, showered, hand-laundered my socks, underpants and sweaty shirt, hung them to dry and, almost 36 hours after I woke up, I fell into my bed.

As grueling and long as the trip was, it felt good to be back in Bangkok.

The timing, however, could not have been more perilous: it was the big REI Anniversary sale.
Any trip to REI is a threat to my wallet; all that cool gear just begging to be taken home and played with is a terrible temptation. But when it’s on sale, I get all jelly-kneed and start spending money like a drunken sailor on shore leave.

Fortunately for my wallet, I did manage to show moderate restraint. I did buy more than I had intended, however, I did get some excellent deals on things I did need.

What did I get? I am not saying. I will talk about what I bought and the process of gearing up another day…