Helpful Road Sign

On our recent trip to Chiang Mai I noticed several of these signs.

Here it's blown up so you can see it a little better.

Apparently there is a problem in Thailand with trees falling on the train trestles.  It's very thoughtful of them to put up signs to let you know where such problems occur, because you know, you might go out on an afternoon drive, find a lovely tree near a train trestle and lay out your blanket and lunch, only to have your picnic cruelly ruined as that tree suddenly falls over in an attempt to crush the trestle.

Looking at Really Old Stuff

I thought about naming this post "Ayutthaya vs. Angkor" but I didn't want to start any international incidents, particularly given the current state of Thai-Cambodian relations.  But the impetus for these particular musings come from a family outing to Ayutthaya, coming one month after Mali and I went to Cambodia.  Yeah, I'm a hopeless romantic who takes his wife to Phnom Penh to see a genocide museum and then to a sprawling testament to the results of slave labor for a honeymoon.  Ayutthaya was a day trip with the family.  Both are World Heritage Sites, but Ayutthaya is in danger of losing its World Heritage status, even as the city has applied to host the 2020 World Expo.

This was in the Angkor Archeological Park at  Ta Phrom.  Ta Phrom is awe-inspiring because of the massive trees that have grown around, over, and on the old temple.  A lot of people call it "The Tomb Raider Temple" because part of the movie starring Angelina Jolie was filmed here.  While the Angkor architecture is pretty amazing, what is more amazing to me is the way that nature has a way of outlasting it all.  Still, kudos to Cambodia for doing a lot to make sure that people can visit these temples safely (there were several areas that were off limits this time around which I was able to freely scramble all over when I last visited in 2006).

This is part of the "Leaning Meaningfully in a Doorway" series that Mali and I started on our trip to Cambodia.  The upper is at a temple in Angkor, the lower is at Ayutthaya.  The most obvious difference between the two is the manner of construction: the Angkor builders used big, heavy stones which were intricately carved.  For reasons unknown to me--mostly because I'm simply too lazy to look it up--the builders of Ayutthaya used bricks, which they then covered in stucco.  There were a few monuments in Ayutthaya that still had some stucco on them, a few of which still had some of the detail work still visible.  Still, in the contest of who had more embellishments that have stood the test of the centuries, Angkor wins, hands down.

What does this have to do with Angkor or Ayutthaya?  Nothing, really.  I just wanted to show how Mali used a hand towel to keep the dust out of her face while we traveled around Angkor in a tuk-tuk.  Now she knows why all the Cambodians in Siem Reap have a krama, the traditional Khmer scarf that has 101 uses, including keeping dust out of your face.  I have a similar cloth from Northeast Thailand that I had included in my luggage for the trip, for some inexplicable reason I didn't think to give it to Mali before we toured the temples.  My bad.

This is your first moment of zen for this blog post.  I love the color contrast of the gray Angkor stones and the bright orange of the monks robes.  It would be way more zen-like if I didn't tell you that the monk is talking on a mobile phone.

The first clue that this one is at Ayutthaya is that the kids are there--the Cambodia trip was a second honeymoon for Mali and I.  The second clue is the architecture.  The Angkor empire was Hindu, while Ayutthaya was Buddhist, and pictures above and below are clearly more Buddhist than Hindu.  Clearly.

This was a great family picture at Ayutthaya.  I'll have to ask around and find out why this particular monument still had the stucco facing on it while all around it were piles of bricks.

This is your second moment of zen. Sarah has this whole inner peace thing down pat.  Well, at least she did for the time it took to take a photograph.

Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil

This is your third moment of zen.   With the exception of my family photos, this was the coolest shot I got in Ayutthaya.  You'll notice the statues have no heads.  This is also common in Angkor--the reason is that treasure hunters and thieves have stolen them all.  So, if I come to your house and see a stone Buddha head that looks like it might have come from Angkor or Ayutthaya, you'll excuse me if I go a little nuts and possible try and return it to its rightful owner.

This was the coolest moment of the day.

 

My family in front of the Buddha head in the tree.  Cambodia doesn't have one of these!

Running in Angkor

Last December I read about the Angkor Wat International Half Marathon, and I immediately thought, "Now that would be a cool t-shirt to earn!"   Combine that sentiment with cheap Air Asia flights from Bangkok to Phnom Penh, and voila!  Recipe for an adventure (I'll blog about what Mali and I did together later, after I've sorted through the pictures).

As you can see, everybody's smiling BEFORE the race

The Angkor Wat International Half Marathon is held, surprisingly enough, inside the Angkor Wat Archeological Park.  I figured I might never have another chance to run a race at such a totally cool venue, so I was glad to have the chance.  And it turned out, several people from the embassy here in Bangkok had also signed up for the race.  Several of them trained together, and it was great to be able to get together before and during the race to offer moral support.  And after the race we ate together, which was fantastic.  Oh, and we got to make really cool race t-shirts, which I designed.

This is my best side, and you can't see how slow I was running at the end of the race.  I have run one previous half marathon, so part of my brain understood what I was in for with this event.  Despite that foreknowledge, I failed to adequately train for this run; the longest training run I did before the race was 9.5 miles.  I know there are plenty of training programs for marathons and half marathons that say you don't have to run the full distance, that the last three to four miles or so are purely mental.

In my honest opinion, that is the kind of advice that leads to so many first-time marathoners--or half-marathoners, in this case--being sore (or worse, injured) for several days after a race.

Yes, those last few miles of a long distance race requires mental fortitude, but it also requires your body knowing that it can handle the abuse of those miles.  And that is why the next time I run a long event like this, I will have at least two training runs longer than the actual race distance under my belt.

This was about ten minutes after I finished, after I had stretched a little bit and re-hydrated a little--before the pain really set in.  Oh, and see how my race bib is tucked into my shirt?  You'll also notice that the safety pins are still in my shirt.  The numbers were printed on this felt-like paper that didn't stand up to my perspiration output.  I slowed down to re-pin my number.  Twice.  Eventually I just tucked it in my shorts.

I am also giving a thumbs up and a wink in recognition that I totally dodged the conjunctivitis bullet.  See, there were tons of Cambodian kids lining parts of the race course, and since I knew I wasn't going to even come close to winning the race, I gave high-fives to as many of them as I could.  I don't know about other folks, but when I run I don't carry hand sanitizer or wet-naps, and I for darn sure rubbed the sweat out of my eyes after slapping hands with those little kids.  So far, no pink-eye, but if I do come down with it, I'll at least have the grim satisfaction of knowing that I probably helped spread it to a couple hundred other kids, too.

I'm always grateful for Mali's support at these events.  She really likes the ones where they have bagels and yogurt as well as bananas afterwards, because being the good husband that I am, I grab them for her.  Sometimes she'll even pretend to hug me, even though I'm sweating in unholy proportions.  Seriously, ever since I got home from my mission, when I exercise I sweat so much that I can literally wring the water out of my clothes.  It's pretty nasty, and here in Southeast Asia with the constant high humidity, it seems to be even worse.  I am not kidding when I say I lost at least six pounds during this race.

After everybody gets some more water and a banana or two, they're all smiles.  The reason I am not smiling in this picture is because Erin is standing on my left foot, which had...

This...

Now for those of you who haven't figured it out yet, I am a barefoot/nearly barefoot runner (I even created a logo for it!).  About three years ago I started running in Vibram FiveFingers to help overcome patellar tendinitis in both legs.  And since moving to Thailand, I have transitioned to doing most of my running completely barefoot, which is quite safe where we live because they sweep the streets here daily.  I ran my last 10K in the US in the FiveFingers and had my fastest time in 10 years, but I knew that with the half marathon my finish time this go-around would be much slower than my previous--I finished this one about 14 minutes slower than my other half, but I'm working on getting faster at the longer distance with my chosen (lack of) footwear.

Even though I feel comfortable running barefoot here in our neighborhood, I was not sure what the roads for the race would be like, so I brought my FiveFingers along.  Good thing I brought them, because the road surface was pretty nasty and would have made the soles of my feet into hamburger.  And I was one of at least three guys running in FiveFingers.  Okay, so add the surface to my already mentioned propensity for excessive perspiration, and you have a recipe for serious blisters when wearing the Vibrams.  Despite all the charms and advantages of the FiveFingers, the insoles when wet are slicker than snot, and in this humid environment the sweat runs down my legs and does not drain.  To help mitigate this, I also wore a pair of Injini toe socks, which kept me from getting even worse blisters than the one I had, but obviously didn't prevent that one.

All in all, pretty good experience.  I learned a lot about myself.  This is a race I would like to do again, given the opportunity, and I recommend it to anyone who has the time (and means) to get to Cambodia in early December.  But remember to get those long training runs in before race day!

China Travels, Part 3

Pretty much the ONLY family picture we took in Shanghai

(Apologies for the delay between posts--I have a really good excuse this time.  Mali and I spent five days in Cambodia.  Blog posts and pictures coming soon!)

When people have asked me what our China trip was like, have told them the difference between Beijing and Shanghai is this: Beijing was way cooler from a tourist perspective, but I wouldn't want to live there, while Shanghai wasn't so great as a tourist (with children), but I could totally see myself living there.  And since we really didn't go anywhere or see a whole lot in Shanghai (I'm not joking when I say that from the perspective a touring family it wasn't that great), I'll use the contrast with Beijing to highlight two of the more notable aspects of Chinese culture from my point-of-view.


Expectorating: The major difference between Shanghai and Beijing was the notable absence of human saliva on Shanghai sidewalks (remember, this comes from the perspective of a guy who likes to tool around barefoot).  Everybody in Beijing spits; men, women, and children.  I kid you not, I saw a lady walking down the street, dressed to the nines, who then snorted and hocked a loogie the proportions of which would make a Major League ballplayer blush.  I'll give Beijing the benefit of the doubt on this one, and say that maybe we just happened to stay in a part of the city that just wasn't as clean, while the section of Shanghai we stayed in was ridiculously immaculate.  I will end this section by saying that Shanghai is one of my favorite running cities--wide clean streets with minimal foot and bicycle traffic to interfere with a leisurely jog around the neighborhood.

The only playground we could find...and that's it.

Staring: Everywhere we walked in Beijing we got started at.  Let's get the obvious one out of the way--a family of seven anywhere in China is certain to attract attention.  Add to that Mali's physical features, and everybody in Beijing just assumed that she was Chinese and spoke to her in what I can only assume was Mandarin.  Walking around with her white husband and their five kids, there was no way to avoid that attention, especially in Beijing where mixed-race families appeared to be extremely rare.  I noticed there were more couples like us in Shanghai.  But even those families had only a few kids, so we still got stared at.

But nothing, NOTHING in Shanghai compared to what happened every time we sat down to eat at McDonalds in Beijing, especially at breakfast time.  It seems that every morning at that particular McDonalds about half of the people in the restaurant are not actually there to eat.  They are there to stay out of the cold until 08:50, at which point they all dutifully file out of the restaurant and go to work.  Just never-you-mind the family of seven--with four kids under the age of 10, no less--that just came in and is looking for a place to sit together to eat breakfast.  Don't bother moving to let them sit down.  No, seriously, you should really just sit and stare at them like they are animals in a petting zoo.  Just please don't spit at them.

Thank goodness for the ball-crawl...there are five in there, I counted

In sum, we really enjoyed our trip to the Middle Kingdom.  Maggie swam very well at the Shanghai swim meet (her team was one of only two that was not from China), while Anne and I stayed at the hotel with flu-like symptoms.  I was afraid the Chinese authorities would not let us leave, but they were happy to let us go because we didn't have any explosive residue on our bags.  I would love to go back to China again, maybe when it's warmer, though.  And when I'm not feeling sick.

China Travels, Part 2

So, intrepid readers, my last tome detailed our adventure getting to Beijing and then visiting the Great Wall of China.  It was indeed a grand adventure.

The next day, after another fabulous McDonalds breakfast, we walked from our hotel to the actual Forbidden City.  See, there's a reason our hotel was called the Forbidden City Days Inn.  It was literally a 10-minute walk from the Forbidden City.  Not that we could have taken a taxi even if we wanted to.  They don't have taxis in China large enough to transport our mob.  Our walk there took us through a very beautiful park complete with a pond of dazzling goldfish and a gorgeous red bridge.  Very serene, which was appreciated because...

...once we got close to the Forbidden City the crowds got thicker and thicker.  Oh, and all those stories about how Chinese don't know how to stand in line and take their turn?  Well, they are all TRUE.  Pushing shoving, cutting people off, blatantly pushing past people who have been waiting very patiently for their turn...it was nuts.  The bridge going through the very first gate was packed, and we felt fortunate to not lose any of the kids in the scrum.

There are words to describe the Forbidden City complex, but I'm not sure I can put those words together in any way that would do the place justice.  Every time we walked through one of the gates I said, "Hey, I think this is the one they used in that final fight scene in the Mulan."  And then we'd see another one, and I would say the same thing.  I'm still not sure which one it was that was in the movie.

As most of the Chinese visitors took the central route through the Forbidden City, we decided to go around the side entrances and pathways.  And we only went down the right-hand side, but given the symmetry of the place, I doubt the other side would vary too much in its layout.  It seemed to me that the side galleries and places just went on without end.  By the time we got to the emperor's garden in the middle, everyone was starting to get tired and hungry, so we made our way back out of the complex.

An American couple chillin' in the doorway.

It was within the confines of the Forbidden City that we ate our one--and ONLY--Chinese meal on this trip.  And between you and me, it wasn't that good.  Granted, our children are not as adventurous in culinary terms as Mali and I, but we've heard from a lot of people that, generally speaking, Chinese food just isn't that good.  I'm going to have to modify that statement, however, because I have had some Chinese food that is in fact quite delicious.  Of course that's all been outside of China, but I'll take a chance and say that Beijing Chinese food just isn't that good.  But their McDonald's and KFC are just like we get in the States or here in Bangkok.

That's right, my son knows how to use chopsticks!

Check out the guy to my right--based on how I eat noodles, apparently I might be part Chinese!

Beware the ravenous panda!

Mmm, noodles...and no, Mali is NOT Chinese!

Even Jane loves her noodles.

We also visited Tienanmen Square, but the kids weren't too impressed with any of that (no sense of history--kids these days!).  Okay, I'll be honest: Tienanmen Square really ain't all that, and they have no bowls of chips, just lots of Communist concrete structures.  So we'll just leave it that for dinner we went to McDonald's.  And at least this time there was some place for us to sit...

When I get around to it I will post about the rest of our China adventure.

China Travels: Part 1

I thought about putting, "Hello, how are you?" in Chinese characters to start this blog entry, but realized that I just don't trust programs like Babelfish enough.  I'm afraid that it will actually give me characters that say something like, "I like to date squirrels"--not that there's anything wrong with that, but this is a family program.

The kids had the entire last week of October off from school, so we decided to go to China.  Our original itinerary included a couple of days in Hong Kong to visit old friends and, more importantly, inflict Hong Kong Disneyland with our presence.  Thanks to Typhoon Gigi, however, we were advised to cancel that portion of our trip and we did.  So naturally the typhoon changed direction at the last minute and we could have gone.  No big deal, except that I had to prepare and teach a Sunday lesson that I had originally intended to completely blow off.

Bright and early Monday morning we headed to the airport and somehow made it through check-in and customs everything and made our flight to Beijing.  Completely uneventful, until Jane decided that taxiing to the terminal in Beijing would be a perfect time to empty the contents of her stomach all over herself and her car seat.  Lovely.  I tip my hat to the flight crew of Thai Airways, who didn't even blink at the disgusting mess left behind (we really did try to clean it up, I promise!).

My impression of driving from the airport to our hotel in downtown Beijing was that this part of China reminded me an awful lot of Virginia--lots of trees with some rolling landscape.  The traffic was quite Virginia-esque as well, with lots of cars creeping along.  The only weird part is that in most of the groves of trees along the side of the road the trees were all planted in tidy little rows.  Kinda like driving through the corn fields of the Midwest, just a lot taller.

We stayed at the Forbidden City Days Inn in downtown Beijing.  Despite the fact that Mali made advance reservations and made it clear that we needed two adjacent rooms, that did not happen.  Yeah, there were THREE rooms between them.  Oh, and quite possible the hardest beds I've ever slept on--they felt like box springs, not mattresses.  And this is coming from a guy who slept on the floor for five years.  Ugh.

My first mission, after settling into the rooms, was to go out and find some food.  Maggie and Sarah, bless their little hearts, braved the cold (honestly, it was probably between 55 and 60 degrees, but after over a year in Bangkok, we were FREEZING!) and walked around with me until we found McDonalds.  We got back to the hotel in significantly less time than it took us to find the place.  This is important, however, because we ate at McDonalds every day we were in Beijing.  Thank goodness for picture menus, because even the employees with name tags that say they spoke English, didn't really speak English.  Still, the Big Mac has been fantastically consistent in every country in which Mali has had one (current tally: the United States, Canada, Japan, Thailand, and the People's Republic of China--I'll have to ask if she had one in Hong Kong, even though it's technically part of China).

Our first full day in China we went to the Great Wall of China.  We were able to book a driver and guide--the inimitable Sonic Wan, whom we highly recommend--to take us to the Mutianyu section of the wall.  Everyone told us that the closer section of the wall, Dalian, was more popular with Chinese tourists, while foreigners prefer Mutianyu.  I figure it's because of the alpine slide (which they call a toboggan course) that you can ride down from the wall to the entry point.  I know that our kids LOVED the toboggan, which was the best part of the day for many of them.

Anyway, the Great Wall was, in a word, cool.  They've done major rebuilding on the original foundation, according to Sonic, but I was mesmerized by the beautiful natural scenery.  This part of the Wall would have been absolutely horrible for the slaves that built it, as it is in some beautifully rugged mountains, and as anyone who has been to the Wall can attest, this ain't your average backyard wall to keep the neighbors dog out of your vegetable patch.  This is the keep-the-Mongols-out-of-China-of-proportions-the-likes-of-which-Tim-the-Toolman-Taylor-would-approve kind of barrier.

At this point I have to give my children their proper due, for being champs about traipsing all over Beijing with us and not complaining too much.  Jane, of course, was in the plumb position of sitting in the Kelty and riding on my back all over the Wall, including going all the way to Tower 14.  Maggie and Anne also went all the way up there with me--well, Anne opted out of the last set of stairs, but she went further than anyone but Maggie (and Jane), and I give her a lot of credit for hanging in with me.  She even admitted that the views were amazing and all that walking was worth it.  I think the cool temperatures helped, because a similar endeavor in warmer weather would have been much less pleasant for all of us.  Including Jane.

After getting down from the Wall and before heading back to Beijing, we grabbed a bite to eat.  At Subway.  That's right, there's a Subway at the Great Wall of China.  To be fair, Sonic said that the Chinese food stalls that lined the path heading to the chairlift that takes you up to the Wall itself were all horrible.  I think it's just that he likes Subway.

Next post: The Forbidden City and Shanghai...

An Open Letter to My Brother

Hey there big bro,

Are we going to make this the third year running for the hair-based wager on the outcome of the BYU-Utah football game?  As I understand it, you have been growing your hair out this year, at the behest of your lovely wife (and to her delight and the delight of our parents--at least that's the rumor I've heard), so you might not want to put those lovely locks on the line. To be honest, my wife asked that I let my hair grow out a little, too, but that was specifically for the Marine Ball, which was last weekend.  So I'm good.

Nevermind the fact that the outcome of this year's Big Game is 99% already determined.  Nevermind that my Cougs are stinking up the field in ways that should never be shown in front of small children, pregnant women, or those with a history of heart disease.  Forget the fact that your Utes have been a fine-tuned football machine (I'm conveniently leaving out the TCU and Notre Dame games for the sake of hyperbole).  Don't pay any attention to the fact that the game is at Utah this year.  Anything can happen with this game, so I'll understand if you back out of the wager this year for fear of having to face your wife with a fantasticly gorgeous Y shaved into your hair.  And Mali wouldn't cry too much about it if we didn't have the bet this year. My kids might, though...

Your younger (and taller) brother,
Brent

An Ode to Rabbits*

DISCLAIMER: this is another blog post that centers on running.  I'm going to have to work much harder at balancing my running-related posts with more references to squat toilets.

I've blogged before about my running proclivities, including my preference for running on routes that minimize running circuits or repeating any part of a route on a single run.  Living where we do for the last year has been mentally taxing because I have very little choice but to run circuits, and it leads to random and otherwise odd thoughts (more so than I had when running in the United States, at least as far as I remember).

There is one advantage I've found to running loops around the Nichada lake, however, and that is the availability of unsuspecting rabbits.  If you are somewhat familiar with greyhound racing then you will understand my use of the term "rabbit."  In that particular form of "entertainment" (I use the term loosely, as I'm pretty sure those graceful dogs would actually rather do something else, like water a tree), the muzzled greyhounds race around a track chasing what in the sport is called a "lure," which traditionally is some form of rabbit.

Because I run alone I have to find ways to push myself to run harder/faster, and one way I do that is by tagging someone as a "rabbit."  Around here that is usually someone running the opposite direction as I am who passes me somewhere near--but not too near--my turnaround point (I will run all the way around the lake, then turn around and retrace my steps in the opposite direction).  My goal is then to catch up with and pass the rabbit who doesn't know they are a rabbit before our paths diverge (either they get to their home or I go left to head home and they head right for another lap around the lake).  This works on the supposition that said rabbit is running laps around the lake and they don't live in one of the housing complexes on the route and will get home before I catch them.

I have found this method to be quite effective in pushing me to run faster, particularly on the final stretches of my runs where it is often easiest to start coasting ("I've already been running for xx minutes, I can slack a little here at the end!").  Because I am something of a geek, a couple of years ago I created a spreadsheet to help track my runs; it's allowed me to plot my progression, see where I'm stronger/weaker, when I'm feeling good, when I'm feeling really slow, etc.  Because of this tool I have proof that I am on average significantly faster on sections where I'm chasing a rabbit.  I'm still not getting to the ridiculous kind of splits I had when I first started running distance with my BYU roommate Rob back in 1995-95, but I'm getting much faster than I was even two years ago.  Not that it's anything to brag about, I'm still a horrendously slow white fella.

But the best rabbit I've ever chased, hands down, is Mali.  It's only happened once, because I can only think of two times where she's been out exercising at the same time that I've been out for a run (I typically run later in the evening, she tends to go out with her girlfriends earlier).  There was just something about chasing that woman down that was so, so...well, this is a family blog and I think I better not say anymore.

*Please don't confuse my reference to rabbits with the Lao/Thai phrase ໄປຍິງກະຕ່າຍ/ไปยิงกระต่าย, which literally translated is "go shoot a rabbit."  It's a quasi-polite/silly way to say that a man is going to urinate.  Women cannot shoot rabbits.  They get to ไปเก็บดอกไม้ or "go pick daisies."  There's your language lesson for the day.  Don't say I never taught you anything.

Commuting Like a Local

Since we got here a year ago I've wanted to get on one of these Bangkok Metropolitan Transportation Authority (BMTA) commuter vans to come home at least once.  I figured it would be fairly entertaining to squeeze myself into one of these with many Thais who use them every day as their principle form of transport to and from work.  You see them all over the expressway, so I figured that one day I would take advantage of their availability and ride one home.  A couple of weeks ago that day finally came.  Allow me to set the stage.

I worked late and I had missed the last shuttle van back home, so I walked down to the Skytrain station at Chit Lom.  I have learned that it is difficult, if not almost impossible, to get a taxi near the Embassy that is willing to take me all the way to where we live, so I usually hoof it to the train and get off further up the line.  Anyway, as I got close to the BTS station it started to rain.  My previous post described what it can be like in Bangkok during the monsoon season, so it was no surprise that the trains were very quickly full.  I couldn't get on a train at Chit Lom, so I waddled down the Skywalk to the Siam station--it's a transfer point between the two BTS lines, so a lot of people get off each train and a whole bunch get on.  I got into the scrum of humanity and still had to wait for FOUR trains before I got on board, and that was packed like sardines.

Per my usual practice I got off the Skytrain at Victory Monument and descended to the street level to catch a taxi.  Normally I can get a taxi in two minutes or less, but even though the rain wasn't coming down in buckets there were quite simply no taxis available.  I knew that my chance to ride the BMTA van had finally arrived!

Those of you who have seen Victory Monument, you know that it is a giant traffic circle, and all around are pick-up/drop-off spots for shuttle vans and buses that run all over the greater Bangkok metropolitan area.  It's simply a matter of finding the place for the line you want to catch.  So I started walking around the traffic circle, looking for the vans that said ปากเกร็ด (Pakkret, the district in which we live).

Did I mention that the vans do NOT have their destinations written in English?  Oh, wait a second--I can read Thai.  Problem.  Solved.

I only had to walk about halfway around the traffic circle to find the pick-up spot for our area.  I spotted a guy there who looked like he knew what was going on, and asked him first if the van was going where I wanted.  He said it was, so I asked how to get a ticket for this particular van.  He told me to pay after I got on.  Sweet.  Of the 17 people on the van, I was the only non-Thai.  That's right SEVENTEEN people (including the driver).  The shuttle vans that I normally ride are exactly the same on the outside, but our vans only seat 10 passengers, 11 in a pinch. Where our vans have three rows and seat three people in each row, the Thai commuter vans have four rows and two of them seat four people.  It helps that the average Thai is much narrower in body than the typical American embassy employee.  Now I'm no economist, but I believe that is maximizing profits and efficient use of resources.

Here's the best part.  After I sat down they passed a basket around for the fare, a paltry 25 baht.  TWENTY-FIVE BAHT.  Do you know how much it costs to get a taxi from Victory Monument to our place?  Including the expressway tolls it's about 250 baht.  Again, I'm no economist, but that's a difference of 10 times (right?).  So, tell me, why on earth would I ever pay 10 times as much for my commute?  I mean besides the fact that the van drops me off at Central Chaengwattana and I have to call Mali to come pick me up there (especially when it's raining), or the fact that the BMTA vans stop running sometime around 9 p.m.?  And that's only a problem if I work really, really late, at which point it's worth it for the taxi because they get me home so quickly.  Anyway, I only had 100 baht bills, so I had to take my change from the basket, and it honestly felt a little weird, but I forgot my guilt as soon as we got out of the traffic circle and on our way. 

Oh, and just like the shuttle vans I usually ride, most of the passengers fell asleep shortly after the van got onto the expressway.

Not-so-Random Thought While Running

In the spirit of my previous post (has it really been over a month?), I had another interesting experience while running tonight.  In fact, I have a couple more running-related posts percolating in my noggin, which I hopefully will put into the blog sooner rather than later.

But I digress.

It had been threatening to rain all evening, from the time that I dragged my disappointed carcass back from the school (nobody told me that there wouldn't be any soccer at ISB this week) all through my evening run, so it was no surprise to me when I felt a few drops of precipitation.  I still had about two miles left on my planned route, and there was no way I was going to curtail my exercise because of a little rain.

Those of you who have been to Thailand at this time of year know what I mean by "a little rain."  When I say, "a little rain" what I really mean is rain falling from the sky in such voluminous amounts as to make one think about looking up to see where the bucket is that is dumping out that much water, but you don't dare look up because you're afraid that if you do, you'll drown like those turkeys you've heard about.  Yeah, it rains that much here.  It's insane how much water can come out of the sky in so little time.

So anyway, I figured that even if it did start raining while I was running, it wouldn't be long before I would be so wet that I couldn't get any more wet.  It would be physically impossible to any more wet, absent immersing oneself in a body of water.  Remembering my Chemistry 103 class at BYU (so nice I took it twice, in 1992 and again in 1994--it helped convince me that I really needed a major that didn't involve hard science or math), I knew the term I was looking for was "saturated."  As I kept running I remembered also that certain chemical compounds could actually be super-saturated, and I wondered if a human could get super-saturated while running in the rain.  These are the genius thoughts that run through my head while running sometimes.  Scary, ain't it.

Being the trained analyst and naturally curious fella that I am, I started thinking about how I would actually go about seeing if a human body could get super-saturated.  One big factor is that I am not a chemical compound, but rather a highly complex carbon-based human organism, so I figured that first you'd have to figure out the rate of rainwater absorption for the largest organ of the human body, the skin.  Then you'd have to factor in the rate of perspiration and vapor loss from breathing during exercise for a 37-year old white male like myself running in an excessively humid tropical climate like the Bangkok suburbs.  I figured the next step would then be to find some mathematical formula that calculates the difference between those two, throw in a few fancy phrases like "tangent" and "multivariable analysis" and do something with one of those huge Texas Instrument graphing calculators, and...

...and then I remembered that I've been in water for some crazy amount of time like two hours (swimming pool, lake, ocean, etc.) and the only thing that happened was that the tips of my fingers and toes got wrinkled.  By then I was home, my run was over, so I forgot all about super-saturation of the human body, stretched with minimal mosquito interference, and went in and took a shower.

I will say this about running in the rain, though--the soles of my feet have never been so clean without soap.