It's been a pretty boring holiday, most of which I spent in Bangkok. Because the majority of people who live in the city aren't from here, the place is practically empty over New Years, as they go back to the provinces. The decrease in noise, traffic, and pollution makes it rather pleasant, but boring.

Once I get my laptop to a wireless network, I'll upload photos of the calamity, as well as my boring holiday in Ayuthaya, far from the sea

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Disaster in Phuket

From his account, the waves started in the morning. I had gone to the mall that day, and had lunch and read the paper at Au Bon Pain, and I didn’t hear anything. Then I went back to my apartment to play video games. When I left, I don’t know why the taxi driver didn’t try to ask where I was going when I told him to take me to the Southern Bus Terminal. After all, most of the buses would be headed into a disaster area.

Even more incredibly, I asked a uniformed guy where to buy a ticket to Phuket, and he helpfully pointed me to the appropriate counter, without mentioning the giant killer waves that wiped out the beach, which is the only place on Phuket a foreigner would want to go to. And most unbelievably of all was that the ticket guy sold me a ticket without saying a word.

Once the bus pulled out of the station, I got an SMS from a Thai friend saying I should not go to Phuket because of giant waves. I didn’t know what she was talking about. Then they turned on the TV, showing scenes of destruction. She called me and was hysterical and said I should get off the bus. But since it was a VIP bus, it doesn’t stop, and we were already on the highway. I had no idea how I would get home on my own. Plus, I figured she was overreacting, and there would only be a little damage. So I stayed on the bus.

One point that needs to be emphasized, is that Phuket, or any of the other places hit, have not been completely destroyed. All those pictures you see are from the most badly damaged areas. I saw a reporter strategically positioned in front of a huge pile of wreckage, but the areas around him didn’t look that bad. Phuket is a huge island, and most of it is 100% OK. Just the beaches, and about 50 meters inland were hit.

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Even though today is a national holiday, we still have to work, as usual. Not surprisingly, most students aren’t here for the first day of classes. There was not a single kid in my Preparatory Math class. So I checked the register, and there are no students registered for it. So I went and asked “Super Secretary.” (I don’t know what her job is, besides putting on makeup and filing her nails, but she seems to be the most senior of the army of secretaries, and has a phD in something.) She said “yeah, it’s OK, it’s been canceled.” It was nice of her to tell the teacher the class has been canceled!

So, I just lost four 70 minute periods of teaching. To get our base salary, we have to teach eight periods, and we get paid extra for each additional period. It’s a sweet deal if they give you extra load. I only had one extra this semester, which was a light schedule. But now I only have a total of five periods. And I only teach two days of week. It’s going to be a boring semester!

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Check out my photos

So, instead of New Years on the beach, I went to the old capital of Ayuthaya instead. There’s nothing to do there but look at temples, which I wasn’t too enthusiastic about after seeing Burma’s Bagan and Cambodia’s Angkor Wat. However, I was pleasantly surprised, because the temples were rather impressive. If it wasn’t for the massive allergic reaction I had, riding a bike around would have been pleasant. Also, present-day Ayuthaya is a typically ugly, dirty, noisy, polluted Thai city, making biking dangerous and difficult. But once you get onto the grounds of a temple, it is peaceful and beautiful.

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The subway crashed on Monday morning. Nobody was killed, but 200 people were injured.

What is so unbelievable to me about his is that the Skytrain has operated without a hitch for five years, and the Subway has already had a minor, and now a major accident, and it hasn’t even been six months yet.

The two systems are run completely independently from each other. Why isn’t the expertise of BTS, which operates the Skytrain, used to operate the subway too, rather than the new BMCL? After letting this mess come about, the government decided that both systems should be under the same organization, and tried to force the investors to sell to the government. The government actually threatened to build another subway parallel to the existing one if BMCL wouldn’t sell!

All that had settled down, and things seemed to be looking up for the subway, which just lowered its fares in a bid to increase its passengers. But who’s going to wan to ride it now? Between the vested political interests that have totally halted expansion of the system, and incompetence in operating what amazingly has been built, this may be the death knell for mass transit in Bangkok.

2bangkok.com is the definitive source for Bangkok news

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It’s time for the Bangkok International Film Festival again, a chance to see movies from all over the world. Again, I am seeing three or four films a day. The descriptions in the free program are poorly written, so choosing what to see is a crap shoot, but some of my choices have been excellent, especially the Thai film Citizen Dog.

Yeah, a good Thai film. I was surprised too. It’s a movie that can’t really be described. The plot is about a boy, Pod, from the country who falls in love with a maid who is obsessed with cleaning and trying to read a mysterious white book written in a strange language which fell off a crashing airplane. Some of the other characters are a motorcycle taxi driver who was killed when it rained helmets one day and is a ghost now, a smoking, swearing teddy bear, and his friend, who met his girlfriend when they “accidentally became husband and wife on an overcrowded bus.” Pod’s grandmother warned him that if he went to Bangkok he would grow a tail, but he ends up becoming famous for being the only person in Bangkok not to grow a tail. The strange characters are matched by surreal visuals with vivid colors

What made the film so interesting, though, was that it actually took place in Bangkok, unlike some strange fantasy world like the other Thai films I’ve seen, and pokes fun at the things you see every day.

The other highlight was Oliver Stone’s Vietnam epic Heaven and Earth. An amazing movie in and of itself, enhanced by the presence of Oliver Stone himself! He answered questions about the film, and talked about filming in Thailand. Much of the shooting was done in Phang Nga, which was devastated by the tsunami, and Phuket stood in for Danang. He also talked about Alexander, which was shot in Ubon in Northeast Thailand.

How cool is that?

Citizen Dog review

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