Not nearly as cool of an update as Fossilkid, but I mentioned that we’re going to London and then Amsterdam in the spring. My kid doesn’t know yet, it’ll be a Christmas present.
She had to pick any country in the world to do a series of reports on, she’s in 7th grade, runs from now until the end of the school year. She picked the Netherlands. I was so excited when she told me, somehow played it cool, all that poker actually helped for once.
No, but we visited an area called Patpong and they were aggressively touting their ping pong show. I guess a reasonably named area to have it.
Bangkok is amazing. Biggest downside is that you tend to spend a lot of time in shopping malls because public spaces are limited and traffic/pollution/weather can make walking unpleasant. Also, when you arrive you want to walk everywhere but quickly adapt the local laziness towards walking and start getting taxi/tuk tuks/motorcycles everywhere.
But it is an amazing location with cheap flights everywhere besides the Americas.
Have you been to Tokyo, Japan? I feel like it really blows Thailand and everywhere else on Earth away. It has 10x Cyber Punk vibes.
10x might be too low.
Visited Bangkok over 20 years ago and while it was a fun place to visit, there was no way I felt I’d ever want to live there. The worst part, besides the food poisoning from the amazing street food, was being the target multiple times per day of locals attempting to scam me out of my hard-earned baht. Was with my soon-to-be wife so was unable to catch the ping pong show.
That said, I understand the city has evolved quite a bit over the years and is much more of an ex-pat destination these days. Have a close friend here in Japan who’s son worked there for Line and recently quit to start his own export business there. He loves the place.
Of course Tokyo remains undisputed champ of all Asian cities (though I prefer its southern neighbor Yokohama myself).
Taiwan and Singapore are at the top of my list of Asian cities to visit (better get to Taiwan before China joins in on the World Invasion Games and ruins that destination choice).
I love Bangkok - the sights, sounds and smells. Never got sick on street food (avoid cold stuff, stick to well cooked). Caught a ping pong show once, it was pretty bleak and basically the opposite of erotic. But going to a regular strip club and feeling like a rock star buying $1 mekong and sodas for a gaggle of giggling strippers was a lot of fun.
We found a place with the best Indian food I’ve ever had and pretty much ate there the rest of the trip. The Thai food was insane too of course. Even the best Thai food in the US was a pale shadow.
Yah, that’s why living next to the park was a massive deal for us. In just 3 minutes walking we can get to a pretty awesome city park with a sports complex w/futsal, basketball, pickleball, ping pong, badminton courts. Just today we tried pickleball for the first time and I’m already looking for leagues, have already signed up for a futsal league, and am looking for basketball as well. So should be super easy to stay really active even if the city isn’t always super walkable (for myriad reasons).
Tokyo’s been #1 on our list to visit for awhile now, and Seoul is probably #2. That was also a big motivation for us. Neither of us have seen anything in Asia apart from Georgia and the Asian half of Istanbul so being able to use BKK as a base for 5 years to explore the region is a nice perk. As you mentioned, direct flights are quite abundant and very cheap.
But re: Japan, we’d snap move there if it were at all doable. My wife is a mega fan of Japanese culture and we both work from home and hardly need to make friends anyway so the insular culture wouldn’t affect us as much.
Haven’t really gotten the scam vibe so far, so maybe it’s changed quite a bit. Istanbul is a place that seems 10x more likely to be scammed. The only annoyance were the ping pong dudes, but that was in Patpong on the main RLD drag there, so I guess to be expected. We just left Romania, where people are pretty cold and Georgia, where cold doesn’t even begin to describe the people, so Thais have been a breathe of fresh air. A lot of it is probably a smiling facade, but whatever, I’ll take it.
My last job was Blockbuster Video, to give you some idea. It’s been only online poker since 2004. Still going somehow, but certainly not as lucrative as the old days.
That’s why it helps in BKK being able to get delicious pad thais for like $1.75. Just out of curiosity, I checked what the same dish would cost in my hometown of Omaha, and it was $13. The massages are pretty great too. You can get a foot, Thai, or head/shoulders massage for about $8/hour so I think I’ll be making it a weekly thing.
Ha, ping pong show sounds about like the least erotic thing ever imo.
My wife and I were curious about Nana Plaza and got a drink there last weekend. It seems like these days it’s about 80% other couples like us or randoms just curious but with no intention of partaking in any activities. The best area seems to be one of patio bars with seats facing the road leading to Nana so you can see the degens making their way there and odd negotiation between a freelancer and potential client. If you’re a fan of people watching (like we are), then this seems like one of the top cities for it.
Wow, amazing longevity. Still living the dream almost twenty years later.
Traveling to America today and I feel terrible for whoever is going to sit next to me on the plane because I’ve been farting like crazy since I woke up at 3 am.
It’s paywalled, but WSJ has an article today that I assume relates closely to this topic:
On a flight yesterday the guy across the aisle from me kept a telephone conversation (bluetooth earbuds) going until literally the moment of liftoff. Flight attendants walked by several times checking seat belts etc, as they do - I couldn’t tell if he was actively concealing what he was doing or if he just happened to not be talking when they walked by, but he definitely didn’t seem like he was trying to hide anything. It wasn’t animated or loud, so didn’t bother me at all, he couldn’t have been more chill.
Do you say anything? I really don’t believe there’s a safety issue and “rule cop” is not a great role for me so I did not. Just thought it was funny.
Nope, not saying a word, just eyerolling my fellow horrible citizens as one does on a flight these days.
I’m not a scientist, but my thought is that if a phone call or a phone not being in airplane mode even had a 1 in a million chance of crashing a plane, they’d take that shit away like it was 4 ounces of water.
Not only that, but if a cell phone had a 1 in a million chance of crashing a plane, we would have crashed one by now. We’re averaging about 30 million flights per year over the last 20 years. It’s very unlikely a cell phone call has even a 1 in a hundred million chance of crashing a plane.
So, yeah, the play is silently judging the asshole who thinks he’s more important than anyone else.
On the tarmac about to head to NY for the first time. Pumped. Staying a few blocks south of Central Park, will be working but have tonight and 1-2 other nights free. Going to try to catch a show but curious any other unsolicited advice!
Also clear line at SeaTac was just 5x longer than the regular line. But there people were dutifully standing in it.
Nearly all shows are dark Monday nights, so you probably want to do tomorrow night if you’re determined to see a show. If you’re fairly indifferent on what you want to see, just hit the TKTS booth in Times Square (when they are open tomorrow you can see here what shows are available). If you have your heart set on a specific show that’s not at TKTS, StubHub can sometimes be a good source of a last-minute tix at reasonable prices.
Tomorrow looks like a beautiful day - if you can swing it during the daylight, just take some time to wander around the park with no real destination in mind.
There’s a guy on my train yelling in a ny accent wearing a jets sweatshirt about how to everyone cant be a fuckin giants fan so atmosphere on point
“A few blocks south of Central Park” isn’t a very interesting area of NYC, although you’ll be close to a lot of shows. If you are going to go for drinks or dinner I would either walk over the Hell’s Kitchen area or even better hop in an Uber and get out to a neighborhood that isn’t exclusively for tourists.
Oh, his name is Joe Benigno.