Yeah yeah I know, different country, different tastes but seriously: it's a CORN PIE. Like, exactly the same breading/filling/etc as their apple pie but filled with corn. Tasted great btw, go figure!
So at the top of MBK (crazy mall filled with little stalls hawking bootlegged DVDs, clothes, cell phones, etc) there's a pretty nice arcade and this was the first thing I saw when I walked in. It's a regular PS2 version of Guitar Hero 1 but hacked to run off of 10 baht coins as an arcade cabinet and featuring 5 giant buttons instead of a guitar controller.
Yes, this blurry photo proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that I saw this. Or that I know where Bigfoot lives. What can I say, I get nervous and take crappy pictures when there's a crowd of kids who I don't speak the same language as waiting for me to be done with my turn butchering songs on Medium so they can feverishly slap giant buttons on Expert.
Now you figure by the name that THIS would be the one with the rhythm game button layout but nope, this one had a regular PS2 guitar controller. Those nutty Thais!
This is a close-up picture of that enormous 30-something story abandoned skyscraper I've taken pictures of from our house before.
Here's a building right across from it that's actually still being worked on, hence the green tarp. Dad explained when I first got here that anytime you see one on a building that means there's actually people doing construction stuff in there, and so far that's always been the case.
This is the sign outside of the giant abandoned skyscraper, you can't see it very well in this picture but I liked how it clearly used to have 2008 written as the completion year but was then hastily painted over and re-written as 2009.
Turns out this place was supposed to be a Crowne Plaza, I guess someday it might still be one but considering no one's worked on it since the family moved here (about 4 months ago) I'm thinking they ran out of funding or one of the myriad other reasons that almost-finished buildings are given up on in Bangkok.
Michah and I waiting for a boat taxi to come, and WOW this is easily the worst pose anyone has ever caught me in. I just...do I look like this all the time and nobody told me?!?
Micah and a boat taxi. I feel so bad for the dudes who have to stand on the side of the boat as it rides around because this river is HORRIBLY disgusting, the people living alongside it pretty much just use it as a watery trash can and I saw many a piece of nasty ephemera floating atop it's murky brownness.
A balding fat man gets onto a precariously positioned boat without looking and hilarity DOESN'T ensue? What is this world coming to??
"I'm on a boat! That's an accomplishment!"
You see these sorta houses all along the river, however they usually don't look this ominous though. I'm thinking the camera automatically used a very fast shutter to compensate for the boat moving, hence very little light coming in. Yep, that's about it for my Camera 101 knowledge.
I wasn't going to risk getting a face full of garbage water so I just stuck my hand outside of the blue tarp's safety perimeter. Auto focus is seriously one of the most awesome inventions ever.
It's like the Jungle Cruise, only without the funny guide and the awesome animatronic animals. But hey, it's cheap!
I think this picture proves Micah is The One or something, what with all that glowing. Buddha looks on approvingly.
Yeah, for the sake of my former coworkers at TD Banknorth seeing that I'm actually now IN Bangkok I had to get some prototypical "tourist pose" pictures.
"Look, it's a tiny featureless figure that I presume is Stefan and a nondescript Asian-looking building that as far as I know is in Bangkok!"
Definitely didn't realize my shorts were hiked up so unappealingly until just now...
I get that I'm doing the Vanna White pose but who am I looking at??
While I was actually there I made an effort to be reverent and respectful of a religion that 98% of Thais follow, but looking at this picture now I'm totally thinking "Damn, I wish I would've gotten one of me high fiving Buddha!"
My love affair with Bangkok's tangled messes of wire continues.
I like shiny things. And pointy things. And roof tiles. I wrote that in a singles ad once and didn't get ONE response, can you believe it??
Took this while climbing up the endless stairs to the top of the temple. Fortunately the stairs weren't steep so it was a pretty easy hike (and that's saying a lot coming from me!)
Another one while trekking to the top, I was really impressed with this view until I got all the way to the top and saw the REAL deal!
I like taking pictures with a prominent foreground object, and yeah I'll admit I'm enough of an art fag to think of this stuff when snapping tourist pics. Still don't know how to control a camera for crap though.
Case in point. When I look at this now I get the peculiar urge to roll a bowling ball straight down the middle.
I like how I'm wearing a black shirt (underneath the Hawaiian one) AND black shorts so one could totally assume I'm wearing some sort of awful one-piece shirt/short combo, like those aviation suits but cut off above the knee.
I wonder if Cody's checking/has checked out this photo blog because I totally take pictures like this because of/for him. Also I like/love forward slashes.
The golden top of this temple was seriously enormous, and it had a treis fetching cumberbund on!
"Hey, it's Stefan and...a giant handbell?"
I love Buddha's obstinate pout on this statue. "Buddha, I'll let you out if you if you promise to apologize to Ganesh." "I don't WANNA, I'll just stay in here FOREVER!"
Anybody else expecting lightning to strike this pole and the Tiny Buddha inside to come alive?
I wish I could've gotten a better picture of these twin UFO buildings because I enjoyed them thoroughly. Still wondering what they actually ARE though.
Dunno if this was another Buddhist temple or what but man oh man is it big and nice, this whole area was really well designed and pretty.
I felt bad for Micah and Tina having to keep waiting for me while I took esoteric pictures of absolutely random crap.
Micah looking through some pay binocular things. Without his head there this looks a lot like Wall-E, which of course gets me tearing up just thinking about it. Damn that movie for making me a baby!
Buildings, buildings, buildings! I just know if I was taking a picture like this in Japan it'd be swarming with ninjas running along the roofs.
It looked a lot nicer in person, in this picture it looks more like Happy Buddha by way of Slimer.
Man, I hope I'm THIS popular someday and there's that many pairs of shoes outside my house!
Cody picture!
Man, imagine if people rusted. That would be gross.
The actual temple wasn't so amorphous and blobby, and honestly I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
This is the problem with me taking the same way down that I took up, I'm bound to be interested in the same things and take more pictures of 'em.
OK yeah I get it, it's a cool looking roof! Sheesh.
Bah, wish this wasn't blurry because it was a really neat little garden off the side of the temple stairs. Couldn't really figure out how people got out there to tend it though.
I guess I didn't take a picture of the whole thing so I should tell you that this was a giant clay pot that was filled with water and plant life. Also I couldn't really get any good pictures of it but there were TONS of tiny fishies in this water, it was very fun to watch.
There were whole lines of these giant bells (I'd say they were about as big as me from the waist up) and they were very fun to clang. It's weird when you look at a whole line of something that's the same and then have to force yourself to realize that each of these was made BY HAND. Confounding.
I think this is the trunk of a tree? What can I say, Cody got me to love textures.
This is one of those things that in person is hypnotic and beautiful but when you take a video of it is dull as dishwater. Basically it's a really smooth, polished stone (which a prominent sign warned you not to touch) on top of another stone with this little hole in the bottom that pushes water up and makes the ball spin. This picture makes it look like it was positively cruising but really it was very slow and tranquil.
In my camera the Multi-Burst feature makes a neat little animated GIF sorta thing play in your camera but when you output the file it looks like this. Still neat though.
Reminds me of that really old photo set of the horse running, but...with a stone ball.
I swear this is the last picture of this thing, I just liked how the slower ISO made the water look when it splashes off of it.
Me: "Oh man, I TOTALLY think I captured the essence of this stone ball/water thing, and after only 500 pictures!" Micah: "Soooo... you're telling me I'm sorta related to this guy now? Thanks, Mom."
Nobody's EVER taken a picture of a FLOWER before!
I just realized this could be considered Bee Porn. That's weird.
I wish I could've just taken this whole thing home with me, it's very pretty.
No idea what sort of plant this is, I just thought it looks sorta like Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors. "FEEEEED MEEEEE!"
The 500 pound Stone Elephant Hat never really took off, and I think Micah's face helps explain why.
It seems obvious that a tiny LCD would make pictures look sharp and clear when they're actually blurry but it always takes me until I'm home to find out that a picture I like is all fuzzy.
Yep, pretty much useless. These things were cool though, they were little statues (I'd say about 6" tall) that were set up all around the tiny waterfall. I like when things are scaled to make a small landscape look big.
Granted the blurriness doesn't help but I still can't figure out if the little dude is holding a bowl in his hand or cupping his protruding belly.
Maybe you can SORTA see the cool things on display here? I dunno.
I like to imagine that there's just ONE electrician in all of Bangkok and he's got maybe five seconds to fix each problem, hence all of the boxes haphazardly ripped open and left askew.
Nice place, I wonder if the rent's reasonable though. Might be able to talk them down on the price since it's got no lawn...
I don't know why my brain's wired this way but I see faces EVERYWHERE, like here it's a cyclops with a funny hat and sharp monster teeth.
Tina pointed out while I was taking picture after picture of this display (which I could NEVER get centered in my viewfinder, aaagh!) that I looked like I was praying and snapped this photo.
Surprisingly this photo came out decent, although like I said before I could never figure out how to center it. Asymmetry REALLY bothers me (well most of the time, like anything there's always exceptions).
Micah in a Tuk-Tuk, this picture's deceptive though as we didn't actually have him drive us anywhere.
Tuk-Tuk drivers are sort of renowned for their proclivity for quoting you a cheap price to get somewhere and then "happening" to take you to some gem dealers and tailors and such that are "on the way", hence why we didn't actually go with the guy. Good thing too because holy crap I would NOT fit in one.
No idea what the story behind the statue is but if I may be so bold I think this picture would make an AWESOME album cover.
There's people in front of me in the boat! You needed to know this! With a picture!
Wow, really wish I had longer arms so I could take Myspace pictures from a less overwhelmingly "FACE!" distance.
Tina took this one, totally looks like a picture you'd end a drunk driving PSA with and my birth & death year would appear underneath.
This was an ENORMOUS Soi Dog, normally they're all about the same size (I'd say about knee height) but this sucker was up to my waist and a lot bigger all around. I think he's their Mufasa or something.
Yeah I know, RIVETING subject matter. I just thought it was interesting that this place had glass water bottles, thought it was a good idea since they can be (and here quite often ARE) repurposed for all manner of things.
Each table at this inexpensive fried rice place I go to has this little bowl filled with what I guess are cut up tomatoes in water? Not entirely certain of their purpose yet.
I'm dull enough that someday I'm going to get a video of this, it's the pull-off cap to one of those glass water bottles. It's a pretty neat design.
This is a high-rise you can see from our Skytrain station (Phrom Phong), pretty standard fare until you notice it's got a HELICOPTER LANDING PAD ON THE TOP!
This is the sign for one of the giant supermarket chain in these parts, this particular one is connected to the SkyTrain station On Nut which is at the very end of the SkyTrain line. I ventured inside a couple days later and it was seriously the biggest grocery store I've ever seen in my life. Also the lines in it were ridiculously long, I spent about a half hour in one. Glad I had my mp3 player with me, thanks again Meagan!
This is a really nice park all the way at the other end of the SkyTrain (Mo Chit station), I certainly intend to come back here some day with a book in tow and get my read on.
Ooo, a fountain.
Double Gazebo! You could have TWO local bands play at once!
Doesn't that just look like the coolest Oasis amongst all of that Crazy Bangkok hustle 'n bustle?
End of the line.
Probably hard to tell but that building next to the radio tower thingy has a GIANT facsimile of Thailand's King on the side, must be about 15 stories tall.
This is me in CentralWorld (wow this album jumps around a LOT), while I was there Philips had a display on the bottom floor that inexplicably featured a band playing in front of a giant reproduction of a portable video player.
It's a shame there's maybe 10 people sitting in the audience because this band was actually pretty decent.
Blurry, long-exposure mediocrity taken from an overpass.
It's frustrating because I even made a point of steadying the camera on the rail to get a clear shot but to no avail. I mean obviously I expected the cars to streak since they're moving but why are the buildings fuzzy, WHHHHHHY??
Man I hate seeing some pics big because they looked so nice on my lil' LCD, I just thought with this lighting that the trunk of the tree totally looked like a nuclear power plant.
Y'know actually I'm taking these pictures blurry on purpose because I'm trying to, like, recreate how the world looks to me without glasses on and stuff. Think about it.
These lights are neat.
So when you look out our living room window at night there's this SUPER prominent spotlight going around all the time, and being bored one night I decided to follow it to it's source. Turns out it belongs to the Narcissus Club which I took some pictures of on my first day out in Bangkok. Still have NO idea what they're about.
Trying to take a picture of a spotlight is a pretty fruitless endeavor. Also check out the next couple pictures and how the top floor of the building's color changes in each one, which is weird because in real life it was just purple!
Now it's red? And wow this setting makes the spotlight look dim.
OK blue I can understand, red...sort of, but GREEN!?!?
I can't remember the name of this but it's a traditional Korean statue, saw this little one outside a giant house. I love how the flash makes it look so ominous.
These wires were really clean and well organized, figured it would make for a good change of pace and help me "keep it fresh" with my wire fetish. Also those things that look like coffee cups and plates stacked on top of each other look neat (if you can see what I'm talking about).
Tesco SuperLotus had a DVD section that was maybe one row and then a VCD section that inexplicably was about 10x bigger. Saw these knock offs I'd read about before on CartoonBrew so I figured I'd snap a pic. They are (from left to right): Little Panda Fighter, The Little Cars and Ratatoing (which doesn't even make SENSE!) Google the titles and check out the trailers for yourself, and then make sure to wash your eyes out with sand afterwards.
Here's ANOTHER Kung Fu Panda knock-off, admittedly the original was actually way better than I expected it to be (definitely check it out on DVD if you didn't see it in the theater) but was it seriously successful enough to warrant TWO half-assed clones?
Took this one for Meagan, although if you're also an FPS fan you'll get its significance. Also it's weird that I love the colors pink and black separately but together here I think they look hideous.
EIGHT AA batteries for 42 baht (a little more than a buck). Yeah, TOTALLY expecting my digital camera to run on these for longer than 10 minutes.
So while I was in Tesco SuperLotus I noticed there were a bunch of people giving out free samples of a bevvy of products and snagged this cup from one of 'em. What for, you ask?
THIS +
THIS = Party in my tummy! Although I didn't realize until after purchasing this that it was a "sweetened flavored milk", basically tasted like chocolate milk but...without chocolate? It was kinda weird, but good!
Here's another iteration of the Guitar Hero arcade cabinet I happened upon in the bottom floor of the Tesco SuperLotus, much nicer setup though and I actually got a decent picture of the whole shebang!
This sign was incredibly frustrating to get a picture of in the dark, The whole thing says "Perfect Lab" but the "Lab" part is constructed out of a shiny mirror-like substance so the flash doesn't illuminate it much beyond maybe the edges of the letters.
People always balk when I say I'd like to live in a van someday, but consider that it'd totally be an awesome van like THIS! Maybe a little less rust though, this one looks like it was dragged up from the bottom of the ocean.
The other excuse for my blurry pictures I've thought of is that Bangkok is, like, super polluted 'n stuff so there's this haze that is sometimes in effect and distorts your pictures. Yeah.
"OPEN DAILY 9AM - 12PM" Sooo...you're only open 3 hours?
Yet another time where I take a picture of something with the flash and expect/dread something showing up in the photo. Also I think it'd be cool to use things like this in a stop motion film, put tiny little figures around the grating so it looks like some massive entrance.
