Jemaa El Fna Food

Jemaa El Fna Food, originally uploaded by ibeepix.

Happy New Year!

Songkran 2008, originally uploaded by ibeepix.

I'm back in Bangkok, and what a change it is from Australia. It's very hot, about 40 degrees during the day, 30 at night. And after 2 months of being confronted with severe water shortages I seem to have arrived at the biggest water fight in the world. Yes, it's Songkran, Thai New Year, and people celebrate it by splashing water at each other.It's bigger and crazier than I could ever have imagined, especially in and around Kao San Road. Yesterday there were thousands of people there, all armed with giant water guns, drenched, covered completely with talcum powder and hardly able to move. In other parts of the city celebrations are a bit more gentile. Groups of children, teenagers and the odd granny are on the streets, dancing around on loud music or in trucks driving around and trying to get as many people wet as possible, shooting water at passers by, cars and into the open windows of buses. Even the bus drivers are joining in and are shooting into the buses of their fellow bus drivers.
So far I haven't been able to take any pictures, but today I'll try to make some...

Songkran 2008, originally uploaded by ibeepix.

Busy in Bangkok

Yesterday morning I arrived back in Bangkok. And for the first time ever I had a hard time finding a room. I usually stay in Rambuttri street, not far from Kao San Road. My train arrived around 6.30 AM, so I was quite early. But not a single guesthouse had a room available, not even the more expensive ones. I think I walked around for an hour with my heavy backpack and then decided to stay in one place and wait until somebody checked out. After about another hour without any progress I checked whether any of the nearby guesthouses had any rooms available yet, and luckily the place where I wanted to stay from the beginning had a single room for me, I just had to wait for it to be cleaned. By 10.30 AM I finally could go to my room...
When I went out for a little stroll, I bumped into Sarah, an Australian girl who'd been staying in Nongkhai for the last 2 weeks. She left Nongkhai a day before me and was doing her last minute shopping before flying home. I joined her for some more shopping and we had some great Indian food at 'Spicy Affair' (this place has possibly the best Indian food in the Kao San area, even though it never seems to be busy). After we said goodbye and she took a taxi to the airport, I got a very nice massage.
Then I decided to check out the dentist since I bit of a little bit of one of a tooth while sleeping a week ago. Somebody recommended 'Dental Time' on Chakrapong road to me. And it turned out to be a good dentist. Since it was only a tiny little bit that had broken of my tooth, they only had to polish it a little bit, but they did a good job and it cost me only 100 baht (2 euro).
This morning it was raining quite hard, so I took a taxi to the Panthip Plaza, the place to buy computers, camera's and game consoles. I bought myself a new external hard drive, because the one I had already is nearly full, and a cheap lightweight tripod for my camera.
Then I walked to Siam Square to enjoy the air-conditioning in the luxurious malls, had some great Japanese food and took the bus back to Kao San...
Tomorrow evening I have my flight to Melbourne, so from now on you can follow my adventures on my Australia blog...

The Good Life

Lunch at Lee's (from left to right: Silvie, Stu, Sarah, Susan and Dave)
I've been in Thailand now for exactly 3 weeks and the end of this stopover in Thailand is slowly coming closer. Friday I will take the train back to Bangkok and monday I will fly to melbourne. Once again I can say it has been absolutely wonderful. Nongkhai is such a nice place. Though I'm sure that a lot of people would think it's the most boring place in the world since there's not that much to see here.
I've been hanging out with my friends here, working on my portfolio and writing job application letters for a job in Melbourne, having lunches at Lee's, who makes the best vegetarian food ever, having fresh coconuts while listening to live performances of The Rubberband (listen to some songs I recorded down below) in the Gaia Bar (a great bar floating on the Mekhong). And I think it was during one of their songs I thought to myself: 'This is the good life'.
But as I said, it's all coming to an end soon, and that's ok, 'cause I'm sure Australia is going to be great too...

The first 4 songs were played by the whole band (Anton on the accordion, Lee on the violin, Christina on the guitar and David on percussion), the last 2 are played by Lee (voice and guitar) and Susan (flute)...

Moving time

Today, I'm finally moving to a single room:-) The room that I wanted became available and I will move there later today, which is really nice 'cause the room I was in was quite nice and small.

I've been working on my new Australia blog the last few days and now I can finally declare it open for business. So please go check it out. The new address is australia.inebeerten.be. It's very similar to this blog. I haven't written anything interesting yet, since I'm not in Australia yet, but that will change soon...


Vandaag verhuis ik eindelijk naar een nieuwe kamer. :-) De kamer die ik graag wilde hebben is vrij gekomen en dat is heel fijn, want mijn oude kamer was nogal lawaaierig en klein.

Ik heb de laatste dagen ook aan mijn nieuwe Australië blog zitten werken en ik kan nu eindelijk zeggen dat hij online is. Dus ga er zeker eens naar kijken, 't adres is australia.inebeerten.be. Hij lijkt heel erg op deze blog.Ik heb wel nog niks interessants geschreven aangezien ik nog niet in Australië zit, maar daar zal snel verandering in komen...

Technical Problems

I recently made a new online portfolio. And when I put it online, I erased my old one, and everything else that had been gathering dust on my old webspace. But unfortunately I didn't realise that by doing so, I also deleted the background and header images for this blog and for the blog newsletter. I thought I fixed the problem last week, but apparently I uploaded the wrong images for the newsletter, so that's why the newsletter looked a bit weird. I just uploaded the right images, so everything should be ok now...

Other than that, everything is wonderful here in Nongkhai. The first few days I was very tired from the train trip, but I feel like my energy is up again. I met a lot of nice new people and many of them are staying for a while. The weather is really nice with warm and sunny days and cool nights. And I had a really good massage the other day...

Ik heb recent een nieuwe online portfolio gemaakt. En toen ik die online heb gezet, heb ik mijn oude portfolio en alle andere dingen die stof lagen te verzamelen op mijn oude webruimte, gewist. Maar helaas wist ik niet dat ik door dit te doen ook de achtergrondbeelden voor deze blog en de blognieuwsbrief heb gewist. Ik dacht dat ik het probleem vorige week al had opgelost, maar blijkbaar heb ik de verkeerde beelden voor de nieuwsbrief geupload, en daarom zag de brief er dus een beetje vreemd uit. Ik heb zojuist de juiste beelden geupload, dus nu zou alles ok moeten zijn.

Daarnaast gaat alles goed hier in Nongkhai. De eerste dagen was ik een beetje moe van de treinreis, maar ondertussen heb ik alweer wat meer energie. Ik heb een hoop nieuwe, interessante mensen leren kennen en de meesten blijven hier ook tijdje. Het weer is overdag warm en zonnig en 's nachts lekker koel. En eergisteren heb ik een heerlijk massage gehad...

And back in Nongkhai

Jenny and I immediately booked our train tickets to Nongkhai. Unfortunately the sleepertrains were all full for the next few days, so we were forced to take a normal train. The trip to Nongkhai was horrible. I think to diesel engine was located underneath our carriage, so it was very very noisy. I didn't sleep for even a minute.
We arrived in Nongkhai around 5am, took a tuktuk to the Mut Mee Guesthouse and made ourselves comfortable in the hammocks in the garden, since the reception is closed until 8am. I ended up in small double bedroom right in front of the noisy entrance, because all the other rooms were full. And it looks like I wont be able to move into one of the 2 best single rooms because they are taken by people who will stay longer than me :-(
But neverthless it is really nice to be back here...

Jenny en ik hebben onze treintickets naar Nongkhai onmiddellijk geboekt. Helaas zaten de slaaptreinen vol voor de komende dagen, en dus konden we niet anders dan een gewone trein te nemen. De rit was verschrikkelijk. Ik denk dat de dieselmotor van de trein onder onze wagon zat, dus er was heel veel lawaai. Ik heb nog geen minuut kunnen slapen.
We zijn om 5u 's morgens in Nongkhai aangekomen, hebben een tuktuk naar de Mut Mee Guesthouse genomen en ons in de hangmatten in de tuin geïnstalleerd aangezien de receptie nog tot 8 uur gesloten zou zijn. Uiteindelijk heb ik een hele kleine dubbele slaapkamer gekregen juist voor de lawaaierige ingang van de guesthouse, omdat alle andere kamers al bezet waren. En 't ziet ernaar uit dat ik ook niet zal kunnen verhuizen naar één van de twee beste single kamers omdat daar mensen inzitten die nog langer dan mij gaan blijven :-(
Maar hoe dan ook is 't ontzettend fijn om terug hier te zijn...