I will try to post pictures if i can get them. Otherwise look here to see a few: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rovinglight/422717101/

Tomorrow I am going to explore some old cities two hours north of Bangkok to pass the day, and try to fly out of here on Monday to Cambodia.

I had my brand new broken camera with me, and I went back to the place I bought it to see what they could do, but the warranty doesn’t cover “broken” so that was out, and I ended up taking it to a little shop where they will charge me about $100 to fix it. Bullox. Hopefully it will be less, but they won’t know till they open it up.

Cambodia can’t come soon enough. Bangkok always treats me wrong. I spent the rest of the day messing around with my new lens, which is amazing. De-stressed a little through photography. Hit the jump for more photos.

Some graffiti near my guest house

Monk beside temple wall

This is not a small city

No sitting on the Metro? AND no balloons?

Yesterday I bought a new lens for my camera, an 18-200 mm with image stabilization. Pretty cool, and now I can get some good shots of people without being right up in their face. I also bought a small, pocket sized digital camera. It takes good video and is great for taking out when my big SLR would scare people. Let me rephrase that. It was good for those things. We went to the French embassy yesterday to see a movie at the cultural center there, and I dropped it. It broke. I hadn’t even had it for five hours. So I am taking it back today to see if they can give me a new one, or fix it… Hopefully it will work again, otherwise I just pissed $250 down the drain.

Me, Mimi (Couchsurfer) her friend, and the two guys I met on the bus to Bangkok

I am leaving here tomorrow to go to Laos again, and I have already overstayed my visa, so I will have to pay 1000 baht ($33) to leave Thailand, then $30 for my Laos visa. I will spend a few weeks in Laos, making my way slowly towards Cambodia.

(These pictures are from Bonnie’s camera, as I know better than to take mine to a New Year’s Party!)

 
Bonnie, Me, and Uri

Fire Show at the New Years Party

This time was no different, and after I had completed the circuit of my footprint (the area I can comfortably travel on foot) I passed a group of people sitting around in front of a small bar/cafe speaking English. I pulled up a seat and hit it off with them. There were three guys from Israel, a girl from Canada, and a girl from Australia. Two of the three guys were together, and the other had just met them that day. The whole group had met oat the bus station that day or the day before, and I settled in nicely. We had a fun night of wandering the town, and I made plans to meet up with Bonnie, the Canadian girl the next morning to ride motorbikes around.

We met up at 10:00am, but all the motorbikes were already rented in the whole town, so I had to fork over some extra cash and rent a bigger bike that was some sort of chopper. She hopped on the back and we took off for a full day tour of the mountains and surrounding area. We went to two waterfalls, a crazy canyon that was unlike anything I have seen, and had lunch with the best view I have ever had while eating fried rice. When we got back, we grabbed two beers and went down to the river to drink them. We sat on a bamboo bridge over the water and watched it get dark as people slowly drifted on bamboo rafts below us, occasionally getting stuck among the pillars of the bridge. When it finally got dark, we moved over to a camp fire that had been set up with pads around it, and spent a while just talking about randomness. She had a room that was huge, and she was only paying 150 baht a night, so I moved my stuff in with her and am now only paying 75 baht a night.

We met up with some people we had come to know, and got dinner, followed by a few hours at a live jazz bar set away from the main road. Today we decide to be lazy, and woke up around 11, before she went to lay by a pool, and I got a massage and went to the Internet cafe where I presently am. No plans for tonight, but tomorrow is New Years, and from the amount of flyers being past around, it should be an incredible time.

Oh, Update: I ran into Greg, the Canadian that I hung out with in Ton Sai. We had been planning to meet up in Laos, but it didn’t work out. He was walking down the street one night and I literally ran into him. So we have been hanging out some, catching up on th emonth since we have seen each other.

Pai Panorama, the main city is actually out of site in the valley.

Just some sunflowers near the mountains

Me, Bonnie and the Bike

Visit them at: www.samesameguesthouse.net

Robert

Same Same

The Inside

I have spent a great deal of time over the past few days working online to update the back end of my blog, and to work on how it is displayed. I am not sure that this will be the final version, but for a while, it will work. I have downloaded a new program that allows me to blog with ease even if I am offline, which is always a plus. It will automatically update once I get back to the Internet. It also has this nifty option to insert a map quickly, so here one is.

I have been in Chiang Mai, the northern capitol of Thailand for the past week or so (maybe longer? not quite sure anymore) I leave tomorrow for Pai, where I will spend New Years’s Ever before booking it to Laos the next day. My visa expires on Jan 1, but if I overstay, it is only $15 a day, which I may be willing to pay to avoid traveling on New Years Day. (I am sure that everyone parties here just as much as anywhere.)

I am able to leave Chiang Mai because the author who was going to have me do his blog has decided to wait until after he finishes his current publishing contract to start up anything new.

Other than this, there is very little to report. Please comment and let me know what you think about the new layout. It will change soon, but not much. Just going to edit the side bar some and make it work how I want it to. Last night with decent Internet for a while, so I will be busy.

-Ben

In order to do the work I need to right now, I have helped the owner of this guesthouse make his place wireless. So now I can sit up on the balcony, editing my webpages all day and designing the new ones I am going to get paid for without having to wander to find internet.

Here is a sample of what I have been designing so far. The guy is starting a complete online site to talk about Foreigner – Thai relationships, which seem to flourish here. So… back to work!

Side note: I will be changing the layout of this site soon. it is getting old to me