This is my photo of ’Pong taking this photo in Bangkok. Recursion is always an interesting phenomenon.
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Speaking of my journey to Thailand, ’Pong has just published a bunch of photos of me he took there, only one of which you’ve seen before. Some of them are not particularly flattering.
I’ve been working on the tag cloud page, and one of my attempts to clarify things has revealed a disturbing fact.
I decided that the “category cloud” on the left-hand side of the website was already showing that the biggest categories were politics, the Internet, human nature, media and business. I didn’t want the tag cloud to repeat that information. So I decided to remove all the tags which were also the names of categories.
Boy, that certainly changed the emphasis!
Even in the reduced screenshot (right), one name dominates. Yes, out of 944 posts, counting this one, 91 are tagged “john howard”.
My own boyfriend comes in a poor second with just 42.
Is that right?
’Pong’s photos of the urban decay in Bangkok are much better than mine.
’Pong’s movie Bangkok Express slices through the city at the height of the motorway. Yes, you can see urban decay, but it’s abstract, in the distance. The train slices the city differently: just above human eye level.
The photos I took from the train in Bangkok reminded me that a sign at Ashfield Station in Sydney has got it all wrong. That sign tells us that railway stations are for catching trains — and if I’m not catching a train right at that moment then I’m not welcome. I might be a terrorist. Move on, nothing to see here.
Bullshit.
When the Thai economy was booming in the early 1990s, construction started on a 60km high-speed elevated train and motorway link from central Bangkok to the international airport at Don Mueang. However when the currency collapsed in 1997-98, work was abandoned.
These stained concrete fragments (pictured) are all that remains of the Bangkok Elevated Road and Train System (BERTS) or Hopewell project. They line the old diesel-fuelled railway through northern Bangkok like a modernist Stonehenge.
In the Old City of Bangkok, on the afternoon of Wednesday 28 November 2007, this barber (pictured) gave me the best haircut I’ve ever had.
It wasn’t because I looked particularly handsome afterwards, though it was an improvement. It was the meticulous care and attention shown.
’Pong took the photo with a proper camera, not a telephone. He’s got a better eye than me, too, and he’s certainly captured the mood.
One of the most important differences between Bangkok and Sydney is that Bangkok isn’t full of arseholes. I’ve already mentioned that Skytrain security staff are helpful. Unlike CityRail’s. But it goes way beyond that…
In virtually every bar in Bangkok, you don’t pay for your drinks up front. You sit, you order your drinks, they go on your tab, you consume, you enjoy the company of your friends. And when you’re ready to leave, then you get the bill. In virtually every Australian bar, though, you pay for your drinks in cash at the time of serving, thank you very much.
In other words, Australian pubs operate under the assumption that you’re the kind of arsehole who’d leave without paying.
Leena Jangjanya (ลีนา จังจรรจา, pictured above) is the most beautiful, most sexy woman in all of Thailand.
She’s usually just called Leena Jang, and since she’s a candidate in Sunday’s Thai general election her posters are everywhere in Bangkok’s northern suburbs. There’s three versions, including one in her graduation robes (law) and one where she’s looking like a successful businesswoman in white. You can see them both below.
I’ve mentioned before that our time in Bangkok wasn’t your typical tourist experience. One day, for example, we spent six hours in the Don Mueang district government offices. Here’s a photo of the men’s toilet.
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