Step Falls

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Originally uploaded by miaowmatthew

I took a trip from camp to Step Falls today, near Newry, ME, and Grafton Notch State Park. Check out the pictures from there and from the rest of family camp so far here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthewvaughan/sets/72157622039400309/

Eastman's Farm

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Originally uploaded by miaowmatthew

I'm at Family Camp in Maine. Some of us took a trip to the Chester Eastman Homestead, a.k.a. Eastman's farm, run by the Eastmans, who are friends of the camp. Here's a link to the photos that came out of that, below is the video, and here's the link to the same video on YouTube.

Kuwait City Airport

I found they have free wireless in the Kuwait City airport. So that's where I'm posting this from. I didn't expect to be able to do anything internetty for at least another day. In an hour I board my next flight, which is Kuwait to New York (JFK). The Bangkok-Kuwait leg was painless, all told. Kuwait Airways is no Cathay Pacific in terms of luxury, but it's perfectly adequate.
Flying low over the little bit of Kuwait that we did, coming in from the ocean, the view was exactly what you'd expect if you weren't trying too hard to be creative. Lots of sand and not much else. Trucks and low buildings. Everything seemed sand-coloured or dirty white. There were long straight and seemingly interminable highways, a few olive-coloured trees, huge tanks that look like the kind of thing one takes surveillance photos of, and towers with flares burning at the top. I don't know what those flames are called. Oil flares? I think they burn there on purpose. They must, but I really don't know why.
I chipped my guitar somewhere along the way, I'm not sure how. Doesn't matter. The book all fuzzy down there is "Jésus le Dieu qui riait" by Didier Décoin. I've been halfway through it for going on three years now and so I thought I might finally finish it on this flight.

Getting Thai Iced Tea

This is the man from whom I buy iced milk tea in a bag almost daily. Having eaten at lot of Thai restaurants in North America and having always relished their Thai iced teas, I was intrigued to see what they would be like in Thailand, or if they were even a common Thai thing. Turns out that iced tea (and coffee) stands are a ubiquitous thing in Bangkok. I don't know if the teas themselves might fairly be called better, because truth be told, they're pretty much the same thing you get in a restaurant in New Haven, CT, which is great, because those are delicious. They are, however, much, much cheaper in Bangkok, which makes them definitely better overall in my book. As I said, I buy iced tea from this guy only almost daily, but I drink an iced tea from somewhere every single day, I think. The yellow sign on his cart says "everything 10 baht". That's cheap and no mistake. Even in Thailand, that's a good price.

Getting Drinking Water

This is the drinking-water dispenser in the parking garage of the apartment building I live in. It's where I get water. Watch the video if you're that interested in the details. On Facebook? Yeah, that's why you can't see the video.

My Shelves

This is picture 3 of my picture-a-day week, which will be over before you know it. Mostly because it'll be only a 5-day week. Sorry. I leave Bangkok on Saturday at 3 a.m. (Friday afternoon EST) and won't arrive in Maine until Sunday evening EST. So that's that. These are some shelves in my bedroom.

There are postcards on there from Cameron in San Diego, Forrest in Peru, and the corner of one from Lizzie in the British Virgin Islands (so much classier than those American Virgin Islands, really).
Also:
a 500-kip bill from Lao P.D.R.
a pink women's polo sirt I bought in ChongQing, China
a yellow "Michigan" t-shirt given to me by Molly Menschel
two fox 40 whistles from my lifeguard days (black and red)
a bottle of rosewater, brought by a friend in India, which is labelled "Ayurvedic Medicine"
a spiral-bound Raffi Singable Songbook
nail clippers
clothespins which I mostly use for hanging things to dry on the balcony
a scrap of paper on which I was practicing Thai (รอสักครู means "one moment, please")
my rainbow necklace
a copy of "A Century of Christian Science Healing"
a free map of Bangkok
a recorder / flûte à bec (in its case)
a business card from the TubTim resort on Ko Samet (Samet Island)
a money card from one of the food courts in the mall I work at

Monitor Lizard in Bangkok

I never go to Lumphini park without seeing one of these guys. On this day I saw seven of them, and I didn't even go into the park, I was just jogging along the fence outside to catch a bus to work (and stopping to take photos for my blog, obviously). For pictures of these guys, go the same Flickr set as the photos on yesterday's post.
I'm off to work.
Love,
Matthew

Sunday Mornings

Every Sunday I do two things: go to church and go to work. These are some photos from the first part of my Sunday. The photo above was taken from my balcony. The street to the right of the building under construction is Rama IV. Right down that way lies Sathorn road, and the Bangkok Christian Science Society.

I walk out my apartment, round the corner and wait by the 7-eleven. 7-elevens in Thailand really deserve their own post. They're everywhere.

This is the 71. I don't tke the 71. I don't know where it goes, either. I take the 22, the 45, the 46, the 115 or the 116. Today, on the other hand, I had made myself late by dawdling with picture-taking, so I had to take a taxi and I was late for church anyway.

Left to Right: Anchalee, Markee and Mayurie. They're basically half the congregation right there. It's a cozy little group, as you might have guessed.

A wealthy Chinese resident of Bangkok was asked by the King at the time to build this canal. He did it, and so the canal was named after him. Not after his Chinese name, though, but after an honorary name which the King gave him after he'd built it: Luang Sathon Racha Yuk (หลวงสาทรราชายุกต์)

Sathon Canal. And Sathon Road. It's a busy road, a famous road, and gives its name to an expensive business district, but it's not the most awesome place just to hang out. Still, there are good things nearby, like Lumpini park (see below). If you for some reason need to know more specifially where on Sathon the Christian Science Society is, you can click the photo to take you to my Flickr set where it's explained.

Bus stop by the Rama IV gate to Lumpini Park. This is how I get to work after church. The route takes me right by my apartment building, but I never have time to stop off there. For awesome monsters of Lumpini park, see tomorrow's post. And that's my Sunday morning in photos.

Projects!

I'm about to post my two 282nd entry on my Rise Up Singing music blog (riseupsingingproject.blogspot.com) which I began about 282 days ago. By contrast, I haven't posted on this blog for months now. What I'm learning from this is that projects motivate me. So here's a small project to get this blog going again.
Picture-a-day.
For the next week, I'm going to post one picture daily of something in my life. It could be anything, but it'll definitely be a little piece of my life here in Bangkok, rather than some random scenic photo. I'll write about it a little, too. You know, for context.

Why only one week? Because one week from today I'll be on a plane from Bangkok to New York City via Kuwait, of all places. I'll be spending two weeks at my favourite place in the world (camp), and one more week in my second-favourite place (Montreal). All with my favourite people in the world (various). I'm sure to get lots of post material from that, but I also don't want to be under a daily obligation while I'm on my whirlwind North America visit. So: a week of Bangkok dailies, then we'll see.
This starts tomorrow. For now, I have to finish the post on my Rise Up Singing blog. So goodnight, guys.