Exploring Bangkok

The tour hasn't officially started yet. We arrived a day early because of flight scheduling issues from Seattle. So today was a day all to ourselves. People who do group tours usually call this a free day. It's almost like taking a vacation while you are retired! Why call it a free day when every day is a free day while on vacation? Or is it free because we are not hobnobbing with fellow tourists? In any case that is the official term and I am sticking to it.

We are going to doing regularly scheduled city tours and such tomorrow. So we decided to do something exotic and/or geeky that no normal tourist would venture to do. I did much research to figure out the most obscure thing possible that would take a large amount of effort. I eventually came up with a visit to the Royal Barge Museum. This we thought was exotic because what red-blooded tourist would go visit something so obscure instead of going and mingling with diverse (tongue-in-cheek now) China Town and little India? It was geeky because Sandhya and I love sailing and boats and know a thing or two about them. We were eager to see how they compared with the Catalinas that we used to sail.

This was a good choice because the combination of wrong instructions on the Bangkok.com website, unrelenting sun, suffocating humidity and other factors, it became a very interesting jaunt.

While figuring out all this stuff, we discovered that Bangkok has a great transportation system for tourists that uses their main river, Chao Praya with connections to an on-land transit system. Super. For just 150 Baht per person, we could go up and down the river, getting on and off as many times as we wanted to. The ticket is good for the day.

Chao Praya river viewed from our Hotel

We stayed at the Ramada on the River. They provide free shuttles to the terminus of the all-day boat service called Chao Praya Tourist Boat (this may change by the time you read this, readers, so please check before you use this information). So off we went to the terminus and took the all-day boat.

 

On our way to Sathorn -- the starting point for the Chao Praya Tourist Boat

Getting to Sathorn, boarding the Tourist Boat were all completely uneventful. It was the standard fare. Hoards of tourists, many of them still smelling fresh (the day was young yet). But the cacophony was unbelievable. People was yelling and chatting very loudly. We have so long away from Asia (India) that we have forgotten how noisy it can be. And then we had the ticket collector, a woman, who was running around yelling at people and when they didn't listen she would clap with her hands very loudly till she got their attention. Turns out she just wanted to check for tickets. The reason she had to clap was that she was speaking Thai and the rest spoke only Chinese, Norwegian, Dutch, German etc (not many American accents, though). Clapping, of course, is a universal attention getter.

To get back to our 'exploration', the guide book said pier N10 was where we should get off. Instead that Tourist Boat dropped us of at pier 11. Everyone knows I am a stickler for following instructions and we off walking towards pier N10. The plan was to then get to the Royal Barge museum. After all, my thoughts were, if the government produced a booklet with instructions, it would be best to follow them. Of course, Sandhya had no reason to distrust my beliefs and we set off towards N10.

Sandhya then came up with this great idea of using mapquest (she is a fan). She plugged in the Royal Barge Museum. The instructions said to go one way and I thought we should go the other way. 

On our way to the Royal Barge Museum

We finally walked around 3 Km, for about 2 hours, climbed and descend two bridges, traversed a military compound and got to the Royal Barge Museum. The lady at the counter at museum was intent in teaching me how to say thank you and keep correcting my accent till I got it right!

In any case, we had an obscure goal and a determination to succeed in getting to the goal! And we did. See these pictures above to see the beautiful barges. The barges are very impressive. It doesn't seem easy to carry out a battle in these boats, but then I am not a Navy man, so I am not going to opine!

Had a great day though! Let's see what tomorrow brings forth.

Off to Asia!!!

Starting our Asia vacation on Monday (Feb 8). Took off from Seattle on Asiana on time at around 1. All excited because we haven't had a long vacation since our trip to Germany about a year and a half ago. Everything was fine until it was time for food when we discovered Asiana messed with the meal assignments and Sandhya couldn't get vegetarian food. She had to rummaging through smelly, fishy (really, it was fish) lunch/dinner to separate out the sticky rice (which she loves).

The flight was very, very long. 12 hours to Seoul and 6 more hours to Bangkok. All of course with no vegetarian food for Sandhya. We were delayed by an hour departing Seoul for Bangkok. We lost a day and arrived late on Tuesday night/early Wednesday (Feb 10) morning.

Other than then hitch with vegetarian food, service was excellent with Asiana. Don't see that kind of customer service with North American carriers.

Did I mention that this was also the start of the Chinese New Year? When we landed at Bangkok, the line up for Immigration was a mile long. A very large number of Chinese had decided to vacation in Thailand.

But I had to admire the Thai authorities for clearing such a mass of humanity expeditiously! Look at the crowd below! It only took them around 40 minutes to clear.

Chinese Revelers at Suvarnabhumi Airport in Thailand

The Gate1 guy was there to pick us up and get us transferred to the Hotel. Airport to Hotel took us almost an hour--not because of traffic, but just distance. Checking in was uneventful.

Our scheduled arrival time was 7 AM. The ship is going to be docked for a few hours. We need to be back on board by 12:30 PM. As usual the ship was already docked by the time we got our coffee from room service.

On first impression, Ketchikan is a pretty city established on Ketchikan creek. It has a beautiful mountainous backdrop.

We had a scheduled shore excursion for highlights of the city and its environs. The excursion lasted about 90 minutes and was via a quaint trolley (looked like a railcar on tires). The driver, a young man, was both the driver and the narrator. He was enthusiastic and had interesting anecdotes to recount. But there was nothing noteworthy. The highlight of the tour was the native village of Saxman a couple of miles off the city. It reputedly contains the largest number of totem poles. What was interesting was the price of totem poles for sale in the local shop peddling trinkets and such. It seemed curious that they would get these totem poles made in China and Laos and get them shipped over here! They also did have the same things made by local artisans. The price difference was extraordinary! The imported ones cost between 5 and 10 dollars for totem poles from 6 to 12 inches whereas the locally made totem poles cost 10 times as much from 50 to 150 dollars. Amazing. But why would anyone want to buy a totem pole from China?

We got back from tour around 11:30 AM. We hurried to shop for more trinkets. For a change it wasn't Sandhya who was the impulse purchaser, it was me! For some reason I had this intense desire to buy a thermometer and a pocket knife. Strange! Maybe I was taken off guard by all this relaxation.

Our scheduled arrival time was 7 AM. We must have arrived and anchored much earlier because when room service coffee arrived at around 6:15 AM, the ship was already still and at anchor.
I had a leisurely coffee viewing the city of Sitka.

We went down to Deck 2 for breakfast. We sat at a table with 4 other elderly ladies. It is remarkable how many of the passengers on board the ship are elderly. Many of them with handicaps that makes them barely ambulatory. One of the ladies same from Southern California. A second one came from Montana. Two of the ladies were from Denver. Interestingly one of the ladies from Denver had flown Cessna 150's. We got talking about flying and spin training of all things at 8:30 AM in the morning. I'd never have imagined meeting a 65 year old lady who flew Cessna 150's for breakfast while on a cruise. Interestingly she said she was afraid of heights but not while flying—same thing for me. What a small world.

We were booked on a shore excursion in a semi-sub to look at the wonders of the underwater world. This was a great disappointment. All we saw was Kelp, Kelp and more Kelp. Of course, the occasional start fish. I wasn't inclined to take any pictures but Sandhya wanted some for the record.

 
Sitka is a small, sleepy city. Looks like tourism is their mainstay. But ours was the only cruise ship anchored for the day and not many were out because of the cold and the rain. The city is clean and quaint. But otherwise not much to it.

 
Ended the day with a great dinner followed by a magic show by Las Vegas comedian/magician Jeff Peterson. Quite funny and some light magic. Nothing heavy duty.

Glacier bay is widely touted to be a sight to see. And indeed it was.

The ship sailed out overnight from Juneau City northwards towards Glacier Bay. We went to bed late last night and I didn't expect to be up until later in the day (for me that means 8 in the morning). But I woke up quite early because the daylight. Unbelievably it was light at 4:30 in the morning. But then I shouldn't have been surprised. We were at a latitude of approximately 57 degrees North. And it was May (almost June – which is when we get the longest day in these northern latitudes).

In any case, I looked out on the Verandah and it was an amazingly picturesque sight! There was mountainous islands whose tops were obscured by fog (or maybe clouds—hard to say).

I went back to bed, but was back up by 6:15 when our attendant knocked on the door with breakfast for Sandhya and me.

I poured myself a cup of coffee and stood in front of the verandah doors of our stateroom. I savored the scenery. Here is a sample of what I saw when I looked out.

 
Of course, there will be those who'll complain that this is a cloudy day. Au contraire, this was picture perfect. Coffee in hand and a sight such as this. And we were just entering Glacier bay—not there yet! I slowly sipped my coffee as I watched the island go by. The ships are required, by the Forest Service, to leave no wake in these waters in order to not disturb the marine life. I poured myself a second and there were a couple more of such sights.

I wolfed down my breakfast while watching the scenery and did my my SSS's (for those who don't know what this is-- Sh**t, Shave and Shower). Of course, I took my time doing this and then nudged Sandhya awake. I must confess, I left her only about a ½ hour to get ready. As they say in India, I pressurized her into getting ready quickly. She did get ready in about 45 minutes and we were off the the bow to hear the narrative from the coast guard and hear and view the Glacier. I say hear, because when pieces of ice from Glaciers fall into the water, they make a tremendous thundering sound and then you can hear the splash of the ice and snow into the water.

I was bundled up. But not Sandhya. Any one who knows Sandhya shouldn't be surprised.

Me

Sandhya

It was cold and windy but the scenery was absolutely spectacular. We entered Glacier Bay through the --- straights and headed north towards the Margerie and --- glaciers. The entire Bay is surrounded by glacier topped mountainous islands. Take a look at some of these photos.

We finally arrived at Margerie Glacier. The glacier is around 250 ft tall from the surface of the water. We were told that around 100 ft of the Glacier is below the surface. The glacier is obviously active. Ice and snow blocks frequently peel of the surface and fall into the water. We could see that the water approaching the glacier was full of small icebergs. The glacier ice has a distinct blue color. The rock that has been gouged by the glacier on its way down the valley is stuck to the side of the glacier as the dark, black portion. The other glacier is directly to the north end of the bay is --- glacier. It doesn't have the typical blue color because it is covered by rock; that gives it a black color obscuring the blue color.

We headed back out of Glacier Bay, heading south on to our next destination—Sitka.
Sandhya and I got back to the warmth of indoors. After taking a short nap, we headed out for dinner followed by some great live music. We got some dancing in too. Ended the evening late, listening (again) to fabulous piano music by Glenn-Michael.

We arrive at our first port of call today. Forecast for the day is rain with a high of 50^o F. We arrived at 1PM and scheduled to leave around 10:15 PM. We had a shore excursion scheduled for 4 PM. There was plenty of time to kill, so we relaxed near the pool and had a couple of drinks. We had a leisurely lunch and headed back to our stateroom to bundle up against the cold and rain during our much anticipated shore excursion. I say much anticipated because I was quite excited about Alaska, didn't know what to expect, but expected a lot.

Well, around 2 PM, when we get back to the stateroom, we discover an envelope containing a notice that our excursion was rescheduled to 1:30 PM. What a shock! The tour had already started without us. I was furious and went down to the Front Desk (open 24 hours). I was calm, though, when I interacted with the nice young lady at the counter. She explained that she couldn't do much now and that this was the responsibility of the Shore Excursions department (and they were closed at this time). She did, however, offer to take our tickets and forward them to the excursions department. She was confident they would get back to me with a solution. I said I wanted a full refund and she offered forward my demand to them.

In any case, we decided to not let this spoil our day. We got off on to the pier. There were a number of kiosks belonging to local operators who were offering tours of the town and the Mendenhall glacier. We signed up with one of the local operators for a trip to the glacier.

Approaching Juneau

Shopping in Juneau

Mendenhall Glacier

 
This decision turned out to be one of the best decisions of the day! The guide was a Tlingit Indian who was funny and informative. His narrative kept us spell bound for the entire duration of the trip. Turns out his father (who was also the chief ) narrated stories to him about the tribe and also taught him the Tlingit language. He claimed to speak it fluently. He also learnt about his tribe's history. Interesting facts about the Tlingit. There are two major clans: the Eagles and the Ravens. Eagles can only marry Ravens or vice versa. But marriage within Eagles and Ravens is prohibited. The purpose was prevent inbreeding. Also, sons were raised by uncles and daughters were raised by aunts. The reason was that if they were raised by their biological parents the parents might be lenient! Finally, the successor to the chief is not the chief's son, but one of the boys raised by the uncles. There were a number of other anecdotes about the day-to-day life of the Tlingit—too numerous to recount.

We spent about an hour at the glacier. We had never been near a glacier before. Whatever, I knew was from the movies where people walked on glaciers and fell into crevasses to be dramatically rescued against all odds by a heroic figure (while the characters who dropped into the crevasse survived by eating moss and snails—or something like that). We didn't actually walked on the glacier, but were close enough.

Although it wasn't raining, it was cloudy. Ben, the driver (whose last name was Dover—a fake one he said later), told us that a cloudy and/or rainy day was the best condition to view the glacier. What is distinct about the glacier is the blue tinge to the ice. We were told that this was because the blue color of the spectrum is reflected and all other colors were absorbed by the ice.

Mendenhall Glacier

We got back to the ship quite happy the way things turned out.

Dinner was interesting. We shared a table with another couple who were from California. We were surprised at the number of people from California. I wondered by Californians would ever want to go to a cold place like Alaska! The gentleman had an interesting background. He was retired, 15 years. He was teacher before retirement. Before teaching he working in the private sector for a while. He got into teaching for altruistic reasons. We got into a long discussion about education, teaching, unions and a whole bunch of issues. We also got to know he had a bad back. It seemed like lot of people on board had one infirmity or another. Bad back was a common one. But the really interesting part was when food arrived. He had ordered 3 servings of the main entree! He also ate two and half of those servings. If memory serves me right, he also had dessert! Wow!

We concluded the day with a showing by the Filipino crew on their culture. What was noteworthy was that they were not professional performers. Very impressive. Sandhya and I know that that it takes a lot of effort and practice to put out such a thing. In fact, we know by experience that a 2 minute performance takes around 40 hours of choreography and effort. The crew put on a 1 hour show. Bravo.

The fascinating couple we met on the Juneau stop

The Theater where the Filipino crew put on a show

This was a sailing day. I did wonder if I was going to be bored having to stay on board all day and evening. Would I feel cooped up?

Didn't turn out to be the case There were lots of activities to keep us busy: Kitchen Tour, Cooking Shows, even a ballroom dancing lesson!

Kitchen Tour

Cooking Show

Swimming Pool

Lunch

Dinner

Our very first cruise starts today. And to Alaska. Sandhya and I are very very exited and looking forward to it. Anyone who has gone on a cruise has always had positive comments.

The thing about cruises is that everything is relaxed. We were given an approximate time to get to the pier where the ship was docked. We were supposed to get in around 10:30 to 11:00 AM or so. Given our only travelling experience with airlines, we were anxious and booked Shuttle Express to get to Pier 91 in Seattle. This is a brand new pier in Seattle.

I think we were one of the eager beavers. There were not many passengers in yet. So we relaxed for a bit.

A Happy Sandhya!

A Happy Me! Some say this does not look like a happy guy. But trust me, I am happy
This was just before boarding.

Pugent Sound from the Cruise Ship Terminal

Check in was a breeze. It took us less than 5 minutes. They had a very large number of check in counters with friendly staff. They snapped a photo of each of us for the record (they use this photo to check that it is really us when we get back from shore excursions) and handed us our keycards that also doubled as boarding passes. Conveniently they linked the key card to our credit card and all expenses on board were to be done with the key card. A great way to spend money in blissful ignorance of the damages we would discover to our wallets at the end of the trip.


On the way to embarkation, the view of the ship was breathtaking. It looked massive!

View of the Ship before embarkation

We went up to our state room. Compact and clean with a verandah view. The first thing I did (and so did Sandhya) was to have a couple of drinks before lunch. And then off to lunch--which was fabulous. We anticipated that the week would be geared towards eating and drinking. 

Our Stateroom

Departing Seattle

Dusk

Predinner Drink

Dinner

The Last WW I Veteran dies

He was 110 years old. Check out the CNN story.

Last WWI Veteran

Afghanistan

Check out Michael Yon's blog on Afghanistan. If you continue clicking on next, you can see his photo blog on the Thailand/Burma border.

Afghanistan

Jeff Bezos's Speech to the 2010 class of 2010

A superlative speech by Jeff Bezos to the class of 2010 Princeton Grads. It is very moving and highly inspirational. I don't think I ever saw this side of Jeff Bezos while I was at Amazon (But then I skipped many of the all hands...). Here is the link to the speech
http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S27/52/51O99/index.xml

Take time to read it. If you are a toastmasters fan, you'll recognize all the elements of a good speech.

Did you know he was a tinkerer and inventor in his younger days?


Also, now we know where all the need for metrics comes from !!!! Note Bezos's passion for estimating various kinds of measures.

Extra Time -- Second Half -- 2010 World Cup final--Netherlands/Spain

Replacement by Spain. New guy Torres. Supposedly the golden boy for Spain.

Very good action in this second half.

Red card to John Heitinga of Netherlands. That means he goes off the field. Bad news for the Dutch. They are now down to ten. Spain has a free kick just outside the Dutch goal as a result of the red card. No goal for Spain.

Neither of the teams look like they can score a goal.

6 minutes to go. Free kick for Netherlands. No joy.

Fantastic. Spain nets the goal! What a goal! Real classic. The Dutch look really angry. Was the Spanish striker off side? The dutch seem to think so. The replay also hints that this was an off side.

118 minutes. 2 minutes to go. This is it, I think. Spain should be the World Cup winner, barring surprises.

Must be heartrending for the Dutch. This is the third time they have been beaten in the finals. '74, '78 and now in 2010.

45 seconds to go (2 min of added time).

That's it. Spain are the World Champions.

Extra Time -- First Half -- 2010 World Cup final--Netherlands/Spain

92nd minute. Quite a melee at the Dutch goal. Spain gets a corner. They should have gotten a penalty kick.

Lots of spirited tackles, though. How can these guys have so much energy after 90 minutes!!! How can they not be exhausted?

100th minute.  Great action. Good dribbling on both sides. Spain almost gets the goal! Hits the goal on the outside--deflected by the Dutch defender. Spain get the corner--but doesn't result in a goal.

First half of extra time ( a minute added for stoppage) over.

2010 World Cup final--Netherlands/Spain

The closing ceremonies were quite impressive.

Starting to watch the game. It's 25 minutes into the game; both teams are evenly matched. Lots of fouls and free kicks. Not exciting play so far.

Disappointed so far.

Half time and no goal. Not even any clear runs towards the goal. Let me re-state that. There were runs towards the goal, but all of them dissipated.

Second half is good so far. Plenty of attacks and counter attacks. Considerable number of 1-1 encounters.

69th minute. What a miss! Anyway Spain gets a corner. But they can't convert it...

Free kick (near the goal) for Spain. 73rd minute. What a useless attempt by Spain. No conversion...

Looks more and more like this will go to the penalty phase.

Spain is more and more on the attack, but they can't beat the Dutch defense.

80th minute. Attacks from Spain quite intense now.

If either team scores now, that's it. They win the championship. 10 minutes to go.

82nd minute. Holy smokes! The Dutch almost got their goal. Fantastic save by the Spanish goalie.

84th minute. Netherlands attacking now. No goal though.

1 minute to go. Will there be a goal? Will this go into extra time?

90 minutes over. Game continuing on added time because of stoppages.

Looks like there's going to be 30 more minutes...Yes there is going to be play in extra time.