airlai.com  ericlai.com

In the evening, Avi and I went to visit another one of his old friends, J.P., down in Khlong San.  J.P.'s family prepared us an incredible Indian dinner, and I got a chance to take in the even more incredible view from their apartment:

Unfortunately, this photo does it no justice, but J.P.'s apartment has a panoramic view of the Chao Phraya River, which runs through the middle of Bangkok.  His apartment also includes, quite randomly, a Swarovski-certified collection of crystal sculptures.  

I won't go into detail on what J.P. does for a living, but let's just say he's doing pretty well for himself.   

After a few hours of chatting, we hit the road.  This was one of the more interesting ads I saw during the trip:

Avi explained to me that this ad was the Thai government's way of saying "don't have too much fun."  Basically, with New Year's being a big holiday — usually characterized by lots of partying and drinking — the authorities were behooving citizens to celebrate responsibly, if at all, out of respect for the thousands of tsunami victims.  In a typical year, the period around New Year's is characterized by a large number of automobile accidents.  With ads like this and an unusually strict set of rules prohibiting alcohol sales, the Thai government was trying to curb those numbers, at least for this year.  Their cause may have been facilitated by the fact that, with the tsunami on everyone's minds, the national mood was already somber.  

If I had no access to televisions or newspapers — or other people, for that matter — ads like this one would have been the only reminder of the tragic backdrop of my visit to Southeast Asia.

On 3 January 2005, it was 86°F during the day and 64°F at night.


For reasons unknown to me, it is difficult to find a good map of Bangkok on the web.  To give some crude sense of the city's geography, I identified two maps — both incomplete — here and here.