Bangkok / Singapore / KL Photos

Photo time again:



A monster temple (wat) in Bangkok. I forget the name of this one, but it is huge and famous. We didn't actually go :)



Typical Bangkok street (often quite nice with the trees) along the 'Amulet Market'. This is a busy daily street market of people selling amulets for protection. Typical clients are anyone with a dangerous job: police/guards, taxi drivers, construction workers, etc... Very interesting spot.



This is the top of a very bizarre half-finished building in downtown Bangkok. This building is really, really big. Probably around 50-60 stories. Totally empty. I suspect this might have been a victim of the 97 Financial crisis that never got started up again. It is a surreal sight.



Alicia mailing a stack of postcards to 'Other Places'.



Dragon detail from a local temple off of Khow San Road.



The view from our room at the Sathorn Inn to downtown Bangkok. The river is just past the line of high rises. Directly below our room was a small, very dense neighborhood of lower-middle class houses. All wood framed and stuffed together. I'm not sure how long enclaves like this last against the omni-present development.



Alicia very much wanted to go dancing in Bangkok, and on a Saturday night while we were there I was lucky enough to come across an online announcement for one of my favorite DJs, Nick Warren, playing for the first time in Bangkok. We had a lot of fun!



Alicia and I at the dance party.



The lovely lady and I in the garden of the 'Jim Thompson House' (an expat in the 60s who founded a silk empire and built a crazy Thai style house. Then he mysteriously disappeared in the mountains of Malaysia...).



The escalators at the Skytrain stations in Bangkok have these hilarious stickers to make sure you don't clank your head on the steel supports riding up to the station. I really want one of these as a t-shirt.



Scary Barbie-like dolls in a alleyway market in the Silom area of Bangkok. The lady in the store said to Alicia: "They are like you!".



Bamboo outside a building. We want some at our home (someday).



Typical upper-middle class high rises in Bangkok. Pictures of the King are everywhere.



Chinatown in Bangkok, pictures of the long walking markets below.







This is a shot from a yearly festival in Bangkok. A gazillion candles are put out on the water on little floating rafts (made from a plant). The shot is hard to make out but in the back are big floats on the river, and in the middle are lots of candles being set on the water with the help of a bunch of guys wading around. Very crowded and packed, but interesting.



A bit of art in the park during the festival.



This classic sign was on the rooftop of a hotel nearby to our place in Bangkok. Advertised in the Lonley Planet as a budget option for a rooftop bar, and being close by, we thought we'd check it out. The place ended up being bizarre with a terrible band, lots of old white guys with tiny 16-year-old looking Thai girls on 'dates', and really bad cocktails. But the don't pee sign made up for a lot, and the view was good.



Our bags at the Bangkok airport (now shutdown by crazy self-defeating protesters). If you need some scale to see their absurd size there is a rolled up beach towel in the bag to the left and a normal-sized blue book in the small red backpack in the middle.



Bad quality shot of the Singapore harbor. The number of ships at anchor is staggering, and really neat if you like boats (like me).



The street in front of our million-dollar-a-night-hostel in Singapore's Kampong Glam neighborhood. At the end of the street is a huge mosque (as the neighborhood is traditionally been Muslim). Turns out this area is probably the coolest spot in Singapore. A classic urban renewal spot, they kept the old Chinese shophouses and made the streets cute with the cafes spilling out on the street. The rest of Singapore, for the most part, is super bland.



Funny sign at a shopping mall for construction and 'hacking'.



Oh the horrors of American Christmas spread throughout the world. Note, this was taken before Thanksgiving in a country with virtually no Christians. What is wrong with the world???



More Kampong Glam.



This is the National Mosque in Kuala Lumpur (for those not on the up and up, Malaysia is a very Muslim country, enough so that Israeli's are turned away at the border!).




The old KL train station and its Arabic style-arch and a bit of the skyline.



The Petronas Towers are really, really, pretty. The coolest of tall buildings I think.



Alicia at a crazy street full of informal eating establishments one street up from our hotel's in KL.



Me with my quite tasty Chinese goodness.




Alicia getting inked by Lena at Borneo Ink.



Huge Vishnu (?) statue outside of the Batu Caves right outside KL. Behind it are the 212 stairs filled with crazy monkeys to the cave entrance.



Detail work on a temple at the Batu Caves.



Inside the crazy huge caves.



Alicia and I avoiding the dripping cave roof with our omni-present umbrellas (that Alicia remembers, no me).



Mini temple at the very end of the caves.