Thailand, Part IV, The Liver is Evil, and Needs to be Punished

This was the slogan on the back of the bar workers' t-shirts. We took it to heart and punished it severely. This aside, one problem that has arisen here is the question of nationality. Whenever asked where we are from it feels sortof embarasing to admit that, yes, we too are from Sweden. What we have to do is figure out another country that we could pretend to be from. With that solution there of course comes the problems with languages and culture. We could always say Russia, but my vocabulary is limited to about Pravda and Perestroyka, and then again, I am not sure if it is a good thing to be a Russian. There are a lot of countries to choose from, but none without its problems (for a while a wanted to go with Germany, but was talked out of it). Suggestions happilly recieved here.

Thailand, part III, Koh Phi Phi

A lot of people you ask about Phi Phi island say that it has lost its charm, that it is just a huge construction site today and so on (I am of course refering to Phi Phi before vs. after the tsunami). For those people I have only one question: What charm did you see in it before? The spirit is the same, there are a few more swedes (if at all possible), a litle rubbish stashed in a few random places and a some construction going on. That's it. Nothing else has changed. Well, maybe it has become a little bit more expensive. Charm does not go away with a slight adjustment of the amount of baths you pay for your bungalow.

So far Phi Phi is on my (+) list.

Thaland foton

Check out for my flickr account for a some new pictures. They took forever to upload so saviour them...

Thailand, part II, Koh Lanta

After 3 days on Koh Lanta I have formed an opinion about the place. It is nice, it is beautiful, it is, however, not uniquely so. The guidebook promises of a place less exploited than other tourist haunts in Thailand was somewhat exagerated. There are, for instance, a whole lot of Swedes here. My guess would be that at the pool at our resort any given day aproximately 75% of the people are Swedish. So much for an unspoiled, not-so-developed place. The only difference between e.g. Ao Nang is that there is no real town here, most people that travel here are couples or families, and most people living here are muslims (someone mentioned 95%). With that being said, it is still a very relaxing place to stay. The tempo here is lower, we have been staying up until about 10 pm every day(simply because there is nothing to do after that) drinking Singha sitting in beach chairs watching the night sky and the ocean.

Tomorrow we are on an speed boat to Koh Phi Phi. Perhaps that will mean an increase in the tempo. Well see...

Thailand, part I, Travel

After about 24 hours of travel we arrived at our first destination in Thailand: Koh Lanta. The 24 hour trip did included:

• watching a very predictable Kevin Costner movie: The Guardian. Abour every third line was totally predictable and the plot was a collage of standard drama/adventure movie story bits.
• Running around Bangkoks new airport trying to fuigure out where out luggage is, how we get on our new flight to Krabi and why, why, why Thai Airways can transfer luggage to domestic flight for all other domestic destinations except Krabi?
• A cell phone loving non english speaking minibus driver. His reply to the question: "how are you" was answered with "2 and half hour" which we took to be the time for us to reach Koh Lanta from Krabi. No more conversation followed, as soon as we got out of the airport he started talking very discreetly in his cell phone.

That's about it. We are now in Koh Lanta. More on this later...

Oblivion Lockpicking

After picking up playing Oblivion again I realized that what I really never did manage to figure out how to do is the lockpicking mini game. Sure, I understand how it works and that both the visuals and the sounds can be used as cues (here a video of that). I just dont have the patience to sit there listening like some video game obsessed rain man.
So how do we solve this? Statistics. Simply push the tumbler up until ut falls down fast three times in a row. It is now very unlikely that it will fall down fast a fourth time. Not impossible, just unlikely. So this is not a fail-safe method or a perfect strategy. It is just a strategy that lets me play the mini game without thinking.

Pigeon vs. Hawk

Quite obviously the Pigeon lost in this noble battle against the Hawk. This picture taken with my cell phone clearly shows what happened:


Below are stated some of the combat-related attributes of the Pigeon and the Hawk:

Pigeon
Air Speed: 55 mph
Weight: 500 g
Wing Span: 800 mm
Main Weapons: Talons (weak)

Can carry diseases and slowly kill its opponent with Avian Flu or any other disease it chooses to carry.


Hawk Air Speed: 65 mph
Weight: 100 g
Wing Span: 200 mm
Main Weapons: Talons (strong), Beak (powerful)

Uses Single Angular Attack (SAA) when attacking its opponent.




From this data randomly collected from the web (I admit, the data seems to be a bit wrong), it is obvious that the Pigeon has some good characteristics, but still the Hawk managed to destroy it. Very goo indeed.