Here's something for you to mull over as you go about your day: what words do you think are the most useful for your daily life? I recently found myself idly thinking about which (new) words I've gotten the most mileage out of since I've been here, or which were the most important to know early on. My completely non-rigorous, unscientific answers include:
--generally
--kind (as in a type of something -- this kind vs that kind)
--most/majority
--same
--almost

I got sidetracked pretty quickly, but I thought it was funny that most of the words that jumped immediately to mind had to do with degree.

Among words not up for consideration were pronouns, articles, numbers, and a random assortment of basic words like "hello", "night", "friend", etc., because I already knew those when I got here. I also discounted "snow" and "cold" as purely a matter of timing.

When I'm in Singapore, I usually stay in a house I love (it's my aunt and uncle's place). I think it's a really neat design, a tad classical-Roman in that the building forms three sides of a little open-sky courtyard -- but, y'know, brick and cement, and without the columns. The fourth side is covered but open-air, with a table for dining or working al fresco. And in this case, the courtyard contains a fish pond, in which my uncle raises koi. It just makes me happy to be able to sit in the living room and read while still able to see the sky and the fish.

Plus it's a lot of fun to sit, dry and cool, in the covered part of the patio when the thunderstorms come and pour on the fish.

The fish don't mind.

I mentioned earlier that one of the main ways to get around Bangkok is up and down the river. I happened to be staying on the west bank of the river, while most of the stuff to see and do is on the east side. As the Thais like to say, "is no problem." The hotels on the west side know that it'd be inconvenient for guests to keep hopping taxis only to sit in bridge traffic, so they provide regular ferries to the east bank.

I rode a boat like this many times. These guys go back and forth across the river, about 90 seconds between docks, for roughly 18 hours a day. That's a lot of trips. My hotel ran ferries both to the light rail station, where you could take elevated rail to downtown or beyond, and the public pier, where you could hop on another, faster boat to head up or down the river. About once an hour one of the boats would take a slightly longer trip up to one of the shopping malls. And no, Chatuchak isn't on the river.

Bangkok now has the largest aquarium in Southeast Asia, so I thought it might be fun to check out. Aquariums might be my new travel thing -- seeing as I've already been to the one in Hangzhou and now the one in Bangkok, will probably go to the one in Singapore (formerly largest in SE Asia) before the year is out, and plan to hit Shanghai's in the next month or so, I figure I might as well see how many others I can add to the list. I've never really had a travel "thing" (must-see, must-collect) before, so we'll see if I can stick with it. I'm also not sure whether I'll be going anywhere else with an aquarium, which would sort of put a hitch in things.

The Bangkok aquarium (technically Siam Ocean World) is located in the basement of a large shopping mall downtown, attached to a light rail station, which makes it pretty darn convenient. I thought it was kind of funny to think of people trying on Gucci two floors above a bunch of sharks, but that's fodder for someone else's screenplay.

Anyway, it was a pretty good aquarium. One of the highlights was the glass-bottom boat tour that they take you on -- floating over the top of the main tanks! Pretty nifty. One of the things the guide told us is that when you walk through the aquarium tunnel (to view the tanks from below), the fish look about 30% smaller, but from the boat, with its flat surface, you see their true size. It seemed to be true -- from the tunnel, I thought the tiger sharks looked noticeably smaller than they had from above. There's also an option that lets you take a guided SCUBA dive into one of the tanks with the sharks, but it was a little pricey (and I was there at the wrong time anyway).

Siam Ocean World also won most innovative integration of corporate branding/sponsorship in my book. I liked a display of consumer products (mostly Sanyo, I think) that talked about reuse, disposal, and eco-friendly design. A number of appliances had been converted into 'ordinary' fish tanks, including this microwave, a refrigerator (featuring beer bottles with the fish),  a washing machine, and most impressively, a Chevy station wagon (steering wheel and electronics removed, and lots of algae added).

Also, the aquarium had a giant squid. It's actually not very giant by giant-squid standards; I'd guess the block of ice surrounding this one was about 15 feet long, while larger members of the species can max out around 30-40 feet. Still, that eye is pretty darn cool. Equally impressive was the similarly-sized block of ice on the other side of the curtain, containing what I think was a giant (and again, I'm talking roughly 8 feet long) tuna. Think of all the sushi that could have been made...

I think I had about five conversations before I got to Thailand that went roughly as follows:
"What days will you be in Bangkok?"
[response]
"Oh, then you can/have to go to Chatuchak."

So clearly I had to go to Chatuchak.

Chatuchak, besides being absurdly fun to say, is a gigantic weekend market on the north side of Bangkok. People say you can get anything at Chatuchak. I would like to amend this to say you can get anything at Chatuchak provided you can manage not to get lost while there. I myself ended up in front of the same stall three times (from different directions!) because I kept getting turned around in the myriad aisles and alleyways. The market is so large that there are maps made (and sold) of it. There are 27 numbered covered sections, each featuring through-alleys and grids of narrow aisles such as the one pictured here. There are also three banks, a police station, a management office, 8 sets of restrooms, a clock tower, a first aid station, and three gates leading in and out of the market grounds. It's hard to tell from inside, but on one map I obtained the grounds appear to cover the rough equivalent of three or four city blocks. Across the street is a separate meat and vegetable market that operates every day of the week.

As you can guess from the picture, it's crowded, with both tourists and locals. Most aisles (but not all) can just about accommodate two people passing without one having to turn, but since people are often stopping to look at a vendor's wares, things get congested pretty easily. Which, combined with the limited air circulation, makes it, guess what, HOT! A couple of vendors, particularly among the pet stalls (puppies, kittens, birds, fish, various rodentia, and some very small mammal of which photographs were not allowed (there's a good sign something's above board...)), had air conditioning which they used behind closed glass-walled stalls and doors, so that they looked like they were in their own little aquariums.

There's also food aplenty. These were some of the snacks on display at the main market (not the one across the street). Although there are a few food vendors deep in the bowels of Chatuchak, most, and particularly the fresh-fruit and drinks vendors, line the main walk between the numbered sections (the main walk functions a bit like a promenade, where you can take things in casually with a bit of a breeze -- albeit exposed to the  blazing sun -- before darting inside the maze to do actual shopping).

Remember when I said you could get anything at Chatuchak? Seriously. You could outfit a rancher (or a skate teen, cheerleader, working woman, etc) for under US$15: plenty of denim shirts, jeans, all kinds of leather anything, including big Texas belt buckles and boots... country bluegrass music... that's right, that's a Thai cowboy playing spoons. I bet he bought his entire outfit there. If I'd looked hard enough I'm sure I could've found spurs, too.

Due to circumstances into which I will not delve here, I did not actually end up eating all that much Thai food in Thailand (more's the pity). But I did manage to sneak in some food on sticks, Thai remix.

First up was lime ice cream on a stick -- looks like a popsicle, only creamier. Hits the spot on a hot sunny day, but I didn't have time to take a picture for fear of it melting before I got to consume it. Second was, naturally, satay. The ones in the photo are barbeque chicken and pork, respectively. I had the pig on a stick from a different vendor, with slightly less viscous sauce. It was sweet n' tasty, and I didn't have to fight with the stick to claim the meat -- just bit right in and off it came. That's a good satay, and something I find a lot of Thai restaurants in the States just don't do as well as they should.

I also wanted to try something a little further afield, so after perusing some vendor selections, I went with quail-egg-fishball on a stick. Each sphere there is made up of a hard-boiled quail egg wrapped inside fishball (the larger ones are regular chicken egg; there were also salted-egg and century-egg options).

Fishball, for those of you not familiar, is sort of like fish sausage -- a dense ball of processed fish parts, somewhat fishy and a little rubbery-chewy-squishy (imagine the consistency of a Nerf football, but a little less spongy). It's really popular in Asia, particularly added into soup. About once a year I'll be struck by the thought that, "yeah, fishball sounds good right now," and I have some and it is, and then I'm good for another year or so.

Anyway, I've never had fishball with egg in it, so I gave it a whirl. And what do you know, it was pretty good. The outer coating tasted like tofu skin, there was an inner layer of regular fishball a couple centimetres thick, and then the yummy egg adding a whole different texture. It came with a lemongrass-chili dipping sauce that made it a little tangy and tingly, too. And even though I've now had my fishball helping for the year, I could see having them again if the opportunity presented itself.

Leaving Lumpinee Stadium after the muay thai fights was a little interesting. Adjacent to the stadium is a huge night market, essentially a large vacant lot featuring all kinds of local-food vendors (there are probably other stalls as well, but from my position in the backseat of a taxi, I could only see food). One block over, we passed an A&W. I don't think I've seen an A&W in over a decade. Not even a soda can, much less an entire burger joint.

Well, OK, that wasn't all that strange. But then a couple blocks later, our cab pulled up to a stoplight. Walking towards us, by the curb, opposite the flow of traffic, past my window, was a man leading a small elephant (with rider). I've definitely never seen an A&W in the vicinity of an elephant.

The last thing to catch my eye near the stadium was this bridge. I know you can't read the writing (it was late and I was in a cab; what do you expect?), but see those two flags up near the top of the photo? It's the Thai-Belgium Bridge. I mean, I know it was late, but it didn't look nearly long enough.

My cousin and I took in a couple of muay thai, or Thai kickboxing, matches one night. Because of other commitments, we only saw a couple of the undercard bouts, not the main event, but it was still pretty entertaining. I think muay thai has been getting trendy worldwide over the past decade or so; there's even a reality-competition show whose Asian version replaces Western boxing with the sport.

Muay thai is known for being pretty brutal; take your average boxing match and add legal use of elbows, knees, shins, and feet. Also, while the sport has been around for a long time, safety rules like boxing gloves are a relatively new change. That said, the matches we watched were not particularly brutal, although a couple guys did land some kicks to the head. From our third-class standing area (maybe 100 feet away? -- neither ringside nor in some vague intermediate section), we didn't see any blood flying. Of course, we were also there on a lightweight night -- literally. The heaviest fighters scheduled were listed at 132 lbs, and the matches we saw featured guys weighing in at 112 and 123 pounds.

Apologies for the slightly protracted delay between postings, folks. I went on a quick jaunt to Bangkok (free space in a hotel room courtesy of a family member's work trip, how could I refuse?) and opted to leave the laptop behind. But never fear, I have returned, and your patience will be rewarded with pictures and anecdotes that will hopefully transport you (at least momentarily...I know you're really supposed to be working) many miles from your desktop.

Thailand has a lot of temples and markets. At right is one of the temples as seen from Bangkok's river, Chao Praya. I spent a lot of time on the river, and more time in markets than in temples. It's the hot season in Bangkok right now, with the temperature regularly hitting 90 by 10am, and humidity to match. Which I don't mind as much as some people, but even for me, it makes afternoon sightseeing less appetizing than, say, lounging by the hotel pool.

My timing for this visit was just a little off. You see, I arrived just a day or two after the Thai New Year's holiday of Songkran, which is also known as the Water Festival. From what I understand, the entire country pretty much devolves into a giant water fight for a couple days -- if you're walking down the street, you can plan to get soaked, by any- and everyone in the vicinity. Now, I can understand not wanting to fall victim to this in your nice work clothes, but frankly, after two hours of carrying my camera bag around the old city in 95/95 (degrees F and per cent humidity), getting splashed or water-gunned on the spot sounded like a pretty darn good idea.

As it was, I missed out on all of the water-throwing, but the hotel did have a nice pool, so don't feel too bad for me.

Although Singapore is a tropical island, it's not really known for its beaches. In fact, between the airport, one of the world's three largest container ports, and various other coastal activities here, you wouldn't want to swim at any of the beaches on the main island; the closest swimming beaches are across a short bridge at Sentosa, the amusement-park island. Far better beaches are about a 40-minute ferry ride away, on the Indonesian resort island of Bintan. I had been hoping to go there for a couple days this trip, but it didn't work out, so I've had to look elsewhere for my water fix. Anyway, it's also too hot and humid to want to run in Singapore (I had to sprint two blocks the other day, and ended up not breathing all that hard, but sweating profusely for the next eight minutes), so I've instead worked some exercise in by hitting the local public pool.  Which is actually three different 50-metre pools -- one shallow (<1.5m the whole length), one deeper, and I haven't yet investigated how the third one differs.

This is my view from the pool. I think it's nearly impossible to be stressed out when you're surrounded by palm trees.