Good To Be Home

We left Chiang Mai last Thursday morning and it's only Tuesday night now, but it feels like we've been gone a couple of weeks. The more that is packed into a period of time, the faster the time seems to go, and the longer it seems to have been. Or so it seems to me.
V gave us these two of her rare bananas. I think she called them elephant's toe, or ingrown toenail. And then there was a bunch of another type known as lady's breast bananas. A couple were yellow and the rest green and should be yellow in a day or two. [Above and right is the inside of the banana. Which I added Wednesday afternoon.]




The flight back from Bangkok went easily. And we were greeted in the airport hallway to the exit by orchid after orchid plant. Mostly they looked like cymbidiums, but there was a variety of orchids - maybe a hundred different plants, each with several sprays of flowers.






































And when we got out of the airport, we were greeted by the relative coolth of Chiang Mai after the Bangkok heat. (The computer says it's 79 here and 86 in Bangkok, but that doesn't factor in the extra humidity in Bangkok as well.)








And then there was the full moon. We've been keeping track of time by watching the moon wax and wane. It was full the day before we left Anchorage - January 12. And it was full when we were in Kuala Lumpur when our 30 days were up in Thailand. And now our second 30 days are up. When the moon is full again, we'll be just back in Anchorage.

Sommersturm at CMU Film Space

We already heard about Film Space last year - free Saturday night films at the art building at Chiang Mai University - but somehow we never made it there. It's not far - a ten minute bike ride - so we decided to go tonight. So I googled to see what was on tonight and found Thomatfilms a blog that covers what's playing in Chiang Mai. Thai doesn't have a final 's' sound, so they substitute a 't' sound if there is an 's' at the end of a word. So I'm guessing Thom is punning that with at films. Bi-lingual jokes are fun.

This yellow car was parked in front of the Design Center. I'm guessing it's a piece of student art. From Thomatfilms we learned:

During February, Film Space presents “The Month of Iron Hoofter.” March is “The Month of Bad Luck Money.”

Film Space is to the right and in the back of the CMU Art Museum, in the Media Arts and Design building across from the ballet school. Now that the weather is cool, they are resuming their rooftop showings, weather permitting. You might want to bring something to sit on or lie on. A contribution is requested in the donation box at the entrance – you should leave 20 baht. Well worth supporting.

At Film Space Saturday, February 28: Sommersturm / Summer Storm (2004) by Marco Kreuzpaintner – 98 mins – Germany, Comedy/ Drama/ Romance.

Fourth and last in the “Hoofter” series: gay love in Germany. Tobi and Achim have been best friends for years. As cox and oarsman, they have helped their team win several rowing cups in the past and are now looking forward to the big regatta in the countryside. But this trip is no summer camp anymore and the first problems soon arise. As Achim’s relationship with his girlfriend grows more serious, Tobi starts to realize that his feelings for Achim run deeper than he’s willing to admit to himself.

There's a little restaurant - Din Dee - run by a Japanese woman right there too, with a great space. It's a round, earth building. There's something about being in a round room that feels right to me.






After dinner, it was almost dark, and a sliver of a moon hung over the mountains and you could see Wat Doi Suthep lit up on the mountain.





We were looking forward to watching the film up on the roof, but something was wrong with the sound, so it was going to be in a room. Which turned out to be air conditioned, something we haven't experienced much. Evenings have generally been cool and we like using the electric fan rather than air conditioning anyway. But they did turn it off near the end of the movie and it slowly warmed up, so that when we went out if felt nice and cool outside.

My first reaction watching the film was, "Was this still a problem in Germany in 2004?" Well, probably the story was written ten years before it came out and there was a gay rowing team called the Queerstrokes, so some folks were a little more out than others. But anti-gay stuff is just part of all attacks on people who are different from the norm, by people who need to pick on someone else to cover their own insecurities. And coming to terms with sexuality - straight or gay - is scary for most people.

The movie was nicely done, nearly all the characters were likable, even the ones who weren't at first, showed some decent views of themselves. And the only thing I could see that would have gotten it its R rating were bare female breasts. Unless gay automatically rates an R.

Kuala Lumpur 3 - More Petronas Towers Pics

Those little white dashes at 5 o'clock and 8:30 around the moon are bats.

Looking up.

This one is this afternoon when it was still light out.

And this is the giant shopping mall inside.

From Greatbuldings.com:

ArchitectA	Architect: Cesar Pelli
Location	Location: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia map
Date	1998 timeline
Building Type	skyscraper, commercial office tower
Construction System	glass, steel, and concrete
Climate	tropical
Context	urban
Style	Modern
Notes	Tapering twin towers (connected by a sky bridge) share an Islamic-influenced geometrically polygonal plan. Featured extensively in "Entrapment", a cool action movie starring Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta Jones.

The Almost Full Moon and Blogspot Post Times

Just before we left Anchorage I posted a picture of the full moon and the moonlight. And here we are on the other side of the world looking at the same moon. I know it's a much often used device, yet it is still amazing to me that as far away as I go, the sun and moon are always there and people far apart can look at the same moon at the same time. (That raises a question I have never thought about - are there two places in the world from where you can never see the moon and/or sun at the same time? Joel?)

[Update Jan 15 (Thai Time): My son has answered this question by email:

basically no. At the extreme, where they are on opposite ends, it gets a bit tricky since the horizon is almost horizonal. But it isn't quite, since your eyes are not on the ground, and on top of that the earth's atmosphere bends light about 3 degrees at the horizon. So you can see 186 degrees, effectively, and even the moon is far enough away that I doubt it's in the blind spot. The sun has a much bigger diameter than the earth, so it could never be in a blind spot.]

As you can see from my pictures, I haven't figured out how to set my Canon Powershot SD 790 so that the brightness of the moon, surrounded by the blackness of the sky, isn't overexposed. If anyone out there has a suggestion, please comment or email.

On the other hand, we are all used to the giant telephotoed pictures of the moon with every crater showing. These give a different view of the moon.

In this last one, I played around a little bit with it in iPhoto.

These pictures were taken at 5:57am Chiang Mai time. I went to bed about 9:30 last night and just recently woke up. The birds are making interesting noises, though roosters are the most common. The temple gong just marked 6:30. The sky is greying above the mountain Doi Suthep. We have a western facing view, so the other side of the sky is probably lighter. The computer says it is 53˚F (almost 12˚C) so it is a bit chilly in here.

[Update: Here's the moon and sky 42 minutes later at 6:45am from our balcony]

Computer time

I've reset my computer so it has local time. Last year I left my computer on Anchorage time. The blog post timing is set in blooger and it would make more sense on the blog to have my actual local time for my posts. Fiddling with basic things like that on blogger make me nervous. No telling what other strange things it will cause. Will all most posts get changed to Thai time? Probably not, but things got all screwed up early on when we changed to Daylight Savings Time. I had to change it to Pacific Standard time for the blog to work. OK, let me change it and see what happens.

Hah! I was right. (Am I starting to think in blogger?) It changed all the old posts to Thai time. So I changed it back to Alaska time. So just add 16 hours to the post times.

Update 7:23am - It's easier to get the moon when the background sky isn't so dark.]

Full Moon

OK, so there is a light in the alley in the back.
But the shadow of the tree on the deck are from the full moon.

Yang Tone Farm Stay Chiang Dao 1

The mountain just grows up from the plains, silhoueted by the pink sky, hazy in the late afternoon smoke.
As it got darker, we could see bits of flame. The point of Sunday’s event is to mark a new program where the farmers on the hill, Karen hill tribe people mostly, will begin building fire breaks. There is a lot of controversy about slash and burn agriculture which various hill tribes have practiced for generations. But today as the world has moved ever closer into their territory, they have less room, and the smoke from their farming impinges on the people in the cities more and more. In these days of global warming, the practice comes under greater scrutiny.
The giant orange moon rising just after we arrived.
The sun rising almost in the same place this morning.


We stayed at the Yang Tone Home Stay Farm because the Chiang Dao Nest, nearby, was full Friday night. Now we've moved to the Nest, which has wi fi, but the adapter plug that changes my three pronged Mac plug into a two pronged plug is the wrong size. I left the one that works in our apartment in Chiang Mai. So I only have about two hours of battery left.

The Yang Tone is incredible and I'll do a separate post on that. If you are in Northern Thailand, do what you can to stay at least one night at Yang Tone Farm Stay.

At breakfast after walking a couple hours around the farm watching the birds and flowers. See also the next post on this great little place. You can tell, if I like a place, I'll let you know, and this place is really special.