Bangkok Weekend Trip, Chelsea v Thai All Stars. Isaan Style.

The other weekend I travelled to Bangkok with a mate to watch Chelsea Football Club play a Thailand Premier League All Star team. I do not support Chelsea, I support Newcastle in the English Premier League, any sport across the world I support the team that is black and white the same color as my beloved Collingwood Football Club in the Australian Football League in Australia.

The other guy I went with, who I call big brother (BB) or “Horse” used to support Manchester United but now he doesn’t really follow anyone but has travelled the world watching football. The other mate who was meant to come and is a lifelong Chelsea supporter, I mean he went to games before I was born. He become unwell and could not travel with us.

So I and BB headed off to the concrete jungle on Friday evening on the Nakhonchai Air first class bus, and for 736 baht it is unbelievably cheap. It is the only bus service I will travel on if not flying. We left Ubon Ratchathani at 10.15pm and arrived in Bangkok just after 6am. I watched a few movies on my little screen and played a few games and then slept in a very comfortable chair that goes well back and has a massager built in that I utilized well.

We arrived at our hotel, had breakfast and then went and had a sleep for a couple of hours, well BB had a sleep as he is a little older than me and also he couldn’t sleep as there was a Thai guy just across from him that snored most of the trip, I luckily had my iphone and had music playing quietly through my earphones.

So I watched some AFL action and then we set off to Rajamangala National Stadium to pick up our tickets around 1pm. The taxi driver was heading the right way and then turned into Ramkhamhaeng University which is huge. And after driving about for a bit and then stopping to ask a few people how to get to the stadium, we exited the taxi and walked.


The stadium is big, it holds 65,000 people, and I was looking forward to the atmosphere of a live crowd again. The weather was overcast as per usual this time of the year. I usually don’t Photoshop most pictures I put on this blog, I do Photoshop many pictures that I think are special and I want for keepsakes or if I am taking pictures for someone. They are touched up and then backed up to external disks. Otherwise most are just uploaded as are. The above pictures I added the blue sky as the cloudy sky made them look drab.


To edit the above photo as you see it took maybe two minutes at the most. I was going to leave the white cloudy sky but I know my mate wants a few pics so I edited them, quickly and I will try and show you some pictures later on this week or so that have had major work done, a bit like what they do on magazine covers.


Above the blue sky is added and the seats colours darkened and the grass made a little more lush as well, in all lest than 5 minutes to do. This was a guy we had a good chat to and he was testing the sound system out so I gave him a hand and sang the Australian National Anthem, not!


Above BB was posing for another national stadium visited in another country.


The scoreboard that would go on and read Chelsea 4 – 0 TPL All Stars, the game itself was okay, but the atmosphere I was expecting wasn’t really there and the non stop, “bom, bom, bom” of a drum that was meant to get the crowd clapping along, I and many other foreigners wanted to find the drummer and stick his sticks right up his…, you know where.

BB had sat on this bench for a picture and it happened to be where Chelsea sat, he was pretty chuffed knowing this that players like Lampard and Terry who get in excess of £200,000 a week were sitting on his seat.

It was disorganized getting into the ground on the evening, kick off was 5.45pm and there were 10,000 plus people outside playing games around sponsor tents winning crap little prizes. We arrived at 5.20pm and made our way through 3 security checks where we were patted down each time.

We arrived at our entry gate and there was a single line going through a single gate, there were security guards again patting people down and also checking bags again. The single file line stretched way back, we walked a good 500mtrs and it kept going out of sight.

We eventually came across another entry gate and a line of people stretching miles back, we pushed through our line and went up to one of the guards and asked, “Can we get in this gate with this ticket?” after she looked it over she replied, “yes” and we were in. We pushed in, in front of thousands of others that were going to be stuck in lines for at least a good 30 minutes. An absolute fuc# up by the Thai Football Association. More gates open next time and maybe 4 security checks just a little over kill.

Anyway, on the Saturday after we tried to pick up our tickets we went in search of a beer. We walked and walked, down alleys, along small laneways but could not find anything. I then asked a guy in a shop where we could get a beer.

He replied, “No beer, this is Islam area.” So that is why I saw so many women wearing hijabs. Anyway we didn’t give up and we ended up walking down some tiny little paths and what looked like at times the backs of people houses or shops to which they got a good laugh seeing two farangs in search of beer.

We passed a laneway and as I glanced down I saw a sign with “snooker” written on it, we headed there, up a flight of stairs and inside was cool air-conditioning and most importantly a fridge full of very cool beer. So we sat down for a couple of ales planning our night ahead that turned out to be a classic.

It involved many beers and a trip to the infamous Soi 4, in Nana district. And that blog will be coming another day, hopefully soon.

Brunty

Lenten Candle Festival Ubon Ratchathani 2011 Thailand

Here in Ubon Ratchathani we have just had the Lenten Candle Festival, and if you look above this is the biggest and best candle that was on display, well it wasn’t but it was something different and Noot liked it. She took all the pictures that you will see in this post as I did not go. There are too many people for me and I get too frustrated. Noot doesn’t have a great eye for taking pictures and I have tried to Photoshop them to an acceptable standard.

This is Benjawan and her Uncle Beer, he was scared of the candle float and the monster on it and wanted nothing to do with it or be anywhere near it.














And that was Noot’s view of the candle festival this year.

Brunty

Splinter Groups Need to Get a Life, Jumps Horse Racing Australia.

I am sick of these splinter groups that cry foul all the time and then newspapers pick up their story and run with exaggerated headlines.

Today was one such time; I was reading the Herald Sun Newspaper from Melbourne in Australia and came across this headline, “Violent fall reignites calls for jumps racing ban.”

It is to do with horse racing, where horses run races and jump over hurdle or steeples.

As with any sport, actually every time we leave our house there is an element of danger involved. Things can go wrong and this means something or someone can be hurt.

In jumps racing, horses will fall at the hurdle or steeple and sometimes the outcome is the horse needs to be put down, euthanatized as many call it. And jockeys can be hurt and sadly but rarely a jockey will lose their life.

Australia a few years back had a minority get on a bandwagon and call for a ban on jumps racing. These small groups hollered and cried and of course for some reason people listen to them and at one time it looked like jumps racing would be gone. One such group called Horse Racing Kills has plenty of over the top, scare mongering plastered all over its website. Simply trying to shock people into believing them.

Thankfully this didn’t happen, the industry and powers to be put their heads together and used common sense. The left wingers cried foul but no-one listened.

These are the same people who call for duck shooting bans, stop the cull of kangaroos or koalas and on it goes. They complain everything is wrong and dangerous, or simply these people just have nothing better to do.

Look, everybody has a right to an opinion and view. That is freedom of speech, to say what we think and believe. I think these groups and people are full of shit.

If they call for bans on jumps racing because it is cruel and dangerous and other totally idiotic reasons, then let’s ban anything that might injure or harm an animal or human being.

Sadly a 21 year old man called Halley Appleby lost his life over the weekend playing rugby,a sport he loved. Something went wrong in a tackle and sadly he is now deceased. Do we stop all contact sports because of this death?

Motorbike and car racing, it kills people every now and then and is a waste of money and causes green house gases, should this be stopped.

All I am trying to say that there is a risk in everything we do each day. Horse racing is no different.

Horses are bred to run. They are bred to be pets, play sports like polocrosse (this is a real game not that limp wristed game called polo), for dressage and show jumping and of course racing.

If these horses were not racing they would be dead, they would be slaughtered like hundreds of thousands of other animals and made into pet meat at knackeries across the country.

And when you do the percentages of racehorse deaths, to the amount of runners and races held across the country, it is small. It is sad to see any animal be hurt, suffer or die. But they are doing something that is in their blood to do.

We humans do things everyday that could hurt, or even kill us. But does that mean we have to stop every activity that might be dangerous.

I just wish the media and journalists would stop dramatising all this, stop jumping on these bandwagons of small groups just to write a sensationalist headline in the hope a person will read their column. The media are trying to cause a furore and have their online comment boxes light up, as simple as that.

But they have the right to; it is a free country and freedom of speech. But thankfully there are many more normal people out there than the cranks, halfwits with their small agendas.

Brunty

Asana Bucha Day or Pan Sa at Nong Bua Temple Ubon Ratchathani Thailand

Today is Asana Bucha Day or also known as Pan Sa or the Buddhist Lent here in Thailand. It is the day that Buddhists celebrate Buddha’s first sermon. In this sermon he spoke of the four noble truths to five chief disciples.

It is a big day for Buddhists and they flock to temples on this day. I was at my local temple, Nong Bua Temple midmorning today and it was a hive of activity with people coming to pay respect to Buddha. The main temple or pagoda is 56mtrs high and 17mtrs wide.

Nong Bua Temple is pretty famous and the past few years gone through a huge restoration stage and looks fantastic. The fence around the temple now is shipshape and hold the ashes of loved ones passed on. The temple is lucky as it has many I suppose what you call patrons that are fairly wealthy so they do have money to complete all this work.

White and gold coloured paint is everywhere you look, I do like the effect that you get from this though.

There have been many new additions at the temple and the beautiful manicured grass is one, lovely cared for grass is not something you see that often here in Isaan. I walked about bare feet on the grass enjoying the feeling I used to take for granted.




On the temple the story of Buddha is played out from his birth until his enlightening on tablets. I have taken many pictures and hope to have them all on my Flickr account in the next few days and if you click on any picture you will be taken there and see all pictures in larger sizes.



There are 4 small pagoda’s in each corner of the temple grounds, I was told years ago why and I thought I wrote about it, but I couldn’t find it. I am useless I know.

These creatures which I think are of Garuda surround the base of the main temple and look as if they are holding it up.

People inside the temple were paying their respects.

They then walk three times around the temple, and from memory it is once for Buddha, once for the sanga and once for the monks.

They then say a prayer.

They place their 3 incense sticks and candle into the sand.

Every temple has stray dogs, usually there are many as they will be fed leftovers from what the monks don’t eat. The food collected is also given to poor people who might attend the temple as well. Nothing is usually wasted.

So that is the holy day here in Thailand, I have watched AFL football and now the Tour De France has just finished. So that means it is now time for the British Open Golf, I am happy I bought a cartoon of beer yesterday as it is going to be a late night.

Brunty

Lenten Candle Festival Ubon Ratchathani Thailand 2011

Here in Ubon Ratchathani we have the Lenten Candle Festival about to start. Each year at the start of the Buddhist Lent we have the largest parade of candle floats made by temples right down to small villages.

It is Ubon’s busiest time of the year and the foreign population skyrockets and you can play spot the Thai instead of foreigner, okay there aren’t that many but there is a large influx of tourists.

Below are pictures of my local temple’s candle float, the temple is about 400mtrs from my house. Nong Bua Temple is a very famous temple and on the must see list if you are in Ubon Ratchathani. I will blog on the temple a little later on tonight if I don’t have too many ales before then.

The floats from bigger temples are huge, I would say around 30mtrs plus long and around 15 to 20mtrs in height at times.

The floats are made from wax, they are big projects and the past week the temple doors have hardly been closed as local have helped the monks with the melting of wax and pouring it into templates.

The masters at the wax carving are good to watch as they use hot irons to smooth wax on the figures.


The float was nearly finished and they were spraying a palm oil all over it. I am not sure if this is to help protect it, or make it shine.

Underneath the wax is usually foam, the foam is shaped and then the wax is attached.


Naga serpents are a large part of Buddhism and are always included in floats.


I think this is an image of the mythical figure of Garuda.



Anyway, this is just one of the many huge floats from the temples that will be on display from tonight and then be in the parade tomorrow.

I do not attend the parades anymore as it is too crowded, uncontrolled or to be blunt just Thai organised.

The night before the parade is the best time, actually early in the morning as you cannot get pictures without being bumped, or having 50 people in the way. I am a whinging prick, I know.

Brunty