One Night in Bangkok

Ok, so its more like four nights that I'll be in Bangkok, but whose counting? Well the guy in this video http://tw.youtube.com/watch?v=mnqj31VPNoE for one. Anyway, I thought I would write what I expect Bangkok to be like then when I'm there I'll update about what it's actually like. Here it goes...I expect Bangkok to be hot and humid with the occasional rain shower (I checked weather.com). I expect there to be a lot of traffic and crowds in an insane city. I expect the city to be very cheap but have plenty of Western amenities. I expect the people to be pretty cool (it is called the "Land of Smiles" after all). Finally, I expect to see creepy old white sexpats with young Thai women. I'll find out for sure in 2 days.

Now that's off my chest let me tell you about the last few days. This week we have had a German engineer (ok so he's really a naturalized Singaporean) here to work on a machine we have. Simple enough except the German office screwed him by not giving him the proper software and made him stay for several days. One thing, this dude is a machine, he works crazy long hours, and since he speaks English and I'm in the international department I have to stay as long as he's here. Thankfully I got off early last night and I am also thankful he didn't want me to take him to dinner and drinks as my boss requested since that would have eaten up the entire past few days.

I felt like a beer last night when I got off so I tried to go to a real, non-karaoke, bar near me. The thing is there was only one other dude, I couldn't understand the bartender, and I only had NT 100. I thought that would be good for a beer since I have had a huge bottle here for NT 70. Apparently not, this bar's cheapest drink was NT 130 and the bar wasn't even that nice! It's pretty embarrassing to have to walk out of a bar like that.

Also last night the Germans sent another engineer here. And he was able to fix the software. But he also trained the workers and managers on the use of the machine, which is quite complex. So that meant I spent close to 2.5 today hours translating the best I could, which is not all that great mind you since my technical words are not up to snuff. My head hurts from all of that Chinese now. Tomorrow I have to come in once more and type up/translate all of the instructions we were given today. That means tonight I'm going to splurge. By that I mean chill at the coffee shop and go to a bar, since I sure could use a beer.