Shave and a haircut 60 Baht

Which is about $1.65 Australian. They really did a good job too. They even shave the little fine hairs on your earlobe, and give you a neck massage. I was debating the "Adolf" Mustache and haircut special, but in the end decided against it. Thailand is fantastic. Outside feels like a sauna powered by car exhaust pipes - but you have to realize everything balances out. The traffic is terrible, but we take taxis everywhere. An hour taxi ride costs around $3-4. We haven't been here for 10 years, and things are really feeling a bit more spiffy. They have a really great elevated train system now, which travels down one of the main roads. If it only covered this whole sprawling city, the cars and tuk-tuks would be in put in their places.

Kelly and I have been enjoying the fantastic food. We're staying with our friends Bobby and Kazuya, who are Thai and Japanese, respectively. Their daughter, 4-year old Keito, is quite amazing. She speaks Thai, Japanese and English - and somehow knows which language to use with which person. With the maid, or mom, it's Thai. With dad it's Japanese, and with us, or her schoolmates at the international school, it's English.

If it weren't for the heat, pollution and unbearable travel-time, I could imagine living in Bangkok.

Natsukashi Nihon

The coming winter in Ireland is replaced by a humid indian summer in Japan, after a 12 hour plane trip from London to Tokyo. We flew into Narita, Tokyo and then booked into a guest house in the area.
We met my old Austar workmate Micheal and his family the next day. The kids had a great play at a park near their house.
The next day, it was off on the shinkansen (bullet train) to Kyoto. Our kids love Japanese food, so they were in heaven, with all of the onigiri, soba and great Kansai food like okonomiyaki. Kyoto and Osaka was a bit of a homecoming for Kelly and I, as it was where we met and got married. We managed to catch up with some old friends during the visit, but not as many as we wanted to.
After a few days in Kyoto, it was back on the shinkansen to Tokyo. I met Michael for a final day of geeking out at the Japanese techie shopping district, Akihabira, and then off to Bangkok the next day.