Yesterday we arrived in Ayutthaya and set up camp in a hostel called Tony’s Place. While there are some minor flaws (zero water pressure in the shower) this is hands down the coolest place I have ever stayed at while abroad. The whole front of the building is a giant deck / restaurant which is swarming with a mix of traveling folk and it’s directly across the street from Christine’s favorite bar, Chang House.

There is WiFi and decent food in the terrace as well as a tourist information desk, it very much blurs the line between hotel and hostel. Everyone here is super friendly and I’m typing this while eating a delicious BLT breakfast (I got a little tired of chicken and rice).

Our room has cable tv so we settled in and relaxed for a bit and flipped through stations before settling on MTV Africa (an odd thing to broadcast since Thailand is not in Africa). I haven’t watched MTV in years, in fact I’ve been pretty actively boycotting it since around 1997, so whenever I do catch it for a while I’m always blown away by what I see. 8 videos in a row and 7 of them (including Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus) clearly used and overused auto-tune. I’m sickened, is there any musical talent required anymore? Geez. Anyway this frightened me worse when I realized I was watching MTV Africa, not MTV US, these pop stars and the ads for Jersey Shore are representing America to a lot of people and they look up to it, that is really scary.

After that we went to Chang house and hung out with Christine’s friend Earth. Awesome guy, we split a bottle of “Blend” whiskey (Distilled by Red Bull, cheap and not half bad, considering) and attempted to overcome language barriers and had a good laugh doing so. From there we went to another bar where Earth’s band was playing and found some French guys and Christine’s coworker Dan from the UK. We had a really good time talking about cultural differences and I wound up telling the one gentleman from Paris my trick to getting a Parisian to speak English, he had a really good laugh and admitted he had no doubt it would work.

From there we went to a nightclub where there was a Thai rock band playing. I was exhausted but it was a lot of fun. It seems a lot of Thai rock is set on a reggae beat so it’s very, very similar to the ska punk I grew up with on Long Island which is very strange but very comforting. Eventually the band busted into a Thai Punk cover of Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance which turned out to be surprisingly good.

Thai covers of American music are actually really huge over here in the touristy areas but they are quite amusing to those of us who natively speak English because most, not all, of the singers don’t understand the words to what they’re singing. The singers will butcher the lyrics but hit the notes, tones and timing near perfectly. It’s an amazing phenomenon and very entertaining nonetheless. From there it was time for bed, but as a whole the day turned out to be really enlightening and fun.

Today we’re catching a boat tour around the city and checking outcome old ruins, I can’t wait to take pictures and to share them with y’all. Cheers!

A few days ago Tim Jahn posed an interesting question on his blog.

In short Tim’s looking to discover why people work when they do, and do they draw lines between personal and business at certain hours?

I’m pretty sure I can relate to Tim on this question. Tim, like many others of our generation, leads more than one life, with two jobs (his web development business and his awesome video podcast Beyond The Pedway) and he’s about to be a father. With so much going on it can be hard to figure out where to draw the line… If anywhere. This is a question I’ve been posing to myself lately as well. I’m pretty damn busy these days – working for Apple, taking improv classes, working with Long Pork, blogging, assorted photo and video gigs and trying to stay active in the social networking scene of all these communities so I can live up to the “localcelebrity” moniker – it’s hard to keep it in control and to some degree my personal social life has taken a hit and let’s not even discuss my sleeping routine.

The thing is though, I’ve never been happier. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I’m doing the things I love, I’m “working”, being pretty successful at all of it and barely any of it feels like work. To me, there is no line, if you love what you’re doing, it won’t feel like a chore and you won’t need to take a break from it all that often.

I love what I’m doing. I love the people I’m meeting in these different communities, I love the skills I am learning and the things I’m creating. This to me is what life is about. Constant growth and enrichment. Yes there are some things I need to change and cut out, but I believe strongly that if I keep working at it and doing the things I love, not letting anything get in the way that it’ll all slowly fall into place.

I read once, not sure where, that Steve Jobs looks himself in the mirror every morning and asks if he wants to go to work, and the day he says no are the days he realizes he needs change something, and he does. That to me is me right mentality to have.

If you love what you do, there are no hours and you won’t mind.

But who am I to say that? I’m just some jerk blogging from a hostel in Thailand and “working” through the vacation of a lifetime.

(and I couldn’t be happier doing so).

We got up this morning, had breakfast and caught a motorbike taxi to the bus station. We were actually walking their ourselves when we stumbled onto an an old man who offered us a ride as we walked past his house. He was a funny little guy with a great big friendly smile so we couldn’t help but accept his offer.

As we walked up we saw his back was covered in a large tattoo written In the Thai alphabet, so while it was illegible to me it was very detailed and very beautiful. Christine informed me that she’d seen the same design before and that it was a spell of protection that the monks do. Sadly, I did not get a picture but the idea is fascinating to me.

Thailand is one of, if not the most, populous Buddhist countries in the world and it has greatly changed a lot of my outlook on Buddhist culture. I suspect and hope that I may be misinterpreting things but at first glance there seems to be a lot of materialism and superstition around it here, which was not at all what I had understood from the beliefs previously. I also, in general know very little about Thai Buddhism and how it varies from other forms, this is something I plant research further when I return to having a regular Internet connection.

I have noticed that meat is very popular over here but beef is almost nonexistent. This fascinates me because a spiritual buddhist is typically vegetarian so I’d suspect a lot less meat as a whole, but the no beef thing one would guess to be influenced by Hindu beliefs. One this is for sure, there is definitely a friendly, laid back culture of lovingkindness here, so that says something. I definitely need to read more before I go on talking about this as I’m sure to make myself sound ignorant to someone with a greater understanding and possibly offend someone.

We are headed now to Ayutthaya which used to be the capital of Thailand before Bangkok. We’ll be meeting up with some of Christine’s friends from her job over here (note: I forget if I mentioned this but Christine is over here teaching English as a foreign language). She tells me it’s among here favorite places here, I’m excited all around.

What a day.

We woke up this morning and had breakfast on the river before catching a ride to the elephant ranch. We sat in the back of a truck for the half hour ride through the countryside, the weather was beautiful, it was really nice to have the wind in our faces and to just enjoy the ride. When we got there we bought a bag of bananas and hopped onto an elephant and rode through the hills. The wrangler handed Christine an absurdly pink umbrella to block out the sun as we rode. He lead us down a path to the river where we dismounted and Christine begrudgingly returned the umbrella. We each got another elephant to ride in the river. The wrangler provided us with some dish soap and a scrub brush to bathe the elephants. They are such amazing creatures, we sat around their necks and as they dunked themselves under water. They pushed their ears back to hold your legs onto them. So considerate!

That whole adventure cost around $25, which was money well spent. From there we headed back to the hostel, showered and rested a bit. While hanging out we saw a giant monitor lizard swimming through the river right in front of our place that Christine will not stop going on about and demanded I fit into this entry. To be fair, he was pretty cool (editor’s note: that monitor lizard – aka dragon – is the embodiment of awesome!) (writer’s note: Christine is never going to be asked to edit my entires again).

After that we rented a motorbike and took off on the open road, eventually finding our way to the “Death Train” and the “Bridge Over the River Kwai”. I bought a much needed pair of sunglasses and we proceeded to get lost until we found a passage over the river we could take on the bike (the “bridge over the river Kwai” is train or foot only, no vehicles allowed).

We spent some time getting lost, asking directions and having a good laugh before we stumbled onto a bridge and eventually made our way to the Khao Pun Caves and the Buddhist temple built in and around them. It was quite possibly the most peaceful experience I’ve had here, which is saying a lot. The caverns went deep under ground and we stumbled onto a massive amount of bats lurking up above us and proceeded very carefully as to not disturb them. Despite our efforts, one or two still took flight here and there, giving us a mild spook.

The place was filled with a crazy amount of Buddha statues stashed throughout the caverns and many of the passages got absurdly tight and short causing my lanky self to have to duck often. We were both very thankful for not being much larger in size. It reminded me of the scenes from “In Bruges” where Colin Farrell’s character is heckling the fat American family, telling them they won’t be able to climb to the top of the bell-tower. Luckily we’re not that large.

The caverns were beautiful beyond what I can describe and it was nice to find some naturally cool air here (it’s been in the 90′s this week). As we were leaving, a monk set himself up in front of a massive Buddha statue and started to pray. It was an extremely moving thing for me to witness but I made a conscious effort not to disturb him. After that we biked back into town for some dinner at the “Tofu Bar Vegetarian Food” restaurant, which thankfully had free WiFi for customers. We watched the sun go down over a few beers, listened to some John Lennon and caught up on the news. I’ve very much enjoyed being cut off from just about everything aside from twitter but it’s good to know what’s going on as well.

Tomorrow we’re heading out to Ayutthaya which is the old capital of Thailand and from there to Nakhon Sawan, a small city where Christine is teaching. As much as I’ve enjoyed the tourist stuff I’m excited at the possibility of getting into a less touristy area and seeing things a little more like a local.

As for tonight, back to the bar we found last night to share a pint with a couple of Belgian girls while listening to our new Thai friend Juan (definitely spelled wrong) play music.

Until tomorrow friends, cheers!

I recieved some emails of concern so I thought I’d address this head on:

Yesterday a state of emergency was declared in Bangkok due to the ongoing Red Shirt nonviolent political protests. The group is looking to dissolve the parliment and install their leader who had previously been deposed by the Yellow Shirts a few years back. That is pretty much all I know. While we were there Bangkok was hustling and bustling with people, among them were many of these “Red Shirts” who had set up tents with signs and loud blaring speakers. For the most part they kept to themselves at their worst they blocked up traffic on their motorbikes.

Either way we got out of there yesterday. Not because of this situation at all but because we wanted to do other things. I’ll be back in Bangkok on Tuesday briefly to fly out to Tokyo and neither Christine nor I are really worried. They primarilly do this stuff on the weekend to disrupt tourism to hurt the economy and put pressure on te government. We don’t expect it to impact Monday as well.

Anyway, we’re having breakfast and then off to see the elephants. More later!