Christmas Eve in Phuket featured an excellent sunset. We looked for a place to eat on the beach but couldn’t find anything that would satisfy us all. We ended up going down an alley just to the north of McDonald’s and eating at a place called S&G Restaurant. The food was really good, the prices were cheap, and the staff was friendly. I ordered a creamy curry which was the best curry I have ever had.

This is the main drag (Thawiwong Road) by the beach. Eat at one of these places if you want to pay more for lesser quality food.

You can eat really inexpensively by eating at one of these stalls. This one is in Phuket’s night life center on Bangla Road.

Posted on January 16th, 2010 under Thailand. Tags: clouds, food, kids, skywatch, sunset. Comments: 2

On our second, full day in Thailand we caught a cab to the MBK Center, which is a large shopping mall in Bangkok. Taxis in Bangkok can be ridiculously cheap if you negotiate the price in advance or use the taxi’s meter. For instance, the airport is the same distance from the city center as the Charles de Gaulle Airport is from Paris, yet a cab will run you under $15 for that distance in Bangkok and $60 – $80 in Paris. We took a crazy taxi ride our first night from Chatuchak (11 train stops that cost the four of us 160 baht on the Skytrain there) back to our hotel for 150 baht (under $5). We thought we were going to die, but the fact remains that we made it across town for next to nothing. Of course, if you aren’t careful, they will gladly charge you several times the normal rates.

Anyway, we had breakfast in the mall (MBK Center) at an all-you-can eat, help-yourself Thai buffet. The above picture may not look that great, since I was the one who threw this dish together, but the food was actually quite good, and we were able to try a half dozen different combinations of noodles, sauces, and vegetables. When I went to pay the bill (of the “huge” sum of 240 baht (< $7) for the four of us!) the guy wouldn't take my money until we had dessert. Now that's a bargain!

After a day of wandering down countless aisles of pirated software, video games, DVDs, CDs, fake Rolex watches, knockoff cellphones, and generic electronics galore we took another taxi to Lumpini Park.

I wanted nothing more than to sit on the grass and take a nap. The girls wanted to paddle boat around the lake in what looked like the same kind of paddle boat you find in Japan (swan style).

I didn’t notice the water monitor (we thought it was a Komodo dragon at the time), but Ellie sure did.

The giant lizard was about two meters (six feet) in length. Linda and Ellie saw some other ones sliding into and climbing out of the water–not exactly what you expect to run into when you lay down in the grass at a park to take a nap.

Posted on January 9th, 2010 under Thailand. Tags: bangkok, food, skywatch, sunset. Comments: None

The night before our trip to Thailand, we visited Ebisu to check out the lights. There was a nice crescent moon on that night a couple weeks ago, and Mt. Fuji could be seen as well (although it is a bit obscured by clouds in the above photo).

We are back from our Thailand vacation now, and I’ll start blogging that trip beginning tomorrow.

Posted on December 28th, 2009 under Japan. Tags: mt. fuji, night photography, sunset, Tokyo. Comments: None

Meiji Jingu is to the right. I don’t think this shot would have come out as well with my TZ7. I used my LX3 for this one.

Posted on December 27th, 2009 under Japan. Tags: clouds, harajuku, night photography, skywatch, sunset, Tokyo. Comments: None