Baruto is making things very interesting for the January Sumo tournament currently being held in Tokyo. While he isn’t my favorite wrestler, he is a distant third to Takamisakari (高見盛) and Masatsukasa (将司) in my book, he has beaten two of the best (including yokozuna Hukuko (白鵬)) so far and is tied for the best record. I hope he keeps it up and forces at least a playoff on the final day of the tournament because I have tickets.

Today’s picture of Baruto arriving at Ryogoku, by the way, is not from the current tournament. I took it last September, during the last Sumo tournament held in Tokyo.

Posted on January 17th, 2010 under Estonia, Japan. Tags: people, sumo. Comments: 2

On our last morning in Bangkok I took the elevator to the top floor of the hotel in hopes of seeing the sunrise over the Bangkok skyline. Unfortunately, the windows were dirty and the Bangkok air was quite smoggy (for the first time–a morning wind took care of the smog on the other days).

The top floor of the hotel looked quite a bit different from the other floors. These must have been some sort of penthouse suites as you had to enter through a seperate set of glass doors to get to the special rooms. There were also sculptures and other decorations that the other floors didn’t have.

A guard also “prevented” entrance to this exclusive location. I put prevented in quotes because in actuality the guard was sound asleep, curled up in the fetal position on the floor (just out of range in the above photograph).

We split town and headed for the airport with a cab driver who refused to turn on his meter. He wanted more than we paid with the meter for the same ride we had on the way in. I told him I would pay what we paid with a meter on the way in. He didn’t complain and after dropping us off and getting paid he left us with a smile on his face.

The above photo is what happens in the Bangkok airport while dad is checking in.

As I mentioned before, the new, Suvarnabhumi airport in Bangkok is really nice–both inside and out. Personally, I wouldn’t have minded had they cut a few corners on the airport and spent the savings on fixing the sidewalks in downtown Bangkok.

Posted on January 11th, 2010 under Thailand. Tags: bangkok, ellie, people, ryan, sunrise. Comments Off on Departing Bangkok

Street food, like the above, was available all over the place. Ellie had a coconut, but we avoided meat that wasn’t cooked right in front of us. Amazingly enough, none of us got even a little bit sick during the nine days we were in Thailand. We didn’t drink the water, but we had plenty of ice.

The boat ride back down the Chao Phraya River had better views than the way up as the clouds and sun did a little dance behind Wat Arun.

Right on the river, near our pier, was the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. The place is incredible. The above photo doesn’t do it justice. It probably didn’t hurt that we were hot, Bangkok was humid, and the inside was nicely air conditioned.

Further up the street we saw a street vendor making a killing thanks to the nearby school which had just let out.

Posted on January 7th, 2010 under Thailand. Tags: bangkok, clouds, food, people, skywatch. Comments Off on Road back to the Holiday Inn Silom Bangkok

I’ll wrap up Thailand’s Grand Palace today with another flurry of photos.

This Thai man was working on the grounds. The above, close-up shot doesn’t fully revel his environment so I went for a wide angle shot, below, as well.

Just like Denmark and Norway, the king of Thailand has his guards too.

Above is the Chakri Maha Prasat Hall. We didn’t see any live elephants in Bangkok, but we saw many in Phuket a few days later.

I caught these two hanging out on the grounds of the Grand Palace.

The place almost looks like Disneyland… Older and not so phony though…

These two, Thai Buddhist monks sported far larger, fancier, and more expensive camera equipment than my little TZ7.

This last structure is called the Aphorn Phimok Prasat Pavilion.

Posted on January 6th, 2010 under Thailand. Tags: bangkok, buddhist, buildings, clouds, people, skywatch. Comments Off on The Grand Palace

After exiting Wat Pho through the back we made our way up the east fence (pictured above) to get into Wat Phra Kaew (which includes the Emerald Buddha and the Grand Palace). There was no entrance on the east side either. Finally, when we got to the north side we found the only way in.

The admission to this place is the only thing I found expensive in Bangkok. It was 350 baht (about $11) each. That’s about the same fee as the expensive temples in Kyoto, Japan (the ones in Tokyo are free and the ones in Kamakura are either free or close to it), but this is Thailand where most people make less than 250 baht per day. For example, the meal we had just eaten, for four with drinks, was less than admission for one of us. But the guidebooks said this was the place not to miss so we paid, and we were not disappointed.

One, quick, funny story about Ellie’s shirt in the above photo… She had on a dress with tights underneath. Even though the tights weren’t tight and went below her knees and her dress almost went down to her knees the guards would not let her in, saying she was too immodest. So Linda took her to the bathroom where her dress was pulled down below her knees and put a souvenir, Bangkok t-shirt on to cover up where her dress was. We made it through with this far sillier, and no more modest, outfit with no questions asked.

The frescoes along the inner walls of the temple are fantastic. You could spend a day just examining them. A guide who could of told us the stories painted on the walls would have been nice.

Several Thai artists were freshening up the murals.

Posted on January 4th, 2010 under Thailand. Tags: bangkok, buddhist, people. Comments: 3