Finished 1st part of project / Upcoming Travel Notice

It costed me a lot of time and sweaty hard work: cutting and assembling the two loudspeakers, which are actually the 1st part of my project here in Thailand. Today I finished work with the speakers and tested them. They actually sound very nice, but what is even nicer is that I can see the product of 3 weeks of hard work now. And they make sound, that's so great!!! :-)
You can see the plan for the speaker here. Soon I will show you one picture with the finished product.

At work

Furthermore I just wanted to inform you that on Friday I will leave Chiang-Mai for a 1 1/2 weeks travel. No, my internship is not over yet, but since people at the university are quite relaxed about the amount of work an international student has to do and want me more to get to know Thai culture, way of life and language, I was allowed to take 1 1/2 weeks of from work.
I will go to Bangkok (we all know it's the capital of Thailand), a crazy metropolis with even more crazy traffic and air pollution, but also very vivid and fancy. After that I will visit Ayuttaya, a very old temple site from a few centuries ago, when it is the old capital and king's town of Siam (Thailand was formerly known as "Siam"). Then we will go to visit a site that is famous for it's floating markets, which means people sell food and all kinds of other stuff on boats on the water. You might feel reminded to the James Bond movie "The man with the golden gun", where wild pursuits were taking place on the waterways. After that we head to "Ko Chan", which is also called the "Elephant island", thanks to it's shape. There we will stay for relaxing at the beautiful Thai beaches, soaking up the sun, swim at some waterfalls, do scubadiving and just enjoy our freetime. I will have company from Ayush, Tew (who will be our very experienced travel guide), Tip, Michael and Tan.
I am really looking forward to that since I cannot wait to see a bit of the rest of Thailand. Having stayed now about 1 month in Chiang-Mai has been very interesting, but I feel like getting away now for a certain period of time.
So I hope you liked my pictures and still keep reading eagerly what I have to say. :-)

A mass of new images uploaded

Today I uploaded a huge number of new pictures from the last 3 weeks. There was a lot of stuff going on, so check it out.

at work, party, temples, people, elephant camp, power plant visit

Thailand is wicked!

Yaah, Thailand is wicked, that's true!
Yesterday I celebrated my 28. birthday. We went to a "German brewery restaurant" and ordered a "German Sausage Jumbo dish". We had Frankfurter, Bockwurst and Weisswurst. I liked it, but my friends from Thailand and India rather sticked to the Thai food, that was also served. Too bad! The attempt to export a piece of our culinary German food culture failed... :-)
Later the live band in the brewery played "Happy Birthday", and as I quickly realized, this song was for me. Then my friends presented me with a big birthday cake with lots of candles on it and while I blew them out somebody put the spotlight on me, so that all people in the restaurant could see who is the happy birthday guy.

What I wanted to tell you last time about Thai girls and Western boys in the discothek:
Thai girls are much more decent and respectable than girls in many Western societies. For example excessive and sexy dancing or kissing in public (even mostly in the club) is undesired here. So usually it goes like this: A more or less drunk Western guy (often to be seen with a sleeveless shirt, shorts, flip-flops and Tattoos) approaches a very well dressed Thai girl by just touching her, whereupon the Thai girl will push him away. Most likely because that's absolutely not the way a Thai girl likes to be addressed, even not under the influence of alcohol. While Western girls, who also sometimes wear beachclothes, are much more familiar with this way of the guys introducing themselves to the women, Thai girls seem to hate that like hell. Usually they are so kind and always show such a cute smile, but one time in the club I saw a Thai lady shouting at a Western guy in a very nasty way; so loud that half the club was aware of their struggle. He had obviously done something very bad, and she knocked the stuffing out of him (zur schnecke machen :-) ) and was strikingly resolute by doing this. Anyway, after almost 4 weeks of getting to know Thailand, I can say: The majority of Thai girls are really at least as cute as sugarcane. :-) They look like angels. Photos will follow soon.

And one more thing I wanted to tell you about is the Chiang-Mai music scene which I was trying to become a part of: I now know much more about Thai musicians. Having been to a huge number of restaurants with live music so far, I would judge the ability of most Thai people to make music as the following:
In technical terms they are awesome musicians. Almost all of them have had a very proper education on their instrument, which can be easily seen from the way they hold and play it. When entering a bar I am usually blown away by the sound, the timing and the technical abilities of the musicians. But: Almost any band I have heard so far, started to bore me after 10-15 minutes. The problem is mostly that they only play cover songs and often they have worked them out sooo accurately that you couldn't tell the difference from the original (they even sometimes use the same instruments the original band used). But (again) I am afraid that I must say: The majority of Thai musicians are not able to put feeling into the music they play. Often it sounds a bit like a computer that plays MIDI files. Most of them have no sense for setting accents to the music. Although they are very professional at the technical level, the way they are playing and interpreting couldn't sound more boring to my Western ears.
Another important point is, that most of the cover bands I have heard, seem to practise a new song for so long, they are finally able to play it exactly like on the CD. There is no room for interpretation or experiments. Most of the live music here I would describe as sounding irrelevant (the German word "belanglos") to me. It just happens in the background and doesn't excite. To finish with this, I want to make a comparison: Some people say that most of what is known to us as "Black music" cannot properly done by white musicians, because it's usually only the black people that can put in a certain kind of feeling (for example: "soul") into the music to make it sound black. I partly support this thesis and would go further and say, that most of Western style music cannot be properly played by Thai people, because they are also missing a kind of feeling that is found so commonly in many of our Western music styles.

Well, after having written a novel again I will come to an end now. In the next days I will put on some more photos (including several trips to different sights and scenic landscapes) to illustrate the fun I have here a little bit more. :-)

So I wish you a pleasant day and say thank you for reading, until next time

San Kamphaeng hot spring and Chiang Dao cave etc.

Lots of things happened during the last week:
On Tuesday I finally rented a motorbike. It is a little faster than usual (speeds up to over 100 Km/h if you want that. ;-) ) Although I don't have a driver's license for that kind the rental was not problem, they just wanted to see that I own an international driver's license, which I do. I am thinking about doing my driver's license for motorbikes in Thailand now. It will be extremely cheap, only about 3 euros and you only have to answer a few questions, that cannot be difficult according to the driving abilities of most Thai people. Plus, I heard it's available in English language, too. It's only valid for one year and won't be valid in Germany (of course not), but I can live with that. But in case of an accident I am more save with license here.

For lunch and dinner I always go out with Ayush and Tew, two very nice people, that have become my friends during the last week. I already introduces Ayush, he is IAESTE student from India, and Tew is a Thai university teacher for architecture, which knows a lot of nice places to go to or to eat out. With them I went to some bars in the evening to have a couple of beers and listen to some live bands. The first band we saw was on the "Riverside" and played Red hot chili peppers and similar cover music. They were all in their twenties, but extremely professional on their instruments. Plus, the sound in that bar was awesome, as the equipment was, too.
During the next days we went out more often and I discovered that almost any restaurant or bar has a live band playing in the evening. It's always the same: Equipment and sound is of very high quality, the musicians know more than well what to do with their instruments. Some coverbands even play their own versions of the songs, which is a pleasure to listen to.
First I thought I might be able to play together with some live band, but since most of these people play so much better than I do, I am not so sure about this anymore.
Anyway, after having heard 6 or 7 bands playing, I noticed that although most of the bands seem to play almost perfectly together, I percept a lack of the certain something. The music was indeed missing some experimental elements, it seems to be designed to pleasure the guests like a sort of background thing. Even a jazz jam session I watched seemed to act only within certain boundaries that had been defined before. I wouldn't say that Thai people don't play by their hearts but for me something is missing. I let you know about if I find out what it is the next days.

On Friday we went out for party purposes until 4 o' clock in the morning. I will show you the pictures the next days, because they are on Tew's camera. Plus I will provide you with some information about fundamental differences of Thai and "Western" mentality, that manifested very clearly between drunk Western boys and Thai girls in the discothek. Be curious for that!!

The weekend has been no less busy than the week was. Me, Ayush and Tew visited the San Kamphaeng hot spring and afterwards the Chiang Dao cave. At the spring, which is a very touristic site (Asian tourists) we bought a basket with bird's eggs, which we could boil in the water of the hot spring. It was close to a geyser that shot out of the earth at a temperature of 105 degrees celsius. Close to the geyser there was a basin for boiling the eggs. They tasted very good, since they didn't have a very different taste from chicken's eggs. After hanging around there for 2 hours we made our way to the cave and had to climb up a very steep stairway with a dragon's body winding all the way up to the top, serving as a handrail. The way into the cave was then the other way round. It was extremly steep and tight, too, since you had to crouch to get down the stairway. The cave itself was of an outstanding and bizarre beauty. It was a long way from the top to the basement, we had to climb down. At the basement finally there were some Buddha statues where most of the people showed their respect by kneeing on the ground and praying. After a while I got short of breath and we climbed all the way up again and went back to Chiang-Mai. In the evening we relaxed at a restaurant and had a marvellous dinner with decent live music and a band, that came to play to our table. It was an unforgettable experience.