Driven

After hearing about the movie Drive and watching some sneak peeks of a couple of scenes I was very decided that this is a movie I must see ... that it is the movie I have been waiting for since ... well ... quite some time now. Apparently, a bunch of other people had the same feeling, only they were expecting to see either the follow-up to their previously favorite blockbuster

Or maybe the first episode in the rumoured spinoff movies following the exploding amazing success of adrenaline pumping action packing 

Well ... the GOOD news is that, after watching the movie, one of those people decided to open a law suit against the producers of Drive as it did not meeting her very high expectations. So for all you people out there hoping to see some fast pace action including but not limited to Vin Diesel jumping from one rooftop to another shooting three pistols and throwing five grenades at the same time while driving a good old fashioned muscle car ... wait for the next Fast and Furious ... or you may feel like filing a lawsuit ...

For anyone else, go see Drive if you want to see what is probably the best movie of the decade... if only for the music ... or the guy ...

Peace, Quiet ... or something like that ... and a ton of Gold

Thai temples ... a place of tranquillity ... a place of meditation ... the perfect place for ... 

...standing in awe in the face of long lasting divine statues erected many many years ago ... or...

... visiting a creepy Thai version of Madame Tussauds (yea it's made of WAX) ... or ...

taking a hip new pic for your boring Facebook profile ...

Did I mention they've also got GOLD?

There's literally TONS AND TONS OF GOLD!!!

Eye shattering, mindblowing tons of GOLD!!

GOLD, IN THE NAME OF GOD!!! GOOOOLD!

Food Contact

So, I already wrote what I did before and after, and, after two weeks of not sitting on my butt and doing nothing, here comes the true story of what went down in Thailand ... There was adventure, excitement and reeelaxiation but probably most of all ... there was FOOD!

But let me back up a bit ... After a couple of flights and almost one day later we landed in Chang Mai. We took a taxi to our nice hotel, and this was the first time we noticed something I may blabber about a couple of times over here: contrast ... but more on that later. It was already evening, and, as my incredible advisor D. told me, in Chang Mai this is the moment you need to go towards the night market and stop along the way to eat. And eat we did ... the contact with the crowded market is a bit fuzzy in my mind as is the bar with cheeky girls we passed along the way, but what I remember is that we had an amazing dinner. It is only this moment that I remember as ... first contact.

fishy fishy ... and its ##$! spicy sauce ...

We ate all sorts of many things, some (much) more spicier than others. Chang beer flew and the incredible sticky rice with mango topped it off ... it was a real burp... and all this royal treat for about 5 eur /  person ... y a y !

Later on the girls got a quick foot massage during which we took a sneak peak around, where we saw some pretty lame muai thai fighting, bars, drinks and .... deep fried bugs.

fried bugs make thai woman happy

 
I didn't get a clear shot ... maybe it's for the best...

So here we were ... a bunch of confused tourists walking the back alleys of Chang Mai after a 24 hours trip ... the atmosphere in the air was very positive and the food was great. It had proven to be a very good first evening out into welcoming Thailand, and the best ... was yet to come ...

A Shocking Difference

So ... after two weeks we are back from Thailand! It was quite amazing and I hope to manage to blog about it all right here. Uhm ... what was that, sorry? The pic is not from Thailand ... yeah, about that ... step into my office for a few minutes.

For our first day back we decided to clear our heads and went on a short trip to Germany to visit some castle there...

It was an impressive building in the mountains, and we had a short hike through the woods, when we took some pretty pics as well as stretched our legs.

Once inside the castle we realized that you could only visit on a guided tour. Which should be OK... only we were in a group of 20 germans and the guide locked the door with the key and then went on for about 20 minutes blabbering in ... german (doh) ... Which was bad enough, but things got worse when I decided to take a closer look at our new German friends as I really didn't have anything better to do. I noticed that in my vicinity I had a couple of reverse-smiling cyborg ice queens accompanied by their male vorg counterparts. They seldom came out of silence with precise questions about the year in which the archbishop of Cologne went on to do something way to unimportant for me not to instantly forget and every time they "smiled" I could feel a shiver going up my spine. I couldn't help remembering our driver from the tuc-tuc just the day before in Bangkok. He was so happy about ... everything ... telling us in sign language how the water was up to around here in that area over there at some point and then asked some happy people in another tuc-tuc next to us where they were staying and then told us laughing that we should go see the ping-pong match. He kept telling us all kinds of jokes before he dropped us off and drove on further in the half crazy trafic...

Somewhere ... something ... went ... wrong?

So yeah ... that's something I'm still thinking about ... Gute Fahrt!