TheNHBushman.com

Photos by MJ Klein

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that all the photos from this event are available in a single group on Flickr.  I encourage all the Flickrites who attended this event to add their photos to this group.  Thanks!

The story of Bushman’s Blogtoberfest party began long ago, almost as soon as the first party was over.  I wanted to bring the Taiwan English bloggers together on a scale that had never been done before.  The first order of business was to find a place to have the party.

While some people complained about the event being held in Hukou, most people welcomed the break and an opportunity to visit a small town to relax.  Most people also recognized the economic advantage of having an event like this in a small town where prices could be kept at a minimum.  Indeed, if this event had been held in Taipei it would have cost several times what it did, ignoring the fact that finding a place where we could do what we wanted is pretty much next to impossible.

Michael Turton and Agnes at the original restaurant

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Hui-chen and I went up to Taipei on Sunday evening to meet up with some bloggers at an informal gathering hosted by Byron, of Textura Design, and Bike Hugger.  It was a nice group of tech types with talk about blogging, politics and of course, technology.  There are other accounts of the event worth reading, and with some great photos:

Darren Melrose Great photos!

IslaFormosa Apparently there was sausage?  I didn’t see any sausage!  I love sausage! Nevermind, smartass (see comments).

Textura Design Thanks for hosting this event Byron!

Taipei Blogger Party Video Thanks Mark!

Taipei Mixer

Now, I have to tell about a funny thing that happened.  There was a giveaway of some cool stuff (technically, called “scwhag).  Byron asked if he could use my hat to put cards into for the drawing.  I had no objection of course (except that my hat was a bit sweaty!).  But I suggested to Byron that I should disqualify myself from the drawings because my hat was being used, and if I were to win the top prize, well, it could be considered a conflict of interest.  Of course, I was joking and Byron laughed it off saying it didn’t matter.

I won the top prize….

Here is the video, embedded for your convenience:

Thanks to Byron and his colleagues for having us!

See you at Blogtoberfest on October 25th!

Photos by MJ Klein, & Andres Yu UPDATE: This is Andres’ article.

I had an idea a couple of weeks ago.  I talked with my friend Oath who owns a store on the other side of our town of Hukou, and explained the concept of a block party to he and some other Thai friends.  They loved the idea, so we set a date and, well this is the story of what happened:

I invited my good friend Andres Yu to join us for this experimental party.  Not really knowing how well it would go over, I knew that no matter what, I would have a great time hanging out with my famous blogger friend.

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Photos by MJ Klein & Hui-chen, including FOOD PHOTOS!

There were still other things to be seen at the temple (“wat” in Thai language).

After checking out the inside of the temple, we walked down to the lake.  On the way we passed this Buddha with a parasol.

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Photos by MJ Klein – with a few food photos….

On our first night back in Thailand, Hui-chen and I took a walk around at night and I took some night shots – my favorite photographic work (besides shooting models).

This is Namuang Road, just outside of The #1 Bar, previously blogged about.  We’re going to take a walk down that side road with the blue light.

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Photos by MJ Klein

This is part one of the series Thailand, Fall 2008.  See also our series on Ubon Ratchathani.

We went back to Thailand after being away for one year, seven months!  It was a nice reunion with old friends, and an opportunity to meet new friends too.

We took a KLM flight out of Taoyuan International Airport in the evening.

Taoyuan International is truly a beautiful, world-class airport.  Hui-chen and I love shopping and we enjoy browsing the shops and duty-free shopping on the ground as well as in the air.

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Photos by MJ Klein & Hui-chen

Now that we’re back in Taiwan we can get back to regular posting.  Internet connections in northeastern Thailand are what nightmares are made of.  It took me literally all day to upload some photos to use in this blog post.  I didn’t dare try to actually publish another post from there.  The last time I did publish something from Thailand I had to start over once my connection droppped out and never returned – which is exactly why I’m not a big fan of offloading my local tasks to online services – you can’t use what you can’t connect to.

The old name for the temple is Wat Ban Na Muang (still called that on Google maps).  The new name is Wat Sa Prasan Suk and while the outside was breathtaking, I had no idea was was in store for us on the inside.

There are too many photos to show you here, so you should visit our flickr album and view the rest of them.

Brunty explained to us that these are gods that correspond to the days of the week.  We didn’t know why there were 8 of them though.  This photo was taken near the entrance to the inside of the temple.

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Photos by MJ Klein and Hui-chen

Recently, Hui-chen and I went to Ubon Ratchathani to visit our long-time blogger friend Brunty.  In our last article I broke down our trip into a summation and this article is the first point of the summary.

Driving Under A Statue of A Giant, 3-Headed Elephant

I want to begin by telling what happened when we arrived in Ubon.  After a grueling 5+ hour ride on what Brunty calls “a cattle car” we arrived at the bus station.  Brunty and Noot came and picked us up.  I had talked with Brunty beforehand via email about our impending visit and he found us a really nice room for only 400b per night.  We stayed there for 2 nights and it was just great.  Also, Brunty offered himself to be our personal taxi service, and we cannot thank him enough.  All I had to do was send him a text message and he would arrive no less than 15 minutes later.  If only the local services were as good!

We checked into our room and went to the food court in Tesco for some quick fare.  Then we went to Brunty’s home and had some drinks and relaxed a bit after our long bus ride.  Brunty invited his friend Barry to join us, and we had a great time chatting about old music and bands.  I don’t know what’s going on with my batteries lately, but when we got to Ubon, both my video camera and still camera batteries were dead.  I got only a couple of shots in the food court and then nothing for the entire evening.  Brunty has written an excellent article about the first night’s events and fortunately he got some great photos.  We were drinking amaretto (which I haven’t had for ages!) and after much conversation we went to a place called The Terrace. I just hope that Barry and I didn’t bore Brunty to death as we talked about music that existed before he did!  In the photos of me at The Terrace, I am soaking wet due to the rain.

If you haven’t seen Brunty’s article, you must give it a read!

The next day was gorgeous.  I sent Brunty a text message and we were off.

First order of business was food.

This is Brunty and Noot checking out the menu at the nana coffee & steak restaurant.  Again, Brunty’s photos of the food are a lot better than mine, and he wrote in detail about the place, so I recommend you read his article.

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