Summer Program on Southeast Asia

Wow, so it has been a crazy two weeks. I have been traveling a lot with the summer program on Southeast Asia, which recently took me to Malaysia and Thailand. The trip was very informative, and much different than the traveling I did in the past. As most all the time was spent visiting industrial complexes and going to think-tanks, there was very little traditional tourism. I just posted the full Executive Summary from the whole thing at the SIIA website.

In other news, my friend Dawn should be at the airport as I write to come and spend a couple days visiting me here. It should be a lot of fun and a great opportunity to see some more of Singapore, since my time for that has been strangely lacking. And I also have the next four days off of work, so that will be nice. The summer program involved a lot of 6-7 day weeks, and a ton of 14-16 hour days. But I learned a lot.



Smoking a hookah on the street in Kuala Lumpur. There was great food to be had at these little restaurants, as well.








This is also in Kuala Lumpur, at the Institute for International and Strategic Studies. It was one of the more fascinating talks, and it would have been nice to have had a couple more hours there to discuss all the points that were raised. But alas, time did not permit.







This is a mosque we visited at Putrajaya. It was very beautiful.







I found this guy standing guard at Wat Po in Bangkok. I did not make it to this one in 2000 when I was here since I was a little "templed out." The Wat is famous for its "reclining Buddha" and having the most Buddha images of any wat in Thailand. Personally, I have limited tolerance for seeing a bazzilion buddhas in one place, though.




We also went to see various dance performances. This one was a brief segment from the Ramayana. While not a full performance, the night was very nice as a brief introduction to various forms of Thai dance and music.





We ate here. Now, a central question that was never answered to my satisfaction is, why? The place was absurd. And on top of that, they insisted on turning on a karaoke machine in the room we were in and blaring bad American and Chinese songs. I mean, what really is so bad about talking over dinner? Though I am getting a little used to the karaoke thing since my landlord just bought one and occasionally starts singing at 7:30am on Saturdays and Sundays.





Finally, I was not going to include it because the picture came out all blurry (I had my camera on the wrong setting) but I feel I would be not living up to my responsibilities if I did not. This was one of the "big draws" at the restaurant above. They dress some poor guy up, attack him to a wire with a bowl of Tom Yam soup with dry ice in it and he "flies" across the restaurant. It was really silly. And as for the obvious question about the restaurant... Does it ever fill up? Everybody I talked to says no. But in case you want a restaurant that seats 5,000 for a wedding, here you are.