While on my way home (and stuck in an airport for 5 hours) I thought it’d be fun to let you know some of the things I got to do while in Bangkok.

The Chatuchak weekend market is a huge market, where you can buy clothes, food, souvenirs, and many other things. We spent several hours there, and didn’t even get to look at half of it.

A river tour including a section through the canals provided some insight into Thai life, and was a lot of fun. Especially since we were there during Thai new year, in which people throw lots of water at anyone passing by; we got very wet!

We attended a Thai culture show, which was absolutely amazing (even despite the fact that we missed out on the show notes and so had no english translation of what was going on). The indoor theatre in which the show took place had a stage in which there was a river flowing through, as well as rain during the show! The stage sets and general production during the show were excellent, and if you get a chance to go to Bangkok I highly recommend you go to this show. (I don’t know the name of it, but was told that there are two cultural shows in Bangkok; one in the city and one further out. This was the one in the city, which is reported to be the better of the two).

Riding on elephants was probably the most exciting thing that I did in Bangkok, simply because it’s one of those things you may only get to do once. For about 30 minutes we rode on the back of elephants, including through part of a river. After this there was an elephant show put on for us, which included the elephants walking on their back legs, “shopping”, and giving some of us a massage with their front legs (yes, they massaged my back with their front legs!)

On the same day we visited the bridge over the river Kwae, where prisoners of war from WW2 (including New Zealand and Australian soldiers) were forced to build this railway bridge. This is a two hour trip out of Bangkok but was worth it for this and the elephant rides.

Finally, other than the markets, Bangkok has a couple of really large malls. The MBK mall has the general shops that most malls have, while Pantip and IT City sell almost purely IT related stuff. It’s worth checking these out if you’re into these things.

When I get a chance (once I’m home), I’ll post some photos of my trip, and something about the conference I attended (which was the reason I went to Bangkok!)

There are several interesting things about the airport in Bangkok:

• On the inside, the airport looks like a giant warehouse (a lot of grey).
• They have those cool horizontal elevators.
• They don’t make any boarding calls over the intercom. You have to pay attention to the TV screens.
• There are quite a few billboards containing advertising, that said “For advertising only” in quite large letters on them.

More interesting Bangkok things to come later.

On Friday I leave for Bangkok, for the Ministry Net Conference. For those of you going, I’ll see you there! For the rest of you, I look forward to reporting back afterwards (it’s unlikely that I’ll post between now and then), see you when I get back!

The Bible is full of principles which we can apply to our lives, and to our character development as we grow in our relationship with Christ. We can often can take a biblical principle and apply it to a certain situation, but do we stop to think about applying it to the nitty-gritty details of our lives?

I know that I often overlook applying a principle to my life in this way. For example, we read in Isaiah 55 that God’s ways and thoughts are higher than ours. We can look at a specific situation and say, “I see that God’s plans for that situation were different than mine, and this is evidence of the truth”. And that it not a bad thing to do by any means. Lately however I find myself being reminded of this scripture sometimes almost immediately after I think or do something, and this is what has got me pondering whether or not I really do attempt to apply the things that God is teaching me to the “small” details of my life.

Why is this important? Because our thoughts and our attitudes (and therefore our actions and words) are all intertwined. Our thoughts feed our attitudes, and our attitudes our thoughts.  I know that If I don’t pay attention to the details, the seeminly “small” things, then I don’t really believe that God’s ways and thoughts are higher than mine.

I went and saw 300 last night. Despite what a lot of people had been saying, I came away somewhat disappointed.

The Good:

• Good visual effects.
• Humourous at points.
• Spectacular battle scenes in which you can tell a lot of effort has been put in with regards to choreography, and where the minor details leave you impressed.

The Bad:

• Unnecessary scenes containing nudity.
• The plot line has many holes (ideas that were started but weren’t developed at all).
• Predictable character development.

You can read more reviews on the IMDB website, but my conclusion is this: If you’ve really been wanting to go, or are a fan of the graphic novel, then you’ll probably want to check it out. Otherwise, don’t bother, because you’ll be going for two or three fight scenes and not much else. My overall score: 6 out of 10.