Multimedia blogging fun in BKK
My colleagues here at the Internews Bangkok office decided we needed to learn to use a few online media tools, so they divided us into teams, handed us Flip videocams and gave us assignments to get us out into Bangkok. Our gang, the Crazy8s, was assigned Pantip Plaza, aka Computer City.
Getting to Pantip Plaza was slow, hot and sticky, but uncomplicated, thanks to the presence on our team of Thai speaking James. Having been ditched by our local team member Sumalee and the overextended Kathleen, 4 Crazy8s (James, Persephone, Atul and Jiki) squeezed into a taxi and headed off. Traditional Thai traffic jams gave us plenty of time to play with the Flip camera. James and Persephone interviewed amused young taxi driver about his technology use (unedited video here).
We were overhwelmed by the amount of STUFF in the place. In the end, only Atul and I bought anything electronic – cute little solar-powered LEDs, that Atul says are the “future of lighting.”
James and Jiki (our own Js) went for bags – James got a new backpack, skillfully bargaining from 2300 to 1800 Baht, and Jiki bought a little bag with elephants on it.
On the way home, James offered me some local snacks 
(see the video here) to no avail. We walked over a canal whose name I didn’t catch (Jiki, James – help me out) then to Chit Lom and took the Skytrain home. (you can see where we went on this map, which doesn’t look right to me, I think Googlemaps search may have given me some wrong results).
Our indefatigable James paused en route to explain to the camera the Erewan shrine, where, as he first said “women go to get pregnant” to us from a walkway in the sky. 
We returned about 6, Jiki and I exhausted by the heat and humidity and crowds, James and Atul apparently unruffled.
CC licensed picture of the Erewan Shrine from Flickr
Uploaded on October 10, 2005
by Adrian Whelan
