When setting forth on my current journey, I purposefully chose to leave everything other than the flight and the first few days completely open to anything. From a game theory standpoint, the branching factor is very high — I can do nearly anything as long as it completes prior to my flight out. As my time here flies forward, the available options and activities decline sharply and the branching factor begins to vanish.

In my final week here in Thailand, the branching factor has become so small that the intellectual sensation is similar to a game of chess or go where the outcome is known and the details can mostly be reliably predicted or planned.

Though I had managed to avoid planning for the trip, I cannot avoid planning at some point during the trip. Working backwards, I have to start a new job on the 28th and therefore must catch my flight from BKK to SFO and therefore must get to Bangkok for that flight and therefore must make travel arrangements to get from Chiang Mai to Bangkok and therefore cannot be out trekking through villages in Northern Thailand, etc.
Planning itself comes naturally and in fact requires effort for me to take a laissez-faire attitude toward the trip itinerary itself. I took the laissez-faire attitude precisely because it is not how I naturally interact with the world and I hope it imparts insight and personal growth.

I have observed this endgame effect in human relationships. If you have dated a few people, think back to the start of a relationship on the first few dates or the first kiss. It’s not just the hormones that feel so good — the plethora of possibilities is intoxicating as well. As the relationship progresses, each party starts closing some opportunities. As those possibilities close, the relationship enters an endgame. There is no ko rule in real life so the relationship stagnates or terminates.
There is no goal or endpoint required in a relationship and should therefore never need to enter endgame if all involved do not attempt to over-plan, instead leaving the union in a state of innumerable possibilities until the final journey we all must take arrives.

In the last couple of years I began becoming interested in non-verbal communication and specifically non-explicit communication such as sounds, movements, and expressions where the communicating parties have no prearranged denotative form for the sound, movement, or expression. Prior to my interest, I eschewed imprecise communication.

Before coming to Thailand, I was told something along the lines of, “The Thai people have their language and they use it amongst themselves while everyone you will meet can pretty much speak English.” In my experience so far, this statement is hogwash! I have met few Thai that know more than a few simple words and phases. Even those that work in tourist oriented stores and restaurants know little more English than necessary to specify the total and many use a calculator to communicate that.

Communication has been interesting and relies on skills we are all born with and develop to different degrees in our life. This is different than ASL or the distinct sign language developed for SCUBA which I have been utilizing the last few days here on the island. I do wish that SCUBA groups had adopted something along the lines of ASL though I understand many reasons why they would not. With sign, the participants in theory both know that the somewhat arbitrary symbol of a shaking hand means, “Something is wrong.” Communication with the Thais has relied on making appropriate faces and since both participants do not have a shared denotative form your communication takes on a very emotional and customized character for every situation.

So far, I have been able to negotiate food on multiple occasions. I have also been able to negotiate a massage and be clear the feet were the only thing I was interested in having rubbed. I have observed that these communications are pleasing and leave a sort of satisfied sense of accomplishment when really not much has been accomplished at all.

I suppose that is all well and good for survival of mammalian species while completely failing to address higher order communication like, “how am I growing”, “how am I being held back”, “what kind of compromises can we make”, and “where would would you like to go for cocktails?”

I start the day with a visit to Wat Pho near the Grand Palace. Wat Pho is known for the reclining Buddha which occupies an entire building. Leaving Wat Pho, a man approaches and tells me that the Grand Palace is closed. I know he is lying. He also tells me that there is a Turtle exhibit which is special and today only at a Wat across the river. He then tells me to be sure I only ride on Tuk Tuks with a yellow license plate. And lo and behold, a Tuk Tuk driver pops his head up.

Tortoises sounds cool so I walk over the bridge to the Khao Mor cemetery which is part of Wat Prayoon. The Khao Mor cemetery is lovely and filled with tortoises. You can buy sliced banana, rolls, and other bits of food to feed the tortoises which several at the site were doing. The central piece of the cemetery is a large rocky structure with cremated remains along with pictures on display. I am told by a man there that people rent space from the Wat for a year at a time for display of departed dear ones.

Wat Prayoon is different than the others in one very distinct way — it’s thrifty design and lack of colorful details and spires. The entire Wat is white though it keeps the distinctive bell shape to the main structures. To enter the Wat, you pass through a Buddha image museum. The Thai people believe that feet are unclean and shoes are even more unclean so any time you are entering a Wat structure or entering the presence of a Buddha, you remove your shoes. I remove my shoes and enter the museum through a door opened by a lone guard. I appreciate the various Buddha images and slowly walk the space absorbing what I can. Without words, again because of no shared language, the guard indicates I should enter the Wat and walk around. Around back, he suggests I go up the stairs. I climb the stairs and find a raised center loop to walk. As I reach the front side of the loop, a symbol crash rings through the air and I cannot help but laugh at the joy and wonder dripping through the air.

I walk to the nearby Wat Kantayanamit which, unlike Wat Prayoon, is bustling with people in worship. I feel unsure if I should enter any of the spaces and I brave forward. No one seems to mind my presence and I try to keep myself as subdued and respectful as a farang can be. A gentleman there gives me some information on the various statues and that the women in the temple are doing a sort of ‘mock monk’ ritual with cut hair and white robes.

From there I walk to Wat Arun which has the most intricate and detailed decorations I have seen to date. The temple itself is also steeper than any I have been to and they allow visitors to climb the monument. I am a little surprised by this since it is steep enough to give many some difficulty, if nothing more than fear, on descent. It appears that most that could never make it up and down recognize that at the start and never try. I do wonder if anyone has been stuck up there or taken a bad fall since it is generally easier to climb up than down.

I figure now is a good time to see the Grand Palace as originally planned. I walk there, walk in, and am informed that I need pants to enter. Sigh. I decide to not rent their clothes and instead return tomorrow. I head over to the National Museum of Bangkok and enjoy the displays of history, kings, and artifacts.

I wake in the morning to still sore feet and a few blisters. In response to this stimulus, I decide to spend the next phase of my trip to Thailand scuba diving.

Let’s rewind a bit. Last year I visited New Zealand on a trip where I booked nothing beyond the airplane trip into and out of Aukland and the only goal was to hike and see some New Zealand sights. This worked extremely well. I hiked, went to museums, kayaked, met people, traveled via bus, boat and plane, and generally had an awesome time. Since this is my first visit to an Asian destination, I have reserved a hotel room in Bangkok for three nights to give me time to get my bearings and learn enough about how things generally work before diving into the unknown. Four days and three nights seems like plenty of time to get at least a tenuous handle and proceed with some assurance that I will not be starve or sleep in the street without previous arrangements.

Koh Tao is probably the world’s premier diving instruction location with dozens of diving outfits stuffed onto an island no more than a few kilometers across. I research a few diving outfits on Koh Tao and select an open water certification program with a good looking outfit which charges 9,800 Baht for the four day course with accommodation. I see that they have an agent in Bangkok and figure that will be a better way to handle the booking than the only other option — email. I call Boyd and set an appointment with his guy, Kevin, at the Thannon Khao San office. To get Blanglamphu, the part town with Khao San, I am told to ride a boat up the river. I head down to the nearest pier and as I arrive a long tail boat is leaving the dock. I say where I am going and they ask for 100 Baht for the trip. I give them the cash, jump through one boat to the one for me, and we speed up the river. The boat was very light and bumped and swayed on the light river waves. Occasionally slowing for what I assume is to regain control of the vessel. We arrive at the pier, I disembark the boat and walk toward Khao San.

All along the way, Tuk Tuk drivers and random people on the street keep stopping me trying to give me a ride to a particular shop or destination other than where I am actually going. Alas, this is a constant theme in Bangkok — everyone wants your money and many have finely honed scams. One fellow tells me that the Grand Palace is closed today and I pass the entrance which is clearly letting people in and out.

I arrive at the travel agent and book the scuba lessons as well as the bus and boat transit necessary which will leave Bangkok on Sunday evening at 19:30 to begin my lessons the following day. With this settled, I relax knowing that I do not have to worry about anything other than winding up at the bus stop on time and can do whatever I want with the next days in Bangkok.

To celebrate, I get a beer.

There is a friendly joint on Thannon Khao San which appears to cater to travelers. I order a local Thai beer, Chang, enjoy it and a second one with a delightful couple, Ben and Charlie, out of Australia. They assure me that one eventually gets the Jedi skills to avoid the scammers and non-stop throng attempting to sell schwag for 10 or 20 Baht.

Later, after having explored and enjoyed Blanglamphu, I head back toward my hotel. At the pier, I find out that there is a regular ferry which runs long lengths of the river for 14 Baht. This becomes my preferred method for covering North-South journeys for the remainder of my first stay in Bangkok.

Near my hotel, I feel a bit peckish and poke around the neighborhood for a street vendor. I find a woman making papaya salads. She speaks no English. I speak no Thai. We go through a process of her holding up food-stuffs and me accepting or rejecting it as part of my salad with the enthusiasm meant to guide her toward quantities — I give two thumbs up and a serious head-nodding for the peppers. The salad is delicious.

By the time I am situated, it is 20:00 local time so I ask the hotel concierge what there is to do nearby. She directs me to take the sky-train a couple of stops over to a night mall. The Bangkok night malls are a garish spectacle of lights, music, go-go bars, with couches in the streets and vendors packed in shoulder to shoulder selling sundries from sunglasses to pornography. It all reminds me of Burningman if everyone attending Burningman was trying to buy or sell something.

Before I was really even in the night mall, a man approaches asking, “What I was looking for?” I tell him that I am just looking around absorbing the Thai culture. He says he can take me to girls and drags me to a hosted bar. The women line up on the couch in a revue fit for a Nevada brothel.

I quickly realize this is not at all looking around and absorbing the local culture so I excuse myself. My new friend drags me to a go-go bar with bikini-clad women dancing on stage. I tell him this isn’t looking around either. I tell him I really do not want his help in finding anything since I can look around on my own. As soon as I ditch him a new leech attaches itself, trying to get me to patronize another go-go bar. All the while I am criss-crossing the night mall and actually getting a feel for the bazaar. I lose the second leech and in the same length of time as his order, a new one appears.

“Hey man, what you want?” to which I forcefully indicate my desire to be far away from him. He looks a little offended and suggests I should go get some sleep. Luckily, at the end of the alleyway we are on has a small little bar called Nomads with pleasant music playing and no hard sell to have a drink there so I sit right down on one of the couches. I am greeted by the woman running the place and order a margarita. I sip my margarita and chat with Ariel Dong for a while. Her English is pretty bad and my Thai is close to non-existent though we manage to discuss live bands and the night market in general.

Upon finishing my drink I step into a massage joint called Adam Spa. Because of all the airline related walking as well as the six hours in Hong Kong my feeties were tired! The establishment had 4 lazy-boy recliners in the front two of which were already occupied by someone getting a foot massage. I ordered an hour long foot massage at 250 Baht and quickly a twenty-something Thai boy comes out and washes my feet. He then begins liberally applying cream to my feet, calves, and shins and rubs away the stress of the day. During the massage there were others coming and going. The patrons were usually men with 2 women total while I was there. Near the end of my massage, a woman emerges from the back with quite the freshly fucked look on her hair and face thought it could have simply been a really good massage. As I go, I am given a card for the spa as well as offered a gay guide to Thailand. I start to explain what I am in merely vacating in Thailand and decide it is too difficult to explain my relationship with queerdom given the language barrier. He whispers, “It’s okay,” which is sweet if misplaced.

Since I had never been to a hosted bar before this night and I want to see what Thailand’s menu contains, I return to the bar from earlier in the night. Again with the line-up and I actually choose the woman with the biggest smile – named Goy – and order a shot of whiskey. Eve, the proprietor of the establishment comes and sits with us, pulls out a calculator, flips it around with 1,500 on the display and says, “Ok, for this much, you can go upstairs, get a massage, get a suck, and fuck. How about it?” I was completely ignorant that this was basically straight up prostitution though in retrospect it is all pretty obviuos — there would have been more patrons if it was an opportunity to just have a drink with a cute girl. I offer to finish my cocktail with Goy and then be on my way which Eve accepts. Goy seems disappointed and she also accepts the arrangement. In total, it was actually kind of fun to have a drink at a place with someone fawning over you. I think they are missing a real business opportunity by exclusively pushing fucking. Goy spent most of the time playing with my piercings and trying to convince me to go upstairs with her. After several refusals, I finish my drink and give Goy large tip for her time.

I return to Nomads for a final cocktail of the evening, talk to Ariel a bit more, and finally return my hotel back through the throngs of the night market.

I like this Blowfish module built on top of the ruby OpenSSL wrapper, though I wanted a more flexible module which would allow choosing the cipher at time of use rather than having to make the exact same module for AES, idea or whatever. This can be implemented as a simple class which takes the engine during construction and a private cipher method so that people know to only call encrypt() and decypt()  adding a fair chunk of boilerplate code. Instead, I chose to implement this as a module function which returns an appropriate encrypt and decrypt Proc based on the engine you want to use for encryption.

require 'openssl'

module CipherSuite
  def self.make(engine)
    def self.cipher_fn(engine)
      lambda do |mode, key, data|
        cipher = OpenSSL::Cipher::Cipher.new(engine).send(mode)
        cipher.key = Digest::SHA256.digest(key)
        cipher.update(data) << cipher.final
      end
    end

    cipher = self.cipher_fn(engine)
    encrypt = lambda { |key, data| cipher.call(:encrypt, key, data) }
    decrypt = lambda { |key, data| cipher.call(:decrypt, key, data) }
    return encrypt, decrypt
  end
end

Usage is straightforward:

encrypt, decrypt = CipherSuite::make('aes-128-cbc')
encypt.call(key, plain_text) # => encrypted_text
decrypt.call(key, encrypted_text) # => plain_text

I am a bit of a r00b, so if this could be simplified further please let me know.

For both recipes, I start with 3 pounds of pork belly obtained from a local meat market. Pork belly is usually available at a large butcher though you may want to call ahead and make sure they have it or will get it for you on a particular date. Upon arrival at home, I salted the pork with a light sprinkling of kosher salt. I do not use nitrates on the pork because after the brining and smoking, I freeze the pork slicing it prior to use. If you will be storing without refrigeration, consider nitrates. If you do not like to eat pig skin, you might want to remove that now since the whiskey will penetrate more thoroughly without it.

Whiskey brined bacon

• 3 lb pork belly in a single slab
• ½ c kosher salt
• 2 c Jim Beam Bourbon

Combine all ingredients in a sealed plastic bag — a zip-lock or vacuum sealed bag can work if you are careful. Agitate the bag for a minute and make sure you have a good coverage over the meat.

Whiskey brined molasses bacon

• 3 lb pork belly in a single slab
• ½ c kosher salt
• 1½ c Jim Beam Bourbon
• ½ c molasses

Combine the salt, whiskey, and molasses in a mixing bowl and stir until you get a uniform mixture of whiskey and molasses. This can take a while depending on what equipment you have to do the mixing. Put the mixture and the bacon in a sealed plastic bag.

Put both of the bags in the refrigerator, agitating and rotating once a day for four days. At this point. the bacon is cured and ready to fry up and eat. Try it! Maybe you’ll like it more than smoked bacon. I like the texture and flavor of smoked bacon so I smoke it.

Before smoking, rinse with fresh water and dry the bacon. Let the bacon sit for a few hours on a rack in the open air to allow a pellicle develop. A pellicle is a formation as the water soluble proteins in the meat are pulled to the surface and form a crust which will absorb the smoke much better.

To smoke bacon, you will either need a smoker or a large grill. I have access to a large grill where we placed  enough briquettes to make a small pile in a cast iron skillet. That skillet is place on one side of the BBQ and the meat is placed as far away as possible from the heat. We soaked hickory chips in water – consider beer if you don’t mind sacrificing some suds for your dead piggies – and placed a small handful on top of the coals once they were going.

Check the chips every 30 minutes and replenish the supply if needed. If the coals go down add a few more as needed. Once an hour, rotate the meat and change its position in the grill if it is especially full. After four hours, the meat is smoked and you can remove it.

Slice off some healthy slices of your delicious smoked bacon and fry it up right away and enjoy!

This recipe works great though I think I will reduce the salt to ⅓ c the next time I try the recipe. The salt level is good though probably saltier than it needs since I do not require the same kind of curing levels need by little house on the prairie scenarios where you need to keep the bacon for most of a year without a refrigerator.

Installation and configuration of ircd-hybrid was not difficult. For some reason it took a couple of tries to get the operator password to work. I may have had a typo though issuing:

$ /usr/bin/mkpasswd -Hmd5 mypassword

worked once pasted into the password field of the operator section.

The tough part came when attempting to hook up hybserv. The hybserv process was up and running and attempting to connect to ircd with a logged failure message:

Fri Jun  4 02:44:40 2010 Connecting to 127.0.0.1[127.0.0.1] tcp/6667
Fri Jun  4 02:44:40 2010 Connected to 127.0.0.1 tcp/6667
Fri Jun  4 02:44:40 2010 Server Error: Closing Link: 127.0.0.1 (Invalid password.)
Fri Jun  4 02:44:40 2010 Read error from server: Broken pipe

This confused me since I thought I had a simple and unencrypted password. After some playing around with the configuration some, I managed to get a slightly more helpful message:

Fri Jun  4 04:32:00 2010 Server Error: Closing Link: 127.0.0.1 (Server ID Exists)

After a little bit of head scratching and a lot of searching on google only to find no useful results, I eventually started playing with the configuration for hybserv and got:

Fri Jun  4 04:31:20 2010 Server Error: Closing Link: 127.0.0.1 (Invalid servername.)

Much of the problem of configuring ircd-hybrid to work with hybserv is that the hybserv configuration refers to the older irc configuration syntax. The hybserv configuration and documentation available refers to the M line and the N line and other lines in your ircd.conf — all of which do not exist. Luckily, ircd-hybrid did keep comments like (OLD U:) in the configuration and the connect section had the comment:

/* connect {}: controls servers we connect to (OLD C:, N:, H:, L:) */

This is when the a-ha hit. I made up a name in the server section of ircd.conf and copied that same made up name into hybserv.conf. On restart, hybserv quickly connected and everything works.

Excerpt from ircd.conf:


connect {
name = "irc-services.mydomain.com";
host = "127.0.0.1";
send_password = "plaintextpass";
accept_password = "plaintextpass";
hub_mask = "*";
class = "server";
};


Excerpt from hybserv.conf:

N:irc-services.mydomain.com:Hybrid services
S:plaintextpass:127.0.0.1:6667


Lessons learned beyond these snippets:

• Get /oper working first — it speeds up everything and gives you more information when connected and in operator mode.
• Once you have /oper working, /rehash is your friend.
• Remember to restart hybserv with every configuration change.

If you run into this issue, hopefully google will find this post for you!

Locals singing their hearts out

A little after midnight, Jason and I decide to see what nightlife exists around Mendocino. We check out the hotel in Mendocino which looks closed. Next door is a bar called “Dick’s Place” which has half a dozen older men sitting around watching baseball — this is not the nightlife we are looking for.

We head North to Caspar where there is a roadhouse. I spot a few heads in the place and we go in. Inside is a fine bar has about a dozen younger men and women. The crowd is all locals and they are all at various points of inebriation from mildly tipsy to falling over drunk.
The owner and barkeep – Bobby – is a youthful 53 years old he claims and is a refugee from San Francisco. He is entertaining and likes Blanton’s bourbon. On this fine Wednesday night, his wife is running a karaoke show. I fill in a card to sing “Just a Gigolo” in the style of David Lee Roth and within minutes am singing on the stage. After my performance, Bobby accuses me of being a ringer from SF to steal the whole show. Before leaving, he tells us to come back any time and informs us that this Friday the roadhouse will be filled with hot cougars looking to swing dance. Looks like we have something for Friday.

Jason and I meet a little after 9:00, grab a huge breakfast at the Pork Store Haight. Our waitress there is insanely cute and maintains a bright disposition at all times during our breakfast. We finish our breakfast and head out toward Mendocino. Yesterday I agreed to join Jason to Mendocino for a few days of hiking and even though I have some phone calls scheduled for this week and my window of opportunity to do my OSDV volunteer work is closing fast given the job offers currently lying on the table.

We eventually arrive in Fort Bragg from 20, then Mendocino for coffee, and finally at our hosts’ home nestled on a back road between the two. Since the daylight is quickly leaving, we head over to an easement which connects to the Russian Gulch and a 6 mile round trip to the waterfall which traverses a pygmy forest as well as a coastal redwood forest.
I have my trusty REI Venturi 30 on my back for this trip which I I have grown to appreciate the more I use it. The pack has a large main compartment with a water bladder holder, an accessory compartment, a small top pouch, two mesh pouches, two small hip pockets, and to the best of my ability to tell, trekking pole holders.
Everything for the trip, other than my laptop, was safely stowed away in this medium size technical day pack. This includes my clothing, wool extremity warmers, GPS, camera, headlamp, Leatherman, LED flashlight, tripod, notepad, hat, mushroom hunting guide, and some tasty San Francisco water.

The majority of the pack itself is held a few inches away from my body by a small internal frame to keep air flowing over my back while hiking. The pack is so well balanced when on my body that there is almost no pressure from the shoulder straps — most of the weight winds up on the hips.