The Greatest Two-Hit Wonders – I disagree with a lot of these on the basis that they are “album bands” rather than singles bands. I mean, the Cure? Crowded House? Jimmy Buffett? No way. (Blues Traveler = 100% though.)
My Dinners With Harold: How a shy Ph.D. in English literature revolutionized the science of cooking and became revered in the most famous kitchens in the world – Lovely little profile. I really should get Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking for the Snook sometime.
Hot ball in aloe gel – I laughed so hard at that Mastodon post that I cried. Juvenile, I know, but so funny. 😭
I’ve been waiting to play “Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley” for ages and it did not disappoint. Charming watercolour artwork, beautiful music from Sigur Rós, all my favorite Moomin characters, Little My being a hilarious jerk… and the gameplay is all about anti-authoritarian eco-activism. My only complaint is that I wish it was longer! ❤️
I headed off earlier this week to Bangkok, Thailand to attend the first ever AWS APJ Community Summit. This event brought together 130 AWS Heroes, Community Builders, and User Group leaders for two days of learning, sharing, and networking.
It was about a 10 hour flight for me from Munich straight to Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok.
I found a couple of my coworkers in the airport – Rohini and Mark! We agreed to carpool to the hotel together.
Unbeknownst to us, we were about to hit rush hour traffic so it took us more than an hour to get to the hotel. I had a great first view of the city though.
The event was being held at the Anantara Siam Hotel Bangkok, and wow, it did not disappoint. Rohini and I were invited to sit down and have some tea while they checked us in.
My room was lovely! I felt very welcomed. 🙂
It felt odd to be taking a trip without the Snook! I sent him a selfie to show him I’d arrived safely.
I was pretty hungry, so I headed downstairs to have dinner with my colleague Ridhima.
To my delight, we ran into a crowd of AWS Community folks from Australia and New Zealand! A few of them were familiar faces to me, but others I was meeting for the first time. For most of them, this was the first overseas trip since Covid.
The next morning, I headed out on a city tour with the full contingent of Aussies and Kiwis. (Because of their long travel time, the Antipodeans all arrived a day early.) I’m sitting with my colleague Jason, who runs the Community Builders program.
Our first destination was the Grand Palace, the residence of the kings of Siam (and later Thailand) for hundreds of years. We parked some way away and then walked over with our local guide.
We entered the Palace complex, and it was already turning into a brutally hot day.
We walked past amazing murals showing scenes from Thai history and the Buddhist religion.
The Palace was very opulent and beautiful. I loved the colourful statues.
You might notice in the photos that several of us are wearing questionable skirts and trousers. This is because the Temple is the most sacred Buddhist temple in Thailand, and having bare legs is not allowed. I bought a sarong from a local seller to tie around my waist.
The Temple of the Emerald Buddha itself was amazingly beautiful. It’s covered in gold and colourful tiles and precious stones.
You have to take off your shoes to go inside, and no photos are allowed. A crowd of people were sitting on the floor, just having a moment of peaceful contemplation. Many people brought in lotus flowers as offerings. After a short visit, I went for a walk around the outside of the temple.
I ran into my colleague Belinda, who helped organise the tour for us! ❤️
Even the ceiling was elaborately decorated.
We had some time to walk around, so I just wandered on my own, taking photos of beautiful statues and peaceful corners of the Palace complex.
This is a statue of a kinnara, a mythological half human, half bird.
I was starting to feel a bit pink by this point…
…so it was time to break out the sun protection. Behind me is the Phra Thinang Boromphiman, where visiting Heads of State stay when they visit Bangkok.
From the Palace, we walked the short distance to the Chao Phraya River, where we caught a ferry across to the other side.
Me and Belinda again.
That river water did not look very inviting, despite the heat of the day.
Our destination was Wat Arun (“The Temple of Dawn”), one of Bangkok’s most well known landmarks.
The central tower (“prang”) is encrusted with porcelain.
I climbed up a couple levels and walked around, checking out the statues and decorations.
The final part of the tour was a long-tail boat ride along the river. We had to scramble out on the prow to get onboard!
I’m on a boat! And thankfully by this point the sun had gone behind the clouds.
Our guide took us down some of the canals off the river and pointed out landmarks along the way.
At one point, we stopped along the riverbank near a temple. Our guide had a surprise for us, he said. He pulled out a bag of bread rolls, and I thought for a minute he was going to hand out a snack. Then he chucked one of the rolls in the river, and the surface suddenly ERUPTED with giant catfish fighting over the bread. It was one of the most astonishing things I’ve ever seen.
I’m kind of obsessed with Moomins. For the uninitiated, these are the titular characters from a series of books and comic strips by the Swedish-speaking Finnish author Tove Jansson. I’d never heard of them growing up, but way back in 2005 the Snook introduced them to me and I fell in love. The Moomins themselves are “trolls” but look like hippos and live in a tall, round blue house in the middle of Moominvalley. The stories are funny and droll, but also at times melancholy and gloomy and even occasionally scary. I’ve read most of the books since then (wellll, in truth Rodd has read them to me), watched some of the various animated series and films, collected some merch, and even visited the Moomincafe in Hong Kong (sadly since closed). For my birthday this year, the Snook even made me a Little My cake!
At some point many years ago we learned that there is an actual Moominworld theme park in Finland. Earlier this year I remembered it and jokingly suggested to the Snook that we should go. Amazingly, the stars aligned and Covid restrictions eased enough that we were actually able to make it happen! Strap in folks; this is going to be a long post…
Rather than just fly to Finland, we decided to train it north through the Nordics and visit some new cities (and some of my colleagues!) along the way. Our first destination was Hamburg, a 6.5hr train ride from Munich. When we arrived at our hotel, we were delighted to find that it was just down the street from the Hamburger Dom Fun Fair!
We decided to have fair food for dinner. I was intrigued by the stand offering a “half-meter bratwurst” (which they had to cut in half to fit in the bun!) as well as “Oma’s Gurkenfaß” (Grandma’s Pickle Barrel). The Snook also had freshly-made Marillenknödel (apricot doughnuts).
After the fair, we went for a walk through Hamburg down to the Speicherstadt (“city of warehouses”), which used to be the heart of Hamburg’s working harbour. The Snook was very sceptical about our destination, a place that I’d been told by many was THE tourist destination in the city…
Miniatur Wunderland! This place is the largest model railway in the world. It has 1300 trains across nine sections. The first one we came to was the American Wild West…
We were only able to get timed tickets at 10:30pm, and it was still PACKED. It reminded me of the House on the Rock, in that it felt like an obsessive fever dream kind of place. Every fifteen minutes the lighting cycled through an entire day so you could see it all at night too. Some sections had buttons you could press that would cause things to happen, like a Ferris Wheel to start spinning or the Space Shuttle to take off.
Did I mention it has a giant working airport?? Model plans take off and land through holes cut in the walls while little luggage trucks drive all over the place. It was CRAZY.
There are thousands of little scale figurines all over the place. Hilariously, apparently some of them are doing “rude” things and fans of the place try to catalog them all. We didn’t spot many, but it was pretty clear these folks in the sunflower field were enjoying themselves…
I think my favourite part was getting a glimpse into the control room that runs everything. It looks like Mission Control! It takes a lot of computing power and smart people to keep all the little trains, planes, cars, trucks, and boats moving.
The next day, we bought tickets for a “Hafenrundfahrt” (harbour tour) as it’s the best way to see the Speicherstadt.
It was really cool to see all the old warehouses and canals. Apparently Hamburg has more bridges within its city limits than any other city in the world. (More than London, Amsterdam, and Venice put together!)
Then we went out in to the harbour proper and saw the working port and some big sailing ships near the Maritime Museum.
The sky had been threatening rain and it finally started to fall. Luckily our boat had a retractable roof so we didn’t get too wet! Our first glimpse of the Elbphilharmonie was through the rain…
Of Cats and Wren: ‘Moomin’ Blanket Square – Bookmarking for the future. A Moomintroll knitting chart!!
