Tag Archives: Greg Nasif

Bangin’ Photos of Bangkok

That title has probably been abused by millions of internet users.

Here are some photos from our journey through Bangkok.  It was a massive city, with a lot more nighttime activities than daytime ones.  I think we were all in agreement that it would have been nice to trade one day for an extra night, if only Superman could hold the Earth in place for us.

Pictured here are some of Bangkok’s premiere temples and palaces, some New Years celebrations, our canal tour, a Muay Thai training session, and my secret, solo journey to collect Mr. Yuu Koyama from the airport.

We arrived in Bangkok on Monday, December 28th, and departed on the evening of January 1st.

Departing Chiang Mai International Airport

Departing Chiang Mai International Airport

Wat Arun

Wat Arun

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Chiang Mai – The Elephants

CHIANG WAT, CHIANG MAI – On our first full day in Chiang Mai, we visited an Elephant Retirement Park.

Initially I sought to visit a park where we could ride elephants, but my brother Chris pointed out that these establishments have come under intense criticism from animal rights activists.  Chris worked for a zoo and studies the issue extensively.  Deferring to his experience and expertise in animal politics, we instead visited an elephant retirement park a couple hours north of Chiang Mai city.  It was aptly called “Elephant Retirement Park.”

At the park, we fed and bathed several elephants.  Their trainers told us about elephant habits and routines.  One egged on a baby elephant to step on me.

Here are the photos of this unforgettable experience:

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Chang Wat

Me with an elephant at Elephant Retirement Park in Chang Wat

Me with an elephant at Elephant Retirement Park in Chang Wat

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Japanese People Can Write Better Than You In Any Language

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Surprises are big and small when you live abroad.

I am not sure how obvious this is to most people, but something that intrigued me about Japan is how everyone I encountered seemed to be able to read the Latin Alphabet.  Japanese people appear to read Latin characters, or in Japanese, “Romaji” (when he visited, my brother most eloquently asked “when you say Roman characters, you mean English, right?”) nearly on pace with native English speakers.

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You Won’t Find That Here

Today is May 7th, two months to the day since my arrival in Japan. I knew I’d leave behind major comforts in America, yet I wasn’t ready for the blow I received the very first night.

It was March 7th.  After an exhausting journey, our trainer Kyle took my co-trainee and me to a grocery store in Osaka, Japan. Looking around at all the food, thinking of the reasonably comfortable hotel room waiting for me, I felt safe at last.  Proceeding to the open refrigerator, I grabbed the first plastic container of a beige substance I saw. “Great,” I said. “Hummus. Looks like I have breakfast for tomorrow.”

“Hummus?” repeated Kyle. “Yeah, you won’t find hummus here.”

Horrified, I dropped the sweetened soy-paste.

Won’t find hummus?

I thought this was a metropolitan country. There’s an Italian restaurant on every street here, and there’s not a corner in Italy – or any Mediterranean country for that matter – without a kebab stand selling hummus for an extra euro.

“Japan is different,” explained Kyle.  Mercilessly I might add.

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The Greg Nasif Blog Awakens

This is my first post in what I hope will be an ongoing standard – The Greg Nasif Blog.
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To be sure, the mighty gregnasif.com has existed for over a year and is proudly the something-billionth most trafficked website in the world. But I never knew what to do with the site; rather I was parking my car in this spot for the offchance that I would get really famous (or infamous) overnight for an insensitive tweet and someone would snatch the URL before I had a chance to gather myself. After all, look what happened to sarahpalin.com. And that will be the last time I ever compare myself to Sarah Palin.
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But after moving to Japan and seeing my friend and co-trainee Rob Milchling’s exciting blog, it occurred to me, after keeping a private journal for nearly four years, that it might time to begin publicizing some of my more interesting ventures. Indeed, I am writing this current entry on my three-year-old iPhone at a British bar in Kyoto, Japan.  Most interestingly, Brits around me are grunting and wailing about a soccer game on TV, in bizarre accents I thought only existed for comedic purposes.  It was a spontaneous decision to come here, and it’s these spur of the moment/everyday international experiences that I feel somehow as if I’m betraying a solemn duty by not publicly recording. No more. Today I give in.
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I have had many writing projects rise and fall. This one, however, I am sure will succeed. It is really nothing more than a depot for my writings opinionated, news-oriented, or otherwise. Wherever I go, Whatever I do, I always find I have something to write. And after some ten years of including both alcohol and social media in my life, I finally trust myself to handle the traditionally dangerous combination. Thus this blog is invincible and not even a worldwide nuclear holocaust will destroy it.
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More entries will follow, and since this technically isn’t even the first post, I guess it was completely useless.
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Presenting the Greg Nasif blog.