Justin-Klein.com – Life of a Traveling Programmer – Page 33

Nana Liquid

Feb 092011

One thing I neglected to mention about Swan Inn is that although it’s very centrally located, it also happens to be on one of the sleaziest streets in all of Bangkok: Sukhumvit Soi 4. All along Soi 4 it seems like every third person is a prostitute. Including many of, erhm, “questionable gender.” Walking to or from the guesthouse invariably results in countless hoots and hollers, sometimes associated with an unsolicited nipple-pinch or two. Even on my very first night, as I huffed my way in with all my luggage on my back, I was accosted by several “sole proprietors” offering their one and only product: boom-boom.
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BKK Must Go Party

Public, Thailand 3 Responses »

Feb 082011

Stefan, Evan and I at Nana Liquid.

After quitting my job as a game programmer in Japan, I was presented with the task of once again packing up my life and moving it overseas. So I posted an ad on a Kyoto messageboard for some secondhand appliances. Stefan, an expat who just happened to be from Los Angeles, responded. Although he didn’t end up buying my crappy old fridge, we exchanged info and ended up becoming friends, reconnecting during my subsequent visit to Kyoto and even once in LA when he returned to visit his dad.

Then, later that year, Stefan decided to move to Bangkok. It’s thanks to this move – coupled with his knack for personal networking – that Herb and I had such an unforgettable week in the city. Continue reading »

Swan Inn

Public, Thailand 11 Responses »

Feb 072011

Whenever we take a vacation, we make a choice. We choose to scrap together our hard-earned cash and turn it into what hopefully amounts to an unforgettable lifelong experience – rather than to blow it on a new car or DVD collection or month of fancy dinners back home. And once we’re finally on that long-awaited trip, we again have a choice: do we burn through the budget quickly, pampering ourselves with all the first-class amenities, or do we draw it out, doing what we can to stretch the experience as long as humanly possible?

To me the choice is obvious. Continue reading »

Over the Pacific

Public, Thailand 9 Responses »

Feb 062011

Even though I’m already on a plane somewhere over the Pacific, somehow, it still hasn’t hit me. It just feels…surreal. Did I really just board a one-way flight to Asia? You’d think that after all the traveling I’ve done I’d be used to it by now; perhaps it’s just because of my zombie-like daze of exhaustion. I have been programming around the clock for nearly a week straight in an attempt to get all my code up and running before the departure; even last night at 3am my room was still a pile of circuits and wires. I didn’t finish packing until mere hours earlier.

Oh well, at least this time I’m pretty much as prepared as I could hope to be for such a trip. Sure, another day or two to wrap up the posts from Europe might’ve been helpful – but I’m no stranger to rushing hastily off into the wild blue yonder. And I did manage to finish the new radar hardware implementation, as well as read the entire SE Asia Lonely Planet cover-to-cover.

Yeah, I think I’m ready 🙂 Continue reading »

One-Way To Bangkok

Public, USA 11 Responses »

Feb 052011

In the summer of 2008, having left the US on a one-way ticket to Japan, I began piecing together some preliminary plans for a long-term trip through China, Korea, Hong Kong, and most of SouthEast Asia. But just after Chinese New Year – almost exactly six months after my departure – these plans were abruptly cut off, as work commitments and life in general finally started to catch up with me and force the tough decision to head home. China, Korea, and Hong Kong had all been covered while the rest of Asia remained perched high atop my ever-present (and ever-growing) “Must See” list.

So nearly two years later, in the spring of 2010, I again looked at resuming the trip – an intention that was this time superseded by a flight over the Atlantic rather than the Pacific.

Once my big trek through Europe concluded, I remained in the US for five months of nearly nonstop computer-nerd-style work, as you’ve already learned from my recent post about Vegas. That’s five months during which the travel bug inside me slowly grew and multiplied, eventually taking over completely. By the time autumn rolled around I vowed to leave the country before the year came to a close. Continue reading »

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