Today is both Chinese New Year and Valentine’s Day. Here in Thailand Valentine’s Day is celebrated but it’s not really a Thai holiday. Much like other consumer oriented holidays advertisers have sold the concept here but it has no real roots in Thai culture or tradition. Christmas is much the same. All the malls are decorated up in festive displays and people wear their little santa caps and such but most have no idea what the holiday is really supposed to be about. Marketers have just sold the concept that it’s a sanook (fun) holiday and the Thais have adopted it which drives more sales.
Anyway, the real reason for the post was that last week I organized a little photo shoot event on ThailandFriends.com and we struck out into Chinatown and the Klong Toei market looking for photo opportunities. I thought I would share some of the results.




















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Hi, my name is Bill Rini and this is my poker blog. I've been blogging about poker and the poker industry since around 2003-ish. Like most people I started out playing poker as entertainment in home games whenever we wanted to sit around and smoke cigars, drink beer, and eat pizza, and needed a good excuse. I started playing online shortly after the first online card rooms opened and it wasn't long before I was playing 20, 30, or even 40 hours a week or more. One day I received a phone call about a program manager position at Tiltware which was the company that consulted to Full Tilt Poker on software development and marketing. After Tiltware I spent about 2.5 years working at Party Poker where I was the poker room manager.

{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Awesome photos Bill!
Thanks Riggs!
Is that dog dead or for sale? Or is it both? It looks pretty comfortable on that make-shift bed, with his jaw hanging by the bar. Hehe. :D
Anyway I imagine an exotic country like Thailand, it must be nice and romantic to spend a holiday like Valentine’s there?
The dog was asleep :-) Actually the cat had no eyes. She just would turn her head in the direction of sounds. Very sad but she also looked so cute.
Nice shots. I decided to get my fill of anything Asian on v-day this year by going to chinatown and joining in the new year festivities here in Vancouver. It made me miss Asia so much, but it was such a great time!