Some more non-poker related videos.

Here’s a video shot in Grand Cayman of a stingray feeding dive we did. The funny part is that for all of the danger people think is involved with diving with sharks I actually received my worst animal related bite from a stingray.

While trying to feed one of the rays she sucked hard to pull the food in and I tried to get my hand out of the way after releasing the squid into her mouth. Well, she kept sucking and it pulled the skin on the back of my hand into her mouth and she clamped down (no teeth) and tore off a huge hunk of skin. Pretty nasty with a huge piece of flesh just hanging there.

So, don’t fear sharks. Fear those evil stingrays :-)

The next clip is my first (and so far, only) skydive in Paso Robles, Ca. I was pretty confident right up until I was sitting in the doorway. That’s when it all sort of hit me. Good thing the instructors were there to give me a push (literally). :-)

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Last night I did an interview for the Poker Affiliate Listings radio/podcast show and Jeremy mentioned my list of travels. Well, coincidentally I’ve been going through a bunch of old videos and such and ran across some stuff that I thought I would share for those of you who enjoy some of the non-poker content I post from time to time.

The first two videos are of some shark feeding dives I did in Nassau, Bahamas. The first video is the first dive where we just toured the area and made friends with the sharks. The second video is the shark feeding dive. A lot more action in the second one if you’re short for time and can only watch one.

If I can get the other two videos ripped I’ll post skydiving in California and diving with stingrays in Grand Cayman.

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If you’ve stopped by Bill’s Poker Blog over the last couple of days you’ll notice that I’ve updated the design a bit. It’s still a work in progress that will probably last awhile but I’m rolling it out in little stages rather than save everything up for a huge re-launch sort of thing.

One of the biggest changes is that I’ve aggregated all of the email subscriptions from various poker-related websites I run into one mailing list. That means that if you signed up for email updates on Bill’s Poker Blog, Poker Job Search, RakebackReport, or PokerFilter then you’re on the new mega-list.

One of the reasons for bringing all of the mailing lists together is that I’m consolidating websites. There will still be a Poker Job Search, RakebackReport, and PokerFilter but I’m trying to tie the sites more closely together and share content between the sites since the topic matter overlaps.

Eventually, I hope to offer exclusive content via the email updates that won’t appear on the blog. Bits and bobs that are too big for a Twitter update but not quite enough a regular blog post.

Another reason for consolidating email updates is because there was a large amount of overlap between the email update lists from all of the sites. So for those people, instead of subscribing to multiple email update lists they can get all of the same information in one email.

RSS subscriptions for each individual list will continue to exist and if you just want updates from a single site without the rest, you can subscribe via RSS and get just those updates.

If you do opt for the RSS option, please just click the “Unsubscribe” link at the bottom of the update email and you’ll be removed from the email list.

You can find the individual RSS feeds here:

Bill’s Poker Blog RSS Feed
Poker Job Search RSS Feed
RakebackReport RSS Feed
PokerFilter RSS Feed

If you get a chance, give me some feedback on the new website (good or bad). Like I said, it’s still a work in progress so things will keep changing as I take in feedback.

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I thought this was entertaining. Calvin and his friend hit up Patpong and eat bugs.

When people ask me why I like Thailand so much, this is it. You can go out and have a once in a lifetime experience like this every night.

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I just wanted to give everyone a heads-up that I’ll be going semi-dark soon. Tomorrow I have people picking up my computer to ship back to the US which means I’ll be iPhone and iPad based until at least the 5th of July. I’ll try to pump out as much as I can between now and then about the developing story about Full Tilt and I might even throw in some pics from my holiday in Phuket if they ever get done uploading but the simple truth is that even on the iPad composing anything of significant length is a bit of a challenge. I’ll do my best and try to offer whatever thoughts I have but please excuse me if I tend towards less lengthy posts for a few days.

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When I came to Thailand a little over two years ago one of the biggest motivating factors in that decision was that I really didn’t see much going on in the industry that seemed especially meaningful or challenging that I hadn’t done before.

So I decided to take some time off and take a step back and observe how the industry was evolving while I worked on some personal projects and continued to write on my blog. It was the right move at the time for me and I haven’t regretted the decision a single bit. Over the last two years I’ve launched a lot of cool and exciting projects, seen Thailand and other parts of SEA the way no tourist can, and I’ve met some really amazing people from all over the world.

But barring winning the lottery (which isn’t likely since I don’t buy lottery tickets) the plan has always been to return at some point. I wanted to come back when there really was something that would get me excited about the business again.

And I simply can’t ignore how different the online poker landscape looks today than it did even a couple of months ago. Most people (players and the media) are focusing on the cash out issues but this is really an exciting time for online poker in the longterm. I’ve been really encouraged by the way companies are starting to approach online poker again and finally see an environment where eventually legal, regulated online poker will be available in the US.

That’s a long lead-up to say that I’m leaving Thailand and ready to get back into pushing online poker to the next level. I’m rejoining Party Gaming, I mean Pwin, I mean BwinParty, I mean the World Poker Tour. I’ll be back working with my old boss at Party, Steve Heller, who is now CEO of bwin.party USA and World Poker Tour. I’ve really enjoyed working with Steve in the past and I think he’s putting together a solid team.

I’ll post more details about what I’m working on and such but I should be back in the US in early July ready to hit the ground running.

In terms of this blog I plan on continuing to blog about the industry just as I have before. I’ve never stopped blogging working for either Full Tilt or Party in the past.

That sort of leads to a second big announcement (that’s completely poker unrelated). I got engaged back in Feb of this year and we had plans to get married in November. Well, this has sort of pushed up the schedule a bit so last Friday Ked and I went to the Bang Rak amphur office in Bangkok and legally tied the knot.

In Thailand there are two forms of marriage. There’s a Buddhist ceremony where vows and such are exchanged and is similar in nature to a western marriage. The only exception is that it’s not legally binding. Many Thais marry in a Buddhist ceremony and don’t bother filing for a legal marriage unless they’re about to purchase a home or car or something else that is to be joint property.

The legal marriage mostly involves getting a lot of documents translated, certified, and then sitting around a government office where they review that the documents are complete and they hand you a marriage certificate. No vows, no ceremony, nothing. Just paperwork.

So, we’re sort of doing it in reverse. We got legally married yesterday and I’ll be coming back out to Thailand in November to do the Buddhist ceremony up in her hometown of Phetchabun (with a reception in Bangkok).

We pushed up the legal side so we could get the spousal visa paperwork started. Depending on which office accepts your application it could be up to 10 months before they’re allowed to board a plane to the US. Hopefully the Bangkok USCIS office will take our application and the turnaround will be 8 – 10 weeks.

Lots of changes ahead. Should be an exciting time.

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Okay, I’ve already started receiving emails from friends wanting to know how accurate The Hangover II is to real life in Bangkok. First off, let me say that it’s about as accurate as The Hangover was to Las Vegas. By that I mean that there are as many people stealing police cars, waking up with tigers in their hotel rooms, and getting punched out by Mike Tyson in Las Vegas as there are drug dealing monkeys, accidental uzi discharges in go-go bars, and khlong (canal) jumping in Bangkok.

First off, very few of the Asian actors/actresses are even Thai. The Thais in the film are primarily the police, the monks (not real monks), and some supporting cast like flight attendants and passengers. Lauren isn’t Thai. Teddy isn’t Thai. The ladyboy/transexual isn’t Thai. So that should be the first clue as to how realistic the movie is.

Don’t get me wrong though, a lot of the movie is dead on Thailand/Bangkok. Parts like drinking Fanta from a plastic bag had everyone in the audience laughing because that is something that is very Thai.

As far as locations, it’s a little difficult to imagine how someone would get from Krabi (where Stu’s wedding takes place) to Bangkok in a speed boat. Krabi’s shores are on the Andaman Sea and the only major river running through Bangkok empties out into the Gulf of Thailand. So unless they went around Malaysia there’s no way that’s happening. Innocent enough. There are plenty of beautiful islands and beaches in the Gulf of Thailand. They took a few liberties with the geography.

The scenes walking around crowded Bangkok streets right after they wake up were filmed in Bangkok’s China Town. Uhm, pretty much dead on. That’s China Town. Crowded, confusing, and crazy.

The Buddhist monastery the boys visit seems to be pronounced Chiang Mai but I’ve seen listed elsewhere as Ching Mei. Chiang Mai is way in the north of Thailand so there’s no way they made it to Chiang Mai in one day. It’s a good 12+ hours by car or train and highly unlikely that they even meant to compare the two. The actual location was in Samut Prakan which is sort of a museum of Thailand architecture and not a monastery at all.

As far as getting beaten up by monks, I highly doubt that. Buddhist monks are, as one might imagine, opposed to violence. Smacking someone with a stick rather than pointing to a sign or gesturing to them to stop talking seems drastic and very un-Buddhist.

Siam Sam’s is an actual bar but it’s called Cactus Bar on Soi Cowboy, one of the main red-light districts in Bangkok. I’ve heard some conflicting reports on whether or not the interior scene was filmed in Bangkok or LA. Someone mentioned that it was shot in Tilac Bar (a couple of doors down from Cactus Bar) but others insist it was shot in LA and modeled after Tilac Bar.

Similarly, the street they walk down to get to the tattoo parlor was shot in Bangkok on Sukhumvit Soi 7/1 but the interior of the tattoo shop was shot in Los Angeles. It was big news when the producers paid off all of the bars on the soi to shut down so they could film that scene. I have a friend who was hired as an extra for the riot scenes but they cut his part out.

The scene with the rooftop restaurant overlooking Bangkok was filmed at Sirocco restaurant on the 64th floor of the State Tower. Nice place. Beautiful views. You can get similar views at Vertigo on top of the Banyan Tree Hotel and Long Table in the Column Building (though not really rooftop).

Overall, I think the movie was fantastic. I know a lot of Thais who were afraid it might dwell too much on the flaws here like corruption, the nightlife scene, etc but most of the Thais I’ve spoke to that have seen it say they laughed from beginning to end.

I had a friend of mine say he was concerned after seeing the movie. I responded by saying that Bangkok, a city of 12 million people, is much, much safer than Los Angeles, New York, London, Paris, or Frankfurt. Easily. Even though many of the locations in The Hangover II are real your chances of having anything even remotely like this happening to you are as likely as what happened to the wolf pack in Las Vegas.

When you really look at the movie there really isn’t very much that presents Thailand in an overly negative light anyway. They end up in the situation they’re in because of their own doing (well, actually just one character’s doings). Mr. Chow isn’t Thai so all of the crazy stuff he gets them involved with also has nothing to do with Thailand. Basically they could have filmed the entire movie in any city that has a reputation for being a bit crazy.

All in all, I loved the movie. We laughed like crazy during the entire thing. Part of it was because it was just funny but part of it was there were some inside jokes (like Phil going to the clinic and it only costing $6). If you liked The Hangover I think you’ll love The Hangover II.

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I just wanted to do a quick one for affiliates out there that might be looking at how to geo target their affiliate ads now that US players can’t play on many of the sites they promote. I’ve been using similar code on my Thailand Friends website to keep people from certain countries from registering and spamming the forums.

First off, I’m assuming you have your own server and that it is running some variant of Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP and understand at least a little bit of PHP programming.

First off, get yourself GeoIP C API

wget http://geolite.maxmind.com/download/geoip/api/c/GeoIP.tar.gz
tar -xzvf GeoIP.tar.gz
cd GeoIP-1.4.7
./configure
make
make check
make install

Next get the PHP PECL extension

wget http://pecl.php.net/get/geoip
tar -xzvf geoip
cd geoip-1.0.7
phpize
./configure
make
make check
make install

Change your php.ini and update (normally located at /etc/php.ini)

Add the following line:

extension=geoip.so

Download Geo Lite City database

wget -N -q http://geolite.maxmind.com/download/geoip/database/GeoLiteCity.dat.gz
gunzip GeoLiteCity.dat.gz
mv GeoLiteCity.dat /usr/local/share/GeoIP/GeoIPCity.dat

No restart your Apache webserver. On RedHat Linux the command is:

/etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd restart

Now create a test file. I’ll call mine geoiptest.php

Insert the following code between your php tags (sorry, for some reason it keeps filtering out the open and close php tags.

print_r(geoip_record_by_name('101.108.22.245'));

Run that either via a web browser or from the command line (i.e. php geoiptest.php). You should get something that looks like this:

# php geoiptest.php
Array
(
[continent_code] => AS
[country_code] => TH
[country_code3] => THA
[country_name] => Thailand
[region] => 40
[city] => Bangkok
[postal_code] =>
[latitude] => 13.75
[longitude] => 100.51670074463
[dma_code] => 0
[area_code] => 0
)

As you can see, you now have access to the continent, two and three country codes, the country name, and the city. There’s actually more there but I tend to focus on these. I guess in some areas you could target down to the zip/postal code but I don’t have any need to get to that level.

So, let’s look at how you can use that.

$myip = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
$mygeo = (geoip_record_by_name($myip));
if($mygeo['country_code3'] == "USA") {
SHOW USA AD
} else {
SHOW INTERNATIONAL AD
}

The $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] gives you the IP address of the person visiting the page. You take that and feed that to the geoip_record_by_name function which returns an array which you can reference using $mygeo.

From there you just need to figure out the IF/ELSE combination you need. For instance, if you are targeting France you would nest another IF statement in there so you show your .fr ads to your French traffic.

For a complete list of country codes you can check out this site. Or you can google for 3 letter country codes.

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If people had been wondering where I was all last week, I was up in Phetchabun for the Songkran festival. Songkran is a religious holiday but over the years it has sort of developed into a three-day nationwide water fight.

I prefer the Phetchabun type of Songkran because it’s civilized. In Bangkok, Pattaya, or any other tourist town it’s almost like people take pride in ruining expensive electronics by soaking you while they can see you have your mobile in your hand. In Phetchabun there’s a main drag and most of the action takes place on this stretch of road. People just go crazy throwing buckets of water at each other and smearing talcum powder on your face.

Some people bring huge blocks of ice and put them in their water source so when you get hit it’s freezing cold. Not fun :-)

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Just a quick update on Ron “The Mad Yank” Fanelli. After five months of psychiatric review in Surat Thani Fanelli is back in Phuket prison deemed to be sane. Fanelli requested the psychiatric examination after saying he was unsure of why he did what he did.

You can read more about that here:

Phuket Wan

I also wanted to thank everyone who contributed to Wanphen’s family. We have been dolling out the money to the family as needed. It’s still tough on them though. Thais generally go back to their hometowns on the holidays and so every holiday when I’ve transferred some of the money to her mother my girlfriend calls her to let her know and she talks about how this is the first New Year’s or the first Songkran that he daughter won’t be coming home and how much she misses her.

I thought I would round up some of my previous posts about this in case you’re coming in late and missed it.

Ron Fanelli – Should We Feel Sorry For Him?
Ron Fanelli aka The Mad Yank’s Confession
Fund Raiser for the Family of Wanphen Pienjai
Screen Names for Donation to the Wanphen Family
Going Up To Phetchabun
A Visit With Wanphen’s Family

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