The Riviera Club - Joanna & Nate

So this is our friend - "the american roommate" that we met on a bus during my first trip to Thailand back in 2001. That's the tiny person on the right there. She was traveling on her own from an university exchange program in Japan.

So being the friendly traveler Tresa asked her if she wanted to split a room with us. It worked out. We all got a nicer room at a reduced rate. I don't even recall how we got to talking. All I remember was she had a baseball hat. And I was hoping for air conditioning. This is the place I got heat stroke and fed some tropical fish.

And now she was getting married after all these years. This was the first time we'd met Nate. We'd heard about him, but never met until now.

hey this venue was and is a PGA tour stop. It was really impressive. In the Pacific Palisades right off of Sunset Blvd. The Riviera Club is home to the Nissan Open.
During the ceremony I could hear the ping of golf balls from the driving range.


Mike Weir won this event in 2004 & 05.





I was looking for the trophies and Tresa found it off in another location. The fatter trophy on the right-middle there is the PGA one, and the one to the left of it is the Wanamaker trophy for the US Open. I think that this club also hosted a US Open event.


Anyways...back to the wedding. With Joanna's fondness for everything asian, although I only saw about 5 other asians at the wedding for some reason I was expecting more, the wedding itself had an asian theme.

From the cherry blossom trees to the kimono table cards and the blue buddha. Even the center pieces were made out of bamboo. Bamboo is a renewal resource you know.

We couldn't help looking around all the time. It was such beautiful venue.
Our salad was pretty too. I took a picture...see the link to the album below. My steak was good too, but no pic. I ate it pretty fast. It was good.

Look for the dessert, the strawberries wearing tuxes. It was a good thing I had taken a nap in the afternoon. I had been working on EST while in LA. So my body clock was still going to bed by 9pm PST and up at 4-5am PST. I would have been beat. And I needed to be awake to drive back to Charul and Ramesh's place. Good thing we had the GPS in the car.

These are Joanna's parent. They were so nice. I wished I had video'd father-daughter dance. Cuz it was pretty unique. It wasn't a slow song. I did take multiple shots so hopefully you can get a sense of the dance.

We didn't realize that we were so well known. We were known as the Thailand couple (I'm also known as the tropical fish guy). Every time we introduced ourselves people's eyes would open wide and say 'You're the Thailand couple'.
But if your kid was travelling alone in a far away land. And a couple befriends you, I guess you'd be grateful too. It's always safer with friends than alone.

Thumbs up to Tresa's outgoing travelling personality.

Click me for more photos.