3 weeks!

Last night we had supper at a dive of a restaurant, and as we were waiting for our supper, I saw a big rat run across the floor, and duck under a Coke machine! And the food wasn't that good to boot! I ordered spaghetti, and got a tiny plate of it, barely an appetizer. So, after that, we went to another place and ordered a big plate of french fries ("french fried" they call them here).

Today marks 3 weeks from the day we left. It honestly seems like 3 months or longer. Canada just seems like a distant memory. It's hard to believe it's only been 3 weeks!!!

I had set three alarms to wake us up this morning, for our trip to the floating market and the Crocodile Farm. We didn't hear the first one (at 5:30), and I just barely heard the 2nd one (at 6:00), then the third one (at 6:00 as well) woke us up for sure. Ended up my watch had fallen under my bed, and I could barely hear it. The first two alarms were set on my watch, the third on a little alarm clock I had bought before we left. Good thing for it!!!! We got up, rushed to have breakfast, and waited and waited. Our experience with other bus tours was, the bus was always very early, so we were rushing to be ready. Ended up the bus was late, it didn't come by the guest house until about 7:05. We thought it had forgot about us or something. The bus was actually a mini-van that seats 10, plus the driver and the guide. We stopped at a coconut sugar factory first, which was kinda neat. Sugar from coconut tastes a little different, but good.

The we got the floating market. Well, this floating market was cool, but totally commercialized now. 75-80% of the people there were tourists, floating around on the boats, and most of the shops sold tourist knick-knacks. Not really what we were hoping for, but I did expect it to be very touristy. Darren/Mavis: I assume the one you guys did in Vietnam is very different, as I remember Darren making a remark about how he was the only white-boy in the whole market, and he left out-of-place taking pictures of all the locals doing their daily routine. I can't wait to see that one.

The long-tailed boat we took to the floating market was cool, speed up and down the canals. These long-tailed boats have motors, and ours went slow, because it was full of tourists, but alot of the empty long-tailed boats were flying at high-speed through the canals, creating great waves, it was actually pretty fun!

We then headed to a wood-carving place, where they make everything from little wook knick-knacks to huge pieces of furniture. Everything is hand-made. This was a cool sight to see too. They had a show-store area, where you could buy stuff, and there was this one huge dining room table, it sat 10 (came with chairs), that had an exquisite carving in the table, covered by a huge piece of glass. It had been sold to a guy from Saudi Arabi for just under $10,000 US!! It was very nice!

After the wood-carving, we had a traditional Thai lunch served for us (included in the price). A traditional Thai meal is where everyone sits at a table, and placed on the table are all kinds of Thai dishes (sweet-and-sour chicken w/vegetables, just vegetables, chicken in cashew nuts, etc.), and everyone gets their own plate of rice. Then you just scoop whatever you want onto your rice, from what's placed on the table. It was very tasty. Thai food is quite good, but some can be pretty spicy, and the spicy stuff gives me the runs!

AFter lunch, we headed to the Crocodile Farm and Zoo. The guide ushered us to the stadium area, where they were doing a magic show. It was pretty good, no David Copperfield, but quite funny, and some of the stuff they did was very good (and I couldn't figure it out!) Right after the magic show was the elephant show, where they paraded a bunch of elephants into the stadium, doing all kinds of things, dancing, kicking balls into a net (a'la soccer), they re-enacted a traditional battle involving elephants, like how it would have happened centuries ago. Very interesting, and I did get the impression that the elephants were treated well here. They indicated during the show that an elephant/trainer relationship is somewhat like that of a dog and his master. They become very close, and each loves each other, and would help each other if any harm would come to either. Very interesting stuff, and it was fun to watch. We got to touch the elephants, and later on, Courtney fed some of the baby elephants, which she thoroughly enjoyed.

AFter that, was the crocodile show. Typical, I guess, if you've ever seen it on TV, the guys get the crocs to open their mouths, then they stick various body parts inside the mouth (hand, arm, head), and hope the croc doesn't close. This was pretty funny, even though the whole thing was in Thai, we could get an idea of what was going on from the announcer.

AFter the croc show, we had the opportunity to browse around the rest of the zoo. Many of the elephants are free to roam around, and not tied or chained down, and you could go up and pet them and whatever. A few did have leashes around their legs, probably because they're not totally trained to not wander away, but most just wander around the area, and now where they can and can't be. It was neat to see them not in cages, but just wandering free.

WE got back to Bangkok, and had supper. AFter supper, we ran into Lane, a Canadian we had met in KL, and a friend of his (Heinrich) from Sweden, and the four of us went to the Patpong district, where they have a market and one of the red-light districts. Yawn. The market wasn't nearly as big as the one near our guest house, and the red-light district was nothing like the one in Amsterdam. This was more like a bunch of strip-joints, with guys (or girls) trying to entice customers to go in. At one bar/stripclub, then even had a little girl (perhaps 10) outside trying to entice customers in. We couldn't believe it.

The bus ride to Patpong was all of 3.5 baht, which is just over 1 cent! It was a 45 minute ride. Holy cheap!

After we got back, we were heading back to the guest house, and we ran across a dude selling bugs again! I ate my grasshopper (and got the picture to prove it!) Tasted crunchy, and that's about it.

And that's about it for now.

Tomorrow we are going to head down to some more islands/beaches (Ko Samet, and maybe another one farther south), then come back to Bangkok to get our passports/visa's, before heading north to Chang Mai.

We're doing laundry today, and are going to burn all of our pictures to a CD, and mail the CD back to Canada. Once it makes it's way there, I'll put all the pictures on my web site for you all to enjoy.

Bye Bye!