More Bangkok

After the elephant fun, we went back down to Bangkok for 3 days.

The next 3 pictures are of Wat Arun, or Temple of Dawn.





























This guy was fishing next to the 1 minute ferry that took us across the river to the happenin' side of Bangkok.














This temple is right across the river from the last one. It's called Wat Pho. It's famous for the giant, reclining Buddha.






















This is a new friend I made at Wat Pho. He's really old. I was showing him a few things.

Ohh...Adult Conversation

So last week our class talked about the grammar point "Have you ever ...". They asked each other 'have you ever' questions to practice. One question was "Have you ever been to a night club." An older lady asked me:

student: "What is a night club."
eric: "It's where people go at night for music, alcohol, and dancing."
student: "Oh, what do they drink, wine?"
eric: "No, mostly beer and hard liquor"
student: "Oh, what kind of dancing do they do?"
eric: "That's hard to explain."
student: "The waltz?"
eric: "noooooo"
student: "Ballroom dancing?"
eric: "no no... younger people go. It's young people dancing"
student: "Disco?"
eric: "about 30 years ago. But you're getting closer. It's too hard to explain"

So another 55 year old student told me she used to go to night clubs in college every weekend and always stayed out very late.

This week she gave me a package and said her dictionary translated the package as "hush money". I was very confused and didn't want to take the money. She opened it up and it was some candy (to be specific, Haichu. Isaac's favorite Japanese candy) She gave it to me as a bribe so I wouldn't tell her 22 year old daughter that she partied all night in college.

You can call me The Godfather-san.

The First Few Days

(Above and Below) Bangkok's Chatuchak weekend market. This is a HUGE market. It covers 35 acres and has 15000 shops and stalls. We were there for 3-1/2 hours and only saw half of it. You can find everything there, from lights to food to furniture.

Next stop, north central Thailand - Sukhothai. This was an old capital of Thailand from 1238 to 1438. (Next 3 pictures)

Then we headed to Northern Thailand, Chiang Mai to be exact. We got there just in time for the Saturday night market. It was pretty big heading down all the streets. We saw most of it in 1-1/2 hours.


Then we went to an elephant camp. We saw them paint, play soccer, and do all sorts of non-elephanty things. My educated prediction: In the future, China will take over the world. Soon after, elephants will demolish the Chinese and rule the Earth.

If I look a little uncomfortable, it's because the elephant was in my "danger zone".

Back to the grindstone

I hope everybody had a wonderful Christmas and New Years.

7 flights, 3 layovers, 2 lengthy bus rides, 1 half day hydrofoil boat ride, and 1 overnight train later, I'm back from 18 days in southeast asia. I'll try and summarize everything in a few posts. Pictures will serve better than words. Here is a quick summary of the trip:

It is nice being in summer weather during winter time

I had to keep reminding myself it was Christmas time (For half of Xmas day, I forgot it was Christmas)

After Christmas day, I had to keep reminding myself Christmas was over. Their Xmas decorations were still up when I left the trip and Xmas songs kept playing until the end of December.

Don't try to celebrate New Years Eve in Hanoi. 1 - They use the Chinese calendar. 2 - All their bars and restaurants close at midnight.

Be grateful for what we have because there are many people we met where 20 cents means a lot. I talked to many average people (hotel clerk, taxi driver, tour guide, shop owner, etc). 1 of them had been to their neighboring country and almost all of them had never visited the other end of their own small countries (because they can't afford it).

Well, I was going to post about the beginning of the trip, but I left my memory cards with all my pictures at school, so I can't start until tomorrow.

Stay tuned.