Thailand is a zoo!

All right kids (and Stace), here is Thailand in a nutshell…we live in Bungalo's and have huge tree's out in our front yard. We live on a military base so we don't have a lot of people living around us.  There are dogs and cats all over the place, some living together, others laying on the road…it is really weird here regarding pets and animals.

the people around here like all kinds of food, and they like to cook it really hot in order to kill all the bad germs, that way they don't have to be careful about how many germs get on or in the food before they prepare it.  it is also really really spicy…but I think you would get used to it if you lived here for a couple of days.

  These fish are laying out in the air with no refrigeration like we have in America, and they both cost less than 3 dollars for a meal.  Not bad.

this is all chicken, you can imagine the amount of salmanila that is present there.  But, you can get any part of the chicken for your dinner.  I almost fried rice and chicken gut last night, but just opted for regular chicken.  My buddy ate chicken feet at a restaurant…chewy I guess!

 I don't know what this stuff is…but there is lots of it!

 This is, you guessed it, a pigs head.  I think they took all the meat out of the pig, but there is his head if you wanted to cook it, hang it on your wall at home or do whatever you wanted with a pigs head.  Any idea's?  what would you boys do with a pigs head?

 "Fresh" vegetables are everywhere, but you have to look closely at how long that has been out in the market in the open air just sitting there and how close it is to the uncooked chicken.

 All this food is found in this huge "outdoor" market, that is just one view of it the building…it went that far on the other directions as well.

 The final product, should you choose to partake, comes to you in a bowl with rice or noodles like that and is YUUMMMY!  If you like stuff like that.

 In the same market place I found a bowl of eel's…they are basically snakes that live in water…there must be 350 of them in this little bucket…I'm not sure what you would do with the eel's once you buy them, but that is up to the buyer, I guess.

 So, I bought a bird…he's in the paper bag that I am holding.  I named him Rachata…I think he is Thai.  I took a video of him when he was flying away, it is at the bottom of the blog, hopefully you can watch it.  I have a couple of still pictures of the bird, but I will save them for later.  Late at night, after he was free, I heard him singing cause he was a free bird!

 Not only can you buy birds for 65 cents, but you can also ride on the roofs of buildings that are being transported by vehicles.  Not the safest way of getting around, but the reason the guy was up there was to  move the wires between the telephone poles (on his right) above the highest part of the building so that they wouldn't snag the building and pull it off the truck.  In the end, nobody got hurt.

 I also found a bunny rabbit farm that had a bunch of bunny's for sale for $3 dollars…and they were all wearing clothes like they were going out for dinner that evening.  I almost bought one, but decided not too cause I wasn't sure if I would be able to get them back to the house in a good amount of time…and bunnies don't like shopping or walking around.  At least they were dressed nicely!

 While we were eating that evening, an elephant walked up to our table and stuck his trunk out to say "hello".  He play's the harmonica and will give you an elephant ride for $3 dollars if you want him too.  He's just a little guy, so I didn't go for a ride yet, maybe next week when I go to the jungle!

 there's me eating dinner with the elephant behind me.  You can't see in this picture, but the elephant is wearing a flashing red light on his tail so that cars know that there is an elephant in the road.  Watch out, elephant in the road!

 These are the gate guards back at the base where I live.  The two on the outsides are carrying M-16A2s and the one in the middle with me is carrying an Uzzi.  They are nice Thai's and speak a little english…about as much as I speak Thai.

We also went out to some ruins of a castle. It is called PhiMai or something like that.  It reminded me of Jungle Book while I was there so I sang the King Louis song for the guys that I was with as we were walking around it.

 More pictures of the place…seems rather rustic, doesn't it?

Here's another picture of me near the ruins…I am sitting on a tree root.

That is me, Mr. Aaron, Mr. Kevin, Mr. Chase and Mr. Justin, we all went together.

 There wasn't enough room in the truck for all of us so I rode in the back of the pickup truck for about 2 hours to get to the ruins and back.  It was a lot of fun and saved money, only problem was that we got a little sun-burnt doing that.  That is Mr. Max, the dad with the three little girls that are the same age, with me in the back of the truck.

Here's the video of me letting "Rachata" back out into the wild.  Actually, it wasn't into the wild cause we were in the middle of town, so he just made his home in a tree near the square.  At least he is free!

This is the way that people get around here in Thailand, they ride these vehicles called "Tuck-tucks" that are basically motorcycles with truck beds in the back.  It is fun to ride in them but they are crazy drivers as you can tell from this video.

I love and miss you crazies, look forward to seeing you on Skype this morning before you go to church!  Love ya, Dad!