Still have a couple more days of holiday left

It wasn't the end of the weekend yet so I hung out at Lung Dej's house for the rest of the time. On Sunday Pa'Di, Lung Dej, P'Bang, P'Sea, Pa'Tad, and I all went out for lunch. They took me to the best seafood market place ever. Ever. It was comprised of a bunch of stalls in the middle of an open space that all had various sorts of edible, marine wildlife. We went around to choose our food and got lots of stuff like crab, mussels, fish, prawns, and the like. Then we took our spoils and walked it over to this area where they cooked it for you. I ate all those foods mentioned plus fried rice and a coconut smoothie which I won't attempt to describe and you couldn't even imagine unless you experienced it yourself. We were there for about two hours in all which was ample time to stuff myself to bursting. After hearing that I would be meeting people for dinner too I had to use the rest of the time in between to furiously digest whatever was still in my stomach. For dinner, I went with P'Tae and P'Sea to meet some of her aunts and cousins which included Nisha, her brother Nikhil, their cousin Tee, and Nisha's parents. We ate dinner and then everybody headed back to Nisha's house in Bangkok to socialize. It was a lot of fun with lots of laughing and good conversation. It was time to go home then and I unfortunately had to say goodbye to everybody because it was likely that I wouldn't see them again before I left.

Junk

There was a holiday here in Thailand that started on Wednesday and lasted until the end of the week which gave most people time off work. It was the queen's birthday on Thursday and because of that it was also Mother's Day here. P'Sea and P'Tae were going to P'Sea's hometown, Pitsukomlow, or something like that. Not too sure. Anyway it's near Sukothai and used to be the capitol. That's all I describe about it so you're gonna have to figure out which town it is from there. Anyway, they asked me to come along and I immediately agreed. We were going to visit her parents with P'Sand her brother. We met up with him and then started the drive over which took about five hours. By the time we got there it was almost midnight and we were all pretty tired. We only had time to meet her parents and get a little karaoke on before it was time for bed. The next day we got up around seven AM to go to this market for breakfast. There were stalls everywhere selling things you wouldn't even believe. There were live and dead things everywhere and people butchering the live things to make them dead things. It was fairly hectic but we managed to find breakfast somewhere in all of that. It was a very good soup with noodles, meat, and other unknown substances. One of said unknown substances I didn't care for and didn't finish all of them. Only after I was done did they tell me that it was congealed blood. Yum. I was pretty proud of my tastebuds for helping me dodge that bullet. They bought some fish and frogs from the market to go release into the nearby river. People believe that if you save an animal who is about to be killed it is good luck or karma or that sort of thing. After, we went over to her grandmother's shop and met all the people there. I tell you, everybody that I met there was absolutely wonderful. They were all incredibly nice and welcoming. Most of the day was then spent visiting buddhist temples. One of them held an image of the Buddha that was reputed to be the most beautiful statue in Thailand. There was some history with kings trying to move it to the new capitol but things kept going wrong so they took it as a sign to leave it there. Another very cool one was situated right on the side of a mountain and had an awesome view off of a balcony. We released birds at this temple. That just left dinner. Because it was mother's day we went to a restaurant and met up with all of P'Sea's family in the area. It was a very nice dinner with lots of great food. I think the only other event worth mentioning was throwing up. After getting home and settling down we watched a movie together. My stomach started hurting a lot during the movie. Literally as Sean Connery said his last line and the credits started I felt that warm water start in my mouth and i only had time to think, "Now that's timing" before I was in the bathroom and started the whole process. I felt better immediately afterward and there were no other symptoms of anything so maybe I just ate something bad. The next day was all goodbyes and long car rides.

Ooh, Those Japanese

I felt a little sick today but I'm fairly sure that it's not an actual illness. More a combination not having breakfast, gorging on lunch, and then playing tennis. I will be really pissed if I get sick again this trip. What I'm really worried about is being sick for the flight home though. Specifically Narita airport in Tokyo. Them Japaneresers can be pretty scary. They get really serious about certain things like honor, family, and apparently sickness. They have signs all over the airport about going to see their medical center if you are sick and everybody there wears masks and seems to be closely inspecting you for even the slightest sign of a sniffle. I always watch myself for any cough or sneeze because I fully expect them to quarantine me their until they are sure that I'm not disease ridden. I first saw it a couple years ago about the time that the swine flu scare was at its height and I just chalked it up to that but it's been consistent every other year so I guess not. I saw one family reading their posters and debating whether to go and get some medicine for their son on the flight. I wanted to scream at them,"No! It's a trap! You'll never get out of there again!" A spread of disease across JAL would be worse than across any other airline. I believe that there would be many more deaths. In the words of Jeremy Clarkson," If the Japanese failed that badly they'd all fall on their pencils even before the order came for it." Ooh, those Japanese.

Interesting day

Today was fairly extraordinary compared to the usual routine. The gobs of extraordinariness were all packed in after 5 pm so i suppose i'll start the narrative their. It all started when the skies opened up right when tennis class started. I figured we were done but they brought us all into the gym to train. They have a whole gym with lots of equipment and it's all very professional. They even have trainers whose only job is to work with people in the gym. There weren't many people to begin with and a few left so when they brought out the trainers for us the ratio of students to trainers was almost exactly 1:1. I got basically my own personal trainer for two hours. It was pretty nice though I was hurting at the end of it. So many muscles were sore and they even got me to run two miles. I fell asleep on the ride home and when we arrived I had no idea where i was. By this time it was as dark as it would get and still raining too. I actually wasn't as worried as I figured I would be. I had several options and wasn't very concerned that I wouldn't be able to get home. I had ended up next to an enormous building with a big neon sign that said "bangkok Terminal(chakchuchak or something like that)" This told me I was still in bangkok, and probably meant that there was somebody english speaking in there who could help me. I could have done that, called somebody, or hired one of the taxis driving by to take me home. So really it wasn't that much of a problem. The taxi was an expensive solution so I called Lung Yee and he told me that there was a BTS skytrain station a couple kilometers away. I was already soaked so I hired a motorcycle person to take me there which was quite a bit cheaper. From there I could find my way home no problem.

Muffins

I am so using page breaks you complainers! It's just that the tab doesn't work so I tried to move over using spaces but they didn't show up. I noticed that baked goods here are generally priced at about equal or a little bit lower than in america. That is... except for muffins. The muffins here are way overpriced and always just a little bit stale. These two clues have lead me to deduce a possible explanation. All the muffins in thailand are imported from other countries. This is why they are expensive and they get stale from the travel time. But why would they import them when they could just bake them here for a fraction of the cost. The only possible explanation, no matter how absurd, is that they can't. The secret art of muffin baking was prevented from spreading into thailand. It seems that this seemingly innocent country has commited a travesty so severe that every single other country in the world has withheld this recipe and only sells them at exorbitant prices. Who would have known that they were caught in such a web of secrecy and deception.

Phattaya

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On Saturday Sunny's family, P'Fern's family, Esther, and I were going to take a day trip to Phattaya a beach that was about an hour and a half away. They decided that I should stay overnight on Friday because we were going to leave very early in the morning. And that's how I ended up on that toilet. That wasn't such a great connection, I'll explain more. After they(Sunny, Beam, their mom) picked me up they went to a place to pick out tiles for their house. Which meant that their mom picked out tiles and Sunny, Beam, and I screwed around in a huge department store full of sample rooms with lots of stuff to play with. Afterward, we drove way out of the city to go pick up their new dog Sky. He is a syberian husky and they have him in a dog school right now. He is about six months old and still has that puppy playfulness going on. For dinner, they were meeting some family friends at ANOTHER buffet place. I figured I'd take this one easy because I stuffed myself so much the previous days. That ended as soon as Sunny challenged me to an eating competition. I was like, "It's on, no holding back." My American eating trained body was up to the fight. I was born into large portions and unhealthy foods so I was in my element. He put up a good fight but I ended winning by two plates. It was an unnnecessary margin because he had given up when I was one plate ahead but I decided to rub it in a little bit. The final tally was Sunny: five dinner plates, three desert plates, one glass of wine. Me: six dinner plates, four desert plates, one glass of wine. The wine was one of his desperate last-ditch efforts to win because I was only fifteen. He said that a glass of wine counted as a plate but I just downed it and kept going. Tasted bad though. I met another of Sunny's friends there. Her name is Mint and she had spent the last summer working at Disney World as part of a college program. We talked some and got to know each other a little bit because the dinner lasted like two and a half hours.
Godawful early does not even begin to describe waking up at 6 on a saturday. We left while I was still half asleep and picked up Esther at her hotel. When we arrived at Phattaya the first thing we did was go to the zoo there. It was a driving zoo so you could drive around in your car and stop at whichever animals you wanted and feed some of them. By then it was about eleven so we went to lunch at the same place that we went to last year. It has excellent seafood and is outdoors right by the seaside. Luckily the competition that we had there was not an eating one. They had some gigantic prawns there and we raced to see who could take the shell off and make it ready to eat using only a fork and spoon. Unfortunately, I lost that one and it went to Sunny. It was beach time after lunch. We found a spot and set up camp. The next couple hours was just various beach activities. Played some soccer, fun in the ocean, judo tournament, and playing with Sky. It was his first time at the beach so he had fun with all the new experiences. I was not happy with the judo competitions because they set up an elemination system and I was supposed to fight Esther first. Brian, Esther, and Sunny all did judo so I was at a bit of a disadvantage. While I was in the middle of asking exactly what the rules were she charged me and pushed me over which everyone counted as a win. I was subsequently eliminated without even doing anything. We hired a banana boat which is basically an inflatable pontoon pulled by a boat and the driver tries to throw you off of it. One of the times we were thrown Sunny came up with blood coming from what looked like his eye. They took him to the hospital and I was pretty worried until they called back. It turns out he just got a cut right below his eye. He got five stitches and they sent him on his way. It was late by that time so we drove home and Esther and I stayed the night at their place.
I didn't mention before but Beam didn't come with us because he went to Hong Kong for the four day weekend with some friends. There is some religious holiday going on now so people have Monday and Tuesday off. Sunday we slept in until lunch time when we went to meet yet more people. I always meet so many nice people here it's sometimes hard to keep track. This was a group of friends that Sunny's parents have been meeting with for 25 years. I haven't even known anybody that long. It was just Esther, Brian, and I who went though. Sunny stayed at home to sleep some more and rest. That top picture was the dim sum restaurant we went to. Everybody there went back to the house and they continued everything there. I could talk with Esther and Mint though. Maybe I forgot to mention but Mint was there too, obviously. I am home now after being dropped off this afternoon.
Brian is the one holding Sky next to the glass. Sunny is sitting next to me in the chairs by the window. Esther is holding the animal thing and on the right in the restaurant picture.

Almost Normal

I have been slowly recovering judging by how out of breath and wheezy I get from walking up three flights of stairs. Sunny, a friend Luke and I met in Thailand, arrived back for summer break after finishing high school in the UK. He contacted me and we arranged to do something on Monday. He went to school in Singapore before going to the UK and a friend from his Judo classes was here in Bangkok. She is here to train with an international group of the best judo people from each asian country. We went out to a buffet for dinner with Esther(that friend), Brian(Sunny's older brother), and P'Fern(Brian's girlfriend). I had already met Brian and P'Fern from last year and we were already good friends. It turns out that Esther is 15, stuck in thailand, and can't speak thai. I thought that was a funny coincidence. They were all very good company and we stuffed ourselves and had a good time.
Wednesday, they asked me to dinner again but I went a couple hours early to hang out a little bit. Sunny, his mom, Beam(younger brother), and I drove to P'Fern's house where we played various sports and watched a movie. When dinner time came we met Brian and the rest of P'Fern's family at a very nice outdoor restaurant. The food there was excellent. They ordered a little bit too much and then turned to me. Luke and I became known as big eaters around here so when we had extra they knew where to look. They just unloaded everything to me and I ate as much as I could, which was most of it. When they announced plans for desert I just loosened the ole' belt and took it like a trooper. It was a special ice cream place where they hand you a heaping bowl and let you put whatever toppings you want on it. Naturally, I was very polite and didn't hold back. Around here people always offer food to you to be polite and it makes them very happy when you eat it and like it. I do quite well in that department.