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.