Khantoke Dinner

A couple of weeks ago, we went to a Khantoke Dinner Dance Show with my parents. Khantoke is a Lanna-Thai tradition. At a Khantoke dinner, you sit at a low table and eat from communal containers containing five different dishes: Burmese pork curry, fried chicken, fried vegetables (usually cabbage), pork tomato-chili paste, served with fresh cucumber slices, and pork rinds, which are for dipping into the paste. Along with these dishes, a starter of fried bananas is served, and there is fresh fruit for dessert. While you eat, you get to enjoy northern Thai music and dance. It is a really fun experience, and we enjoyed ourselves very much.

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Pics from the Zoo

A wonderful Thai death-trap playground:


The giraffes weren't interested in coming over to see us, so a zoo worker hopped over the fence into the enclosure and yelled at them, waving giraffe food, until they finally sauntered over.





On the monorail, which takes you all around the zoo, except for spots where you might see some animals

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Riding in Style

Dave, Jody, and Olivia went on a elephant ride during our second visit to Mae Sa Elephant Camp.






Self Portrait on Elephant




During the show


Jody


Introducing William to the elephants

Just because he's so cute:

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This Hamster is not Dead

Hammy

This is Hammy, the hamster we are taking care of for the family who normally lives in this house. Hammy is a Russian Dwarf hamster of indeterminate age and dubious physical condition.

Nearly every day we find Hammy contorted in some stiff, rigor-mortis-like pose in the bottom of his cage and begin making immediate preparations for the funeral; yet, somehow, he lives on, despite the 40+ degree heat. The other day I came upon Hammy lying feebly on his side, twitching his legs spastically, and I was convinced it was all over. Apparently, however, he was merely having a dream that he was out running through the grass, rather than cooped up in a 12-inch-by-8-inch cage inside a house doing a pretty darn good impersonation of a sauna.

Hammy has now been moved into our room to enjoy the air-conditioned comfort (and to cover our floor with the sawdust he kicks through the bars of his cage). Hopefully he will continue to live out his glorious existence for the next six weeks at least, because I don't relish the idea of having to email the missionary family in Texas to tell them their adorable little furry friend is no more.

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Monkeying Around

On our second-last day in Samui, in the interest of actually leaving our hotel for once, we went to the Samui Monkey Theatre. I was excited because I knew the kids would love it, and they did. We all loved it. It was the most fun we had on Koh Samui, that's for sure.



After we arrived, we purchased monkey snacks from a ladyboy and fed most of them to an adorable baby monkey on a leash just inside the entrance. He was very friendly and definitely knew the drill, no doubt having become very familiar with how best to extract food from tourists.









We were a bit early for the show, so we wandered around the grounds for a bit, checking out all the monkeys in their cages. For some inexplicable reason, the monkey school also houses chickens, a snake, an alligator, and a porcupine. While we were looking at those, we passed a little shower room where the monkeys were getting washed up for the show. After being shampooed and rinsed, the monkey and his handler trotted on down to the theatre:





Two monkeys performed in the show, a boy and a girl. You could tell which was which because the girl monkey wore a little bow on her head. The monkeys did push-ups and flips in the air, played guitars, twirled fire sticks, ate soup with spoons, played basketball, and posed for lots of pictures.


The boy monkey


The girl monkey










Bella and Auntie Jody


What William thought of the show

How Isabella felt about the monkeys:

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Fifty pictures of the same pool

Once we got to Koh Samui, we were done. Done with buses and ferries and taxis, done with carrying bags and struggling to entertain bored, hot children, even done with going to the beach, which, let me tell you, is not the easiest or most fun place to take a three-month-old baby. When we arrived at our hotel in Samui, we pretty much dropped our stuff in our rooms and camped out by the pool for the next six days. We only left the hotel three times, twice to go for dinner at restaurants on the busier Chewang Beach, and once to go to the monkey show. As a result, we have very few pictures of Koh Samui, and 95% of them are either of the pool or the monkeys.

The pool was very nice. There were lots of lounge chairs to relax in, and it was steps from the beach.



It was also the pool in which Olivia learned how to swim. When we first got to Thailand, she was quite nervous in the water and didn't stray too far from her floaty. Now she can jump right in and go, no water wings or anything. Of course Isabella isn't too far behind -- gotta keep up with the big sister!







William also got lots of swimming time in. He seems to really like the water. He'll be swimming by himself before he's a year old, at the rate he's going!

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Nine hours to Koh Samui

We spent six days in Krabi and then we were off to Koh Samui, Thailand's third largest island, northeast of Surat Thani town in the Gulf of Thailand.

After breakfast we had time for a quick swim before the songtaew
arrived to take us to the bus station. The ride took about half an hour, and then we boarded a bus to Surat Thani. It was all fun and games at first:


Jody, William, and me


Liv and Bella playing Mommy and Baby

Before long all three kids decided they needed to sit on or in the very close vicinity of my lap, and the a/c decided that its services were not really required, so it was a rather hot and uncomfortable ride. For me, anyway. These three look pretty cozy:



After almost three hours, we were finally, mercifully dropped off at State Railways of Thailand office. Here we drank coffee and green Fanta and Bella was force-fed pieces of fruit by a Thai admirer. Another bus arrived, and we "enjoyed" forty-five more minutes at the back of a hot bus before arriving at the pier and boarding the ferry.


Liv


Monk on a ferry




Sunset over the Gulf of Thailand

We rode the ferry for an hour and a half. The girls amused themselves playing a game they made up called "Passports and Visas." It's about as exciting as it sounds, but they seem to enjoy it. When we arrived in Koh Samui, the minivan taxi we pre-booked in Surat Thani was waiting, so we hurried through the throngs of taxi drivers, rode in air-conditioned comfort for half an hour, and then, a mere nine hours after we set out, arrived at our hotel on Lamai beach.

We stayed in beach-front bungalows with Balinese-style bathrooms:




Two bums in a bath

It was very nice, and we were quite glad to be there.

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