First Week

SO, what's not great about shrimp for breakfast? And
lunch and dinner? In fact, I think I'm going to start
eating shrimp as a snack too. Fried shrimp, broiled
shrimp, caked shrimp....You get the idea.

We got here, safe and sound and in one piece with no
complictations aside from the minor detail of almost
missing the flight from taipei to bangkok because we
were so tired! And last night, our big plan was to
have a nice dinner ( which we did) then go up to the
room and freshen up before hitting the town. We ended
up falling asleep at ......7:30 pm. And then waking up
at 4:30 am. Whoops. Not much to do that early besides
go back to bed.

Did I mention the cake with beans on top? That was
dessert on the plane. A very lovely flight attendant
in a pepto-pink uniform woke me up so that I could eat
breakfast, which consisted of either beef lasgana or
chicken terriyaki, followed by a bean-cake. A yellow
sweet spongy cake topped with beans.

Food is really cheap and REALLY DELICIOUS! Today, we
spent about $8 between the two of us, on breakfast
(shrimp soup, coffee, tea and fried battered bananas
covered in chocolate, $6.50) lunch ( beef salad with
rice from a food stand, $.80) and a snack. I insisted
on prepacked name brand yogurt, to help our bellies
process weird food.

Alex found out about this venomous snake farm nearby
so we checked that out today. It's like a snake zoo
but they milk the snakes to make antidotes to the
poison. We didn't get to see the milking but the
"janitors" were cleaning out cages so we stood by and
watched as they lifted these cobras and pit vipes out
of their cages and played with them before shutting
them up again. Pictures coming soon. I got a great
shot of Alex standing uncomfortably close to a cobra
trying to strike.

Housed in the same complex as the snake farm is a
travellers hospital. Upstairs is the clinic for
treatment of tropical diseases, downstairs is the
snake farm. Why not?

Tommorow is a big walking tour of Bangkok, if Alex is
feeling up to it. He is having the lasik surgery today
and man, is that facility NICE! Walking into the
building was like walking into " the future of asian
cinema" as Alex said. Everything white and gray,
rounded corners and smooth surfaces.

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