a few other things from thailand

before we left bangkok we visited this temple, i believe wat pho, which took up an entire city block. this was partly due to a reclining buddha, which was larger than my house.

i'm sure there were well over 2 or 3 thousand buddhas at this temple.

and i almost forgot my "i'm in a dome!" picture, this is from the rainforest part of the botanical garden in chiang mai.

opium and temples

we went to an opium museum that was funded by the queen of thailand (the princess mother); pictures were not allowed unfortunately. it was a really neat museum located on a mountain side as far north as you can go within thailand. the entrance is on one side, then you walk through the mountain through a 180 meter tunnel with scary art carved into the stone (maybe bad hallucinations?). you come out onto the other side in the museum and go through multiple floors explaining the history of opium, how it spread through the world, how the british used it to suppress the chinese, and how it suppressed the thai people. all in all it was a really enlightening experience of something i knew very little about.

what really summed up the experience was going to a temple a short way from the museum that sat on the river. after ogling at the gigantic buddha we noticed a fork in the massive river. from standing on the temple you could see the actual golden triangle. on one side was burma, the other laos, and we stood on thailand.

note the golden temple and the chemical factory on the burmese side of the river.

just outside of chiang mai there is a massive botanical garden we visited, where we picked up food poisoning. the gardens were amazing (not organic i believe), they had gardens from all over the world and from all of the major climates. they also had a 18,000,000 baht temple (or so tang told us).

foxglove!

the desert place was hot. we had enough of that one.

zoe hid in a small hole on the side of a pagoda attempting to scare tang.

we also went to this temple, notice the hands reaching up from hell around zoe on the ground.

this is... the bathroom.

lanterns.

this town clock is by the same artist that did the temple just above.

mmmm....

my turn being sick

about 1 in the morning last night i got so sick, though it was still a fraction of what zoe went through. we have been taking our time to get our health back and make a plan for the rest of our time in thailand. on a brighter note, check out zoe's blog; this post takes place at the "fish spa."

a rough night

around 7 last night we went to a movie, on the way there zoe suddenly became really ill. her symptoms rapidly progressed pointing towards something wrong with her stomach, tang really pushed the idea of going to a hospital. we got a cab and were then in under 5 minutes.

i was actually really impressed with the hospital, i think i would rather go there than the maine medical center, but the hospital was also nearly empty. zoe was immediately put in a wheel chair and rolled off to the doctor, she was seen with in 10 minutes.

we got a good doctor who said it was a fairly serious case of food-poisoning which later on was confirmed by the blood test. tang also developed food poisoning a few hours later, but not to the same extent. i however am fine, and i ate the same food, even some food off of zoe's plate, i am really lucky.

talking with the nurses was interesting. the nurses told zoe: "your skin is so white, it is so beautiful." zoe replied that she liked their hats, which were the traditional nurse hats from about 25 years ago. zoe laid on a stretcher for the rest of the night and slept.

when midnight came around they closed the treatment center and moved us to the emergency room for monitoring. they would not let zoe leaving until she could give them a urine sample, or become capable of doing so. zoe was so dehydrated there was no chance of it until the next morning. we were cleared to go home around 2 a.m. but zoe was not strong enough to leave until 6. it was strange staying there over night, i think the worst part about it was someone vomiting blood across the room (we really were in the emergency room).

i was really tempted to take a picture of zoe resting, but reframed from being so rude. if i had taken the picture you would have seen zoe on a stretcher in a hall with a dog lying on the floor behind her and some nurses having dinner. i also saw a cat, and later on heard it screaming somewhere behind the emergency room.

zoe is sleeping now in our upgraded (from $15 to $21) hotel room, now we have AC which is great. we went out for breakfast and zoe has successfully consumed a piece of toast and some a mango smoothie.

the really interesting thing about this whole experience is we did not need identification or insurance at the hospital. I had a hard time understanding the paper work and found myself being addressed as mr. zoe high. the entire bill including medication, seeing the doctor, and staying there over night was as much as our hotel room.

tang quotes

zoe and i have been hanging out with a local girl named tang. zoe met tang during her year in germany; they were both exchange students in the same district. now i have had the pleasure of meeting tang, who finds me quite eccentric. here are some tang quotes about me.

"he's not normal."

"i expected he would be better."

"his face always looks confused."

"the insects must always come in; his mouth is open all the time."

"he is only 25%."

here are images from in chiang rai at an ice cream parlor. i was really tired for the record.

a 5 minute update

so the internet was out in our hut, no big surprise. we got some internet here, but very little time to do much. flickr is taking its sweet time. i am beginning to feel the air of asia in my lungs, and it is dirty.

what else can i update you on in 5 minutes?

i will try to write much more tonight.

zoe, tang, and i went to a national park day before yesterday, known as the old city. it is a place packed with ruins and it's famous for the king who laid down the thai alphabet. for the record it has 44 letters and a third of them are vowels.

right now we are packing up to go out for the day. it is 6:49 and zoe is asking me if i can cut her bangs with my knife, i reply no, tang can.

oh yeah. we have hot water! the heater was definitely broken at the hut. finally we were able to wash off the city grit.

all the food is fried here!

our third morning in thailand

just hanging out on the porch...

there seem to be fish heads in every dish, and it's not so bad

hello everybody, zoe and i are alive and well. the 15 hour flight was not at bad as i thought it was going to be. luckily a woman sang behind me for about an hour which helped pass the time. hong kong was full of "hong kong wonder" -it was great. then it was back on that damn airplane to bangkok. 

in bangkok we managed to find the lovely tang (below), and her family waiting for us. 

we went to a shrine that celebrates all forms of buddhism. the place is on the river and has a big dock where it holds a massive market on the weekends.

we went to check out the docks where i noticed massive fish, 2-3 feet long.

feeding the fish was my favorite part of the day.

this was also my favorite shrine. inside the building behind it is a huge buddha at least 10 feet tall in the sitting pose.

later we got some thai "sweets." this stuff is like green cotton candy, but i think it is made from rice. you then roll up the green cotton candy in a thin sweet pancake, and eat it like a burrito.

elephants! i refuse to ride an animal that i cannot give a ride, but i really like to watch them.

tang's dad has a good friend that has a "hut" at a hotel, or that's how i understand the story. so, zoe and i have our very own "hut" which is so lovely. we also get to stay here for free!

zoe's in the window!