Amphawa

Ever since I had the opportunity to go to Amphawa floating market with Eddie and Khwan a few months ago, I have wanted to take my wife there to show her the really exotic style of market, and eat some amazing seafood.  Needless to say, when you see shrimp like this on ice, with a grill set up a meter or so away, you know it is bound to be delicious.

We decided to kill some time walking around, and ended up finding random dogs and taking photos of them.

Plus, Danielle was able to find a few cute bugs to take photos of to pass some time.  I think that she was taking a photo of a spider that happened to have a nice rainbow/metallic sheen on the shell.  

My cell phone camera was not quite good enough to catch the spider on the tissues here, but just make a note - in the tropics, always look before you blow your nose...

Now, our main purpose of this trip, besides getting some delicious seafood, was to take a nice tour at night of the market area and the surrounding river system.  I did not know at the time, but we had signed up for the firefly tour, which was very pretty as we have not seen fireflies since we were in Japan. 

The boat trip was lovely, and everything was going well until the motor died...

Then we just started floating with the current.

So there we were, in the middle of the river, at the whim of the river, in a boat that really was not going to be comfortable to be stranded in.  

All I could think about was Apocalypse Now, and not getting off the boat.  I just kept remembering the scene about the tiger.  

It might be a bit off reality, but it is possible in Thailand. 

Plus, snakes...

I really did not want to drift into trees, bushes, swamp, jungle, etc.

I like my nature controlled sometimes, this was one of those times.

So, we floated...

Then we floated some more...

Eventually we made it to a little dock a bit away from the market.  After helping people up the 1+ meter gap, we were free.  Just was time for the long walk home.

Here is a photo of us after we made it off the boat.  Honestly, it was more funny than anything else.  

I am just glad that the tide was flowing into the river and not out into the Gulf at that point.  

If the tide was going the opposite direction, this would have been quite a different story indeed.

Karen Village

I am not normally one to go to a tourist attraction like this, but as it really did seem like something out of National Geographic, I had no choice.

Even seeing these people, who slowly add rings over the years, and only really take them off to bathe or for medical reasons, I still have no clue how they are able to do it.  No, their necks to not really stretch, it is more like their collarbones are forced down making it seem like the neck is much longer than it really is.

This is a photo of me with the best salesperson you will ever meet.  We purchased a shawl from here that is now a permanent member on our portrait wall at home.  It is a neon pink shawl that she chose for us, as it was her favorite color.

A Quick Excursion in Chiang Mai

One of the ongoing problems that we have run into in Thailand is that of heat-exhaustion and/or carsickness.  While this ALWAYS sucks, it just seems to be a part of life over here for us, and we just figure out our plans and deal with it as it comes up. Dramamine does help a lot, as does continually drinking just about any liquid we can get our hands on, but some adventures need to be shortened and some situations just... suck.
Having a carsickness induced migraine while waiting for a cab or a train in the middle of a loud city is pretty much the definition of sucky.  Oh well, life goes on.