boopyourface

Since we’ve been WIFI-less for the past few days we haven’t been able to add any pictures to the blog (as you may or may not have noticed). So this is for all my visually stimulated friends and family who have been writing me emails something along these lines:

“Hey your blog stories are nice, but where are the pictures?”

So here you go-

The view from our hotel room in Bangkok, the Chao Phrya River.

The bedazzled, bejeweled, sparkle-fest that is the Grand Palace (and none of these pictures do it any justice):

It’s so dazzling, I had to put my shades on- “I love goooold!!!”

For all you aspiring bedazzlers, a close view of the inlaid jewels.

Now on the day that we went to the Grand Palace it was a National Holiday, what EXACTLY the holiday was celebrating I couldn’t quite gather completely but I think it had something to do with the death anniversary of the King’s sister and a buddhist holiday, which may or may not, be one and the same here in Thailand.

Anyways, the point of this little tidbit of information is that as we were leaving the area surrounding the palace the King’s motorcade passed us meandering in the streets of Bangkok. It was the longest and ONLY royal motorcade I’ve ever seen. Me, being the camera happy freak that I am, started snapping away at the the Mercedes Benz’s as they passed us in a street (the street that we were forbidden to cross 10 minutes before the actual motorcade zipped by). I got a picture of the the Benz with the two royal flags mounted on the hood of either side of the car, the King’s Benz, I suspected. And when I viewed the pictures in my camera a little later all the pictures we’re fine except the ones of THAT PARTICULAR car where I can only see a teeny thumbnail and it reads “corrupted data” on my camera screen and it won’t upload onto the computer. VERRRRY interesting indeed…

…..that was a very long story about how I think the King has some sort of picture inhibiting device on his car.

But anyways, here’s a picture of a different Benz, one without the flags, without the King:

This picture is for Ted, who loves dried seafood.

Mmmmmmmm….

This is the mammoth reclining buddha, the guy is huge. I would have got an amazing picture here WITH the giant buddha if I wasn’t shoved out of the way by 30 Indian grandmas one second after taking this picture (and they can be vicious about picture taking. I tried to wait until they we’re finished but my endurance was no match for the old birds).

Wat Po, or a piece of it.

Instructions for “thai massage”

Sculptures of “thai massage”

Now, after seeing these paintings and statues depicting thai massage I should have gotten some idea about what thai massage entails. But alas, I did not and our first day on Phi Phi Island I saw a massage cabana at the top of the beach and thought to myself “oh, that would be relaxing”. So I made my way up the beach and told the lady “thai massage please” (for 10 dollars, what a deal).

Ya, anything BUT relaxing.

I lay there as my body was pulled and twisted in a million directions. Once during the session my back was hoisted onto this small Thai woman’s knees and I was stretched out and then curled in an un-godly manner as she forced my body to contort in an unnatural (especially for my lanky, non-flexible limbs) way. I think they should call it “thai stretching”.

Will, making friends with the locals. What a charmer.

Long-tailing it to Long Beach (the Phi Phi Island Long Beach that is)

On the shores of Maya Bay (for all those paying attention, or maybe for those who weren’t- “The Beach”).

Our longtail boat “The Wipaporn”, that took us snorkeling for the day.

a scenic view from Bamboo Island. We had a Brazilian couple on our boat who were snapping pictures left and right. At every opportunity the man would set up a makeshift photo shoot for his wife: her laying on the white sand beaches, her splashing in the water, her pretending not to see him taking a picture of her capturing a breath-taking view.

I have a confession to make-

I wanted these makeshift photo sessions too- but I couldn’t bring myself- fine, I having no shame, probably COULD, but Will couldn’t bring himself to play photographer (but no joke, it seemed like EVERY couple was doing it and there were a lot of couples there) So anyways, I have this:

These following pictures are from our awesome day of elephant trekking (for more fun details, see Will’s post):

I call this: “hey, I’m riding on top of a giant elephant and I’m not scared at all. ha, I’m having so much fun *cheese*”

I hope that’s enough pictures, *whew*.