Shai missed his flight and Ayutthaya

 After Shai left Bali I tried to get into my own routine, but really all I did was watch movies and sleep.  Here is a picture of a tiny chi-cha (as they call them in Bali and chi-cho in Thailand) that was my companion for dinner the day he left.

See, tiiiiiiny.

 I recently was told an amazing story about a baby chi-cha by a friend I've made in Chang Mai (I'll introduce him soon).  He told me that he was on his way out the door and saw what looked like a grain of rice on the floor (either in Chang Mai or Singapore, I don't remember that detail of the story).  He picked it up and gently rolled it in his fingers to try to assess what it was.  As he rolled it, it opened up into a tiny tiny chicha.  Amazed he sat there staring at it realizing it was a baby chicha, and the baby chicha looked right back at him.  He put the little chicha on the floor and left.  Later, either that day or a couple days later (again, spotty on the details) he was sitting in his house and he felt something crawl onto him.  He's not the type to freak out, and when he looked and it was a small little chicha.  He then told me that for the duration of his stay in that house, if he was sitting quitely and still a chicha would crawl onto him.  He wasn't sure if it was the same one every time, he had no way of knowing that, but when I heard the story I was sure it was the same one.  If that's not imprinting, then I don't know what is.  Cool huh?

It ended up that Shai missed his flight home to SF, which totally sucked and caused some stress, but really was the best thing ever.  I was trying to figure out whether to fly to Australia or back to Thailand to make my way east to Vietnam.  Everything totally worked out.  I had made the decision to go back to Thailand before I found out that Shai missed his flight, and was planning on buying a ticket a few days out.  When I found out Shai missed his flight, I bought a ticket back to Bangkok the next morning, thankfully for the same amount it would have been if I had waited the three days I was planning to wait.

I landed and we squealed and then headed to our favorite part of Bangkok for dinner, China Town.

Yay, street meat to pose with!  I love Thailand.

Omg I love noooooooodles.  I lovingly refer to Thailand as the land of noodles.  Hopefully Vietnam will be similar.

I believe this is heart in one of bowls of noodles.  I could be wrong.....but I don't think so.

Ate it anyway (except for the parts that squicked me out that I picked out for picture above), and it was delicious!  I'm starting to wonder if I'm fueling my body with mainly MSG and sugar.  Either way I'm happy and I love the food.

"On the road again, i just can't wait to get on the road again..."

Yay, happy for a mistake.

Drive-by shrine.

It says "Cute Press, The Beauty Secret". Does this make anyone else giggle or is it just me?

 Rolling into Ayutthaya I saw a huge banner hanging from a building, it had a huge bald eagle and the statue of liberty, it said: "Teach English at Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya Vocational Education College".  I puked in my mouth.  I know that a lot of people argue that teaching English "helps" "better" peoples lives, and my stance is that it's a fucked up way to colonize a country. I think that if I would have gotten a picture of the three story banner hanging off of the building, you might agree with me if you already don't. Ew ew ew ew ew.

There were blinged out buses all over Ayutthaya.  This bus we couldn't pass up getting a picture of.  I want to get on a soup box about how incredibly fucked up this is, but I imagine you all already know how I feel.  Do you think that in 50 or a 100 years there will be a bus painted, in Thailand or anywhere else, of the genocide that happened to the Jews in Germany? Or of the current genocide that is happening to Palestinians in Israel?

Iced coffee break.  I think I'm cursing here because I spilled some on my new giraffe shirt.

A huge trees outside of one of the temples.

Shai's grasshopper.

Picture of the ruins since we decided not to pay the fee to go in and see them, it was going to cost us more than where we were staying. Impressive though huh?

Can you spy the man crawling on the stupa?

Blinged out tok-tok of the ruins we had just took a picture of.

The days got gradually hotter, so we started going to see places as the sun was going down.

I don't remember which ruin this was, but it was amazing.  I think the combination of the time of day we went, dusk, all the beheaded statues, the fact that we were the only ones there and that we meet a family of white barn owls.

We could only see in because of the flash of the camera.  When Shai first entered we thought bats were flying out, but soon realized they were WAY too big for bats.

We ended up following them to each stupa, at least four, until they got sick of us and flew and perched somewhere out of sight. So cool. 

I was trying to get a picture of the owl, it didn't work.

After we stopped to have a bowl of delicious noodles and a family of cats played around the scooters.  I was in heaven.

Can you spot all three kittens?

Dessert, you guessed it, banana rotee.

Our last day temple looking, we drove our rented scooter a little way out of town to see yet another reclining Buddha.

The main stupa in the middle was actually in good condition and allowed people to go inside.  My first impression was that it smelled as if animals lived inside of it at one point, and if not lived definitely defecated in it.  The small was old and rank, a smell that was easily definable and yet like nothing I've smelt before

And it ends up the small was poop from an animal, ends up the stupa was a bat cave.  Can you see the little black dots?  Those are hundred of small bats.

Can you see it?  Can you see it's little face?!? So effing cool I tell you.

And finally the reclining Buddha.  Kinda looks like he's got a blankie, huh?

In closing a picture of a cow or possibly a water buffalo.  Anyone want to help solve the mystery of what mammal this is?

moooooochas gracias. love love.  xoxo