Sleeping puppy at a temple
IMG_7535, originally uploaded by psydereal.
Spent most of yesterday absorbing alienness. Started out the day by driving to another town for the Thai costume fitting. I'm not sure whether or not it was the jet-leg, driving on the "wrong" side of the road, or just riding in the backseat on curvy roads surrounded on all sides by trees (which tends to do it for some people!), but I experienced car sickness for the first time in my life. I was feeling very queasy by the time we got to the shop. It passed within ten minutes and I got distracted by trying on my costume. Mine is a gold color, and they give you these really cool earrings and necklace to wear with it. I'm really excited to get to wear it in two hours. :)
Then there was random running around Ratchaburi, eating lunch, meeting nieces, wedding errands. Ja-ae (I think I've finally taken to calling Ponsurie by her nickname, as the phonemes are less strange on my tongue now and everyone else is calling her that here) and North got dropped off at the beauty salon to get all groomed and whatnot for the big day and her aunt and uncle and Chai and I went to a temple near Ja-ae's elementary school and ran around. We went up to the top of these stairs where there was a thousand year-old statue of buddha. This little calico cat followed us all around the temple, even up the stairs, it was so cute. There were all these dogs around the temple as well, including some really cute puppies, see the one pictured here. :)
Then we drove to a golf course by the mountains and had a meal at the restaurant there. (On the way to the place I saw a real live monkey in a tree!) At about 6, 6:15, there were hundreds of thousands of bats left the mountain by the golf course. There were so many of them, they kept coming out in waves.
I'm really enjoying myself here, everything is so strange and cool.
1. They put ice in their beer here! I don't think I can handle that, I ask the people I'm with to ask for mine without ice. It's not a big deal, I know, but ice? In beer?
2. One of the strange things that struck me while flying over Vietnam/Thailand was how there were no rectangles on the ground like there are when you fly over the states. None of the fields are regularly shaped, just various odd polygons like patchwork. It was neat.
3. All the cows are so skinny! I was told it was because they are work cows and generally not being fattened for slaughter since it's a Buddhist country. I've never seen a skinny cow before.
4. We were coming out of a dessert place (the dessert being unlike anything I've ever tasted in my life, warm sweet and salty liquid containing small balls of various flours and boiled eggs) and an old woman starts feeling my arms. As we walked away I asked my companions why she did this, and they said it was because they wondered what my skin felt like. We had to pass by again to get back to the car and another woman at the dessert place started touching my arms. Apparently my skin is very soft.
Okay, in 40 minutes I'll be leaving to get ready for the wedding. Yay!