(imagine a camera in that monkey's hand)

Hello blog readers

The last couple of days have been really busy so although I’ve been keeping up with my blogging, I haven’t had time to post them. Last night we went out for Japanese food at the Four Seasons Hotel here in Bangkok. Vanessa, the photographer who I discussed in more detail in last post referred to it as "the best Japanese food in the world and the most expensive in Thailand" With that lead up we had pretty high expectations about the food. Vanessa ordered for us and since I can’t really remember the names I will try to describe the basics of what we had. We had a wrap type thing that tasted like a California sushi which was my favorite of the evening. We also had sushi with eel in it and sushi which was made up off the fat belly of a tuna. The final part of our main course was fried crispy vegetables that were cooked in some kind of batter to make them really crispy. I know not all of this sounds that appealing but it was actually quite good. We also tried Japanese beer along with warm rice wine and ended our meal with chocolate hazelnut cake.
The build up for our evening with Vanessa and Katisa was huge. It was like the prom where the fun of it is the preparation and the build up in your mind but it becomes impossible for the night to live up to those expectations. We just realized that all though we had made them out to be bigger than life, they were really just regular people, boring in moments and all thought they lived what appeared to be glamorous lives in Monoco and Paris, they really are the same as the rest of us. Disappointingly they never asked us about our work at Mercy.
All and all, spending an evening and afternoon with them makes for a great story and I fun day getting ready for the evening.

Today we forced ourselves out of bed and arrived at Mercy half asleep. I spent the morning going through the motions with little to no energy. I taught my adult class, Ford and visited with our friends in the AIDS hospice all before 11. At 11:00 we met up with the kids from Mercy and 6 along with Vanessa and Katisa and piled ourselves into the Mercy vans and headed to the Oriental hotel for our river cruise.

We had heard that the Oriental hotel was the most luxurious in Bangkok. I believe it lived up to those accolades. There were hi soi (high society) boutiques in the hotel including a large Louis Vuitton shop at the entrance of the hotel. We walked through a few social rooms on our way to the river cruise. We passed beautiful architecture and art work along with some overtly rich men and women. We boarded the boot and spent the next hour or so travelling down the river on our way to the snake farm. The view was pretty incredible and we got to see yet another way of life in Bangkok.

After arriving at the snake farm we were quickly escorted to the snake show which included trainers or Thai men teasing and prodding an assortment of large scary snakes included cobras, razor snakes etc. After the show we walked around the facility which was pretty sketchy and not well maintained at all. The children seemed to really enjoy running around and seeing all the animals.

At one point I lent my camera to one of the older boys so he could take a picture of this monkey. This monkey was already trouble because there was a hole in the screen where he could reach his arm out and he would grab at the children. He was a monkey so he was pretty harmless, I thought at first anyways. At one point the boy had my camera hanging from his wrist and it was swinging in front of the monkey. The monkey reached through the whole in the fence, grabbed my camera and began swinging it around. At this point I started screaming because I knew this monkey met business with my camera…..BANG, CRASH, BOOM went my camera. The monkey started to swing it around the whole time I was squelling and trying to get the staffs attention. At this point all the kids were gathered around the fence along with every foreigner at the park. Within the first few seconds the monkey had clicked the lever and the battery was hanging out. It was obvious that this monkey probably like all monkeys could easily manipulate small objects and was extremely playful and with any object. After what seemed like in an eternity, one of the staff members came over to rescue my camera. At first he tried to reach through the fence to grab the camera, but was to slow and the monkey grabbed it again and swung it around for the crowd. A few seconds later the staff member climbed in the cage with the monkey, grabbed the camera and handed it to me.

After that the whole ordeal was over, the moment of truth was upon me. Would my Sony Cybershot still be in one piece and would it still work after the monkey mangled with it? First I had to put the battery back in and then I tested it and sure enough it still worked. My camera has a few more scratches and one little dent but I’m thankful it still works and not many people can say that a monkey stole their camera. It makes for a good story and I only wish now that the whole ordeal with videotaped lived so that I could sell it to Sony. because it sure would make a good commercial.

Sending love from Thailand

Misty