Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera!

Did you know the King and I is banned in Thailand? They don't like the way the royal family is portrayed. The musical, the movie and the music are all banned, if you are caught with it inside the country you could be jailed. Have you seen Broke Down Palace? I'm so not reliving a moment of Claire Danes so I can watch Anna and the King.I say however, it's good to be the king, as one of the world's longest serving monarchs, the Thai people love their king. His face is everywhere on everything. He even has his own anthem, we played it before every show. Like a game of red light, green light, the minute the anthem is played everyone freezes until its over as a sign of respect. Its very pretty, listen here. And if you want to know about ,Bhumibol Adulyadej, aka King Rama IX, well our friends at wikipedia can teach you all sorts of stuff.

Snap, crackle, pop

I've seen Andrew Zimmern and Anthony Bordain eat enough weird food on TV so you would have thought I wouldn't be icked out by it in person, nope, not so much.

The dried fish market. Smelled so terrible!That's a whole rooster, eye balls and all. Ewww.These are grasshoppers, the cockroaches and grubs were too blurry to post.And this well, it defies description!

Wouldn't it be loverly?

Pretty sure I saw Aliza Doolittle lurking as I wandered the outdoor flower market. This place is up and running 24 hours a day. The flowers are freshest at night when they are newly floated down the river from the mountains. They smelled heavenly and were so cheap. A bundle of roses? 50 baht. That's like $1.50.

Time for a rub down

Watching Buddha take a rest got me thinking I could use a moment to regroup before I continued my touring. Lucky for us at Wat Po, you can visit the world famous school of massage! 45 minutes of sheer bliss cost 350 baht, yes that's $10 bucks! Really like the treatment? Stay and enroll in the school. Tis better to give than receive, but when it comes to massage I want to receive!
All I have to say is more tourist sites need to clue into this. Eiffel Tower followed by foot massage, yes please! The Acropolis with a little backrub, hellz ya!

See how relaxed I look? Ah....

Lazy boy?

This is the famous reclining Buddha at Wat Pho. I'm thinking the Thai people never heard of barcalounger.
This Buddha is more than 150 feet long, 50 feet high and gold plated! (Gold hit $1000 an ounce while I was in Thailand - you do the math).Big feet, little person, gives you an idea of the scale of this Buddha.
Throw pillow anyone?

Things that are round for $500?

Took this picture at a street side food stand. Besides being very pretty to look at I'm not sure that these items should be stored all squashed together like this.