Good Bye Neena and Henry!

Our last few days with Neena and Henry was spent looking around Bangkok, touring the canals and shopping. The canals are fun, until you realize by the smell that you are riding a ricketly wooden boat, with an oversized motor and too many people, on the sewer system. On our last day we tried to play a little 'Amazing Race' with them, using the canal, tuk-tuk and/or taxi, seeing who could get back to the hotel the fastest from our location downtown. Em and I lost to Neena and Henry!!!! OK, nobody tried very hard as Em and I stopped to look for some calendars Neena wanted, and Henry stopped to enquire about the price of lumber....We bought them dinner for losing, however.

Two morning ago, we sent Neena and Henry on their merry way home after a great month travelling together. They had an very early flight, 06:00 hours, in the taxi by 04:00, and then about 20 hours in a plane. After a few hugs to see them off, we went back to bed and then spent the day figuring out 'What do we do now?' We have 8 days left on our "non-visa", so we went to the Immigration Office, conviently located in the middle of nowhere. Long story short, we are not applying for more time, but instead are changing plans and heading to Vietnam on the 8th. We switched hotels rooms to the famous Kho San Road area and gave up our passports to a visa service to arrange out 30-day visa for Vietnam. It will take four days.

Here is a look at Khao San Road - 'backpacker's alley' - at night. So many farang!! It's a little too obnoxious for us, or maybe we're a little too old for it..


We had a busy day yesterday. We went to a well-known government research hospital where they have several museums designed to test your stomach. First, the anatomy building, yea, crosscuts of cadavers. The hardest to see was their comprehensive collection of fetuses in various stages and with about every disfiguratuion you can imagine. Rumors have it the the building is haunted. Go figure.

Next stop: Pathology Musuem, i.e, cross cuts of organs. Then on the to the Forensics Museum. This was Cool. They had very dramatic pictures of murder victims, suicides and car crashes, with corresponding skeletal remains. In other words, here is a picture of a gunshot victim, hours after he died, followed by a collection of skulls with gunshot wounds to the head. OK, I am going too far and moving on.....(did I mention that a Thai prison hobby is to display famous murders after they have been put to death? We saw several.)

After that exciting venture, we decided to go sit front row in open seating at the snake center. This is where the keep venemous snakes, extract their venom, inject said venom into horses, extract antibody from horse, keep for anti-venom. It was a good show, but a little too close. We saw the King cobra, Siamese cobra, Pitt Viber, and Banded Krate. This is the second oldest hospital of it kind, second to one in Brazil.

A look at the king cobra. We couldn't believe how close the snake keeper would get to that mouth!

A new friend:


Em confronting one of her worst fears. The muscles on this animal are unreal.


With time to kill, we are ready to leave Bangkok and today we head to Kanchanaburi and Hellfire Pass for a few days. We'll see the Bridge over the River Kwai and spent time in the countryside, then back to Bangkok for our flight to Hanoi!

(If you couldn't tell from the wittier writing, Keith did this entry!)