Pictures at last

Well guys, this is the briefest of brief overviews of my time in Thailand so far. It takes like a zillion hours to upload photos on this internet connection, so you only get a few. I will try to narrate as best I can.

This is my trip to a hill tribe village near Chiang Rai. Only a few of us got to go, but it was amazing. There was a festival going on and we just moved from house to house eating and drinking (Fanta for me, home brewed Thai whiskey for everyone else). I gained 1.6 kilograms in 2 days.

This is a Buddhist temple. Two artist rivals built two different temples, white and black. I wish I could have taken pictures inside because there is the craziest paintings on the walls. There are only 2 completed because it takes 3 years to paint the entire wall. It moves from Buddha and good to all kinds of crazy evil things - the two major ones are Osama Bin Laden and George Bush :( The white temple was beautiful, but I prefer the black temple because it's more natural and has more soul. That sounds weird, but it's the only way I can think to describe it. My pictures don't do them justice.

This is in front of Pi Noy's tattoo shop. He's this Thai guy that one of the volunteers made friends with and now everyone hangs out there when we go into town on the weekend. We bbq-ed corn and other veggies with with palm butter and this sweet chili sauce that his mom makes. AMAZING. The corn was delicious, but it made me miss the awesomeness that is Utah corn.

WWII cemetery about 2 hours outside of Bangkok. These are the graves of the soldiers who died building the death railway from Burma to Thailand. There are inscriptions from the families of the soldiers on a bunch of the headstones. It seriously made me tear up. There's not that much to it besides the graves, but it was really powerful to me.

I just thought this restaurant was hilarious.

Watching the tigers exercise at the Tiger Temple. It was the coolest thing ever. I think perhaps I'm getting over my fear of animals here in Thailand. There are tons of little ones just running around where we live. (Like geckos in our dorms that make the loudest geck-o noise ALL NIGHT LONG!)

This was at the death railway museum. Mostly I just thought it was the creepiest diorama I had ever seen. It totally freaked me out.

Bridge on the River Kwai. A beautiful spot but I definitely wouldn't go again.