Crazy Royal Thainess

This is crazy-beautiful Thailand. Bangkok is glorious and ridiculous. I had a great time! But I am happy to be settling into slower and routinized life in the north, in Chaing Mai.

In the 'Kok we toured many o' wat, pictured above are shots from Wat Pho; the hugely impressive reclining Buddha, as well as the Grand Palace; home of the exquisite solid jade Buddha. Wats [temples] are decked out with gold colored glass and foil that cover absolutely as much as possible, and then everything else is rendered in colored glass pieces. It's all very shiny and pretty. Tre different from the ubiquitous offerings in Bali. Though hand woven grass offering boxes and fresh flowers and whatever goods were available were very beautiful (my favorite offering was the Mars bar and frangipani!) I came to find them a reminder of the oppression of women. Everyday women sit and make these beautiful offerings, and everyday the old ones are tossed to the gutter and new ones are laid. Perpetual, tedious work, that only women can do. Truly, I also only ever saw women steadily stacking cinder blocks on their heads for roadside construction--while men were "tinkering" with motorbike repairs.

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The last picture up there is a few fellow nursing students and I practicing first aid safety for a venomous snake bite at the snake farm in Bangkok. Thailand has loads of these guys. The videos reminded us of Patty and Susanna's pathophys class from last year--ah... the coagulation cascade. We also observed a venom extraction up close and personal. They get these poisonous dudes to bite a rubber capped jar to elicit and collect their venom and this is then injected into a horse at the nearby Red Cross Snake Farm/Horse Ranch. Horses metabolize the small amount of venom and make antibodies to it, they then "donate" their blood for the purposes of sequestering the antibody-rich plasma. It's prepared so that it can be administered as an anti-venom serum as the antidote to scary neurotoxins that slowly and miserably kill you when you get bit by one of these cuddly creatures. Pretty rad.

Also up there in those pics, is Kai! Kaiulani, my darling, thank you for your fabulous Thai hospitality, for living in Bangkok while I'm here, and for working it like you do. 

Feeling very lucky for all there is to be enjoyed here at the moment.