YES IT IS. Because they're not my pictures.
Though, they are pictures of me.
Three of them.
Picasa has them.
First three in the Songkran album.
Click:
http://picasaweb.google.com/gecko.on.the.wall/Songkran
They were taken at the church the day of Songkran, by Pi-Ning.
Enjoy!
Moni
My camera = dead.
Congratulations, me.
Not really.
Don't expect a whole bunch a pictures for awhile...
I have no camera to take pictures with. Only a large dead piece of plastic, metal and rubber.
I need a military-issue high-performance camera. One that can also withstand water... for a few feet, atleast - to not have to worry about splashes and stuff.
Anyone make those?
I also just reset my page counter [at the bottom, the numbers].
It is now at "0" and will continue to grow due to the number of DIFFERENT people who visit my blog site. Not just "hits" (come and go as you please counts) - but from different computers.
Was at: 1,570 visits/hits. A good number from me, most likely, but I bet 80% go to my viewers... Hehe. Thanks, people!
Last issue: COMMENTS. I would LOVE to get comments - I love comment feed-back. On my blog site, to my different posts... on my Photo Site, under a picture! Add a comment anywhere! You don't even have to sign up to do so [99% sure].
So... please leave comments for me!
MoniNeko
Songkran... Thai New Year. The third New Year's celebration I've had this year! Crazy.
Following Songkran is Songkran... or rather, 3 days of water-fighting madness across the entire country.
PICTURES:
http://picasaweb.google.com/gecko.on.the.wall/Songkran
In these pictures you will find some taken at a church - that's where the games, stilts and bug is from; these were taken on the actual day of Songkran.
All of the others, which tend to start with water droplets on the window, were taken on the first day of the festival itself, and the pictures are almost nothing compared to the real deal.
Not only is there water flying in every direction at every one, powder is smeared on faces, clothing, automobiles and just about everything. Some use colored powder, which a picture of a bus displays proudly in my album. But I didn't see any of the colored powder on a person this year. As for the regular stuff, however, it got in my face, eyes, mouth, and someone spilt a good amount of it from a bottle on me, which went down my shirt and turned my entire left side white.
I'm sorry you can't see any pictures of ME in my album... that's because I didn't risk taking out my camera in open public. However, two people, Pi-Fanta (Ning) and a farang friend I met have taken pictures, both I have asked for e-mails with photos from. Both said they would love to do so, so now I wait.
The water festival started off [for me] with me [on my lonesome] and my water gun (which I can thank my host dad for), walking around, shooting-up innocent citizens. I walked to the mall, hoping there would be a lot of action there [the mall is barely a few blocks from my current house]. I was right. Not only did I find a good "nest," or "station" - I decided that's where I'd be for the rest of the festival. "Kon Dio" - Alone - isn't much fun, and I met a few people at this shop [bar, actually] called Mr. Tong's, both Thai and "foreigner."
On the second day of Songkran, extended [host] family came over and we had a small BBQ in the shop-area of the house. It was pretty tastey. Then I proceeded to drench my host mother, father, and other family members - then headed back to Mr. Tong's to finish off the day. ...only to get tossed into a pool-sized water-holder/refiller/thing for our gun and bucket water-refilling needs. Just so you know, we love to drop lots and lots of ice into our water to REALLY shock our victims. I felt like I was tossed into the ocean over by Alaska... *shivers*
There really isn't a whole lot else to say about this huge event - it was more action than activities.
Go check out the pictures - here's the link again:
http://picasaweb.google.com/gecko.on.the.wall/Songkran
I'll try and weasel out the pictures from my friends soon... though from the "farang" I can only hope to get an E-Mail from him - I have no contact information of his, and he has my E-Mail on a piece of paper. Hope it didn't get lost to the massiveness of water-wars...
On a different note, I'm back to my old [first] host family, which I will stay for the remainder of time. School hasn't started back up yet, but when it does, I plan on taking fewer classes to focus on learning the language more intently. I have returned to the Kunawongkrit, with my fun host dad, host mom, brothers and sister, my kitty cat friend [Cake], a room with a actual working TV and DVD player in it (yay!), and a broiler - so now I can finally make cupcakes with the Pillsbury and icing goodies. :D
Who cares if Asia always says, "Gah, can't eat that, that makes you fat!"... more cupcakes for me!
Muahahahahaa! Yay ziploc bags.
MoniNeko
P.S. - I just spell-checked the darned thing, and I believe I just set a record... One error in the entire thing! I misspelled water gun. Har har.
It's been another month since I've updated my blogs... but let me tell you what... I have a good excuse this time! I promise.
March started off for me in Nakhon Phanom, which was soon followed by the Krungtep (That's "Bangkok" in [phonetic] Thai) Experience. A few days after I got home from Bangkok, I rode a cramped bus over to Korat, to hop into the Downstage Left seat of the second floor... of a double-decker charter bus that would be our real "home" for the next 9 days.
I sat by my wicked-cool friend, Michelle [from FL], as a few other friends piled around us and the front of the bus [with the giant window in front, of course], like Diana from Taiwan [love her!], Yuki from Japan [she's awesome,too!], Mandy, Ileia, Carol, ...and a few others.
We rode the bus for a several-hours-long distance until we came across our first "oh my gosh look how clear the water is" beach. ...Ha, and we thought THAT water was clear. We all got burnt there, and celebrated Easter. A few of the exchange students [when we had stopped at Lotus] splurged on candy and eggs [never actually saw them, so I'm afraid I can't detail them], and hid it around the resort. Since we were doing this at night and the resort was practically rented out to just our group, we wouldn't have to worry about neighbors. Unfortunately, though, I was one of the worst that were burnt of the group, and decided [after several million movements that hurt] I'd just try and sleep instead of doing more unnecessary moving. I was lucky though... the next morning I woke up and was ready earlier than a lot of people, so I had more energy to get up and look for anything people missed the previous night. Score! I got a bag-full of candy AND found the missing "Baby Bottle Pop." [There were only a few, and I got one!]
...I skipped something. We spent 2 nights at the resort. After the first night, we went on a small boating tour to the surrounding islands. Speed boat. Fun. Saw a walk-through.. or rather, walk-by cave thing, got back in the boat. Snorkled around a bit. Went back to the resort. Okay, back to where I was.
We got on a boat. We went to James Bond Island!!! Woo!!!
Visited a real "floating city." I mean seriously. Their houses were like on a weird boardwalk thing, surrounded by water. It was pretty cool.
Separated ourselves from our big bags... took a couple days' worth of stuff in a bookbag... boarded our next "home." The big, double-decker boat.
We snorkled. We arrived at the Similan Islands and put our bags in bungalows instead of tents [tents were first idea, but the weather looked kind of bad, so they put us in bungalows]. We spent the next night in tents, with what turned out to be worse weather. Ha! Irony. Oh well. No matter where we stayed, it was sandy outdoors AND in. It's just worse this time because the mosquitoes were upped a few notches to where you had a whole ... flock? after you, and you had to pull your ninja moves to unzip, hop in/out-of the tent, and zip it back up in just a couple seconds flat so you didn't get any enemies in your snooze-zone.
Tons of hermit crabs inhabit the Similan Islands. Be careful where you step on the beach, there's one every foot or so, possibly every other inch (depending what part of the island you're on). However, they're really rather cute...
Next day went searching for sea turtles. Found a couple, but the snorklers snorkled them away...
I got a picture before they left, though. Woo!
Climbed a giant rock pile... had to put your rock climbing muscles to the test...
Next day took off from the tent-y Similan Islands and headed for Phuket! We made it just in time to see the Sunset and grab something to eat.
Woke up the next morning to go to the Phuket Aquarium, and check out the Nemo (clown) fish, electric eels, "upside down catfish," and even some people-sized fish!
After catching some delicious fried shrimp with chili sauce, we did a bit of "gift shopping" and headed back to the hotel, prepping ourselves up to go to Phuket FantaSea, which I found out later was also a small theme park... Darn it... I wore heels, too! Ouch. My feet hurt by the time we looked at all of the wallet-gouging-prices on some cool stuff, took a few pictures, checked out someone making glass sculptures, and ate at a huge buffet that could sit.. what was it, 2,000 people? Haha. Yeah, the brochure even said there was about 1,000 types of food from all over the world... They half-truthed that. I think they mean 1,000 types of food all over the theme park, because there sure wasn't 1,000 types of food at the buffet, to every one's disappointment.
Oh well, they had cream puffs. I guess I'll live (I personally downed a few of those).
Also at Phuket FantaSea were some really interesting bathrooms... Now, hold on. Basically all I meant was that they were themed as well, and the sinks were pretty fun. You turn the knob on top his nose and water comes out not one, but BOTH of the bull statue's nostrils!
...anyway...
Last night on the Southern Tour, we had already started heading home. I could have sworn we stayed at this hotel before, but I guess it was just DeJaVu or something. Anyway, Michelle and I rented out an air-conditioned Snooker room [there were 2 rooms w/ AC, one w/o], and played our own way; we had a blast. There was even a dry erase board. Woo!
Before heading home from that point, though, we saw a banner attached to our hotel. "Phuket Bike Week." There were a lot of bikers, both farang [foreigners] and not, staying at our hotel... wanted to take a picture with a small group, but never found a small group again after having that thought. Oh well.
Yes, mom and dad, I wore my contacts when I was snorkeling. Of course I did! I mean, why would I want to view the prettyfulness of the ocean without them (a.k.a., BLIND)? Haha, just teasing. Seriously though, I did wear them...
PICTURES!
http://picasaweb.google.com/gecko.on.the.wall/SouthTour
IMPORTANT!
Please hold all shipments to Moni [me] for the next week or so. I plan on moving back to my old host house within a few days, and I'll let you know when. Until then, please don't send me anything! It will get sent to the wrong address. If you have put something in the mail already, please let me know! The new address will be the same as the first one I had when I came here. If you would like to get it from me, please send me an E-Mail to:
gecko.on.the.wall@gmail.com
Thanks!
MoniNeko
