The Tiger Zoo

If Mr A & I ever had a better idea than going to the SriRacha Tiger Zoo, I dont remember it.

The Tiger Zoo was extrordinarily bizarre. The first ten minutes pretty much summed up the entire head scratching experience. We walked in and first went to the "Happy Family" exhibit. This is where they show how pigs and tigers can live together and ... I dunno. Not feed on the other? So there is a nursery where a tigress and her five little "cubs" (piglets dressed up in ridiculous but precious tiger coats) are in a room together. Next door is a gigantic sow and three piglets and two tiger cubs who are all suckling off the sow. It was just all wrong. Weird.

Anyways, so we move on to the next room, the "Tiger Tunnel", which is one of those windows looking into the habitat exhibts. There are probably seven or so adult/large adolecent tigers living in this habitat. AND PEOPLE! There are three African (?) people just standing in the exhibt holding sticks and wearing tiger print jungle get-ups. Huh?! A people zoo? I stood there blinking for a solid two minutes just trying to figure out what the reason was for these people in the tiger pen. I waved at them, rather embarassed. Were the sticks for protection from the tigers or just part of the theme? Never did figure it out and I left somewhere between offended and dumbfounded.

Next exhibit was more of the same but this time it was a tiger, a pig and a golden retriever. Apparently dogs are also part of this perfectly symbiotic relationship. Word to the wise: pigs cant walk very well on rocks and dogs look gross if their fur gets wet. Wet rocks = not such a great habitat for showing off these animals.

At any rate, this zoo, with its Scorpian Queen, Elephant Show, Amazing Circus, and feed the 10 billion crocodiles with a wooden fishing pole while standing on the jankiest bridge ever constructed, made for quite the Tuesday.
PETA members be damned! I think it was well worth the 300 baht.

Viva La Tea Towel!

In Other News

I have completed another hat. This one was requested by a friend but without any specifications. It fits my head but I have a relatively large head so I think maybe it will be too big for him. (That sentence sounded like I dont speak English well.) I also made a duplicate stitch pattern for it to cover the messy color jog job I did. Not only did that not work, it made the "lightbulb" look more like a "scary face". Ill try to get a picture of the hat up soon.

Im totally over my mothers blanket. I began this stupid thing the day after New Years and quite frankly Im getting sick of looking at it. I have one more seed stitch square, which I began yesterday and then its assembly only. I have to finish this thing before Mr A goes home. This is now my goal and until its done - everything else loses priority.

I got my Stitch It Kit in the mail. HOLY MOSES! Its fucking AWESOME! I whipped out a tea towel for Mr A (somehow I convinced myself that he really needs a tea towel) with palm trees and pineapples and other Hawaiian-esque decorations. Embroidery is AWESOME! Next I want to make a pillow case. Anyone want a pillow case with customized needlework work on it?
Ill never lose heart for knitting but when it comes to hobbies for broke college graduates - stitching is totally taking the cake.

IN OTHER NEWS:
Went to Pattaya this weekend and had a nice mix of wholesome and not-so-much-wholesome fun. Sunday was fun at the Ripley's museum in the Royal Plaza Mall. The Infinity Maze was this thing where you get gloves and socks and walk through a maze made of mirrors and other perception distorting apparatuses. It wasnt so much a maze with turning corners and dead ends and things like that, it was more like find the door out of this crazy room. It was short but interesting and the Haunted House made me want to cry several times. Im not so great with haunted house type things since I scare easily. The 4-D movie was a log ride in the amazon. It was hilarious to be wearing those nerdy 3D glasses at our age but the real fun was the 6 asian girls behind us who were SCREAMING in terror!

Saturday night was not really what I would consider family fun time, but was interesting all the same. After a very suptuous meal at Niddy's Nook (Teacher Christopher & his husbands dining establishment) we took off to find something to do. I wanted to see the show at Throb, which I am told features an obese drag queen performing backflips and sexy backup dancers. After a substantial amount of pleading it became obvious that my company was not going to be comfortable hanging out in Boyz Town all night. So we went to Walking Street.

Ive heard lots of rumors about Walking Street but have never been there myself. We briefly went into a clubby bar called Lucifers Dungeon or something along the same line of stupidity but when you arent drinking or dancing, clubs arent all that much fun. I really had my heart set on seeing a show - ANY show - so finally we agreed to see the only kind of show they offer on Walking Street.
Now, Ive been sort of debating whether or not to write about this. I wanted to go and I thought it was fun, but Im sure it doesnt bring a sparkle to my parents eye to know that their precious daughter was at a "pussy show". Last night Mr A was reading a book about sex traffiking in Asia by a professor at Yale or some other genero-ivy league and not only had dude been to a pussy show, he had been to the same place we went to! I guess I can rationalize my bad behavior by explaining that I was merely partaking in a sort of sexual anthropology.

On with the show...

There are guys who walk up and down the street advertising these shows with "menus" that say what the show entails. I dont like the idea of talking them mostly because Im afraid that Ill be sold into white slavery or something else ridiculous. Since I had company with me the risk was minimal. I read the menu, checked it over with my buddy and the guy led us to a doorway that was up a flight up stairs. We paid 300B, which included a drink!, and the door opened.
Inside looked a lot like Boyz Boyz Boyz. There were a dozen or so girls with tacky outfits (aqua blue and white fringe), tall boots, and a button with a number. The walked between two stages with bored looks on their faces, dancing a little or checking their reflections in the mirror. Mr A fell asleep. I watched some drunk Germans sitting next to us and started to wonder if this was going to be a total rip off.

Then the same Star Wars type music came on and the lights dimmed and the show was about to start. I cant describe the whole show (mostly because Im afraid I will get thrown off blogger) but I can tell you that things happened in that bar that left me shocked and amazed! Like I sat there for a full minute with my mouth open and my eyes blinking in wonderment! At first it was a little bit lame - drawing a picture with a pen in the vagina. To me, that doesnt require much skill. Then it was like - woman was pulling RAZOR BLADES out of her vagina or blowing darts from her vagina and popping balloons that guests were holding up as targets. It was unbelievable! And this went on for a full 45 minutes! I truly cant imagine how these women acquired these skills. But, at any rate, I was really impressed.

After the show we left and I was feeling sick from my ear infection so the night was cut short. But really, how do you top that? If we had gone anywhere else, would I have been able to think about anything but that woman smoking cigarettes with her genitals? Probably not.

The best part of the night was the part when I realized that the gay clubs offered a show that was 1000 times more wholesome entertainment (lights, songs, glitter, dancing) than the girly bars (razors, cigarettes, pulling things out of orifices). I just wish there was a way to work that into the HRC canvassing rap when lameo asshole tells you that "the queers corrupt our society".

Mr A & I have returned safely from a rather pleasant week in Cambodia. 4 nights in Siam Reap (2 days of exploring Angkor due to some oversleeping issues I was having) and 2 nights in Phnom Penh. 6 nights and 7 days. Some of the highlights are as follows:

1) riding a bicycle around the Angkor temples aka the hottest place on earth. Bicycles? Indeed. It was a sweat parade/water drinking extravaganza.

2) the Dead Fish bathroom. Theres a sign outside that says to watch your children or something else casual. Until you notice that theres a freaking crocodile pit next to the bathroom! No joke, there at least a dozen chilling out in this concrete hole that was protected by a picket fence made of kindling. Safe? Not really. But you could feed them for 50 cents, which was the highlight of Mr A's trip.

3) the bus ride back from Siam Reap was like a game of Twister (all rights reserved, of course) trying to find the most comfortable position to sleep on using only my backpack and the person next to me. Luckily, I knew the person. There was air conditioning so that was a bonus.

4) We bought water on our way into the Grand Palace from an adorable 6 year old girl who was working hard on the street. In fact, we bought 2. Two hours later we are at the water front talking to some other street kids and Mr A buys a couple drinks from them ... OUT OF NOWHERE comes 6 year old girl and shes screaming at these other kids and apparently really pissed at us since we didnt buy water from her. So we are like chuckling and "aww cute"-ing when this girl walks over to Mr A and slaps him on the leg. Not even a playful slap, a 6 year olds equivalent of kicking your ass kind of slap. DAMN! She was angry. But inflicting physical violence upon the walking ATMs is not the way to earn your living and she should learn that if she hasnt already.

5) We entered a casino looking like vagrants. Our wallets left feeling the same way. Oh well, at least the anxiety of gambling took away from the unrelenting pain in my ear.

OK. Thats all I have the patience to type right now.

Quick Note from Kampuchea

I know, I know, they go by Cambodia now and the US Dept. of State never really adopted the whole DK thing anyway...but Thailand still calls this place Kampuchea and I feel like sounding more wordly.

Its really really hot here. Thats about all I can think of at the moment. We rode bikes around the temples in Angkor and at one point the sentence "Wow! Your shorts are so wet!" came from the bicycle behind me. As if I had jumped out of a pool or something. Right?
So Mr A and I have been attempting to make our way through Cambodia with twenty photocopied pages of the Lonely Planet and a budget that has been the source of my unending anxiety (because I was only thinking about one person when I designated how much to bring along). We have seen all sorts of sights and I have all sorts of pictures that will have to be posted at a later date.
Cambodia's Royal Palace is a schizoid mix of French architecture and something that looks strikingly similar to Thai architecture (rumor is that it all originiated here). I thought it was creepy rather than plesant but I suppose thats because Ive never been to France. The pastel, colonial lamp posts lining the avenues next to the river, juxtaposed with rickshaws and lots of poor people made Phnom Penh feel much more like a movie than any other place Ive been to. Sort of a highly orientalized version of a real city in the Orient.
Today we are going to a killing field and other such things of the emotionally heavy nature.

Safe Travels.