Caves, bats, and a good chance of rabies.

The longboats on the beach.
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Before I forget, Happy Birthday, Bonnie P.!

Today we drove about an hour to the beach. We took a long boat that had a car engine attached to it to a mangrove and then walked through the mangrove to a cave. I took tons of pictures, which I'm trying to figure out how to send. "Internet Cafes" here are more like some guy's garage packed with old PC's - but it cost 15 baht an hour -- about 43 cents, so I won't complain.

There were bats and crazy bridges that had no business supporting anyone's weight but magically did, and there were stalagwhatevers hanging from the ceiling and it rained inside the cave from the humidity. Bats flew around occasionally, but they didn't really bother anybody.

Walking to the mangrove and the cave.
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Then we *went* (thank you, Eric) swimming in the ocean. The waves here are really quite large, and one in our group, Jeff, had never body surfed before, so we all fun showing him how. He forgets to look where he's going and often runs over people, but we forgive because he's a young'un. I'm elderly here at 29, but on the beach two of the girls said they were glad there was a teacher here. It made me feel lovely and old.

I have to keep this short because dinner is served at 6 sharp, but for lunch we ate at the beach (think beach with NO TOURISTS, a la scuzzy marina for fishermen), and we ate a fish with eyes and teeth, something that seemed like egg or tofu or compressed chicken with chiles in it, a Thai omelet with fried basil which was just nasty, something that looked like garden weeds with soy and chiles (like collards but salty), and a fish cake which was kind of like a crab cake, kind of like a tod mun, but still, all in all, pretty funky. I drank lots of orange Fanta in a long bottle to keep from thinking about anything.

Sketchy ladder situation...
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And today, when I took a shower, I got trapped in there with a flying black mini-praying mantis. I don't spook easily, bug-wise, but that thing had it in for me. It kept flying at my head. I finally swatted it with my bathing suit. It didn't die. It just left.

Oh, and I talked to the cooks yesterday and told them about the BBQ restaurant. They let me try their roasted pork, which wasn't for our dinner, so it made me feel special. It's good - dryer than BBQ. I told them about BBQ sandwiches and they think it's weird we eat cabbage with cream in it.

Looking out.
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The word of the day is "prathet." (PRA-tet) It means "country."

ps- our roof leaks. it's the rainy season. we have buckets on the floors. it's so cool. :)