bangkok and beyond

i went into bangkok this past weekend to (1) see the harry potter movie and (2) buy the new harry potter book. it was pretty fun, i went early to avoid a long bus trip due to traffic. the movie theater was very fancy. it had assigned seats, so i got to choose where to sit. only about 6 other people were there. they had leather seats. the movie was in english with thai subtitles. i confirmed that, without a doubt, you don't often use spaces between words when writing thai. not that i can read it, but when a whole sentence is one long string of characters, its pretty obvious. shopping is a big national pastime here, so right in downtown bkk there are a lot of huge shopping malls. nestled between 2 of the largest is a temple.

then on monday i went on a trip to a mangrove forest along the gulf of thailand with 2 of the biology teachers and 6 students. the students were working on projects of some sorts, mostly about crabs. i didn't really follow everything that was going on, but i got to see some new areas. there are pictures of that here. while the students were working, i wondered around and looked at whatever i found interesting. i could hear monkeys off in the forest somewhere, but it wasn't until we were getting ready to leave that they came to check us out. first there was just one male, who climbed a tree above the boats. after watching us for awhile, he ran down the tree and onto one of the boats and stole a bag of leaves the students had sampled! one of the boat drivers climbed up the tree and made the monkey give it back. then the monkey pooped and it almost landed on someone. then a few minutes later we were surrounded by an entire troop of monkeys. it was fun. they didn't come very close to us, they were much more wary than the ones at the summer palace. three videos of the monkeys in the picture album. it was a good trip, but kind of tiring because it was super hot and never rained to cool things off.

last night i caught my second amphibian. this time it was Kaloula pulchra. it was very attractive (my book gives the common name as painted burrowing frog) and pretty big. when i grabbed it, it puffed up with air. then i hid it under a bowl while i went to get my camera. it was pretty good for about 5 minutes of picture taking, then it kept hopping around and trying to hide under my foot. a couple pictures of it in the "school" album.

this week is the mid-semester break so most of the students are gone. but there is some sort of camp for kids from southern thailand, so its not like the place is deserted. i'm not sure what they are doing in this camp, but there is a lot of singing and such, so it sounds like fun at least. i don't have anything to do with it other than watching the kids sing and dance from afar. they are only hear til thursday.

we have a long weekend coming up, its some sort of holiday. no work on monday or tuesday! then back to business as usual on wednesday.