Boris the spider...

Along Haeundae beach in Busan, there are a number of interactive murals.



(I don't know if I'm supposed to fear the future or the giant spider.)

walk the dinosaur

I had heard that there were dinosaur footprints in Busan, but had never actually visited them. In June, for Peter's last weekend in Busan, we went to Igidae Park to find them.


And I'm pretty sure they're in this picture. It's about the same as the picture in the brochure, but I'm not entirely sure what I'm looking at. Interpret away.

Igidae Park has a lot going for it, though. There's fishing!


You can see the *other* side of the Gwangalli bridge


And those potentially-dinosaur-footprint-puddles are full of tadpoles and little frogs!


There's a path that goes along the water and past this structure


Which is full of...


I've been told that stacking rocks is good luck. I think this looks like the set of the "chatty duelists" scene in the Princess Bride.


There's a cave.


And Pete was brave and athletic.

Looking through a glass onion

An onion lived on top of Pete's refrigerator for a few weeks. It pathetically reached for the window on the other side of the room, until we decided to make a home for it.

Pete poked some holes in the bottom of a plastic container, and then we went across the street and dug up some dirt. It wasn't very good dirt. It was dense, rocky dirt. But it was free.





Pete put Onion Friend on the window sill. Maybe we were too late. Onion Friend didn't exactly thrive, and most of his leaves fell off. But a few weeks later, the dirt was full of life!

touch the distant sands

When I lived in Ban Phe, these islands taunted me. There is a cluster of islands east of Ko Samet, and one you can see from way out in Laem Mae Phim. Autumn and I schemed to build a boat or to kayak out to them and have an untouched, tropical paradise to ourselves for a weekend.

I'm glad we didn't.

This time around, I signed up for one of the speedboat tours offered from Ko Samet to the neighboring islands.

This is Ko Thalu, the one that's furthest east, by Laem Mae Phim.


Then you come around and it's full of speedboats. You can rent beach chairs for 20 baht. There is a restaurant.


The island tour was good, though. There was snorkeling between a couple of little rock islands in the cluster by Ko Samet.


Even there, we were not alone.


On one of the islands near Ko Samet (with bungalows and a mini shop,) there's a nice little hike.


The last part of the tour brought us to the Ko Samet Fish Farm, which looks like this:

Some of the boards are a little broken, but it's fine.

There was a shark, which was far less frightening than the prospect of losing my balance and my camera.

the eagle in the sky

This one time, Autumn and I took a taxi to Kyungsung University, where there are lots of bars and restaurants that are popular with foreigners. Instead, we ended up *at* the university, where there were two huge cages with giant birds of prey.

This sea eagle looks like it's wearing bronze scales of armor.


And there were three vultures, who liked to fight over the meat slabs in a way that's very amusing to mimic. I need a picture of Autumn and I playing vultures.

Back in the US...

In Seattle, people don't ride motorbikes. They pay for things with credit cards and they all speak English. There are no mangy dogs on the street. People wear shoes. It's confusing and strange!

My ma and brother picked me up at the airport on a Wednesday (my second go at Wednesday; the first one took place mostly in Seoul.) My body didn't remember how to sleep, so for awhile I was staying up for 24 hours at a time and waking up randomly at 2:00 am. It got better.

I got my Korean visa the day after I arrived. This task involved shivering on the Seattle sidewalks at 8 in the morning, with fake shoes (I only had flip-flops) and no coat (I didn't own one.) It was only like 70 degrees.

In the following days, I cherished the vast selection of English songs they have at karaoke bars here. I wore shoes. I went tromping around in the woods, confident that I would not be attacked by a viper or a cobra. There was a possible bear.



Tyler was brave and athletic, until the wood became "vibrating and spongy."



My mother left an assignment on the answering machine to make a terrarium. It was pleasantly specific about the location of the plastic geese. Nathan (my brother,) Tyler and I made a terrarium. And there was a frog who wanted to play.



The frog didn't want to play anymore so we evicted him from the terrarium.



Poor frog.

scoff at the monkeys

While in/at/on Railay, it is a good idea to look up every once in awhile here, because there might be a family of monkeys eager to drop things on your head.

Or just be cute.



These are spectacled langurs. I ran into (under? I struggle so much with the prepositions!) a family of them on my way from West Railay to East Railay when I first landed. I was tired and hungry and when I looked down to maybe retrieve my camera, I instead noticed that each of my legs was providing lunch for a half-dozen mosquitoes and I kept going. The next day, there was a cluster of them in the trees near my guesthouse.



I also saw a group of macaques at pranang cave. I did not photograph them.

Sunday driver, yeah

Ayutthaya was the capital of Thailand from 1351 to 1767. I wandered around the Ayutthaya Historical Park and Other Places in Ayutthaya and took pictures.



1767 was the end of the Ayutthaya kingdom, when the Burmese army sacked the city. They also beheaded most of the Buddha images. A few of them have been restored.











Headless Buddhas:




This little Prang chattered and squeaked with bats. I climbed up and tried to take a picture, but it looks just as bad as my last attempt. Bats are tricksy creatures.

butterflies and zebras

Sun mentioned that there were pandas at the Chiang Mai Zoo, so with one day in the city I decided to visit. I had good timing, too; May 27th was baby Lin Ping's birthday, and I came on the 28th.



Lin Ping was running around being adorable. She is not particularly graceful, but this just adds to her cuteness. There was a large table and chairs set up in her habitat (remnants of yesterday's birthday party) and she managed to get her head stuck in one of the chairs.



She started whining, and her mother tried to help by grabbing the scruff of her neck and attempting to pull her *through* the chair, which was not going to happen. The zoo staff frantically walkie-talkied one another. When she dislodged herself, we all cheered. Then some men came and took away all of the chairs. See, Lin Ping? This is why you can't have nice things!

Here is a video of Lin Ping and her mother being cute before she lost her chair privileges.



There are other animals at the zoo too.







Lin Ping isn't even the only adorable cuddly-looking baby at the zoo, but koalas sleep too much to get stuck and scare the zoo staff.


The first spirit house I ever saw was at Point Defiance zoo in Tacoma, Washington, where the elephants live in pretend-Thailand. This is the Chiang Mai Zoo spirit house complex.



(Do you like that there's not a picture of a butterfly or a zebra? I saw them both, I swear!)

let's see the monkeys

An hour or so north of Chiang Mai there is a temple in a cave called Wat Tham Pla. Below the cave there are monkeys.





Monkeys are a big part of the reason people visit, so there is a caged stand that sells peanuts and corn to feed the monkeys. The bamboo sticks leaning against the stand are official monkey-poking sticks to be used when the animals get greedy.





The temple is some 200 steps up the side of a hill. The bottom of the staircase is guarded by lions, and monkeys dare not venture past them.



Except me.





Inside there are bats! You can see them and hear them, but good luck taking a picture of them.





I think this gesture is supposed to be "I have survived the cave and conquered my surroundings!"