Bangkok: No Helmet Required

Bangkok is one crazy, fabulous city. We love it all -- the crowded markets, the delicious food, the ever-present street vendors, the high-end malls, and all of the insane methods of transportation that people use. Motorbikes are one of the most common ways to get around, but they are not just for one person. We constantly see motorbikes with 2, 3, or even 4 people on them. Families are a common sight, with a mother on back holding an infant, a toddler in the front grabbing the handlebars, and/or an older sibling on the back who may be talking on a cell phone or sipping a beverage out of a plastic bag with a straw. A couple of days ago I saw a parent driving a motorbike with a younger child in front and an older child in the back eating a bowl of soup while they navigated the crowded Bangkok streets. Of course, if they aren't carrying children or enjoying a meal while driving, we often see Thai people carrying the most outlandish things while driving their motorbike -- furniture, equipment, building materials, etc. Yesterday Anna tried to take a picture of two people carrying a twin size mattress between them, but she couldn't snap it fast enough before they veered off into traffic. Every once in a while we even see someone riding a motorbike with a helmet on, but that's much less common than seeing someone carrying a table or chairs.

This week, in addition to seeing the sights of Bangkok, we took a day trip to Samut Prakan which is a park designed in the shape of Thailand with monuments positioned in their corresonding locations and scaled to about 1/10 their original size. It was fantastic. Kim also took the kids to the Crocodile Farm nearby, but we couldn't quite make it through the whole show. We all watched while the men put their hands in the crocodile's open mouth, but Anna had to leave when one of them put his head in. Kim made it through to the point where they reached in to take out the 20 Boht bills (money) that they had collected from audience members and placed on the crocodile's tongue, but then had to leave when a 12-year old boy came out to assist with the show. Instead, we wandered over to the walkway where you could "fish" for crocodiles, by paying 20 Boht for a long bamboo pole with a rope tied to the end. Attached to the bottom of the rope was a section of a small animal carcass, which we then dangled into the pit below. We all thought the rope would release the carcass a bit easier than it did. When the crocodile snapped, we had to pull with all of our strength to keep the bamboo pole up with us. At least it wasn't like the elephant park we visited last month, where the baby elephant wrapped his trunk around Max's leg and tried to pull him into the cage to play. At the crocodile farm, we decided that we would let the crocodiles have the bamboo pole if it came down to that.

So we are eating drinking, walking, and sightseeing as much as we can during our last few days in Bangkok. We leave tomorrow morning for the islands, and then we have a couple of nights back in Bangkok before flying home on the 18th. We're really in the homestretch now!