Bang Bang Bang --- Your Dead! (mack)

    After staying in Bangkok for a few more days, it was time to go.  That city is insane!  We had a good time there, but we both felt a little overstimulated.  All hours of the day, the most chaos any eyes from the small city of Seattle have ever seen.  Ads, ads, ads.  Some of them the size of apartment buildings, some of them small, but stacked as tall as buildings.  Traffic is nuts!  Cabs everywhere.  People walking all over the place, everyone stopping to stare at me and Chelsea as we walk.  Tuk-Tuk drivers yelling, "You want ride?" and cab drivers telling us that their meter does not work, then charging us 80 bht for a 40bht ride. Whatever, they can have the extra $1.30.  We will go back there one more time this weekend, I am performing as a guest artist at the end of the Yamaha School of Music student recitals this Saturday.  Band is ok, I tried to give them charts to some originals but they wanted really recognizable standards in the set.  Makes sense I guess.  Then it is on to the Thailand International Jazz Conference!  Super excited to go, but way to late to have tried to get a slot to perform or to play in the solo competition.

Sharks!  Dont touch by the mouth!

This is almost an everyday occurance!

Thai Boxing.  Super intense, these guys were 102 lbs each, fighting for division championship.  Betting is crazy, hand signals.  Personal bets, nobody in control.  One guy on one side might shake his hands at someone across the stadium to place a bet with one other guy.  AWESOME!

   Anyways, today we took the bus (air-conditioned tour bus) two and a half hours west to the province of Khanchanaburi, then to the city of Khanchanaburi.  We are staying in a small guesthouse called VN Guesthouse (I think VN stands for Very Nice).  It seems really cool, very tropical, laid back.  We can rent bikes, book taxi's and shuttles, eat/drink and we are right on the river for about 400 bht. ($13.30 a night).  Tomorrow we are going to explore the town, were about 1km from the Khanchanaburi strip.  I am interested in a sign that said "Get Drunk for Ten Baht!" or thirty cents.  I bet that is the best Ruphedrine(sp) laced Singha beer anyone has ever had!  Anyways ahead of us here - Tiger temple, where supposedly the tigers run free.  The monks have trained them ( I am skeptical ).  Also, there are huge World War II museums, we are very near what was called the Death Railway.  The Death Railway was a railway built through Southeast Asia by the Japanese during WWII, using basically slave labor.  Hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives, mostly asian prisoners and British/Australian troops.  It is interesting that I have never heard of the DeathRailway before - I guess in school systems when they choose the horrors of WWII the holocaust overshadows a lot of things, even some very big things.  Oh, and the Bridge Over River Kwai is just up the street.  The famous bridge from the movie is part of the Death Railway.  Excited to chill, but looking forward to some intense exploring over the next few days.  As happy as this place seems, it has some dark secrets.

Sorry for that last sentance, I have been busting through some very cheesy yet super entertaining thriller novels, the last one "The Breach" by Patrick Lee.... crap I think that was the authors name, I just gave that novel away!