In Which We Visit The Zoo

Yesterday we slept in for a little while, and then called a taxi and headed off to the Dusit Zoo.

We spent about four hours there.  It was a lot of fun, though towards the end of our visit it was starting to really heat up so the animals were all dozing.  But they were pretty active in the morning, so it was fun to see them. 

On the trip to the floating market, I think we saw more European and American people than we saw Thai people.  At the Dusit zoo, I'm pretty sure Jer and I were literally the only people in the park who weren't Thai.  So that was pretty interesting!  We got a lot of very strange looks as people would try and figure out what our relationship to Ellen is.  One guy was staring at us so hard he almost fell off his bike!  Oh well-- we still really enjoyed ourselves.

We watched the seal show, and me and the girl next to me got pooped on by an enormous pigeon, which put somewhat of a damper on the occasion.  Otherwise the seal show was really neat; the seals balanced balls on their heads, jumped through hoops, and played Frisbee and basketball.  Their trainers obviously had a lot of affection for them, and the seals seemed to be enjoying themselves (and the tasty treats they were getting for the tricks).  One seal clapped his hands after every single trick even though he wasn't given a cue.  I think he just liked the applause.

The zoo had many different kinds of monkeys, which are Ellen's favorites.  They also had some adorable Asian bears, marmosets, lots of birds, and some animals you wouldn't see in a zoo in the states, like cows, guinea pigs and hamsters.  One of the bears had a raven friend who rode around on his back picking off bugs.  So that was pretty neat.

Then we all went back to the room, got cooled down and I walked down to the street in front of our hotel to find us some lunch.  For about two dollars and fifty cents I got us a huge piece of the most amazing fried chicken ever created with a bag of chili-garlic sauce to dip it in, a skewer each of squid, scallop and pork rice balls grilled over a charcoal fire while I watched, and a large perfectly ripe mango.  And it was all delicious.  I swear it's a good thing Jeremy and I don't live in Thailand, or we would both be about three hundred pounds.  The only thing missing from our meal was the sticky rice, and that was because it was two in the afternoon and everyone was out of it.

After that we all changed into our swimsuits and rode the elevator up to the hotel's swimming pool, which is an outdoor pool that juts out over the city about halfway up the hotel.  We really enjoyed swimming, and Jer surprised Ellen because we'd told her that he was totally going to drown and then he executed a perfect forward crawl.  So she thought that was pretty hilarious.  We splashed around in the pool for a couple of hours and then I introduced Ellen to the cedar sauna they had in the women's dressing room, which was a huge hit. 

We ended the evening out at a local restaurant, eating more ridiculously good food at ridiculously low prices.  So all in all it was a great day!

~Jess