Why did the lizard cross the road?

Probably just to get to the other side, but this lizard crossing stopped us from walking on till it got all the way across the road. This is from our Saturday walk in Lumphini Park. I was tired of seeing the asphalt and concrete around our hotel, so Phillip and I set off to find a park. After a good walk in the rain, we found this fairly large park with a pond and several small lagoon areas. This may be a monitor lizard, as the hotel staff called it a “monster” lizard when we described it to them later. More pictures of it, ‘cause we did follow it to the lagoon. Its head almost looks like a reptilian ferret head from this angle.  Once it got in the water, it stretched its neck out, so it almost looked like a snake head on an alligator body. Although we didn’t get this close to any others, we saw about half a dozen in the water and at the edge of the water. The hotel staff said that park officials removed about a hundred of these from the park last year as it had gotten overrun with them.

Also in the pond with the lizards were these aerators. Initially, before they came on, they looked like paddleboats that had gotten loose and floated to the middle of the pond. That’s what we thought they were until 10 am, when suddenly the wheels on all of them started paddling, but they never moved. They were attached to posts to keep them stationary.

After we left the park and the lizards, we needed a snack. I’m holding a corn fritter-like item. The center is creamy with coconut milk, rice flour, and corn.  We bought a box of a dozen of these bite-sized griddle cakes as we walked down the street. The dozen didn’t last two blocks. One complaint about Bangkok: trash cans on the sidewalks are almost non-existent. Yet, food vendors sell from their sidewalk booths, so we end up wandering down the sidewalk with a handful of empty iced coffee cups, small plastic bags and empty food boxes. One comparison with large Ecuadorian cities: In Guayacil, Quito, and Cuenca, lots of trash cans on the sidewalks that were emptied frequently and a public campaign to keep Ecuador beautiful by using the trash cans. It worked, as those city sidewalks were much cleaner than the Bangkok sidewalks. And Manta, Ecuador… remember that KFC sponsored their trash cans and keep Ecuador beautiful public campaign. The Colonel has his presence here – you can make him out on the billboard in the lower left of this picture, but he’s only here to sell chicken and apparently egg custards. We got a picture of these buildings, because the aliens may have the docking stations for their spacecraft here. And four are already docked! On the street near those buildings, Phillip found these phone booths that may serve as transporter bays to take the aliens to the space ships. Phillip stood in one, but no luck, nobody or no thing beamed him up. Oh well, one adventure we didn’t have…. The hour-long foot massage we had shortly after I took this picture was probably a much better experience than an alien abduction would have been!

We stopped at a mall before we walked back to our hotel because it looked like a four-story Walmart (actually it was a cross between a Target, and HEB grocery, and the middle of a mall with fancy vendor kiosks) and because we saw the sign for a sushi buffet. Since is was nearing 5 pm, we decided to have the sushi. The two empty chairs on the bottom right were where we sat. The sushi was actually behind us, but the best thing for me was what was in front of us…. that’s a conveyor belt with small plates of raw vegetables, seafood, and meats for your individual hot pot of broth that is in the bar in front of you. Good stuff!

Sunday was a semi-travel day. Our travel was just across Bangkok to a hotel closer to the airport. This hotel had such a comfortable bed, and rooms nicer than at the previous Bangkok hotel. This hotel has a river right in front of it, a river full of fish that know to expect food from anyone who appears on the landing above them. We didn’t disappoint the fish, tossing them stale donuts and bread.

This area near the airport didn’t have much else to do, so when we walked and found a hair salon, Miriam and I got our hair shampooed and blow-dried. After that, all four of us got a foot massage (two at a time) from the shop next to the hair salon. (No nekkid pictures, fully clothed under those towels, as is the case with all Thai massages, foot or body). A nice relaxing end to our vacation! We fly out in the morning… to Tokyo and then on to DFW.