We went to a couple of movies in Bangkok and before each movie started, they play a video on the King's life, with what must be their national anthem and everyone stands up. I thought that was kind of weird, but he's the king, he can do whatever he wants!After we watched these kids for a while, we went to the main road, near the democracy monument. There were so many people everywhere. It was fun just watching all the crazy traffic and people running all over the place. Watch this video, it took longer for the light to change than I thought it would, but look at how all the scooters crawl up to the front of the line and then just take off once the light changes, it doesn't matter if there are people still crossing the road or other cars in the intersection. And yes, 3 to 4 people can easily fit on a scooter. We got pretty good at crossing the streets with all of the crazy traffic.
Everyone was waiting for the huge fireworks display, which was so good. I've never been so close to fireworks like this before. When it first started, there were some going off at both ends of the road and then the grand finale was right over our heads. That part was actually kind of scary because things started falling on our heads! And it was so loud, there were kids crying because it was so loud and people running for cover because all the parts of the fireworks that were blowing up above our heads were falling on us, like I said a little scary. I had some cardboard fall on me and some ashes get in my eyes, but we were ok. Again, not that great of a video because I had things falling on me and getting in my eyes.
After the fireworks display, we found a huge concert going on. It was some Thai performers and they had some fancy dancers. It was fun watching them. Everyone got really excited for this song. Thanks King for having a birthday party. It was a super fun night.
I also liked getting these crepes, I don't know how Thai they really are, but they were so yummy, this was banana with chocolate. My favorite was the lemon with sugar, mmmm, my mouth is watering thinking about it. These were like $1.
No, I didn't eat any bugs. I told you, I'm not very adventurous. My co-worker was actually in Thailand the same time I was and he told me he ate the smaller bugs, not these big grasshoppers. All I can say is gross. We actually didn't see any of these bug carts until we were back in Bangkok, so I'm not sure how much these are consumed.
When we left Ao Nang, we were supposed to fly back to Bangkok from Krabi, but since the Bangkok airport had just re-opened, we ended up having to stay in Krabi for a night. It wasn't too bad, considering the airport had been closed for a week. I'm glad we were able to spend a little time in Krabi. We found this market while wandering around. All their fruits, vegetables and flowers are so colorful and the fruits we tried were yummy, except this one Jared made us try, I can't remember what is was, but it tasted like, well, I can't say what it tasted like, it's not very nice. That night, we ate dinner at a small street vendor. There were several down by the water. This was probably our cheapest meal. Definitely spend a day in Krabi.
We first went to Chicken Head Island, maybe you can figure out why it's called that, by looking at the photo below.
We got in the water to snorkel and after about 2 minutes of being in the water, we discovered how many jelly fish were also visiting Chicken Head island. I hate jelly fish. I quickly got out of the water, as did everyone else. It was disappointing that we couldn't snorkel. You can kind of see the jelly fish in this picture, hate them. And there's a shot of one washed up onshore on one of the other islands we went to. There were hundreds of them on the beach.
We also went to Poda Island and these shots are from there. It is so beautiful.
Me and Jane looking HOT!
The last beach we stopped at was Phranang Cave, which must mean penis cave because look at the cave...don't ask, I really don't know.
The beach here was so nice, no big waves, just water slowly lapping up to the beach, we didn't know that the best beach would be here, so we ended up only having 30 minutes to explore. I would want to spend more time at this place, if I went back, even if the cave itself is creepy. The limestone cliffs were amazing. Jared and Lance were pretty amazed. 
Annemarie, here's your monkey! I couldn't catch him for you, but I at least took a picture.
When we got back into Ao Nang, the tide was out, so our taxi couldn't take us all the way back up to the shore. We had to get out and walk in shin-high water to the beach. Which, normally wouldn't be bad, but the part of the beach he let us out at was at the river outlet and since rivers aren't exactly clean here, the water was really gross at this spot. It was so disgusting, muddy sand was oozing between my toes and I tried not to think about why the sand was so muddy. I just wish they had real septic systems there. yuck. We washed up as soon as we could after that part.
We didn't stay at the Sunda Resort when we returned to Ao Nang because we were being cheap. We found the Good View hotel, which was right in town and was $20/night. It was clean and convenient and had AC.
I found it interesting that a lot of the places we stayed had an open bathroom concept. No separate shower area, so the whole bathroom would get wet when you showered. It's all tile, so it really wasn't a big deal, but it seems like it would be pretty easy to install a little shower curtain.
You'll see these little shrines all over the place, in front of homes, businesses and this is one that was at the hotel. This is where they leave things for buddha. I don't really know any details, though. 
Can you see the lady in the yellow bikini? This is the beach in Khao Lak, the guy walking next to her is wearing an orange speedo with a matching orange hat, nice.
This little bug (about 2" long) was making a bunch of noise out on our porch. It's very interesting-looking, kind of looks like a grasshopper, but much wider.
I wondered if there were scorpions here since it's such a tropical climate and reminded me a lot of central america. I only saw one and luckily it was dead. But, it still made me scared to walk on the grass at night when I was only wearing flip-flops. So, I would run across the lawn back to our room, to minimize my foot-to-lawn contact time.
After we returned from our dive, we were invited to the Happy Snapper bar. It was fun, all the dive shop people come here when they're not out on the boats. This was a band that was performing (I know, crappy picture). They only played covers and all of them were American songs, but they sounded really good. Natalie and Mark from the dive joined us there, they were fun to hang out with. I had a couple of sprites, I know I'm such a drunk. I love sprites in foreign countries, they taste so much better. And I let Marcel buy me some sort of virgin lemon drink. yum
