bugs and the pretty country of Laos

I went to the Golden Triangle of Burma, Laos and Thailand with my two dutch friends. They are traveling thru Laos and I needed to get a stamp on my passport so that I can stay in Thailand until the 28th of July.

Lao money is in very large bills, they call their money kip and there are 252 kip per 1 baht and 32 baht per 1 us dollar. so having 700,000.00 kip is still less then 100 us dollars.

We went and visited a wat (temple) in Lao, it had many horrible pictures of people being murdered or other such violent acts on the outside walls. It was rather shocking.

Shhhhhhhhh

yeahhhhh...

Before I went back across the border, I bought an elephant shirt so that I could be appropriately touristy and wear that shirt with my baggy pants and be a total crazy farang (thai word for foreigner, it means guava in thai)
I also got this great drink that was very interesting to watch him make because he threw ice and coconut milk into a blender and then I got to pick the different flavors to put in it, but because it was all in Thai I had to guess at what flavor was what and ended up with this strange bluish-greenish, fruity-minty drink, it was quite interesting, but I liked it. :)

I decided sitting on the roof was a good idea, until the reception guy came and frowned at me. Then I got off. :(

That was the awesome view from the roof. I was looking over into Thailand, but I couldn't cross the border until the next morning, because I only got an additional 15 day stamp on my passport crossing the river.

Back in Chiang Mai, I met up with my friends Sarah, Elaine and a new friend Kadilyn and we all went to a night market and bought bugs of various kinds, this is the thing is a cockroach, which are apparently high in protein. :D Of course I had to try it. The appetizers were silkworm/grubworm (not sure which), wasp (stinger removed), and cricket. The cockroach took a while and was quite tough despite being deep fried.

Kadilyn looking on with some amount of disbelief. I don't think that the 3 of them really thought I would eat it.  Haha, I will admit though, that I felt sick for the rest of the day after eating it...though it may have been psychological.

:)