The Roosters Have Been Evicted!

About a month ago, Chris and I were awoken by a strange sound (at 4:30am no less). After of few minutes of half asleep confusion we figured out one of our neighbors had decided to get a rooster. In the morning we did a little investigating and saw that he actually had three roosters. We asked Khun Supot about them and the next time he was able to talk with our neighbor found out that he had taken up cock fighting (which yes, is illegal in Thailand...but when you have enough money to pay off the police you can do anything you want). We figured it was maybe a temporary situation and dealt with their "crowing" for the weekend by using earplugs when they woke us up.

The next week Chris' parents were visiting and we figured the roosters would be gone by the time we got back from our travels. When we got home we were surprised to see they now had four roosters! That morning the roosters woke us up again, but we just grabbed our earplugs not knowing what else we could do. We thought about sneaking over there in the middle of the night, freeing the roosters and making it look like a hungry python had come along and finished them off, but then remembered our neighbor is a retired Army guy and may have friends in high up places we wouldn't want to be in trouble with. Chris had to head to work the next morning exhausted, while Rick, Debbie and I got ready to go to the pottery village. They were unlucky enough to witness a test match between the two of the roosters before we left. It was really sad to see and we definitely knew we had to do something after seeing that. The day after Rick and Debbie headed home we were woken up at 3:30am by constant "crowing"....we couldn't go back to sleep, so we counted the seconds of silence between each "Cock a doodle doo..." we didn't get past 7 seconds!

When Chris got to work that day he emailed our relocation company, who called our landlord, who then called Land and House's Sales Office. They came to our neighbors house, but he wouldn't let them in the front gate. Our landlord decided to see what she could do and went over there herself (I think she was afraid we would move out, and she makes a lot of money off of our rent). She explained the situation to our neighbor and the next day the roosters were gone!

This last week, I've spent avoiding our neighbor because I was a little afraid he would be furious with us for ruining his money making scheme and making him get rid of his $1000 roosters (that's apiece!). But yesterday, Khun Supot said he talked to our neighbor who told him he was not mad at all and was sorry they had kept us awake. I guess Supot told him that in America people don't live in villages like they do here and they don't have farm animals. Lol, I know, we've tried to explain America to him but he thinks everyone there is extremely rich...which I guess compared to the vast majority of Thai people we are. Funny thing is he doesn't know about the new law they are trying to pass in Longmont...it allows people within the city limits to keep chickens in their yards...I'm sure we'll move home to find our neighbors with five roosters.

Rick and Debbie's Visit to Thailand

Rick and Debbie on the beach in Krabi

After one year of living in abroad we have finally had our first visitors! Chris’ parents, Rick and Debbie, decided to leave the cold behind for two weeks and join us in Thailand for some fun in the sun!

They arrived in Bangkok bright and early Saturday morning after a 17 hour direct flight from Los Angeles. Surprisingly, they were bright eyed and wide awake ready to start their vacation. I think we need to thank Ambien for that.

Khun Supot figured out how to fit the five of us plus luggage into our Toyota Fortuner and we made our way to the hotel so they could shower and change before we started exploring. We first took them to Chatuchak weekend Market, if you come to Bangkok it’s a must do since markets are a big deal in Thailand. There is always something for sale and Chatuchak is the perfect place to go to see a little (ok a lot) of everything. After that we visited the Grand Palace and the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. The Grand Palace was the home to the Kings of Thailand during the 18th century. If you want to see Thai architecture at its best it’s the place to visit. After the palace we were starving and attempted to have lunch at the Oriental Hotel which has a really pretty restaurant by the Chao Praya River. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t let us in…something about no flip flops (I know, seriously?). So we ended up at the Siam Paragon Mall and had lunch there. Rick and Debbie read our blog about Bangkok’s movie theaters and really wanted to see it for themselves so after lunch we decided to catch a movie (we saw Yes Man with Jim Carrey). Rick even squeezed a little nap in because the seats were so comfortable.


Since we love elephants we really wanted Rick and Debbie to get to meet them! The next day we took them to Ayutthaya to ride the elephants through Thailand’s ancient capital city. Luckily, when we arrived they were getting ready to have an elephant show so they were able to see how smart and amazing the elephants really are! Debbie even got to dance with the baby! We then took an elephant ride around the ruins of the city. After Ayutthaya we headed back to Bangkok to visit the Temple of the Reclining Buddha. The Buddha statue was humungous (about 46 meters long and 15 meters high) and was really neat to see, but after the temple we were pretty templed out for the rest of the trip.

For dinner we wanted to give them a unique Thai dining experience and took them to the restaurant Cabbages and Condoms. It’s a famous restaurant in Thailand for giving part of its proceeds to AIDS research/awareness in Thailand and is well known with expats for having great Thai food! It was delicious and really spicy; Rick experienced that first hand after eating a chili in his first bite! The restaurant is set in a really pretty garden and is decorated with condoms (sounds strange…maybe even creepy) made into really neat and actually pretty decorations like flowers, lanterns and they even had a Christmas tree! Who knew you could make so many things out of condoms!

The third day we all hopped on another airplane and headed for the beach!! We wanted to take them to Krabi since Chris and I had such a great time there last summer! We stayed at the Cliff Resort again (since we thought it was really cool last time too). It’s a small resort but fun because you get your own little bungalow. Plus, the bed are extremely comfortable (something very hard to find in Thailand). We spent our first day relaxing by the beach and the pool! After the power exploring of Bangkok we did the first two days, they needed a rest! We walked along the beach and played with the monkeys which decided to climb all over us. They tried to steal our stuff (Deb’s hat, Chris’ water bottle and my camera) but we fought them off and got some fun pictures.
The next day we took a speed boat/snorkeling trip to four other islands. One of the islands was the Phi Phi Islands made famous by the movie The Beach. This time we actually got to stop on the beach where the movie was filmed. It was beautiful and made for great people watching (Europeans are a strange bunch) since it was jam packed with tourists. Snorkeling, we saw a lot of great fish and even found a lion fish! The next day we did a sea kayaking/snorkeling trip around Hong Island and through the mangrove forest. Our kayaking trip was really exciting! We saw a lot of wildlife including a monitor lizard, we had hooligan monkeys jump in our kayaks, climb all over us and steal our water bottles (those monkeys sure have sticky fingers) , and even were chased by a king cobra (Seriously, all the sudden our tour guides were paddling like lightning in reverse and telling everyone to turn around)! After lunch we went on our snorkeling adventure to Hong Island. There were only six of us on this part of the tour (the four of us and a couple from England). We had awesome tour guides (Baht and Nana) who entertained us by cat calling the other tour guides “Hey lady boy…you want to kiss my a$#”) We stopped at a really cool area for snorkeling where we saw more neat fish and coral. Rick was fighting a cold and skipped the snorkeling on this trip to try his hand at deep sea fishing with the guides. They caught three squid with a hook and fishing line tied to a water bottle! After snorkeling they took us to a lagoon and taught us the “Ching” dance to find clams (this is done by standing in waist deep water in a lagoon and digging your feet in the sand, while singing “Ching, ching, ching.” With your toes, you pull up clam shells…although we were a little afraid of what else was down there). We thought they were using us naïve tourists to catch their dinner, and tried to found out how much they were going to pay us for all of our hard work! However, after the lagoon they took us to a gorgeous beach (with no other tourists) on Hong Island for an afternoon snack of clams and squid! They nicknamed Chris “monkey” since he ate the most clams at monkey speed. We also had our fill of pineapple and watermelon throughout the day…I think we will all steer clear of pineapple for awhile (my tongue still hurts)!



Our last two days in Krabi we relaxed on the beach and by the pool, got a one hour massage for $6, and explored the night markets. We even took a really fun Tuk Tuk ride to dinner one night. The driver had his Tuk Tuk all tricked out with green lights and a really nice sound system and we cruised around Krabi feeling like we were in a moving club.


We were sad to leave Krabi on the 5th day but we had more to see and do! We spent the next day at the Floating Market and the Tiger Temple. The Floating Market is a big tourist attraction because it’s set up like a market in the olden days on the river. Now, there are so many people and so many boats that it’s actually a little annoying. We decided to take a boat through the market before we realized what we were getting ourselves into. Chris and I had never been there but thought it would be fun to see and it definitely was an experience, just one we won’t be having again! After that we went to the Tiger Temple so we could play with the Tigers! Debbie even got to hold the head of one of the tigers in her lap and have another tiger hold her!
That night we all had margarita cravings and so we went to the best Mexican restaurant in Bangkok (yes, we have Mexican food!!!) called Charlie Brown’s. Charlie must have been on our minds that night because after dinner we went to a sidewalk bar called Cheap Charlie’s. We met some interesting characters there (we always do, the place is full of crazy foreigners who I think must have been kicked out of their home countries). Then on the way back to our hotel Chris and Rick were letting the booze think for them and decided they needed another drink and stopped at a sports bar called Charlie’s. Luckily, there were no barfisodes to speak of, lol.

The next day we drove up to Korat so they could spend some time in our town and see our house and how we live. I think they really liked our house and neighborhood but were also extremely annoyed by our neighbor who now has four roosters for cockfighting (more on that in a later blog). We gave them a tour of The Mall and Boon Ta Lua (a fun lake we go walking around, more on that in a later blog too) and then took them to one of our favorite Thai restaurants called Waang Ma Chaa. It’s a neat restaurant set up around a pond. You get your own little hut to sit in and they bring you your food on a boat. We ordered all of our favorite Thai dishes for them to try!

Chris had to head back to work the next day so I took Rick and Debbie to the pottery village and then to the silk village. They bought a lot of souvenirs to take home and even got to see how the silk is made and woven. After power shopping I took them to get massages and we had a 2 hour Thai massage for $10 each! We then went to pick up Chris and to have dinner at another of our favorite restaurants called Chez Andy. They have great western style food and pizza (the owner is Swiss).

The last day they were here was adventure we hadn’t even planned on. We gave ourselves 4 hours to get to the airport from Korat (normally it takes about 3), but did not account for protestors. There were dairy farmers protesting along the highway so the police shut it down. The farmers dumped milk all over the highway causing a 10 car pileup! Luckily, Khun Supot found an alternate route to Bangkok which is not an easy thing to do. There are not many “back” roads…at least not any convenient ones. After grinding our teeth to nubs, and Khun Supot nearly pulled out all his hair, we made it to the airport with a whole TWO minutes to spare before they closed the flight!! Deb and I ran in the airport to check in while Rick and Supot loaded the bags onto a cart! Thankfully, the rest of their flight was uneventful and they made it home safely!