We had some cool adventures in and around Bangkok!
We have already told you all about the cooking class that we took. But did you know that we also went to a meditation class? No you did not. Well, now you do. It was a free 3 hour class, which turned out to be very stressful, because about 10 minutes into the class, we were scheming ways to get out of there. It was a somehow interesting experience though, and we learnt how to practice meditation in seating position, standing position and walking position. The steps to walking meditation are the following:
- Practice standing meditation. We believe this means that you stand and breathe. You also need to hold your hands behind your back, so that everybody can tell that you are thinking about something really important
- Intend to walk. This is no joke, and a very complicated step. While standing, you need to think about walking, but not actually do it. If you walk, you lose.
- Walk. You need to walk very slowly, and with very, very small steps. It is not too clear why, but it seems that there have been accidents in the past, where people walked too fast while meditating, and then fell asleep and crashed.
- Stop. Because you may only walk in a straight line, you will inevitably face an obstacle sooner or later. At that point, you need to stop. DO NOT try to go through the obstacle, safety is extremely important and taken very seriously when meditating.
- practice standing meditation
- Intend to turn. You now know the drill: if you actually turn, you lose
- Turn: this is performed in 6 steps. Researchers have been looking into more efficient ways to turn 180 degrees, but no luck so far.
- Repeat
So, as you can tell, we are now experts at meditation, and take it very seriously. One of these days, we will tell you about sitting meditation, it is a fascinating topic for us.
3 hours away from Bangkok, we visited a national park called Khao Yai. We got to see flying bats (really impressive: about 2 million bats coming out of a cave at dusk to go hunting), killer scorpions and snakes (up close, see pics...), white and black gibbons, and an elephant butt. To this day, we do not know if the elephant butt was attached to the rest of an elephant, but we are pursuing the investigation. Also in this park, we drove around for 1 million hours while coping with starvation, and that was not a lot of fun.
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| We like to take a bath once in a while |
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| How about going in a dark, dangerous cave? |
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| AAAAHHHHHHHHH A MONSTER!!!! |
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| "Oh my god, I just saw a monster!!" |
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| Batman's friend, flying |
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| More of Batman's friends |
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| "Everybody down on the floor, the bats are coming!" |
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| Bats flying |
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| More bats flying |
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| Elephants swimming. Just kidding, these are also bats flying. We saw a LOT of them, so we thought you should too |
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| For the park visit, we put on some anti-leech socks |
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| Yep, anti-leech socks do look great |
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| Monkey ATTACK |
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| Danger. I can sense danger coming |
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| I'm scared |
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| Can you find a white gibbon on this picture? |
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| Jeremy with a deadly killer snake |
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| Jeremy and the deadly killer snake rapidly became great friends |
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| Alina also was not scared at all of the deadly killer snake. Not at all |
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| Jeremy and the deadly killer scorpion |
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| Alina touched the deadly killer scorpion. She is fearless |
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| This green snake is actually deadly, so, well, we did not touch it. We are crazy but not stupid |
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| The elephant butt |
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| I <3 Elephant butts |
Back in Bangkok, we decided to stay an extra day so that we could be good Jews and join the local Chabad for the celebration of Simcha Torah. Simcha Torah is the Jewish holiday that celebrates the end of the reading of the Torah, and marks the beginning of a new cycle. It is a happy celebration, with lots of singing and dancing. In Bangkok's Kao San road, the main tourist neighborhood, the Chabad mostly included Israelis on vacation. The party started upstairs in the Chabad House, but quickly moved on to the street for some more dancing with the scrolls, resulting in a traffic jam and a bunch of Thai and foreign trying to understand what was happening.
In Bangkok, we also did some more normal tourist stuff:
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| We rocked borrowed saari inside the royal palace |
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| We enjoyed some beers in Kao San |
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| We took pictures of monuments without having any idea of what they were |
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| We waited for the commuter's boat |
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| We took said boat |
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| We took some stupid pictures |
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| Got a haircut |
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| "I want this one!" |
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| We met up with the Dunkin Donuts bear |
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| We had our picture professionally taken as Thai royalty |
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| And we glowed in the dark |
Jeremy and Alina,
We Are Now Royalty in Thailand
