Siracha Tiger Zoo

Today I went with Lakshmi and Eldar (other roadies) to the Siracha Tiger Zoo (all photos link). I went to this two years ago with Troy, but it was fun so I decided to go again. I am glad I did. We saw the Elephant Show. Its your typical elephant show...elephants tight rope walking, playing basketball, dancing, playing with hula hoops, and giving massages to random people out in the audience. Hmmmm that girl looks familiar?!


Visited the "Scorpion Queen"......its a lady who lets tons of scorpions crawl on her. Yuck.After that we saw the Crocodile Show and the Tiger Show, nothing new on those. Your standard crocodiles deciding not to eat their trainers while they stick their head in their mouth. Tigers jumping through hoops/standing up/dancing for us.
As always my favorite part of this zoo is that you can play with the baby tigers. For a small fee of course! We got to play with some crocodiles and just happen to be there when some of them were getting "hatched". The staff would break them out of the eggs then cut their little umbilical cords, rinse them and put them in a pond. We got to watch this but we were not allowed to take photos of it.
And also this time when we got our pictures taken with the monkey I got a kiss from one of them....and he slipped me the tongue! (shhhh don't tell Troy I got kissed!). Love the big guy in the yellow--wearing a Guns N Roses shirt, good taste!

LakeLand Cable Skiing

A group of us (Mike, Hakan, Pulkit, Natalia, Vamshi, Jeff, Zudtky) all went to the cable lake skiing area in town (all photos link). For people who don't know what that is....its a man made lake about 4 feet deep that had cables that go in a circle above the lake. So if you fall anywhere in the lake you just get out and walk on the path that circles it, back to the dock. Every 10-15 seconds there is a hook with a rope on it that you can ski behind. The thing that makes this more difficult is that you have to do a dock start! This turned out to be harder then I thought it would be. I didn't do well at it. I did go knee boarding for the first time though. Its 300 Baht (about $8) for 2hrs of use....this includes skies/kneeboard/salom skies, you can rent a wake board for a couple dollars more. Two hours doesn't seem like much but after that two hours I was very sore! You can ski so much more when your not waiting for the boat to turn around to get you and to straighten the rope out, etc, etc. A couple of us knew how to ski, but there were more that didn't. Everyone did pretty good for their first or second try! And ALMOST everyone was able to knee board at the very least.....

Pattaya

Back to our favorite location Pattaya, Thailand! We are again staying at the Pattaya Marriot Resort and Spa. Its such a great location. We are walking distance to anything we need. There are a couple of grocery stores that have almost everything you could possibly want from the USA. Every thing is so cheap. Not as cheap as last time we were here though-thanks to the American Dollar being so weak. There are several spas within one block, the hotel is attached to a mall, two movie places near, bowling allies, restaurants, tons of bars, laundry, just everything. The big bonus is this time we have several full crews with us. I think there is about 50 people here. Which means I will be busy all the time!

Moving Blogs.....YES-AGAIN!

So after China where my blog travelpod got blocked from I have decided to move my travel blog to Blogger here at google. This way I can add photos better, and video clips...we will lose the cool map with the dots you can click on and read the stories (I will see what I can find to make that up). But this is going to be my new home. So bookmark it, add it to your google reader list or whatever blog reader you use, feel free to link it to your blogs, whatever! This is now my home. I will be moving all my old posts to this location over the next couple weeks, so please bear with me.

Flying back

Leaving Qatar and heading back to Des Plaines.

Ramadan Hareem (Happy Ramadan!)

Ramadan starts with the sighting of the new moon in the 9th month of the Islamic Calendar, so if it's cloudy at night and you cannot see the moon then it is possible the month will start the next day. But we could see the moon last night so it started today. Ramadan Kereem (Happy Ramadan!). It is the holiest month in which the revelation of the Koran began and the conquest of Mecca occurred. The month also ends with the phase of the moon, so it can go long if you can't see the moon due to clouds. I would imagine its hard to plan the final celebrating around possible clouds.

So what does Ramadan entail? The part most people hear about is the no eating or drinking from dawn till dusk. And that mean NO drinking. You can't have water, juice, coffee or tea..nada. And that means no brushing your teeth or chewing gum, nothing should ever be in your mouth. The not as known things are no smoking and no sexual relations. In addition to the five daily prayers, during Ramadan Muslims recite a special prayer called the Taraweeh prayer (Night Prayer). The length of this prayer is usually 2-3 times as long as the daily prayers. Some Muslims spend the entire night in prayer. I was also told that it is encouraged to read the entire Koran during this month. It is illegal in the Gulf Countries to eat or drink in public. This is enforced by fines or being arrested.
At the end of the day the fast is broken with prayer and a meal called the iftar. In the evening following the iftar it is customary for Muslims to go out visiting family and friends. The fast is resumed the next morning. Many of the local hotels have huge buffets to eat at in the eve. The locals all go out about 10 pm and the dinners last till 1 am. Many businesses are only open 8pm to 1am. So you and the rest of the country are all trying to get your errands done at the same time. That makes it more interesting. Today is only the first day of the month but the amount of decorations that you see everywhere is spectacular. I hope we are here until the end of this lunar month. There is a three day celebration at the end of the month, that are suppose to be the best of the year.