Biggest Rat I've Ever Seen

This is not a joke. One of Niti's cats pulled this thing up to the door one afternoon. After I took the picture, the cat drug it under the deck for some privacy.

First Trip to the Village

I don't have many pictures worth showing yet, but here are a couple shots that Niti took during our first trip to the village.



The first one is just a shot down the street that our house sits on. Just a quarter of a mile back, the road is completely unsealed and prone to washing out, but once you make it this far things are a lot better.


The second picture is at an overlook point when you first enter the village. The tripod in the back is a huge swing that is used during their annual (and aptly named) 'Swing Festival'. The young man sitting on the left is Anuchit, Niti's older brother. He's been driving us all around the country on his days off, and then taking the bus to Bangkok to sell handicrafts on the weekends.

Foxy and Red Bull

So Niti and I had been planning to get a couple of puppies at some point. Her mom said she would be happy to take care of them for us when we return to Hawaii next year. Originally, we were going to take one from a litter at Niti's cousin's house. But after we picked out the one we wanted, he 14 year-old nephew decided he wanted to keep it.

We ran across these two on Tha Pae road (kind of the main drag downtown) and after a little bargaining talked the seller down from $15 to $12 per puppy.






We named this one 'Foxy' because it sounds fun with a Thai accent (that was my motive, anyway). Sounds like a name for a Thai disco. She's a bangaew mix, which is a Thai breed used for herding cows or bufallo, I think.








Then this is Red Bull, a Yellow Labrador mix. All this one does is sleep, pee and whine. She's cute, though. She's alwas about ten seconds from passing out.





The house in the village is about to become liveable, so we'll be moving the dogs to the countryside here in a few days.

After much debate...

I have decided to give in to the global obsession with blogging about mundane things in your own life. Above all, I see this as an easy way to share photos with friends and family without forwarding bulky, attachment-laden emails. You'll have to forgive me, as the only way I can stomach doing this is by inserting a lot of metatext and cynical remarks along the way.