Because Pork Chops Taste Good....

From another esteemed fellow traveler comes this great photo from the markets of Thailand. These are one of the offerings found on both dinner plates and the altars of local Chinese Temples.

It brings to mind the conversation between Jules and Vincent about why Jules does not eat pork. Unless it is one seriously charming pig that is.

Ultimate Dinner

The New Year's Eve  feast

Them bones, them bones, them, crab bones

My last dinner in Thailand for this year, and my last meal of 2013, was at the invite of my hosts here in Trat. A home cooked meal of mussels, clams, crab, chicken, papaya salad and fresh fuit for dessert.

I hope that everyone reading these posts has had as wonderful an ultimate day as I have. I offer each of you my humble wishes for a fantastic New Year.

Be well, Live Out Loud, and Laugh often!!

marco

Ultimate Continued

The path out onto my own private isthmus

The view from my lakeside hideaway

Muay Thai in action

The next contestants getting the gloves on.

Since I had the luxury of riding back to town, I immediately grabbed a cigar and decided to walk out to the local reservoir and find a shady spot to enjoy the afternoon. A mere two kilometers later, I was parked on a little isthmus out on the lake, watching the kites hunt in the updrafts when I wasn't reading my book. Absolute solitude, a warm afternoon, a good book and a fine cigar. What else could one ask for?

Lunch, that's what. I stopped at a little lakeside restaurant, which amused and befuddled the local folks thee. Not a farang establishment. The menu was in Thai script, so we had to go verbal. I managed well enough and had a fine repast of fried rice, shrimp and veggies while the geckos hunted in the rafters and my fellow diners got a jump start on the evenings festivites. Let's just say that the bar was kept hopping.

On the walk back, I was treated to some fine crowd action at a local Muay Thai boxing match. There is an outdoor training gym just up the road from my place and today was a match day. The crowd was in fine form and the boxers were doing their best. Muay Thai is a combination of boxing, kicking and elbow and knee blows all rolled into one martial art. The light weights that I watched were going after it fast and furious. Yet another bonus to the day.

Ultimate Vignettes

Where the mangroves meet the open water.

Huge Bromeliads haning from the mangrove trunks.  It is an amazingly intertwined ecosystem

Ultimate

The Mangrove Nature Trail

Into the Mangroves

Real ife nature on the trail.  I did not get a phot of the big-ass snake.

On this, the ultimate day of 2013, I went where the whims of the travel gods took me. The course of one's journey hangs by the finest of threads, events hinging on the most minute choices. When I fall into the delusion that I control the course of life, I am often quickly reminded that the entire course of an existence can pivot on the slightest occurence. Whether Chthonic or divine, the agents of fate have been known to blast my strongly held concepts of free choice and self-determination into the smallest of bits.

Everything I touched today turned to something else. By acknowledging that events were far beyond my control, the day flowed form one scene to another, blissfully unaware of my plans.

I walked out of Trat, heading south towards the Gulf of Thailand. I was heading for a mangrove restoration and preservation area which has a walkway out into the mangrove swamps. This is important if you want to visit a mangrove swamp and you are not either a mudskipper or a snake. The mangroves are utterly impassable.

I had been needing a nice long walk to unkink my laziness of the last few days. Twelve klicks, while a death march for most Thai, is a mere bagatelle for a dedicated walker. I found the mangrove preserve and had the place utterly and completely to myself except for two Dags that did require a stone or two. Shady and solitary, I saw some sort of bittern that darated amongst the mangrove roots, countless lizards and other scuttling things, and one damn big snake. Fortunately it was below the walkway and I was up on the walkway. This serpent was at least three feet long and fast. The other wiggly was a five inch long millepede that was truly fearsome looking, but still only five inches long.

Walking back was not to be. The Thai do not understand walking if it does not involve food or shopping. I had not gone two hundred meters before I was offered a ride. The folks were so nice I could not refuse. They hauled me partway to town and, before I could even get up a head of steam to continue, another car stopped for me. It would have been rude to refuse and they were getting a kick out of picking up a poor farang.

There was more to the day and there will be more to this post.......

What I did....

Lucky for all of us, Trat takes food safey seriously down here at the Night Market.

What I did on my Winter Vacation, By Marco

Today I did nothing.  Well, not completely nothing, but Mostly Nothing.

OK, so I went shopping and bought a pair of flip flops.  After I ate.  That's what Thai folks do, they eat and they shop.  Preferably both at the same time or in close proximity.

Oh yeah, I had coffee.  Twice.  Cafe society is a big deal here in Trat.  

I did do some business, exchanging dollars for Baht.  That's like doing something, no?

Oh, and I made a still-life.  Do you like it?  Its sort of ike a Vermeer, but not quite as dreamy.  I call it 

"Street Food on a Chair with SOG Automatic Knife"

I did a crazy street dance with two Thai kids today.  I guess that counts as something.  This little boy was about four years old and he cornered me in the middle of the soi and started dancing.  I didn't get the exact wording of his squeaky Thai, but it loosely translated into English as "C'mon big Foreign dude, lets dance in the street like wild things."  So that's what we did.  His older sister, who was maybe six, threw herself into the mix and we had us a wild street mosh while their mom howled with laughter and egged us all on.  It was pretty much the hit of morning on that little Soi.  Those kids had some moves!

But mostly I hung out on my balcony and watched the world roll on by.  My guesthouse here in Trat is run by a German Cat and his Thai wife.  The place looks like a cross between a Chinese Hotel and a Greek Inn, complete with Corinthian (Doric?) columns.  Its all blue and white and the beds are wonderful and the pillows are not too big and its a corner room with a lovely breeze.

So, really, today I didn't do anything worth mentioning.  Lucky Me.

Trat Wat

Keeping the sightseeing agenda very low key.  This is a small Wat in town, which was busy having a potluck whilst I was wandering about.

My favorite miniature monk.