Friday, June 03, 2005

flying fish

I gave myself a mission today, which was to go to the flower market at Thewes to take photographs, which I managed to some degree. Far from being the photographer's dream that it is supposed to be, it was a bit like wandering around a garden centre. There is another wholesale flower market that is open incredibly early in the morning, or rather, middle of the night, and I might try and go to that tonight with some friends. The other volunteers are in town, and I am sure I could convince some of them that this would be a worthwhile trip.

I used the river taxi to get to Thewes, and it seems that everytime I get on the river taxi, I end up either or the wrong one, or missing my stop. It is not the easiest service to use, with no rationality over which stops the driver chooses to stop at. This time I ended up in a random green leafy street of houses, and had to wait a half hour before I caught another taxi back down the river. This is before I managed to not get on the taxi that just crosses from one side to another. Being completely illiterate in this country is not good. Strange signs mean nothing, and public transport is just guesswork.

Like I said, whenever I made it to the market, it was a bit of a let down on the whole photography point of view. Still, I did some wandering, and came across a food market. The main thing being sold was fish, and it was amazing. There were catfish and snakefish so fresh that they were still flapping on their trays, with water being occasionally sloshed over them to keep them alive. This sloshing means that every so often an energetic fish escapes by leaping up into the air, riding the wave of water, and flops unceremoniously onto the path in front of an innocent browser. I saw this from 5 feet away, thank goodness. There were also buckets of what looked like tadpoles, and endless buckets of filled with eels, all slithering away on top of each other. I have to admit that they gave me the heebie-jeebies a little. I came away without any purchases, since I'm not sure that my new, more down-market inn would have the facilities to cook up a fresh pig's head. I did consider a turtle in a bucket for my sister, but I wasn't sure whether it was meant to be a pet or to be consumed.

All that wandering meant my legs were starting to be a bit sore, so I headed for the ever-reliable Sawasdee House for a sit-down and general relaxation, before I meet the other volunteers. They are in Bangkok for the weekend, and they usually want to party, although this weekend, I will definitely not be partaking. The last thing I want to do is drunkenly stumble into something, which I often do whilst under the influence, and set back my healing by several days. My bites are just starting to look like bad cuts rather than horrible bites, and I'd prefer them to stay that way.

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