Two of Mel’s coworkers were going on a day trip and invited Mel and I to go along. The trip was planned to go to Ratchaburi.

Here is a simple map of where we went.

[googlemaps https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=116437842819168394278.0004909e882c84a5db626&ll=13.627303,99.923401&spn=1.281221,1.757813&z=9&output=embed&w=640&h=480]

We first went to the Damnoen Saduak Floating Market.

The market was quite the adventure. We had breakfast which was composed of rice noodles in a chicken broth and coconut juice served in a coconut. We then hopped in a boat and were paddled around the market.

During the trip we bought a Durian and I had the privilege of trying that.

As you can see it is actually pretty scary. The husk is very strong and spiny which hurts a lot. The lady cut it up for us which was fun to watch.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkSxTwuDU4M&fs=1&hl=en_US]

After the boat trip Mel and I picked up some paintings for the apartment. We spoke briefly with him using our small vocabulary of Thai. We are quite excited about the paintings as they are original and very very well done. Now our apartment doesn’t have to be so plain.

After the paintings we passed by these metal sculptures. They are made out of all car parts or simple washers, screws….

The next stop was at the Siam Cultural Center. The center had a small wax museum that had some well known people and some important Thai figures. The Center also had full replicas of house designs from around Thialand.

The next stop was at a rather large candle store.

After that we headed down the road and stopped at a rather goofy resort. This province apparently has a lot of resorts. They all seem to have a theme. The first one we stopped at had a area were you could feed sheep.

The next resort was called La Toscana. It was very beautiful. The resorts all seem to have small villas instead of single rooms.

The final resort we stopped at was pretty funny. Imagine driving through the Thai jungle in a valley between some mountains and then all of a sudden you see this

During the trip we also encountered a lady on a moped that had strapped her small child to her back with a piece of cloth. It looked very safe On the way home we passed 3 small trucks(think Chevy Luv sized trucks) with large bungalows strapped to the back that were at least as large as the truck itself. They were of course traveling down the highway safely at probably 60-80 miles an hour. My phone’s camera failed to focus and take the picture in both cases so I’m sorry