Durian and Drag Queens

Leyla, Leyla, Leyla....how you find Durian at all appetizing remains one of the seven mysteries of my world right now. I talked this fruit up to everyone in my group - and they were a little sketched out from the start because every hotel has "NO DURIAN ALLOWED INSIDE ROOMS OR HOTEL" signs all over. I told them the smell was a decoy and that it tasted like pudding. When we got the "king of fruits" we disregarded the smell (which was repulsive). No one even swallowed it and their hands couldn't scrape the fruit out of their mouths fast enough. EEEWWWW! Haha! I got pictures of everyone eating it - you will enjoy them :)

On another note, we went to see the "lady boys" (the Thai term for Drag Queens) last night. The Thai men dressed as women are prettier than most women. Of course not everyone emerged from the show unscathed (remember Mike....the queen danced with you) Tim in our group was mauled by 2 of the queens and emerged from the show with huge red kisses all over his face. The lip syncing of English songs was amusing, especially for the people who did not speak English at all and at there were an alarming number of foreign kids in the audience. Good times were had by all.

Finished cooking school yesterday - Leslie and I are now culinary artists. The class itself was a lot of fun and we even got to play with fire. Pad Thai, green curry, sticky rice with mangoes, stir fry veggies, tom kum soup and more were our dishes and we ate them all :) It was a nice way to spend the day! Today we leave for Chaing Rai on a great city bus equipped with dirty people, buckets of sweat, fans that do nothing, and ... no air conditioning. Lovely. Bet you are jealous :)