We're back in Bangkok. It's funny that just 10 hours ago we were submerged in a pit with thousands of year old pottery shards and skeletons in this tiny little village in the middle of farmland surrounded by substinence farmers and eating large cockroach looking insects (or at least Eric was) caught in the fields and now we're in this huge city eating dinner in a modern Italian restuarant watching sleazy older Western men walking around with their young Thai prostitutes out the window. I wish we had more time in Bangkok. From what little I've seen, the shopping is AMAZING. For example, you can get huge Northface backpacks for like $10. I got a pair of really nice designer shoes for $7 in the village we were staying. There's so much silk, gems and handicrafts that I could spend a month here just shopping. Unfortunately I don't think we'll get around to getting silk and gems. There's a gov't store like Cottage Industries where you can go for stuff from all over Thailand. We'll probably end up getting a lot of stuff from there. Tomorrow we're going to this huge weekend market where you can get everything from shoes to illegal wild animals such as tigers and crocodiles.

The digging was a lot of fun. I can't go into it right now, but Eric excavated a pot with an infant buried at the bottom. I had no such luck...both pots I excavated had nothing in them. However today I got real lucky because I found some jewelry near this burial. It was these pretty red beads. I think it was a necklace or a bracelet because it had holes drilled in them on both sides. I think they said it was carmelian or something like that. One of the cool finds was this wrist with about 5 copper or bronze thick bangles on it. I don't know what happened to the rest of the body. In a site not to far from us, they recently found 1200 pots with babies and adults buried in them. They were all lined up next to each other. Unfortunately we weren't able to go see them.

Earthwatch was a great experience. The people were amazing, both the staff (archologists, grad students, etc.) and the EarthWatch volunteers.

One highlight of our week was having dinner at this Thai person's house. She was a masseuse who actually came out to the site and was giving massages one day. We all had dinner and then her and her students were giving massages to whoever wanted them. There were a bunch of people there and we had a lot of fun attempting to communicate.

We're off to India tomorrow evening. Don't really have a firm plan of what we're doing. We'd like to go to Ahmedabad for a few days if we have time.

We had our last day on the dig today (more on the dig itself later). We left the site a 2, stopped by the hotel for a shower and our bags and then jumped a short, 50 minute flight to Bangkok (1500Bhat/person). Uncharteristically, Monika and I decided where we wanted to stay before we landed, Novatel Lotus on Thanon Sukhumvit. A quick call to the hotel from pay phone got us a "Deluxe" room at a "Superior" room rate, 3400B.

Once again we used to Public Taxi versus the "Airport Taxi" service. We still needed to to pick up our bags from the Siam Orchid Hotel in the Siam Square section of town. so I explained to the woman at the taxi stand that we wanted to make 1 stop before proceeding. She appeared to speak English so I thought we were all set when we got in the taxi. Immediately, the driver started with, "Sukhumvit then Siam Square". "No," we explained, "Siam Orchid Hotel in Siam Square first, Sukhumvit second". We broke out the Lonley Planet Phrasebook, so I know we were approximating the Thai words for first and second. "No. Sukhumvit then Siam Square", he insisted. Eventually, we pulled out a cell phone and called someone that spoke a bit of English.

I clearly told the guy on the phone, Siam Orchid Hotel first then Novatel Lotus. His English was up to the task so he repeated what I said back to me with a clear understanding of what I was asking.

"400B", he said.
400B was way too much. "No," I said, "use the meter."
"50B surcharge for 2 stops", he replied.

Monika quickly piped in that we would not pay an extra service charge. He could stop the meter at the Orchid, but we would not pay a service charge.

The entire ride from the airport to the Siam Square area was the driver saying, "Sukhumvit first, Siam Square second", with us repeating "No. Siam Square first, Sukhumvit second." At one point we gave the driver a business card from the Orchid with an address, directions, and a small map in Thai. Eventually, by what I doubt was the most direct route, we made it to the Siam Square area. Apparently he had completely ignored us when we told him the name of our hotel because he drove right by it. I figured out he was lost (or purposely) when he drove by the Le Royal Meridian which is the really nice hotel right in front of our little run down hotel. "There it is. Siam Orchid Hotel. Siam Orchid Hotel," I pointed and yelled. After a slightly tense and dangerous U-turn we made it to the first hotel.

We quickly got the other 2 bags from the Orchid and after about 10 minutes of convincing the driver that the bags would fit into his car, the bag on the front seat wouldn't rip the fabric, and we would take on bag on our laps, we were on our way to Sukhumvit. He asked us a couple of times which way he should take to get to the hotel.

"Novatel Lotus," we repeated. "No hotel. Sukhumvit," he replied. "No. No. Novatel Lotus," we replied again.

He nodded his head so we assumed he understood. The next thing we know we are driving down Soi 33 off of Sukhumvit, and the driver is saying, "No hotel. You point."

Monika and I looked at each other as we realized he wasn't saying "Novatel" he was saying "No hotel."

Either because of some great coincidence or because he was just messing around, the Novatel Lotus is on Soi 33. 3 seconds after is dawned on us that he was saying "No Hotel", Monika spotted the Novatel Lotus.

After getting the bags out of the car, the driver asked for 400B!

"No. We said use the meter."

The fare from the airport to the Siam Orchid was 167B. The fare from the Orchid to the Novatel was 53B. The driver was trying to charge us 200B extra. At home if a cab driver tried to extract an extra $5 from me I would be kind of annoyed, but a driver trying to extract twice as much is just ridiculous. In spite of all that I tipped the guy 80B, making it an even 300B for the fare. What was I thinking? He just looked so downcast when I wouldn't pay the 400B. Yes, it was only $2US, but I tipped the driver 36%! Generous as I am, I don't even tip that well when I get good service. I'm such a pushover.

We leave for India tomorrow. The week on the dig was fantastic. I'll give it a full review commentary when I have the time. It's late, we just had dinner (Italian again) and there is a baby elephant outside the window of the ernet cafe that I am at. I don't think it is because of the Singha.

From Dec 4th, 2002:
While I was swimming about 100m offshore from the hotel in Phi Phi, I noticed that the bottom was dotted with little holes anywhere from 1-3 inches wide. Sticking out of each little hole was a 3 inch long fish. I resembled a sardine: streamlined usually silver. As I was watching it I noticed that every couple of seconds a crayfish would pop out of the hole carrying a rock or pushing sand with it's claws. I got close to investigate and the fish, puffed up it's gills and started (tired) to look real intimidated. Since I was much larger than the fish I went closer. When I got even closer it darted back into the hole and didn't come out until I had to surface for air. Pretty cool. I tormented these little guys for about 15 minutes. As I started looking at more and more of the holes I sometimes found up to 3 crayfish and 3 fish. With the fish there was usually 1 that was noticabley larger (male?) and 2 smaller lighter colored ones. I need to check out what these fish were when I get back.

Sawadi ka! (means hello in Thai)

How are things going? We're having a great time here in Thailand. We're in the middle of our archaelogical expedition in a town called Phimai which is located 4 hours northeast of Bangkok. We're staying in the town of Phimai but the site is about a 35 minute ride. There are about 6 Earthwatch volunteers and the rest are archaelogists and students from a university in New Zealand. Everyone is super friendly. We are digging in a very important site in Thailand because it's the one of two places (in Thailand) where they've found artificacts from the Iron age, Bronze age and prehistoric times all in one area. The site itself if located in a tiny village whose main sustenance is rice. You see rice paddies and piles of rice in their husk along the side of the road. We are digging on 2 landowner's propery. There are a bunch of villagers that we have hired to help us dig. Apparently it has helped the local economy because these same workers would probably have had to go to Bangkok and left their families to work if they weren't working for the dig. None of the villagers speak a word of English so it's been fun trying to communicate with them.

Mainly what we've been finding our thousands of year old pots. Eric and I spent the whole day yesterday excavating this one particularly large and beautiful pots in hopes of finding an infant buried inside of it. This was common in prehistoric times. Unfortunately, our pot was shallower than the others that were found with infants which means that this pot was probably from the bronze. They didn't bury their infants in jars during this period. We didn't find anyting in our pot except for a few animal bones, charcoal (which is important because it allows you to carbon date stuff) and pottery shards. It was a bit disappointing to not find anything in the pot. Another guy working on another pot did find an infant this afternoon. It was pretty amazing. You usually find them at the very bottom of the pot and since it's all bones, it doesn't take up much space.

Our routine starts with breakfast at 7am in the hotel. You can choose between extremely greasy and horrible eggs or traditional Thai breakfast which consists of rice (always) and vegetables. It's soaked in gallons of oil like the rest of the meals. The food pretty much sucks. Then we all head to the site at 7:50 am. We travel in the the back of closed pickup truck. The roads are pretty good for half the way and then we take a dirt road the rest of the way. You see lots of cows, roosters, and rice on the sides of the road. The villagers all pile into these open homemade looking pick-up trucks that have an exposed engine and an open wooden box for a cab. We then work the rest of the day with of course the standard breaks. I'm usually very into what I'm doing and don't want to take a break, but the villagers who are working for us start to say "break, break" if I don't get up. We leave the site at about 4:30 and then we have 2 hours to ourselves before dinner. Eric and I have been working out. Today I ran stairs (Hustle up the Hancock training) in the 5 flights at our hotel. Dinner is family style as is all the meals. After dinner we've been heading to the town which is quite lively for a town of only 10,000. It was the King's birthday last Thursday so there's been a lot of festivals and celebrations. Just about every business, school and gov't building in Thailand has a billboard picture of the king outside their property. Yesterday we saw a Chinese opera on an open air stage at the market. Very very loud..... There is a night market every evening where you can buy all sorts of interesting food to eat such as live catfisth, pig intestines, and from what I've read...field rats. There are internet shops all over the place so it's been pretty easy to keep in touch with everyone although the connections are REALLY slow.

We're here until Saturday and then we're off to India. The first week in Thailand was really nice to. We went to an island in the south called Ko Phi Phi (pronounced pee pee). It was where the movie, The Beach, was filmed. It was extremely gorgeous with big limestone rocks jutting out of the water. We did a night scuba dive and 2 day dives. We saw a lot of beautiful fish, moray eels, sea snakes, sea slugs, stingrays, sea turtles, giant clams in indigo lips extended (looks like a pair of wrinkly blue lips), angel fish, lion fish, sea urchins, etc....The night dive wasn't all that great. It's very hard to see anything. I also treated myself to an amazing body scrub and facial. I still haven't had a Thai massage. Didn't get around to it.. One afternoon we rented a kayak and rowed to an isolated beach on another side of the island and snorkled. Haven't had time for much shopping yet. They actually have shoes in my size so I"m planning on coming home with a suitcase of shoes!

The following was snipped from one of Monika's emails to her mom:

We can't make international calls from our hotel and the nearest phone is close to a mile away in the village so the only time I can call is after dinner since we leave for the site at 7:50 am.

We're having a great time at the dig. We're staying in a small town (named Phimai) in the Isan region of Thailand which is about 3 hours northeast of Bangkok. This region is like the heartland of Thailand. They harvest rice here. It's a lot more backwards than the other places we went in Thailand - but not as backwards as India.

We are working with a bunch of New Zealanders. Most of them are archaelogical students. There are 3 other Americans and 1 Japanese guy volunteering through Earthwatch. Everyone is extremely friendly. We didnt' get to dig (on Monday) because it rained. We have a small canopy covering the site, but the problem is we have to sift all the soil we dig up and you can't do that in the rain. So we spent the day visiting a completed archaelogical site which was quite impressive as well as a Buddhist/ Hindu temple. You see carvings and lintels of both Buddha and Hindu gods but they were done at different periods. We also visited a museum. Afterwards we walked around in the town where they have been celebrating the King's birthday for the last 5 days or so. I bought a pair of shoes at the market for 7 dollars. My correct size and all.... I've started a small collection of flip flops as well.

I've gotta run because the ride back to the hotel is leaving. I didn't even get to tell you about our first day at the dig. Eric and I spent most of the day excavating a large pot. We're hoping to find an infant buried in the pot which was common in prehistoric times. Unfortunatley, this pot is from historic times so we may not be lucky. It probably dates from 900 BC. We may find other things thought when we get to the bottom of the pot. They have hired a bunch of villagers in town. There was a big land dispute today which I'll tell you about later. We're digging on 2 family's land.

After breakfast we had 2 hours before we needed to catch a bus to Khorat. Since we were in the Siam Square area, there appeared to be plenty of things ( shopping) to keep us occupied. 50 feet from our hotel was the Government run craft shop. Although you won't get the best prices I think you can get decent quality merchandise. The governement handicraft shop is 2, department store looking floors of "traditional" Thai handicrafts. I am not currently an expert on Thai handicrafts so I have no way of knowing what is traditional and what is created to service the tourist market. There were some extremely nice tapestries, laquaerware, handcarved wooden statues, life-size copper statues, gold, silk and more. There was some pretty breathtaking stuff. There is one especially good wooden statue of a woman. The expression on her face is just extraordinary. I just took a look at the picture and realized she is holding a pot, similar to the one we are digging out in Phimai. More on Phimai later. There is also a copper statue of a male flute player with a faraway look to his face.

After strolling around the shop for 1 hour, we headed out to get something to eat. We didn't buy anything. Our plan is to go on a shopping binge when we get back from Phimai. As usual we were pressed for time. There is only one vegatarian restaurant that was mentioned in the guide book so we headed there. We picked up the excellent, Nancy Chandler map of Bangkok. Poor navigation on my part prevented us from getting there in a timely manner. As we were beginning to get stressed out that we wouldn't be able to find vegatarian food before the bus trip a tout on the corner sweet talked us to this second floor restaurnat. The food turned out to be really good.

After lunch we quickly returned to our hotel which turned out to be only 300ft away. You can get to the entrance to our hotel by going down the driveway of the Le Meridian. The Le Meridian is a 4 star hotel and was where we had eaten the night before. I just have to laugh that we pass right by this enourmous, luxurious hotel, to get to our "well-appointed" mid-ranger which had actually started to grow on us.

Before heading out for our walk we had managed to resort our belongings into 1 bag! I spoke to the woman at the front desk right after breakfast and she said we could keep our bags at the Siam Orchid. Much better than wasting 2 hours to drop our bags at the airport.

We hoped a metered taxi to the Northeastern bus terminal. With 1 minute to spare we got to the Khorat bus. The bus was airconditioned (aircon) with extremely comfortable seats. I wish the economy class on a plane has the leg room and comfortable seats that this bus had. We were entertained by "Framed", a Rob Lowe movie that was dubbed into Thai. I'm baffled as to why this movie was deemed suitable for the Thai market. I'll need to watch it when I get home, because I couldn't quite figure out the storyline.

The journey up country was really nice. I've got better notes in my diary. I'll work on getting them into the weblog at some future date. It looks like the internet cafe is winding down. All the Ragnarok players are shutting down. I'll try and continue tomorrow.

Oh yeah, we are in Phimai now and spent all day at the dig. Monika and I are working on a large clay pot. It rained on Monday so we didn't get any work at the site. Gotta go.

We resorted our belogings we managed to cram We made the aircon bus to Khorat with 1 minute to spare. After an extremely comfortable (even being subjected to a loud Thai dubbed Rob Lowe movie, 3 hours bus ride