Tomorrow afternoon I’m hopping on a train and riding down to California to shoot a wedding, attend a baby shower, and visit with friends and family during the downtime. I’m beyond excited.

Unfortunately, this will be a 12-hour train ride, by myself, so I can’t imagine I’ll have anywhere near as much fun as I did when this photo of my friend, Ryan, was taken in Thailand last year.

I will be bringing my laptop with me, and keep the posts comin’ when I have the time to write ‘em. All orders for actions will still be sent out promptly, as well– I just wanted to give a head’s up in case I decided to totally bail out on the blogosphere for the next week!

My heart and brain are always at battle when it comes to zoos, but since we were escaping a grimy guesthouse for the day I probably enjoyed myself more than I normally would have. We got to see pandas, feed giraffes and watch an elephant play the harmonica. Plus, they had a rose garden next to the aquarium! I took a million photos (natch) but these were my favorites.

Another train stop on the way to Chiang Mai, we spent an afternoon in Lopburi which is literally infested with monkeys. At one point we poked in to a 7-11 to pick up some water and stock up on TP. When we walked back to the train station a monkey jumped on the plastic bag I was carrying, tore it open and ran off with our toilet paper! The nerve! I was in such shock, all I could do was tentatively step backwards and yell, “Chris! CHRIS! CHRIS!” Then Chris turned around to give ‘em the boot and scared them off real good.

Anyway, this post is for my mom and Meg, the two biggest monkey lovers I know. Enjoy! There are loads more monkey-shots over at Flickr.

We doubled up on a night tour of yet more temples. This one was my favorite. The roundabout pictured below has giant silver and gold rooster statues which are good luck to have your picture taken with them (according to our tuk tuk driver, anyway!). You can see ours here and here.

Our first full day in Ayutthaya was spent exploring the temple ruins. The town is full of them but we only dove into Wat Mahathat. There was a small admission fee for each temple and from the outside it was sort of obvious that if you saw one, you likely saw them all. I’m sure the sweltering heat had something to do with that decision, as well!

Luckily, we managed to pick the one temple with the Buddha-head that has been naturally embedded in a tree. There were also countless rows of headless Buddha statues, many having mismatched limbs and a giant Buddha, which Chris posed for in the shot above, even though they tell you not to. Rules, schmules! Am I right?