French Cheese,Crepes and King Cobras....

So after a night of celebrating our first teaching experience in the local: Supan's house, we used Friday as a rest day to nurse our hangovers and decided to take it easy. 

Stephens new toy!!

When Saturday came we went shopping for an early birthday present for Stephen, as it was something we had discussed buying for a while now. We had just gotten our last paycheck and feeling flush, we purchased the new Samsung S4 Zoom, as this solved the issue of not having a second phone and not having a decent camera for travel pics. The Samsung Zoom, which if you aren't aware of what it is, it's probably because it hasn't arrived in Europe yet. Instead of giving you a run down of how amazing this piece of technology is, have a look for yourself in this link: Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom. All I can say, after playing with this for a while is, it's a beast and will now allow us to take much better pics for this blog and for ourselves.

Saturday night we headed back to the local as they were having a themed party: French cheese,wine and crepes, cooked by a french girl that is friends with the bar owner, and attended by all the local Thai and farangs who frequent the bar. We had a great night and capped it off by taking on the challenge of "crepe face" The idea is you place a crepe on your face for fun then try to eat the whole thing without using your hands, I (Stephen) was the only one to complete it in one go, nearly choking in the process, but totally worth it as I announced my joy with a mouth full of Crepe☺.

Kristine was also extremely happy as they had a special on french cheese and bread, and as she had been craving real cheese as she called it for a while and because it's soooo expensive here as is all imported foods she was delighted, and easy singles weren't going to cut it. I know there's a "cut the cheese" joke in there some where...

Aaron and Pim

On Sunday we had our day planned and with new camera in hand, we set off on the road again with Aaron and his other half Pim, who was visiting from Bangkok. We planned to head to the King Cobra Village only 1 hours drive by moped from Khon Kaen, we made a quick pit stop in the local shopping center to get some food and found ourselves drawn to the arcade for Stephen to get his gaming fix. We found ourselves playing mainly guitar hero and Stephen and Aaron showing off their moves on the dance machine.There is a video but he has requested it not be shown... we'll see!!

On the road again and after what seemed like forever after passing some unusual sights such as a woman/ninja taking a few water buffalo for a walk down the main street and a cow that looked like it hadn't eaten a meal in weeks. I tried to help out by shouting "Your surrounded by grass cow, tuck in", but I think it's the language barrier here ☺.  Better brush up on my Thai!

And finally  some healthier  looking cows who had a bit more "cop on" and looked a lot healthier against the serene Thailand country side which we will never tire of seeing.



We arrived at the main attraction and took our seats for the snake show. The show itself was free and they only asked for donations after each act which consisted of a range of Thais coming on stage and trying their best to be killed by antagonizing some of the biggest cobras we've ever seen face to face.


They allowed us to take photos of the show and we witnessed some crazy things ranging from a woman putting huge live pythons heads into their mouths and men doing the same, only down their trousers to which every man in the audience winced slightly. 

Also a 70 year old man being chased by a 10 foot python and swinging him around, so he was only a meter from where we sat. Next they had a boy come on who was six years old and he danced with a snake, as it launched itself towards him only for him to move at the last second reminiscent to bull fighting only with with a cobra that looked pretty mean.

Aaron smooching

After the show we were allowed to take pics with some of the snakes ourselves and they placed some of the heavy pythons around our necks, which we all gave a go some braver then others. ☺ 
One woman offered to put a King Cobra around my neck but after seeing the show and how angry they could be I declined. I was happy to pose for some pics for some curious Thais, who were amazed by the falang with the snake on his neck.

We had a brilliant day and after another hour on the bikes to get home, we went for a well deserved Thai massage.The 1 hour Thai massage with herbal tea and a foot bath in rose petals and lime before hand that only set us back 8 Euro.. don't mind if we do ☺