Legal nonsense... finished! I'm now on a semi-permanent visa in Thailand, and the American Embassy has started the process on renewing my passport. After waiting 5.5 hours (not a typo) at Thailand Immigration, the 25 minute process at the American Embassy was totally awesome. They were friendly, fast, helpful, and just all around great. Way to go, America.

Because it's the Queen's birthday, we all got some extra time off this week for nonsense. It started out pretty typical, drinking, and carrying on. Also with all you can eat tacos. I'm up to 13 and a piece of pie, because Mexican food? Please.

So with some of that time off Ella and I decided to take a Thai cooking class. I feel bad for these people, as I've booked with them twice before and cancelled. I hate being flakey. But, the first time I recently discovered I had free time and ran off to Chiang Mai. And the 2nd time, I got hit by a taxi. So, I feel they were legitimate excuses. Regardless, it was pretty cool. I understand they want to condense the time so you spend it cooking and eating, but I felt it was pretty light on the prep part. It was either rushed or semi-prepared so you did the token last step. The food then, all came out totally delicious, and despite having everything done for us, Ella and I had a contest to see who's food was better. My pad thai was superior, but her tom yum and curry won the day. Darn. She still has yet to decide on my punishment. After you get a cool book to take home with idiot proof instructions. I want to make a pad thai from scratch, but man is it a lot of prep and a very short cooking time. After all that, we stopped by an Indian temple (so colorful!) and took a paddle boat ride around the newly vacated Lumphini Park (from all the government protesters)

The next day, we had no idea what to do, and Sandra suggested we go to Hua Hin. Why not? So off to the south of Thailand. We had dinner at a nice place overlooking the ocean, and then around a night market for some browsing. We got some beer, and found a nice spot on a beach that was pretty much to ourselves. We had some impromptu pushing people into the water and drinking under the stars, interrupted with my collision into a boat anchor. Who put that there?!

The next morning we weren't able to see the royal palace, since the King was currently staying there. Instead we went to an elephant farm. We got to see a very friendly elephant eat giant bunches of bananas and sugar cane, as well as taking a bath. We hitchhiked back to town, took a look at the railway station, and then started our journey to Santorini. A weird sort of shopping area/park just north of Cha-am, it's like a combination of a Greek pedestrian zone with an Atlantis decor in Thailand. We browsed and played around on the slides, and eventually got a ride back to Bangkok in a very crowded minivan. I think the 5 hours on the middle front seat was perhaps the most uncomfortable of my life, though I'm sure that record will be broken at some point. And back to work tomorrow, to start a now (shorter!) week.