Pet elephants and million dollar coqs

Today I met up again with Craig from Seattle. As we were wandering aimlessly in Bangkok we met a guy named Tinakorn. Or Korn (pronounced kohn) for short. He said he was from the Chiang Mai province and started chatting to us, interested in where we were from and what we'd done so far in Bangkok. After talking for awhile by the river he invited us to join him for dinner in Thonburi (the city across the river). So we of course said yes, excited by the prospect of a local Thai inviting us to do something with them and hopped on the very next ferry boat across the river. From there we caught a bus type thing - sort of like a bus crossed with a pickup truck and then walked to find a street side restaurant. Korn ordered a great spread - Tom Yum soup, crawfish, fried rice with lime, shrimp and green onion, and a whole steamed fish marinated in garlic. It was heaven. His English was fantastic and we talked about everything from what we were planning to do for the next few days to who was the best James Bond to how really really rich Thai men buy a fighting coq for 2 million baht in the hopes that they'll profit on the bets made at the coq fight. Korn told us he was actually goin to make his way East tomorrow to select a pet baby elephant for a friend of his. And since he said he'd be back in Chiang Mai around the same time that both Craig and I planned to be there next week, he offered to have us both come stay at his family's dairy farm. We were thrilled to be invited and are looking forward to it.

So now I just hope that this trip I'm making tomorrow to the temple works out. Hopefully I will actually get to meet Bhikkhuni Dhammananda.