Random Thoughts of the Day:

I don't think I would ever ride an elephant. It's just too sad. Even the places you see that look like a nice small family run business, and the elephants are just hanging out together and seem to be fine, you drive by that same place in the evening, the poor guys are on ten feet ropes. I guess I could see if I was traveling into the jungle somewhere that was only accessible by elephant, maybe it wouldn't be so bad. I'm sure it's an interesting experience, and they are so cute. Today we stopped by a place and there was an older one and a baby that couldn't be used for riding, so we fed them bananas. But if there weren't a bunch of tourists wanting to ride them, maybe they wouldn't have to live such a sad existence.

There are also tons of monkeys here that spend most of their time on super short leashes, just staring at nothing. They are used to get coconuts, one day there were six of them at work in the field next to us. Each one was on a long rope held by a guy who told them which tree to climb up. They pull off the ones they can then throw them down. When one tree is done, the guy tells the monkey which tree is next, and they leap through the air. It was a pretty crazy site. One guy saw that we were watching and told his monkey to jump to a tree that seemed way too far, and the monkey took almost five minutes trying to figure out how to do it. I imagine that the monkey has a pretty idea if he can make it or not, so I don't know why the guy was so insistent, yelling at the monkey to do it. When he finally did, he jumped and had to grab onto a leaf, with about a foot to spare after he slid down. The owner looked at us as if to say, 'Good show eh?'. I wish I could have told him that we were thoroughly entertained already, and there was no need to scare the crap out of the poor monkey.

Anyway, that was my animal rights talk. There is a monkey that lives on our property here, and every time we drive by and he is sitting there staring at the ground it breaks my heart. I wish I could give him a puzzle or a toy or something. I'm sure monkeys can do puzzles can't they?

Other than the sad state of some of the animals here, I don't have anything really negative to say about our time here. The people seem very friendly, everyone gives you a huge smile when you smile at them. The guys aren't rude, they don't yell or catcall like I experienced in Fiji.

The people here seem to be either fairly poor or fairly well off, there isn't much of a middle class. I don't think I've seen a single beater car here, if you can afford a car it's a pretty nice one. The houses on this island are basically varying degrees of shacks, with woven bamboo or thin ply wood walls, and tin for a roof or else pretty big nice looking places. Although even the tiniest shack seems to always have a tv, and often a satellite dish.

A lot of people run a small business, usually a food stand, motorcycle rental, internet, travel agent or a combination. I often wonder how these tiny stores or restaurants make money; I think it must just cover the cost of rent and their own food. The people seem to work hard, but slower. When I see a building under construction (always women are working right along side the men) I wonder how anything gets built since it seems like such a relaxed pace, but I guess it is just a different way of living.

Well that's my musings for the day, Hitoshi is getting shrimp ready and I'm going to go help.

Oh, and on one more completely random thought: I think that this is the longest I have ever gone not eating beef since I still didn't have my baby teeth and I snatched a steak off my mom's plate and gummed it for half an hour. I didn't think it was possible for me to go so long without it, it's an interesting change. I can't complain when there is such an abundance of fresh seafood.