this involves a lot of strange animals...

This weekend has been interesting, to say the least. On Friday, Matt, Andre and I took Kelly's motorcycle to a restaurant called "classic rainforest". Matt had a gift certificate there from the 'white person competition'. This place was really cool. THere were trees and waterfalls everywhere. There were pools with swans and giant fish. The menu had strange food items, so we decided, what the heck...let's try something new. We had fried frog, Barbequed Ostrich, and Stir fryed crocodile. We all shared, and it was suprisingly delicious! Maybe my palate has changed from all the Thai spices burning off my taste buds, because I can't say I would have tried any of this before!!
Saturday, Andre and I had to go on a border run to Cambodia to extend our Thai visas. Every so often we have to exit the country and re-enter. It only took a few hours, and we walked around a bit in Cambodia. It was pretty funny because they make it so confusing trying to make foreigners give up and hire a guide. We kept asking people how to get to the border, and they would point. Little did we know we had already crossed the border and had been walking in Cambodia for 45 minutes. Finally we got our new visas, hopped back over the brder and came back to Ban Phe.
Sunday, Matt, Andre and I got up early to go to the monkey temple. This is a temple that was abandoned and overrun by local monkeys. We drove the motorbike there with bunches of bananas. As soon as we got out, the monkeys surrounded us with mean looks on their faces. Some growled and hissed. We threw the bananas and ran. About 8 of them chased Matt down the road! It was scary. Then they hopped on our motorbike...a hostile takeover. Eventually after realizing we were out of bananas they allowed us to walk around a bit, and gave us back our bike. It was fun, but I was too scared to go near any of them!
As we left the temple, there was alarge hill, so Mat drove us down one at a time. At the bottom, Matt was goofing off with the bike by himself, and fell off of it. Dre and I ran down the hill. The bike was on top of him, so we pulled it off. He had road rash all up and down his sides, and his ankle looked broken. Nobody was around, and Andre and I couldn't drive the motorbike. Luckily a nice Thai woman came and drove us on our bike to the local doctor. She drove, I sat in the middle and Matt was on the back. During the ride, Matt went into shock. He started shaking, biting his fist, rocking back and forth and looked like he was going to pass out. I grabbed onto his legs, and held him on the bike until we got to the Dr. The Doctors didn't speak any English, but they cleaned him up and we think he got a sprain. While they were cleaning him up he was still in shock. It was so scary to see him crying and freaking out. Andre met us at the Dr. on another Thai person's bike. They gave Matt medicine and the same Thai ladies drove us all the way back to our place. I don't know what we would have done without them, they were so helpful. Matty is fine now, all cleaned up and a mild sprain. He was pretty lucky!
This is the 2nd accident I have avoided, I feel like I have dodged a bullet. Anyway...he will be ok! We are taking a taxi to go to Shaam's tonight for dinner. It will be nice to see him, and have a great meal!
I have pictures of the monkey temple and the strange food dinner which i will put up sometime this week!! miss you all