Bangkoking Away

When I said seven stories, I wasn't kidding.  I made it through about four floors before I got bored.  I thought I'd finally found an exit, but instead it just led me into a five story mall.  Finally found the exit from that and got swept into a four story mall.  Turned out it was a good thing, though.  Because that four story mall had the aquarium in the basement.  Score!

It was expensive, about 30$ American, but I got to do a couple extra things other than looking at fish.  We'll get to that later.  A lot of the fish and stuff were native to Thailand or Asia.  I'm kind of disappointed.  I was really hoping for a "boring fish of America!" section.  Anyway, here are fish pictures

Wait, what's this?  One of the things I paid for was a glass bottom boat tour of the shark tank?  Awesome!  Why don't they do this in the Newport Aquarium?  Oh right, because it is dangerous as shit and this sort of dangerous thing is only acceptable in Asia.  Inside the shark tank they had a small plastic bubble with a baby doll in it.  The workers said it was so the sharks would be trained to eat children that fell out of the boat.  I am not making any of this up.

I also got a behind the scenes tour, which I was asked not to take pictures of, and this

This is a fish spa, and Thailand is crazy for them.  The little fish are doctor fish and they nibble at the dead skin on your feet, something like a more ticklish exfoliation.  It doesn't hurt, but there are times that you can feel them nibbling.  Weirdest feeling in the world.  Some people claim it tickles, but even with how ticklish I am, I just thought it felt weird.  And my feet felt all gritty when I got out.  It wasn't till later in the evening I realized that actually, the grittiness vanished and my feet feel like I just got a pedicure.  Seriously.  The little guys even trimmed my cuticles for me.

And this wasn't something special, just one of the exhibits, but it's really cool

You can't see it in the photos, but those brown things are real bamboo shark eggs, backlit so you can see the shark inside.  And it was moving.  How weird,  The little thing in the tube is a just hatched bamboo shark.  It was adorable.

Well, that's all for this time, I'm off to the school for my Thai Culture Classes.  That's gonna consume my days from 7:30am to 6pm for the next five days, so I'll report back then.  Maybe I'll even know what school I'll be placed at and *gasp* get an apartment of my own.  Golly it sure will be nice to be paying rent again.