so annoying - no photos for you AGAIN

i dunno what's going on with my computer? the internets? photo formatting? something. but blogger is just not interesting in uploading my photos, which is sad, because i got (i think) some fun ones today.
let's see. i think i got as far as all the temple stuff in my last entry. i really liked all the temple stuff, even though my feet did feel like they were about to fall off by the time we had walked our way around all of it.
after lunch yesterday we took a boat ride! yay, fun, we like boat rides. it was kind of funny: to get to the pier, we walked through a little markety place, and then through a maze of back alleys and narrow corridors and at one point through several passageways that were semi-flooded and we had to teeter along planks that had been put down and then all of a sudden bing! you're out on this major pier and people are lining up to get onto the boats and you think, hunh?? how can all that soggy-plank dodgy-back-alley business be the way to this major pier, but there's no other entrance that i could see. very odd. the boat ride down the river was great - i forgot to say in the last entry that at one point max (guide, whose actual name is somsat) gave us some bread to chuck into the water and we got completely mobbed by freaky looking catfish with alien mouths. they are scary looking, and i think i have officially crossed catfish off the list of things i am willing to eat as a result.
i am on a mission, btw, to eat something different at every meal (my mission of having a daily massage fell through today, unfortunately, due to lack of time, but i will make up for it by having a two-massage day later in the trip at some point). so far, food wise, i have had green curry, red curry, masaman curry, pork liver soup, panang squid curry, pad thai, mystery noodle soup with i think fish balls in it but not entirely sure, and sauteed shredded turnip with mystery fish. not a bad meal yet. i have also had several mystery fruits - ooh, contest! anyone who can identify this fruit will get er er er ooh, yes, a picture of a baby tiger! the flesh looks like a white melon but flecked with little black dots about the size of poppyseeds.
what else. um. after the boat ride we had a thai massage (official part of the tour program, not just me being decadent), and some of the girls went off to a tailor to go get measured for custom-made outfits, which is a big deal here. the tailors are all called hilarious high-fashion pseudonyms (the best one i have seen i think is "Mister Armanni Suits"). terra (note correct spelling) is going to get a copy of the green silky backless number that keira knightley wore in atonement, for $200. i'm sort of vaguely tempted except it's not that that cheap, really, and i don't really know what the quality is. also i have enough dresses. yes i do. but i am going to buy some silk when i get to chiang mai at the end. anyway. i did not go dress shopping with the other girlies, but instead went back to the hotel for a breather, and i had the very, very best of intentions of going out and doing cultural activities after a quick rest, but a) i got really sleepy b) it started to rain absolute monsoon-style buckets and c) i made the mistake of flipping on the discovery channel in my hotel room (we were staying in a fairly plutocratic international-businessman-style generic hotel in bangkok, so i had a megatelevision in my room) and this program "bear grilles: man vs wild" was on, and i got totally sucked into it. he is this wacky english dude who goes into extreme wilderness situations and teaches boy scout survival skills like which live snails are OK to eat and how to rappel down a cliff using only dental floss etc etc. it was, um, fascinating. and then i ended up falling asleep, so... three hours later, michelle (sweet/dim aussie girl) & terra (confirmed total neurotic freakazoid) headed out to go to a cabaret show.
so cabaret for me is like burlesque in that i don't _completely_ understand the defining parameters, other than smoky nightclub little round tables saucy genderbending singing and dancing. this was fun, to start out by describing it with a completely inadequate adjective. er. where to begin. basic gist: men and transgender/transvestite male-to-female dancers dressed in wildly elaborate costumes dancing and lip-synching to showtunes. the two main shockers were a) how completely convincing some of the men were as women (i.e. i didn't realize they _weren't_ women until after the show was over and we saw them close-up in the lobby) and b) how absolutely astronomical the costume budget must have been. each of the 40-50 performers changed into a different sequin/feathered/rhinestoned outfit every ?minute or so. it was an interesting case of very high pre-production values (i.e. the choreography and the costuming was really cool) but not so hot on the actual production (dancing reasonable, lip-synching uniformly terrible, although admittedly most of them are lip-synching in a language they don't speak). one aspect of the show that was completely unique to bangkok was that about half of the little vignettes were western in theme (parodies of: roller disco, the supremes, forties gangsters/molls, vegas showgirls, etc.) and the other half were asian from different countries (parodies of traditional thai temple dancing, a japanese geisha act, a korean fan dance, etc.) and if the snickering from the various pockets of japanese, korean, chinese, etc. people in the audience were anything to go by, the cultural references were as perfectly-pitched for the asian as for the western-themed bits and pieces.
anyway.
sorry, this entry is getting really long, and i haven't even gotten to today yet.... after cabaret show ate pad thai from street vendor yum yum then home to bed, now i will post this and then see if i have the stamina for the next one.