Hello to all our friends and family. This is our seventh set of pictures taken during the month of August while we traveled around Thailand.

This is Khao San Road where young travelers come to find rooms in guest houses for $2 a night. This street made an appearance in the opening scene from the movie version of "The Beach." The photo here gives a good sense of the chaos and intensity of the city of Bangkok. The streets are filled with people, bicycles, cars and "tuks-tuks," which are modified motorcycles with three wheels and a seating compartment. There's a bright yellow and blue tuk-tuk in the picture here. They're called tuk-tuks because they have a 2-stroke engine that blurts out tuk-tuk-tuk-tuk as they weave in and out of traffic.


Across Southeast Asia, we've found daredevils doing stunts that would never be allowed in the U.S. (because there's no way anyone would be able to afford the insurance). Moments after this young Thai removed his head, the crocodile clapped its jaws together.


Here is another young Thai wrestling with a Siamese cobra which is ten times more poisonous than a King Cobra. One drop of venom can kill five people and, indeed, the previous person hired to do this stunt was bitten and died during the act.


Thailand is covered with slow-flowing rivers and canals. In the old days, most commerce took place on water. In this small village of Dameon-Sanouk, life continues today just as it has for hundreds of years. Women paddle their boats up and down the canal and trade their produce with each other as well as visitors who also sail past.


This is the facade of the main temple in the northern Thai city of Chiang-Mai. The monk is wearing the bright golden robes that all Thai monks wear. The bannister alongside the steps is decorated with a serpent being eaten by another monster (at the bottom-most point of the bannister).


The whole family rented two elephants and went on a trek through the jungle near the border of Burma. The mahout (the person who guides the elephant) sits on the animal's head and provides direction by pressing on one ear or the other. Here are the children at the edge of the river.


This is Lee and Susan's view of the journey deep in the jungle where we ran across enormous spiders and poisonous snakes crawling along the trail.


We rented a jeep for three days to explore villages of hill tribes who live deep in the jungle. Their lifestyle hasn't changed in hundreds of years. This old woman is a member of the Karen tribe. She is sitting on a stoop under her house next to Rebecca.


This is another member of the Karen tribe weaving clothes. All the women in the tribe wear handmade clothing with the same pattern.


These women are members of another tribe called the Lisu. They are smiling because Susan has just bought $17 worth of handicrafts from them. They usually don't make more than $100 a month.


We drove our jeep deep into the jungle along a dirt road until we came smack up against a river and realized that if we wanted to get to see this Padong village, we'd have to drive across. We forded 6 rivers with our jeep and finally made to this village on the Burmese border where having a long neck is a sign of beauty. At the age of 5, girls begin to put brass rings around the necks and keep adding on as they grow older. How this runaway beauty fad got going is anyone's guess.


We saw waterfall after waterfall as we traveled through the jungle. We are nearing the end of the rainy season and the flow rate is tremendous. Here are the children luxuriating in the mist kicked up by the waterfall behind them.


We came across this family of elephants on our way out of the Padong village. In the jungle, elephants play the role that horses and oxen play elsewhere. They are the major source of transportation and labor for the villagers. The owner of these two grown females and the baby is sitting along the river as his elephants cool off. The baby is just one year old but weighs about 500 pounds. Unfortunately, for reasons we don't understand, the baby charged Max who went flying backwards onto his backside. It was more scary than hurtful.

We have some incredible pictures of animals and plants from the jungle. Click here to see them.

We flew into Bangkok on July 14 from Penang, Malaysia and over the next three months we've traveled far and wide around Thailand. Some of our major destinations are shown on the map below, including our circular jeep tour from Chiang Mai into the jungle near the Burmese border. At the end of our three month stay here, on October 11, we plan to go to Burma itself (now called Myanamar).

That's all for now. We're leaving for the Bridge Over the River Kwai tomorrow. We'll have more pictures up in a few weeks time.