This is our eighth set of pictures taken from September 6 through September 28 during our travels around Thailand.

During the second week in September, we took a train from Bangkok west to Kanchanaburi across the railroad bridge built by the Japanese with Allied prisoners of war as slave labor and immortalized in the movie, "The Bridge Over the River Kwai." When the train crosses the bridge, the people on the bridge must move to small shelters on the side.


Not exactly safe behavior, a man leaning out of the train door gives the "high five" to another man on the bridge.


The motorbike (or "moto" as it is called here) is the preferred means of transportation in the countryside. We rented one for the day in Kanchanaburi (at a cost of $4), and Lee shuttled everyone back and forth. In the picture on the left, Rebecca is on the back.

We went on hike through the rolling hills of the jungle forest near the Burmese border. On the right, Rebecca goes for a swim in one of the numerous waterfalls that comes thundering out of the mountains at the end of the rainy season.


At one point in the jungle, we came across s troop of beautiful red macaque monkeys. This little baby monkey was in the trees just above us. A few seconds later, the monkey family decided they didn't want us around. They started to pelt us with small fruits, and two of the monkeys intentionally tried to pee on us. Fortunately, we ducked away in the nick of time!


Here's Susan from a vantage point over the River Kwai, surrounded by mountains.


We returned to Bangkok for a few days, and then headed out to the resort island of Samui in the south of Thailand. We hired a fisherman to take us to a coral reef next to a small deserted island a few kilometers offshore, and we went snorkeling right off the boat. Max is holding a shell that he just picked up.


The following day, we took a speedboat from Samui to a National Marine Park with over 40 small islands. We kayaked through caves and under limestone ledges dug out by the ocean. Just behind Max and Susan, you can see two "longtail boats," which are the most common means of transport through this area of southeast Asia. The boats get their name from the long rod off the back of the boat that connects the engine to the propeller.


This is a view of the harbor from a trail along the side of the mountain in the middle of one of the Marine Park islands.


A full moon rose shortly after the sunset. Max didn't want to come out of the ocean.


Back to Bangkok for a few days, and then we were off to the ancient city of Sukhothai where Thailand first coalesced as a country 900 years ago. Here Ari holds up his little hand next to the hand on a giant Buddha statue.


Sometimes, there are disagreements. As this man drove past with his cart of hay, Max is about to hit Ari on the back. Ari had decided to ride Max's bike instead of his own, and Max didn't like that.


This is an unremarkable picture of our plane before taking off from Sukhothai on what we thought would be a short trip back to Bangkok, Friday afternoon. But 15 minutes into the flight, the right engine on the plane blew out and the pilot couldn't restart it. We immediately lost altitude, and the plane lost its balance! Flying on only one engine, he did a U-turn in the sky and brought us safely back to Sukhothai. Unfortunately, our passports were at the Vietnamese embassy which was due to close that afternoon for the weekend, and Lee was booked on a Saturday flight to Venice to give a keynote address that had been planned a year in advance. Without a passport, he would not be able to leave the country. After a series of frantic phone calls, the Vietnamese agreed to allow a vice consular at the U.S. embassy to go get our passports for us. The U.S. embassy officials told us they would do what they could, but "the Vietnamese were unpredictable." Luckily, everything worked out fine, and Lee got to Venice to deliver his address, eat some Italian food, wander around the canals and then fly back to Bangkok.


Here is a picture of our home in Bangkok over the last three months. The red arrow points to the window of our apartment on the 23rd floor.


Our next journey will be to Burma where we will be out of communication because internet access is illegal. We will put up pictures when we return in a month. To see photos from Burma, click on the next page.