Well, no photos today, partly because I don't have any new ones to post (well I do from our Khao Yai National Forest excursion, but having technical difficulties with those babies). Anyway, we were supposed to be in Cambodia, specifically Angkor Wat, right about ... now. But there's been a slight glitch. My friend Dora, her husband and cousin came to Thailand last Saturday to hang, see the sights and go to Cambodia with us ... unfortunately on their way to a ferry down south to take them to a beautiful island excursion they got in a car accident and Dora is now laid up in Bangkok's fanciest private hospital with a ... we'll call it a "bone broken in her neck" since that sounds much less alarming than "a broken neck." Semantics are key. She will be here until probably Wednesday or Thursday of this coming week it looks like stretching out her SE Asia adventure by a few days and then will be jetting back to the US to lay around in another hospital. Luckily for everyone her cousin David just HAPPENS to be a neurologist; we also all discovered at the same time that Dora's cousin's fiancee (a different cousin) is Thai-Chinese and his doctor parents went to school here with Thailand's foremost spine injury neurosurgeon or whatever. They are also all somehow related to other doctors and people who can pull key strings, so she's getting lots of attention and help. But still.

This was a trip that was as ill-omened as it gets I have to admit. Their fateful itinerary:

Saturday Febuary 25 -- during lay over in Hong Kong Dora is inexplicably separated from her husband and wanders through immigration into Hong Kong. Airport personnel cry when they cannot find her (according to Jon, her hubby)! I wonder if I could make airport personnel cry. On the bright side she has now been to China.

Sunday Febuary 26 -- I take them to the Weekend Market in Bangkok and get my wallet stolen, which happens to be carrying a wad of cash that I just took out and didn't have time to spend (if it would have been just a few hours later no prob). Okay technically this isn't their ill-fated omen, but I think some of their ill-fated omens rubbed off onto me. It's as contagious as bird flu (which isn't actually that contagious, so maybe more like ring worm).

Monday Febuary 27 -- Dora falls off a raised platform during a bike ride through the Bangkok suburbs (see previous entries for photos) and crashes into the surrounding jungle. Shreds the skin on her knee but, luckily, had insisted on wearing a helmet even though Nancy's former Dutch employer who runs the bike tour outfit tried to talk her out of wearing a helmet because it's sweaty and looks silly. People with brain injuries look much sillier. Plus he has Nazi eyes so who wants to listen to him anyway.

Tuesday Febuary 28 -- While sitting in the back seat of a taxi that the crew took from Bangkok to the seaside town of Trat, the careening taxi driver misses a curve and hits a tree. The rest is history, although she did get to enjoy a very dramatic (and pricey) airlift from Trat to Bangkok Aiport.

And so ends Dora the Explorer's big SE Asian adventure. Next time we're all going to Canada! Although I have to say, if you're going to end up in the hospital in Asia, Bangkok's the place to do it -- nice, modern hospitals for a FRACTION of the price in the U.S. A FRACTION. Your own room -- for 200 bucks a night. Yeah, you heard right. Of course, there is a downside -- Thailand has a booming medical tourism industry, Westerners and Asians from all over the world come here for operations and cancer treatments and dental surgeries and sex changes and boob lifts and take advantage of low wait times, excellently trained doctors, fabulous service and low prices -- but meanwhile the public health care system is suffering from a debilitating shortage of doctors because they are all flocking to the higher paid private sector. Ah, healthcare. It all comes down to how much mulah you have.