Wannatonka?

This 27″ hit early, around 4:00pm. Sether was jigging a buckshot in the wheelhouse, tipped with a live fathead.

Caught on the tipup, out deep about 15 minutes after Dube landed the pair inside the house.

Dube hooked the 22″ jigging in the house, as it came through the hole the rattle wheel behind him went and he landed the 26″. Good photo op.

3 afternoons in a row this guy has been down around 14 FOW, “patrolling” his area.

Click for vid

D and I headed out Saturday night, about 5:00 and the late bite was decent once again.

D landed a nice, 16″ eater about 7:30:

Then about 2 hours later, this 6lb, 27″ pig hit the same rig in the same hole:

Seth and I hit the wheel house last night around 5:00, in an attempt to lure some fish in and also listen to the vikes lose on the radio. We waited 4 hours for the first hook-up and Seth landed a nice 24″ in the wheelhouse around 9:30: After another hour we had a flag pop in the deep and landed a fat, 25″: Seth even took a little video:  click to watch…

Well, I got a bit lazy and didn’t post anymore after Friday’s celebration. The evening portion of the party went well, although the governor didn’t show up due to another engagement. I couldn’t get any decent pics because it was dark, but there was a camera crew there so I’ll update once I get ahold of those pics and videos.

Saturday we went to “The Sanctuary of Truth”, a type of memorial or temple that started construction in 1981 and is still being worked on. The entire outer portion of the building is hand-carved wood, mostly statue type depictions. They made the property into a tourist trap as well, with a dolphin show, elephant and horse rides, atv rides and a bunch of other junk we didn’t do. Pretty impressive to see though. Here’s the website if you want to read about it: http://www.sanctuaryoftruth.com/

Saturday night we hit the “night” market, which is kinda like a flea market that the locals go to. Lots of food stands, clothing, fake purses, trinkets and other junk. Mike gave me the culunary tour, we tried lots of different things – bamboo worms were the most exotic. They’re basically like a large wax worm fried with green onions. They were a bit greasy but tasted a lot like french fries, so pretty good stuff. They also had grasshoppers, cockroaches, some kind of beatle and silk worms. Here’s a pic of the bug stand:

Sunday morning we hopped a boat to do some diving and fishing. The visibility was horrible, only about 6 – 10 ft, so we didn’t end up diving. The fishing wasn’t good either, only a bunch of small sunny sized fish that the driver kept, so we docked at an island and rented motor bikes to tool around on. We drove around the island for awhile then stopped at a beach for beers and lounged around for a couple hours.

The water was pretty rough for the area and pretty much everyone got sea sick except for Mike, myself and Matt. They had food on the boat which was really good. Some type of Thai soup with vegtables and squid and baby back ribs that tasted exactly like the wings at the Choo Choo.

Monday was a busy work day, then Matt took me to a shopping mall to get some gifts for Sophia. It was an indoor mall like Ridgedale but there was also small stands scattered about with lots of Thai silk clothes, picked up a few little dresses for Sophia. We then walked down the beach shops a bit and stopped by a small children’s clothing store. In a secret back room they had a bunch of fake high-end watches. Everything from Rolex to Cartier, the higher priced models were really good fakes (for only about $150 US). I didn’t buy anything but still fun to check out.

Monday night I just had a few beers with the guys in the hotel bar, packed and tried to stay awake before having to leave for the airport at about 1:30am. Flights back were all good and arrived about 30 min early in Minneapolis.

Overall, a great place to visit. Everything is pretty in-expensive and the food is great (if you like spicy stuff). Glad to be back home though.

My favorite monk (with the shades):

The ceremony was pretty interesting, lasted quite a bit longer than I expected though. The monks did some type of chant that never seemed to end, the mayor showed up late and it was hot as hell outside.

After the monks were done chanting, the main little guy did some finger painting on the front window and then proceeded through the entire office with a tradition that looked a lot like “blessing” a building with holy water.

Once he returned to the stage, myself and some of my fellow employees were given the opportunity to present the monks with their “gifts”, which were pre-packaged buckets of goodies. Everything from food, to toiletries, kinda strange. They aren’t allowed to earn any money so they’re basically begars, they just don’t have to beg. They venture out in the morning to the markets and people buy them food and any supplies they need, in exchange for a quick blessing on the street.

Here’s a few more pics from the event:

http://www.wannatonka.com/?page_id=64

Gallery of some other pre-party pics, bikes and other random pics of the office setup…

http://www.wannatonka.com/?page_id=55

Something kind of interesting over here, there’s a sprayer next to every toilet (similar to the ones on your kitchen sink). After spraying yourself down, the toilet paper is only there to dry your self off. Only drawback I’ve seen so far is that people seem to go a little nuts with sprayer sometimes and leave water all over the toilet…