Mother Daughter Reunion in BKK

My Mom, whose travels around Thailand for the past three weeks have made me incredibly jealous, completed her tour of the Land of a Thousand Smiles by spending several days with me in Bangkok.  As soon as she landed, we were out shopping on Khao San Road, sampling mangoes and sticky rice, buying hill tribe artwork, and taking in the tourism of the backpacker district.   

Mom was even able to find her precious singing bowl and we spent hours combing the adjacent roads testing each bowl to see which one “sang” the best.  We spent the following entire day overwhelmed and on sensory overload as we rummaged through the thousands of stalls in Chatuchak market.  We bought colorful shirts with matching funky necklaces, dresses and blouses, tons of jewelry, elephant wind chimes and more.  We walked through sections in the market full of spices and sweets, and turned a corner to find tie dye and army jackets.  

Capybara from South America - pretty brown eyes!

The highlight of the market (besides our awesome purchases) for me, was the exotic animals we found while wandering around the pet portion of Chatuchak.  We were walking past puppies, kittens, guinea pigs, rabbits, hedgehogs, and ferrets – when we saw a MASSIVE animal in a cage.  It looked like a guinea pig on Barry Bonds steroids.  It had beautiful brown eyes and apparently was from South America.  I had to go home to look it up, but it is a Capybara – the largest rodent in the world.   

Baby Capybara which is larger than a Chihuahua!

Apparently, they can weigh up to 145 pounds.  It sounds like you would need a very large hamster ball for that thing to roll around in!  Kate and I can tell you – we thought we had owned just about every kind of rodent – from mice, rats, guinea pigs, gerbils and hamsters…we figured we had seen it all.  This guy was monstrous – but he had the prettiest big brown eyes.  Apparently there are wandering capybaras roaming around the United States – who were abandoned by their owners.  Kate…perhaps we should go find a few!  

Fennic Fox - aka the Energizer bunny on Red Bull

In the same exotic store, the owner also had two beautiful Fennec foxes – that were his pets!   

He let them run around the store and I quickly let go of ever wanting a fox as a pet – they got into everything!  They sure were cute but were like Energizer bunnies on Red Bull and bounded around the small shop fast enough to make your head spin!