Oyster Boy

Just ate 7 large raw oysters! The oysters are served in the shell with ice you eat them with fried onions, lemon juice , spicy Thai sauce, lemon grass or garlic along with a raw Thai vegetable that you eat last. The first time I ate this dish was last year and I was really looking forward to the dish again. My stomach seems to holding up rather nicely but I continue to eat medicine for my previous stomach problems.

I think I might go for traditional Thai massage also. There is a place I can get a massage here that costs 200 baht for 2 hours, when you add the 100 baht tip for the massage person it works out to around $10 CAD for 2 hours of bliss.

The best news thou is I was able to take my battery plus transformer charger to a local repair shop. The man in the shop said the problem was with the transformer/charger (not the battery) and he could convert it to 220 volt power for $200 Baht $6-7 CAD. Thai people are very skilled at repairing broken things. This is the second time I had a problem with the Bananarama, first it was the flash bracket that broke and I had it repaired now it is the charger for the Bananarama Turbo battery that will hopefully be repaired (find out tonight at 5pm).

If the battery charger cord can be repaired I should have enough time to charge the battery, change film and go out and photograph 2 more ladyboys tonight. I have photographed 7 ladyboys and 1 lady so far. I want to photograph a minimum of 20 different ladyboys, then hopefully I will have enough good photos to do my box portfolio set "A Box of 10 Ladyboys".

I feel like I am getting into a nice rhythm with the cameras. There are less and less technical mistakes and I feel a nice flow when using the equipment. I can focus and use the Bananarama quite smoothly now so I hope I can shoot the rest of my b/w sheet film and the few sheets of color negative 4x5 I brought along. The friendships with the people I photograph are growing also, all the people I photograph are friendly to me after and often stop me to talk to to me on the street when they see me. If I could stay here for 1 year I could really establish some long term friendships. Two girls I photographed back in 2003 still work the bars here and I was able to speak to both of them last night.

I have so far stayed clear of the angry farang bar owner I met the other night so hopefully that is not a problem any longer. Things seem to be balancing out and going quite smoothly now.