Would you like lizards with that?

The other night we went out to a place called Mike's here in Chiang Mai Thailand that is well-known for its great burgers. It's located near the walled moat that surrounds the inner part of this city, and you sit on stools around the counter, in an open air setting and get great burgers and fries. With it being one of Jessica's mom's first nights in Thailand, we were trying to ease her through the culture shock of her first time abroad, so we thought it would be a great place to get an easy, familiar meal. Just after they brought us our fries, she looked down and right next to her basket of fries was a lizard, about 6 inches long, head to tail. She just stared with bugged-out eyes, and I (Jessica) started laughing. She did quite well not to scream or even jump. She just kind of moved her basket of fries and kept staring. Clearly, this was not the "typical burger and fries" experience we were hoping to give her!

But it WAS good for easing her into life in Thailand. It eventually ran away from her basket of fries and up a wall. She handled it like a champ! Lizards are so common here... here's a picture of the first lizard we saw in our cabin, on our 1st or 2nd night here. This lizard crawled up the wall, around the top of the wall to just above our bed, where a significantly larger lizard crept up behind it and started chasing it. Once they got over our bed, the big one tried to eat part of the smaller one's tail. (We actually HEARD the "crunch" sound!) Immediately, the smaller lizard fell all the way to the ground just beside our bed, and scampered out the door. The bigger one crawled outside through a hole near the ceiling. We figure the lizards have a log of when people arrive and try to freak them out within the first few days! I'd say that we've witnessed 2 fairly successful attempts!