Pai & Chiang Mai

Ladky was right - Pai may be heaven on earth. I think the views, the chill people and all-around blissfulness of the place were my reward for my journey from hell to get there. On Thursday I took an all-day yoga class with Mama Mam, a 61-year old fireball with plenty of stories to tell. Friday and Saturday, Jenn and I did more yoga and went on an awesome, tough bike ride through the mountains to see an old WWII bridge and hike up to a really cool canyon ovelook.

Today, Jenn and I volunteered in Chiang Mai to help Cultural Canvas Thailand build a mud bottle wall/meditation space for a women's center called Wildflower. It was a cool day of meeting great people and playing with mud, rice, glass bottles, and small Thai/Vietnamese/hill tribe children. For the next few days we'll finally do the big sightseeing in Chiang Mai before taking the slow boat ("slow... boat..."- Jenn) to Laos. It's time to get out of Thailand for awhile.

Mae Sot & Myanmar

I was adopted by a woman in Mae Sot, who brought me to her school, drove me around town on her motorbike, and fed me constantly for a few days. I helped her record English dialogue lessons for her Thai students, and chatted with her for hours. It was nice to get more closely acquainted with this woman, meet her students, and get to see Mae Sot, a Thai-Burmese-Indian town, through her eyes. One of the highlights was meeting a student with a crush who said "I still heart you forever, teacher!" as I was leaving.

The day I spent in Myanmar was absolutely ridiculous, mostly for reasons that can't be explained on here. I crossed the Mae Sot-Myawaddy border with no trouble, although the passport control guy thought I was doign a visa run and didn't understand why I was leaving so far ahead of April 12th (which is when I'm required to leave Thailand for a sec). But I got in okay, had a Burmese man walk me over the Friendship Bridge, and then ambled around Myawaddy for a few hours. I stopped at a pretty cool Wat for awhile - similar to but not exactly the same as Thai wats. A group of young monks was splashing each other and messing around in the water. They all giggled and nodded when I asked if I could take their photo. Afterward I showed them the pics and they laughed hysterically, pointing fingers and teasing each other for their captured expressions.

A bit later I got my palm read by an ancient Burmese man. I'm to live over 90 years, have two marriages, 3 children, and be extremely lucky from 35-42 years old. Also something about Venus and Saturn, but I couldn't understand him about that part. Or he just made it all up.

Lunch was a trip. I walked into a nice-looking place back near the border and asked if they accepted Thai baht. Until I actually showed them the bills, they seemed to think I'd said something about hot coffee. The menu, of course, was unintelligible to my eyes, so I said chicken/gai to the FOUR waitresses and one young boy who were standing before me. They all excitedly nodded their heads, so I continued, "Ok, chicken.... and anything. Ok? Chicken and whatever. Mai pen rai. Ok?" No, not okay. They had no idea what I meant. So in a big gesture to help, one of them ran next door to get an interpreter, who turned out to speak no English whatsoever, but did speak a little Thai. So I thought she and I worked out that I would eat anything under the sun as long as it was paired with chicken instead of a more questionable meat.

This was what they served me: a bowl of rice large enough to feed a family of four; pickled spinach/greens; bean sprouts and tofu; an oily green soup with grape leaves; two pickled spicy eggs; a plate of herbs with a nasty sour source; and what I thought was green mango but most definitely was not. Then they stood at the end of my table and STARED at me for minutes. I finally glanced at them awkwardly and they immediately smiled and backed away. Of course the food turned out to be delicious. Chicken or the rest of that stuff? Same same.

monkey thief

since yesterday morning i've been to Lop Buri, Phitsanulok and Sukhothai. it's been a cool tour of some of the smaller ancient cities and i'm liking the few days of solo travel. tomorrow i'll go into the Sukhothai historical park (another UNESCO world heritage site) before leaving for Tak Province & Mae Sot. Mae Sot is right on the Myanmar/Burmese border and I'm looking forward to spending a day or two there. i'm still undecided about whether to cross the burmese border for a day... lots of controversy about visiting that country, and for good reason, but i wouldn't mind talking to a few locals and gaining some insight into their way of life and view on their own circumstance. promise to be careful.

while i was in Lop Buri, i visited the famous Wat San Phra Kan with a Dutch girl i met. i nicely warned her to take off her sunglasses and put her cell phone in her bag, since i'd heard stories that the monkeys ("liing") that clamor all over the Wat like to steal stuff from you. so although Astrid's goodies were all safe, one bastard monkey climbed up on my shoulder, which i thought was real cute for a second, and then yanked my earring out of my ear before i even knew what was happening. so i hope the little guy enjoys his new toy, because i really liked those earrings so he better, too.
btw, the last rule listed on the back of my train ticket says: "no animals or strange smelling foods/fruits in the air-conditioned cars." got that?

scuba: check

I’m officially a certified Scuba Steve! I finished my Open Water training a few days ago in Koh Tao. Unfortunately Jenn got super sick and had to cut her training short. The poor girl was absolutely miserable. I tried my best to take care of her, and she was a trooper, but I feel awful that she had such a shitty week. We made a few trips to the island’s clinics but ultimately decided to leave early and go to a hospital in Bangkok. So we went straight to the ER this morning, and she has a new round of medicine to take. I hope she gets better asap and meets up with us within a week to get her travel on.


I’m leaving in the morning to slowly make my way up to northern Thailand. I think I’m going to check out Lopburi, Phitsanulok, Sukhothai, and maybe Tak province along the Myanmar/Burma border. Then I should be in Chiang Mai in a week if not sooner.

Happy Spring to everyone back home!

Learning Thai

I finally started making a more serious effort to learn Thai. Since I arrived in Thailand, I’ve learned bits of the language on a need-to-know basis. I can order food in a restaurant, give directions to taxi drivers, bargain for a lower price, and handle basic greetings. But recently I finally bought a good book and have been working on learning the Thai alphabet and writing system. It’s so confusing! Not only is it a new set of sounds (not to mention tones), but also a whole new world of totally different characters. The Thai alphabet has 44 consonants and 32 vowels. (So far I’ve memorized reading and pronouncing a whopping 12 of them.) Thai is phonetic, meaning that once I know all of the letters, their classes (high, middle or low), the tone marks (low, falling, high, rising), then supposedly I’ll be able to read Thai with decent pronunciation. Learning the letters and distinguishing the tones will be the tough part. But some things in Thai are actually much simpler than English. In Thai, for example, there are no tenses (same verb for past, present, future), no conjugations for different subjects (same verb for I, you, they, we…), and no differentiation between singular and plural. So all of that should make this a simple, manageable project once I learn the other 60+ letters of the alphabet!

rabbit, rabbit, rabbit

I felt so at peace yesterday. I worked out for an especially long time in the morning, then spent a few hours in a gazebo next to the campus pond hanging out with Lauren Ladky. Then Lauren Marani, Heidi, Jenn and I went to Suk 33 for dinner. It was a peaceful, low-key, much-needed day with good friends.