How to quit your job and travel around the world

This morning I woke up at my usual time (around 6:45 a.m. and when the weather is coolest) and went out exploring on my motorbike. I went to this local Wat, which had monks there so I felt I little awkward because they aren't so keen on women being near them and sapping them of their spiritual will power (I guess). But I went into this rather ordinary temple and just had a seat. On the walls they had painted the story of Buddha in this almost comic book style.



After the temple I had breakfast and then went to the Karen Elephant Camp to find an elephant to ride on. So I got on this one and we went down to the river for a swim.


Here are the fire dancers from last night. The whole event was definitely a "gathering of the tribes" (the dreadlocked guy was there again with a sign proclaiming that he was forced to sell his CD collection in order to make the money to get back home. Poor thing.) American burnouts have nothing on the old British hippies. Maybe its the snaggle tooth/snaggle toe combo, maybe the Brits got a head start on the psychdelics or something, but these hippies (going on about festivals)are the real deal. They are really mad. I had two Changs with Katie (my roommate for this weekend), watched the fire dancing and then had had enough.



I have seen hundreds of Buddhas in the last couple of weeks, but I never saw one with a beard. This guy is sort of poser I think. Like he snuck in.

The River Pai.



Tha Pai Hot Springs.




Hot enough to boil eggs in! Women will come and sell you a small basket of eggs to cook in the hot spring and then eat.


On my motorcycle somewhere in the countryside around Pai.

I like Pai and Pai likes me. Halfway between Chiang Mai and Mae Hae Song, it's along the River Pai at the bottom of a valley surrounded by temples and natural hot springs. Granted the town itself is something like the parking lot of a Dead show meets the Oregon Country Fair (or Rainbow Gathering), and is complete with a shirtless, dreadlocked guy begging for spange with a sign saying "Help get me home. Can fix dreadlocks for work." (Later, he was spotted with 40s of Chang outside the 7-11.) But it's only in a place like this that 5,000 miles away from home you run into someone you haven't seen in 7 years, which is what happened to me last night when I ran into my college friend, Liam. This place pretty much defines chilled out. I met a girl on the bus from Portland, Oregon on my way here so we decided to split a room at this brand new, very clean guest house run by a British woman named Helen and her Thai boyfriend. It's called Breeze of Pai and is right on the river. We rented motorbikes and this morning woke very early and made the 7 km ride out to the Tha Pai hot springs. Though it's well into the 90s in the afternoon, the morning is quite dewey and fresh and smells beautiful. We passed tiered fields, water buffalo grazing, a couple of elephant camps before arriving at the springs. They are the perfect temperature to get into - though at the source, it's hot enough to boil eggs (which you can buy from Hill Tribe women there.) My friend Liam was there so we spent about an hour in the hot spring, which has really nice clear water, chatting.

After coming back to town and having breakfast, I set out to explore alone the countryside on my motorbike. All I can say is that Thailand was made for motorbiking! It's amazing. I must have ridden about 40 km total, circling a smallish canyon, down through a Hill Tribe village, up past an abandoned temple before the heat was too punishing to go further. I stopped to buy water and then came back to Pai to have lunch. It was my first time driving a motorbike, but holy shit, it's fun! Now, I am thinking on my journey through Laos I'll try and do some of it by motorbike if I can. For everyone whose reading and has ridden, you know what I am talking about, there's nothing like it.

Tonight, I've been told, there's some sort of art opening party just outside of town complete with fire dancing, live music and drinks and food. Ok, so it sounds like a Thai Burning Man, but I'll be heading out there later. Will let you know how it turns out.

Remember that SNL skit Church Chat with the Church Lady? Well, they have the same thing here. It's calle Monk Chat. I sat and chatted with this monk for a little bit (he doesn't drink banana milkshakes, but he does eat beef curry). Chiang Mai is filled with young monks studying. I guess, since we don't really have a monk culture in the states, I thought that monks were these venerated people who never mixed with common folk or commonplace activity. Not true. They drink Starbucks, wear sports sandals and use the Internet. In fact I stopped into the Internet cafe at a monastary this morning and was sitting next to monk who was surfing the net for cell phones.



I feed an elephant cucumbers.


These threaded jasmine garlands are for sale everywhere. They smell and look beautiful. I have taken to buying one whereever I am staying for my room - it makes the room smell nice and also brightens the sometimes perfunctory $5 guest house rooms. (I am really starting to sound like a travel guide huh.)




I am getting closer to the white elephant....

If I had one word to describe Thailand so far it would be pleasant. Everything here is highly pleasing, unoffensive (that's reserved for bad farang BO) and just nice. I don't know how else to put it. For example as I was walking here to this Internet cafe, a middle school got out. The street outside was lined with food stalls selling the hugest assortment of little bags of cookies or colored rice ball sweets, small bowls of noodles, shaved ice with color and cups of fresh strawberries. So pleasant! Or the music, which at first was a little chessy to my alt-indiefied ears, but now I crave it. Ahhhhh. In with the good out with the bad. Or the word "kaw" - which I don't really know what it means, but they tack it on to a lot of things and for a one syllable word, it gets a lot of mileage. Sawadee kaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwww. Hello laaaaaaaady.

Today I took a songtao [because the language is tonal, English spellings are largely phonetic. Lucky me] up to this Wat overlooking the city (which was obscured by a thick layer of smog). I almost lost my cookies as there was about 67 hairpin turns and I was in the back of an open-aired truck choking on the exhaust. But once there it was quite ... pleasant! After that I came back, picked up my laundry, wept openly at lunch while I finished "Atonement" by Ian McEwan and then went to shower and rest.

One thing that they often say in yoga or any of the mind/body pursuits, is to "deepen your practice." Well in the spirit of deepening my general practice of backpacking, I am leaving Chiang Mai tomorrow to head out north 4 hours to another city called Pai, which is supposed to be pretty laid back. The pollution here is a bit yucky so I am going back to the country side, where I have a bunglalow reserved for 300 bht ($7.50) a night. From there I can go to elephant reserves and also hot springs. So, if I am offline I am enjoying the pleasantness of Pai.

This is the yoga sala overlooking the ocean and where all the yoga and meditation classes took places.



Out sea kayaking in Angthang Marine Natural Reserve. Chris, the German guide, behind me paddling.



Ok, this is cheesy. But I saw this Russian couple on the beach and the wifey was this kind of super-tan anorexic thing with this unnatural red hue of hair and the husband was busting a gut. She was striking all these beach swimsuit model poses while he snapped away, and I thought to myself, "I want to have swimsuit model poses of me! On a beach in Thailand!" So here it is. And I figured the best day to do something like that is just after a fast.

I had to leave the tropical island finally today because my brain was getting soft. Thoughts like "You know, I really would like to have a bird and keep it in a bamboo cage" or "Can snakes climb stairs?" were starting to be my only thoughts. After a very nice time on Monday sitting on the beach, drinking juices and talking with my new fast friends - a Londoner named Jo and Aussie named Kirstie, I have traveled to Chiang Mai today. Back to the cheap reality of urban guest houses. It's wicked hot here and I don't care about my beach-coma induced idea of not drinking for another week. I'm going to head out, get myself an ice cold Chang (local brew which is 7 percent and is suspiciously like Mickey's Malt liquor) and soak it in. Then I might have some fried street things and after that maybe a green papaya salad.

So as I was contemplating a freckle today, an activity that took up most of an hour, I was also trying to think about what I would write on my blog today. I really have very little to tell you, which made me realize that in fact tropical paradise is actually quite boring. Not to me. But to you, at your desk, it is. I did actually go on a very pleasant sea kayaking outing today to a marine park and will post photos tomorrow when I am near a more modern computer. The closest I could get to annoyed is that our party was dominated by Germans, so the German language reigned supreme today and no one wanted to or had the ability to speak English with me. Fuckers. Oh but I can't hear them when I am floating on my back in the sea.

Um, yeah, so back to that freckle. Beach inertia has set in and my original plan of leaving here today, then tomorrow has now been extended to Tuesday. Even the shabbiness of the town is sort of growing on me, despite rumors that someone got bitten by a dog walking back here through the town.