well jessie and i are back from our adventure in pai, where we rented motorbikes, sat in hot springs, went to some coffin caves and became certified in thai massage. it was nice to get away and pai is the perfect place to relax for a few days. there was some definite characters in pai, most of them being foreigners would been there for awhile running their own shops or yoga classes or whatever; mainly the town has a lot of foreign influence, but it's nice and easy to extend your stay there; which i did by three days. Thankfully only [View Full Entry]

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Here i am back from vietnam with some pictures, hope you enjoy and that you all had great holidays! [View Full Entry]

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SO Trish and I have arrived in vietnam - the country which only opened its doors to tourism in the late 80s - with a little cultural shock, a little overwhelmed by the abundance of motorsays and having to head into the mob of the them just to cross the street. but other than a few minor details here and there about us having relatively little clue about vietnam compared to what we know about thailand, things are going well. We headed out monday morning to halong bay, spent the afternoon and early evening on a boat around the islands and [View Full Entry]

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so we just finished up loy krathong festival last weekend and there were many a time i felt my life could have been in potential danger and that was only on thrusday. it got really crazy on saturday but i decided to stay in for that. on thrusday alone in the area where we were there probably about a firework going off every second; some right at your feet, some beside you, some in the air. it was pretty crazy and i just kept saying how crazy it was. i eventually got to light off some fireworks of my own though [View Full Entry]

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well, i've been back now from chiang rai for a couple of days now and i have to say there are some key differences between chiang rai and chiang mai. First, there is less traffic and pollution in chiang rai and thus i felt compelled to rent a motorbike at jess's encouragement. i only fell off it once but it doesn't really count because we were stopped. she just happened to get off when i wasn't prepared and the bike came toppling down on me and i came toppling down onto a nearby garbage can! and then as i tried to [View Full Entry]

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Ok so here are some random pictures from along the way. hope you enjoy!! ashlee [View Full Entry]

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i just got back from an Akha village in Chiang Rai and here are some pictures. Maybe i should fill in some details a bit. Similar to the situation in Canada , hill tribe people have somewhat of a minority standing here in Canada for several reasons. Most are not traditionally from Thailand and immigrated here as early as 30 years ago, due to such things are world war 2 , the vietnam war etc. They came from Burma, Laos, China and Vietnam. And as many came so recently to Thailand they do not have thai citizenship which makes them illegal [View Full Entry]

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ok so far i've been here in chiang mai for about a month and three weeks.i'm starting to feel less and less like a stranger to this place and am somewhat fitting in. some of the food vendors on my street are starting to recognize me and it seems as though less people are staring. although that could be just me imagining and hoping that less people are staring. so here are some things i've picked up along the way. Thailand is a newly industrialized country due to an economic boom that happened in recent decades. There are many implications of [View Full Entry]

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