Life inside the moats

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I've figured out that I just don't have the time to both live exciting moments and analyze and describe them at the same time. So, if I'm a bit lax on this whole blogging thing, the computer gets the back seat by default.

I'm in Chiang Mai, a city in northern Thailand surrounded by moats, I think the second largest city in the country. I'm still with the Norwegian and German girl (I hate being the third wheel). We have other people join us for short periods before venturing out a different direction; a Swedish girl and Aussie guy hung out last night, and another German is with us now.

Tomorrow I'm going on a 2-day trek. We head out in the morning, stop at a waterfall, soak in a hot springs, stay the night in a Karen hill tribe village, then trek through the forest the next day before we ride elephants to another village. We finish it all off by taking a bamboo raft back to the highway. So stay tuned, the next blog should have some awesome pics! Good times.

Yesterday I rented a scooter and buzzed all over the city, stopping to look at some temples and markets. We found a pretty cool bar on a rooftop filled with travelers sitting on grass mats, rather than the other bars on the streets filled with sleazy old men and their pay-as-you-go Thai girlfriends. You can't walk one block without a tuk-tuk driver harassing you for a ride or a ladyboy offering you whatever it is they sell. We also went to a club with mostly Thai's that played really bad 90's electro-pop but fortunately I had enough Sang-Som in me to dance to it anyway.

Our days are largely spent sitting around waiting to be hungry again to eat some more Thai food that they cook on carts right on the sidewalk. I read books, have long discussions about life and plans and stories from our past, and the differences between our homelands and what it will be like going home and how we can never really tell people what it is like. The only way to know is to go out into the world and learn about other cultures and people first hand and feel what is like to see new things for the first time every day. It's an incredible feeling, just the simple act of crossing paths with people can be the most enlightening and fun thing we do in our lives.

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Photos

Euros
Mara the German and Cas the Norwegian

Shirt
That's a big shirt!

Hell yeah!
I think America is freakin awesome!

Gin n' Tonic
On the rooftop bar

Wat
Like Wats? Well you're in luck!