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rest stop...
a nice place to rest on the long and winding road, that leads, to pai...all who wander are not lost...
but some of us are... ;-) hope this finds all healthy and happy... i have been aimlessly wandering around northern thailand since my last post trying to figure out what i want to be doing and where i want to be going... thankfully i have not put too much energy into it and have more or less just let things happen as they will... since i came north in the first place to sit the vipassana course and it was cancelled, i really had no thoughts of what to do... so here is what i wish to share since my last post...
went to the train station about two hours before my train dejparted for chiang mai... found a quiet corner out of the way to sit for 45min... mossies were bad so i covered up with a lungi, very hot though, sweat dripping off my chin... as i am wiping a big drip away, an eldery lady approaches and performs a deep wai to me (unusual in that i am younger, and foreign)... she asks, in sign language, if i have mossie repelant and we communicated that i do not...
she then leaves and returns 2 minutes later with a packet of mossie repelant and a bottle of water... she then performs another deep wai and leaves... i soon realize she runs the shop that is right behind me... how beautiful, and she wants nothing for it, no money... i feel that she respected that i was meditating, thank-you sister... the train to chiang mai was good... after i got a really quick bout of the runs out of me (probably from one of the meals i ate around the train station that day) sleep came quickly... at one point the train stopped and in the lit doorways, an infestation of large flying bugs occured... was freekin' people out as they were getting into the racks at some points... once we started moving again it cleared up...
upon arriving in chiang mai i decided to walk to the guesthouse, about 2.5km, since i did not want to use a saengthaew service that uses corruption to form a monopoly on public transport in the city as well as 'blackmailing' certain hotels into paying commision for them to bring customers (this is what lonley planet says anyways)... so a nice,
swine flu in thailand...
you can buy this unfortunate soul an the market... peaceful walk in the rain at 0600hrs... once i thought i was close to the guesthouse i was looking for i kind of lost my bearings so i stopped at a local shop and sat for a hot coffee and to consult my map... i also asked the shopkeeper where a certain street was and after consulting another gentleman they pointed up the street indicating a few blocks away... so i began again, in the rain, and headed up the street... i walked about another two kilometres in a circle and was seeing some of the places listed on my map but bearings were still a little off... finally i thought it should be the next street, the corner was getting close, and sure enough, right at the corner where i stopped for coffee and hour earlier was the street i was looking for, literally the same corner... too funny... so i get to the guesthouse and there are no vacancies, not one bed... no problem, i ended up about 5 minutes away in a cozy place with a dorm for $3cdn/night...
decided to go see a muay thai event... very interesting on many fronts... mostly falang (foreigners)
toilet trained...
could you do it and if so, how... on the train in thailand... but some locals... first fight, one fighter forgot his mouth piece... last fight, one fighter forgot his cup, too funny when the ref taps him in the groin to check... they cancelled the last fight... fighters didn't appear to be all that good but again, i appreciated the experience... most expensive thing i've done so far in thailand, cost 350B ($12cdn)...
really wanted to find a pair of cargo pants as it is much too warm and humid to always carry a bag just so i can have a few small things with me... wanted to find a pair of diesel knock-offs, black of course... i bought a pair in bangkok 5 years ago and just thru them out before i left canada... haven't seen any here yet though... had a canadian brother at the guesthouse who spends a lot of time here explain to me where all the shops and markets are where i could possibly find what i was looking for... one of the options was the night bizarre buthe said prices there were inflated for tourists and you'd have to bargain hard... this is where i ended up going and don't i find exactly what
so close yet so far...
the table on the left, where i sat for coffee... the sign on the right (julie's), the place i was looking for... mmm... i am looking for at about the 5th shop into the bizzare, and i paid half of what the lady asked which was the same price i paid 5 years ago... happy with my new black, zip-off cargo pants ;-)...
found the coolest little artists shop yesterday, johnnys, a green thai artist who has travelled around the world and now lives here in chiang mai... i took some photos of his stuff for my memory and your enjoyment... i get goosebumps everytime i go into his shop and read some of the stuff he wrote... we are lucky to have people like johnny in this world... thank-you brother...
decided to rent a scooter here and drive north for a few days... so i drove to pai... was about 135km and took me about 6hrs ;-)... must say though i was not in a hurry... about 20 minutes out of chiang mai i saw a car that had flipped on the hiway... there does not seem to be a lot of accidents here but when there is one it seems to be bad... this helped me decide not to go faster than 60km/hr... so i thought maybe
mother earth...
you are so special... we respect you... a three hour trip... well once i turned off the main hiway onto the pai hiway it was like a classic beatles song... most of the time i wasn't doing more than about 40km/hr and often i couldn't even go that fast... stopped at an amazing waterfall that i swam under, mok fa waterfall... worth the 100B for me to enter the park and the 20B to park my scooter... pai is in a beautiful setting in a valley... the town itself seems to have become a tourist town, sort of like banff is... but there is a lazy river that runs through it and i stayed in a bungalow about 15m from the river... it is so peaceful in the valley and the pace of life around the town is as you would expect in such a rural setting... there are a few hilltribe villages very close and i thought i may check one or two out on my way out of town in the morning...
so i drove to one and just felt so much like a voyeur it made me uncomfortable, i truly wonder how they feel about it... so that was enough of that...
thaiways...
this is part of the accident that helped me take my time on the drive to pai... there seems to be a lot less accidents on the road here but the ones there are, are bad... time to head out and go further north... so as i was leaving pai i wanted a rain coat for the ride... had seen a store with them hanging out front and decided to get one even though no they had nothing in black... drove through the town 4 times and couldn't find the shop... was on my way out of town on the hiway, like 2km, and decided i should have a hot coffee beofre hitting the road so i turned around and went back into town... then do i not see another store with two black raincoats hanging out front... this is how my journey has been, beautiful...
so i started to head north today, got as far as chang dao, saw aome amazing caves there, then went looking for a hotel... couldn't find the hotel i wanted, couldn't find any of the restaurants i wanted, so i decided to head back to chiang mai instead of going north as 'planned'... when i got back to chiang mai i stopped and ate before finding accomadations which was not my plan... then i checked another guesthouse but was full so i headed back to nat gueast house...
right when i pull up i see katia, my ex dorm mate walking up, i send a big smile and a hello and can tell right away that something is wrong with her... and she tells me that after i left and she was packing up to go herself, her camera was missing... this is why she was here, to leave me some kind of note... this must be the reason i came back to chiang mai and everything else worked out as it did... i feel that if we had not seen each other we both would have had bitter tastes regarding our experience together... now i feel we are good with it... mmm... amazing how 'god' works...
i recieved conformation for a vipassana course in malaysia june 17-28 so i went and bought a train ticket to bangkok for an overnighter on the 20th of may and will then head south, toward malaysia, and spend my remaining days of this visa in thailand somewhere on a beach where there is nothing to do but laze under a coconut tree, meditate, suntan, meditate, swim, meditate... you get the feeling... so until now... peace... may you all be
blog namesake...
thank-you johnny... happy...
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Steve
non-member comment
all who wander...
but all that are lost are not wandering! great to hear you are well. Do take care and the entries are appreciated.