Sunday, December 16, 2007

thailand.....

what to say (there is so much!)
i've had little blog entries scattering around in my head for the last few days, and i wish i just had an automatic computer to download them onto. in the moment, you know, they can be quite poetic and very observant and beautiful, and then i get to a computer and have to recall them from somewhere back in time.....

well we're in a different place in time than europe, for sure. we automatically settled here in a way we have not on our entire trip....even in bangkok, which is a crazy big city, we slept a lot (14 hours the first night!) and stayed very central to our little room near khao san rd. (but not as crazy as that road, which , as kira said is the "times square of thailand"....not nearly as big obviously but signs everywhere and a tourist mecca, with so many people selling clothes and jewelry and little food carts and bars and live music, like thai cover bands playing "one" by U2 and tuk tuk drivers at the entrance to the road wanting to take you somewhere, as long as they can drop you by their connected travel planning establishment or custom made clothing store first to get you to buy something and them to have a commission....all that was fun for about a day, and then too much, so we just stayed on our little three block strip that was a little more mellow, and slept a lot....the last day there we wandered across a little river and through a local neighborhood and just happened to find (how do we do this?) the only "99% organically grown restaurant in bangkok" (!!!) how great! i had a fresh carrot/beet/celery/ginger/apple juice and carson had his first thai iced coffee and we had a delicious coconut milk/lime leaf/galangal root veggie soup with Brown and Red!! rice! oh it was so delicious. we then took a taxi over to the station and bought the last two seats on the bangkok to chiang mai train, we were so lucky to get them...oh but the train ride....at several points i thought, if there was a hell than it might involve being stuck on this train forever, having it be eternally dark, and humid, and hot, with nothing to do and no way to get comfortable...well we did experience that for 13 hours, SO LONG to sit on a train, and it felt like an earthquake, much more bumpy than the queens to manhattan subway ride we went on, like is this train going to stay on the tracks? because it sure felt like it would rock off at any moment....we had to sit in separate cars and didn't see each other for the whole time, i think it's the longest we haven't seen each other on the whole trip, even though we were quite close in distance :) but the train-attendant woman was so sweet, they had a food service on board for free which we didn't eat but just it being there was nice, and as the sun rose i could see out the window, rice paddies and hills and green and farms and dogs at each stop (the thai dogs we've seen so far are so mellow, like little people walking around)....so much nicer than a big city... and chiang mai, where we are now, in the north, is much nicer though we still want to venture more rural so we are going to go to pai (kira's favorite (? at least one of them) place in the world....on tuesday. we might just stay there for a week or more and just CHILL. that sounds lovely. thailand feels to us all about chilling out and relaxing after so much sight seeing and 10 hour walking days in europe....now it is warm and easy going and just time to relax. which is very nice! i am loving all the fresh fruits, coconut papaya dragon fruit (so beautiful! it's like the color of beets, but pinker!), mangoes, bananas, passionfruit, pineapple....all of these things made into smoothies, or lassis with fresh yogurt, or breakfast sundaes with yogurt and muesli.... we bought some clothes the other day and it felt so great to put on something different than what we've been wearing for three months straight...tonight is the sunday market in chiang mai, where for blocks and blocks the street closes to traffic and everyone sells all of their wares, and clothes and silk scarves and food made on the spot, everything...we might just go on a shopping spree and say good bye to many of the things we brought with us, adios, sayonara, ciao (did you know we can say "thank you" and "hello" and "good day!" in 7 or 8 languages now!?)

so far the strangest food item that i've seen here was as we walked by a little outdoor food market yesterday....deep fried chicken heads...hmm..and by the end of the day they had all been purchased!

for the next three nights we are staying at julie's guesthouse, which is very cute, backpacker-like and cheap, we have our own room again (thank goodness for affordable private double rooms!) and they have a couple of nice hang out areas with their own little cafe and several journals of all of their former guests who write reflections, words of thanks, travel tips, etc. i'm going to read through those later to get ideas of what we should do here....i really can't wait to go south to the islands and coast, but we're thinking of waiting until after christmas for that because a lot of europeans frequent that area (we've been told) for the christmas holiday. for now we will explore chiang mai and pai and maybe do some little trips around here, or go to laos (kira and flora and fred and cimon--what did you most enjoy here? where did you stay? what trips did you go on?) carson just got his hair buzzed, now he looks like a monk, we see many of them walking the streets in their beautiful orange golden robes. tomorrow we will visit some temples for the first time, how beautiful, there are more temples in chiang mai than in any other city in thailand.

we are getting better at bargaining and at knowing what something should be worth, versus what you are told it costs at the beginning of the transaction. we took our first tuk tuk ride yesterday morning as we were tired and delirious from the train ride.....they are quite the experience, but fun, and everyone drives crazily here, you just kind of fit in somewhere and go, all the motorbikes and tuk tuks and taxis and converted pick up trucks with covered back areas that act as taxis too....the thai people we have met are really so sweet, i bought a t shirt from a woman who didn't speak a word of english but just made all of these cute little noises to indicate that she thought the one i got was the best one for me, it was such a sweet exchange! we got a juice from another woman in a little booth that she owned, and she took so much care in chopping up each vegetable and juicing it for us...we see so many travelers like us, with their "Thailand Lonely planet" books in their hands, searching out the spots, trying to make their way in such a different place. all of them either have a silk scarf or some thai pants, something they bought here, like us, which is cute and also redundant...but alas we are tourists too, aren't we! and we look just like them and we're finding our way just like them. i wonder if you can ever escape the tourists if you are a tourist...i guess that's why helpx is so nice, a chance to live with a local family and be with them for a while instead of so much sightseeing and going to all the hotspots all the time. that's why pai will be nice, to be in one small place for a while and just BE there. :)

last night we slept for 16 (!!!) hours straight, fell asleep at 5 for a "nap" that turned into an all night rest, but it felt so great...catch up from our train ride and our plane ride and everything in between....we both feel caught up. i feel really healthy right now, all the smoothies and fruits and juices and yogurt, and we are both taking probiotics and have some grapefruit seed extract to help keep us intestinally sound...let's pray that our food choices continue to be good and that we don't have to go through any hard times with it, if you know what i mean :)

other observations and thoughts...hmm let's see...in thailand they drive on the other side of the road, like in ireland and the UK...it reminds me a lot of maui, with birds of paradise and hibiscus and plumeria and little dove's cooing in the trees and all the fruits (morgan today i said to carson, doesn't this feel like Hui F road?!)...coconuts are one of my new favorite things....so many new smells, walking by the food markets or little food carts, of course the strange things like the deep fried chicken heads or toasted grasshoppers and grubs, or little pieces of meat grilled and stretched out on sticks (now what kind of animal is THAT, i ask myself, and i don't know)....lots of fresh vegetables in little stalls, fresh orange juice from little thai oranges like mandarins (or mandarinis, as they say in italy)...chiang mai has a ton of coffee shops, and lots of western food is advertised everywhere, across the street is an 'authentic italian restaurant' with homemade pasta and a wood fired pizza oven....carson got measured today for a pair of custom fit shorts....i have seen a few western men walking around with younger thai women...that is strange, i don't know what the situation is there but i can only guess...so many motor bikes with at least two people on it, sometimes a mom and two kids or a whole family....sunny and warm, humid in bangkok and thankfully not so much here...little altars everywhere with fresh glasses of water and little juice box or oranges for an offering, yellow flowers....so many temples....so many honorings of the king everywhere, i could even see them from the train, all lit up in the night, white and yellow, large sparkly constructions with the king's smile and waving hand, and offerings to him there...the beautiful monk robe colors....languages everywhere, thai and also german, french, people traveling from everywhere....oh so much....i've been on this computer for too long, but thankfully i can frequent them much more often now, as the price is around $1 at the most per minute, where there was one day in italy we spent like $12 on internet time! it is so relieving to be in a cheaper place and to be a little more extravagant with our living costs...because even better things here cost way less than they did in europe. europe was so wonderful, no regrets at all, but we both feel ourselves relaxing in a way that we didn't there. we are enjoying each other a lot here, taking everything in, a new phase of our journey together, which has been so rewarding and challenging at times, but continuing to be patient with each other (and with ourselves) to appreciate the travels we are having, to remember to be present continuously!

we miss everyone so much! i'll write more again, absolutely!
love,
melissa

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