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i think the best days evolve from no planning whatsoever. yesterday we had breakfast again at the good life (it's hard to not eat at this great place every morning) and sat at the table with the swing chairs with people from mexico, japan, england, canada, and the US. how fun! it's endlessly exciting to meet people from all over the world and to make new friends with all of them. we spent the day with howard from london and kat from toronto visiting a waterfall, drinking smoothies at a beautiful little lisu hill tribe cafe up on a platform that overlooks the pai valley, eating lunch, and meeting up later for a walk around the town and music at phu pai. this afternoon we are all meeting for a journey to the daily fruit/vegetable market to buy items to cook dinner with at howard's house! kat did a cooking course in chiang mai and she's going to share her skills with us. i can't wait....carson and i have been to the market so many times, but have to admire all those beautiful vegetables and herbs from afar, as we have no way to cook them ourselves. i will take some pictures of them and post them later!

we also had fun this week with chloe, our new friend from california. we shared every single meal together for two and a half days, and enjoyed the atmosphere at fluid one afternoon (fluid is a huge pool a little bit out of town with umbrellas and places to lounge around, full of westerners). chloe is going to cambodia, and then over to bali, and she got us interested in going there. we had a day of ideas and indecision, what should we possibly do? i brought up the fact that we still have quite a bit of our trip yet, and we can be free at any time to powerfully choose where we want to go....so many ideas....laos, cambodia, vietnam, south of thailand, india, mexico, new zealand, now bali....we are still in the choosing process, but as of now we are thinking of finishing out most of our lease in pai (another week or so) and then heading to laos for a week or two, and then going to south of thailand to explore ko chang and maybe a couple of other islands, and then flying from phuket to bali, indonesia, to be there for a month or so. how does that sound? we haven't visited a beach once, so i am excited to be near the ocean! we both want to go to new zealand too, but i don't know if there will be enough money for that journey (new zealand is full of helpx opportunities, so once we got there we could be taken care of by helpx, but still....plane fares are a bit more :) so for now, that is our evolving plan :)

my highlights of pai are seeing the employees of the good life every morning, sitting at kay's wheatgrass bar as he extracts a shot for us and pours pu-er tea, and talking with nook, a sweet woman who works there too, she always has such a big smile for everyone she meets, a constant inspiration to me....going for dinner at na's kitchen and being greeted by her..when we were gone for a few days to chiang mai and returned, she grabbed my hand and said how good it was to see me again...oh! how special!...and we always look forward to going in there for her smile and her food (oh, the som tam salad, my favorite, cucumber/carrot/tomato/long green bean/fresh garlic/chili and citrus, with fresh roasted peanuts on top...)....going to the hotsprings our various nights with mike/rachael/abram/julia, or dan/chloe and looking at the stars, hearing stories of their lives, chloe's poem....last night when we drove into town and saw 14 paper lanterns and their fire floating up into the sky, wishes/prayers/letting go.....hearing stories of other peoples' travels, where they've been, where they are going, their favorite parts.....all the 500,000 swifts flying back into their lod cave home at dusk every night, thinking about all the caves in the world that the bats fly out of at night.....coconuts, coconuts, coconuts, fresh water, in smoothies, in curries, i can't get enough!...carson and i are doing so well together too, we had a huge breakthrough and basically a "re-engagement" last week, really getting through some fears and blocks that had been coming up throughout our trip and creating a whole new basis for our relationship...it's been stellar! almost feels like we are starting to date all over again, that magic you know, but with our whole foundation too. it's so fun to tell people about how we met, our little internet romance and how long it took for us to finally get together, almost everyone can hardly believe we actually met on the internet :)