Thursday, March 11, 2010

Thailand.
Here we are, sitting in the Chiang Mai International Airport, ready to depart. The past two and a half weeks have seemed like months in some ways; perhaps because, so far, all of the places we have visited are places we spent time during our travels two years ago. The places (especially Pai) being so familiar that it was almost as if we had never left (almost). And now, here we sit awaiting a completely new journey, a journey to a place neither of us has visited before, but that we have heard oh so much about: INDIA. India!

Coming to Thailand at the onset of our journey has acclimated us to traveling again (even though we have been on the move since our last trip for the most part, but just in the US!) It has been fun to discover “home” in such a foreign place. During our first stint in Chiang Mai, we ended up staying 6 days because we were having so much fun there! We met up with friends from home: Will, Fawni, Dana….met Carson’s Alberta Street neighbor, Shawn…met new friends through these friends, attended an Anusara Yoga class, ate tons of good food at our favorite Chiang Mai spots: Juicy 4U, Dada Kafe, the Blue Diamond, Le Spice Indian food….walked around the Sunday Night Walking Street, enjoying all the handicrafts and sights and sounds and foods (especially anything made with sticky rice, mango, and/or coconut!)…started (and completed) our Indian Visa application, walked around the old city, went to a dinner party at a new friend’s house…And this time around, our timing was blessed to intersect with the timing of our friends Flora and Lance from Portland, and we were able to spend three days in Chiang Mai with them! (It’s really such a treat to see friends from home when you’re traveling! Because you’re all traveling, there’s so much free time to hang out with each other!) Carson and I nearly succumbed even deeper to the Chiang Mai vortex by taking a 2 week Thai Massage course, but we decided against it. If our trip had been longer I think it would have been in the cards, but…..next time.

Going to Pai was like coming home. We saw so many famliar faces there: our favorite cook Na, our friend Nuk who used to work at the Good Life (it was her birthday while we were in Pai, and we got to meet her mom this time too!), Kay and Plaa at the Good Life (and their new adorable 6 month old baby girl Lily!), Carson’s sister’s good friend Lek (who we took a precious Yin yoga class from on our last full day in Pai!), and many Ex-Pats that we recognized from our last visit there two years ago. Pai is another little vortex that pulls some people in much longer than they initially intended to stay. Upon our first night there, we were already looking at little flyers posted around town for beautiful homes for rent by the month…”Hmm, maybe we *should* stay here a little longer!” we both thought. Pai is soooo mellow. It is very peaceful and easy to be there. I also feel incredibly lazy during most points of my time there, because what we end up doing is eating and walking around the few Pai streets very slowly. One day, we rented a motorbike and cruised around the Pai countryside, watching Thai women harvest garlic and peeking into small villages as we drove through. (one of the photos in the previous post is of a truck loaded to the brim with garlic! We saw many of these driving around Pai every day; some even go the 3 hour distance to Chiang Mai, somehow, over those mountains all loaded down like that!) On our drive, we came across an amazing guest house, with each bungalow made of a sandbags (the white buildings in the pictures from the previous post). These bungalows were way out of our price range, but we looked inside one anyways and were so inspired by the space that they created there. Each interior was painted different colors, and had unique artwork painted directly on the wall. (Pai A Ars for anyone who is interested!) Carson is excited to investigate this form of sustainable building when we get back home (or perhaps in India if we find a workshop there.)

My favorite thing about Pai was meeting our new Thai friend Aie at his his shop, La Liead in Pai. (La Liead means “slowly, slowly” or slow living, and is a perfect word for how we move in Pai). We came across his little shop on our first night there, after cruising up and down the night market street (Pai had so many more little shops than last time we were there!) Pai is higher in elevation than Chiang Mai, and so the nights actually get cool. Carson spotted some lovely hoodies right away in Aie’s shop, and started trying them on. Soon we started looking around the shop and noticed detail after detail of the creations that Aie has made, as well as the collection of coffee percolators throughout his shop (Kelly, we thought of you!). His whole idea for his shop is to create a place where everything in it is something that is handmade, to inspire people to be creative in their own space, and for people to have a place to sit and slow down and ponder/reflect upon their lives and their journey. We sat down at a cement and wooden table that he’d made, and he served us Chinese green tea in ceramic cups that he *also* made, and he began to describe his creative process to us. Sometimes having a language barrier is almost better, because the simplest truths are conveyed and repeated in a way that helps you really get the gist of what is being expressed. He told us of how he wakes in the morning, has coffee (coffee is a constant companion to this particular creative process it seems!) and begins to visualize a new creation…he sketches, and drinks more coffee, and eventually visit’s a junk yard or the river, and looks and looks and finally finds the perfect pieces for his project. He brings them home, puts them together, and what results are some of the most honest, delicate, beautiful, and precious creations I have ever seen. Made with wood, river sticks, bent nails painted white, plants planted in rusted light sockets turned upside down like a flower, bent pieces of metal….and combined with the Amelie-like piano music in the background….I was constantly brought to the brink of tears whenever I sat in that shop, simply because I was moved by how utterly beautiful everything was. Rachael, if you’re reading this, it was like that quality that we always try to come up with a name for: like the feeling we get when we listen to David Gray, or when you’re driving on a road trip and the perfect song comes on and even though you’ve heard many times before, for some reason it just FITS…it’s like bittersweet, fully alive, present, beauty, so-happy-you-cry-ness all rolled into one. I felt that feeling every time in La-Liead in Pai, and every time Carson, Aie and I had conversations (which was nearly every day we spent in Pai, as we could not stay away!) One evening he drove us up past the Lisu and Chinese villages toward the mountains, with a view of one of the most sacred mountains there, to a clearing with three Yunnan-style huts, to watch the sunset over the Pai hills. The breeze blew the golden grasses and a small flower (pictures in the last post) and the moment was perfect. March is the dry season in Pai, and thus everything is brown brown brown instead of the lush green we’d experienced on our last visit there in December 2007. And the profuse burning going on all around the area to clear the land made the sky incredibly hazy. Aie told us that in the wet season, you could see all the way to the Chiang Rai mountains which are quite far away; that night, we could barely make out the mountains across the valley! But it was still beautiful, and we looked at Pai from above, and the “sea of stars” that were all of the homes and shops of that sweet community down below.
There is so much to say about our experience at La-Liead. Perhaps more of it will come out in future posts, because our time with our new friend was some of my most favorite moments in a long time. We all felt inspired (insPAIred, you could say!) by what is possible for us to create creatively, and Aie continued to encourage us by saying “You can! You can!” to anything that we shared about that we would like to elaborate on career-wise in our lives (building projects, massage, food and healing, writing a book).

Oh, Pai. We were there for about a week, going la-liead, la-liead, slowly slowly. It has grown since our last visit, but it’s heart is the same. We met some new friends there, a lovely woman from France who just traveled solo in India for the past 4 months. Will rejoined us there, and we spent more time with him (Bangkok, Chiang Mai, and Pai together, how fun!) Pai definitely feels like one of my homes in the world, and a place that I will always enjoy going back to.

It’s difficult to catch up on everything that has happened in the past couple weeks! I really intended to write more, but sometimes while traveling it’s easy to get caught up in the moment (or too relaxed in the moment perhaps!) to sit down and write it all down. I also am re-learning how to be a writer, as it’s not been a regular practice for me lately. And finally, sometimes the act of writing something for such a potentially large and diverse reading audience is a bit daunting; but I will do my best!

Now….now, we are in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (or KL, as it’s often called). Since we had to fly here anyways en route to India, we thought, “Why not check it out?” So we are staying for only one night. Not really enough time to do much, but enough to get a taste of the place and see if we would like to revisit it on our way back (we would!). We arrived here around 2:00pm and took a bus into the main transit hub in the city (about an hour’s drive through mostly palm/jungle vegetation). KL has a really *amazing* transit system comprising of several (8!) light rail/monorail/metro lines. More about that in a minute. Last night in Chiang Mai, I spent an extra 45 minutes online looking up info about KL. Luckily, we decided to book a hotel so that we’d have a prearranged home to migrate to in such a big, unfamiliar city. (What a great idea!!!) It was soooo nice to know where we were going and how to get here. We are staying in a 100 year-old former train station hotel! It’s quite beautiful on the outside (photos below) and has much character inside; it’s fairly clean, with rustic spotty carpets, bright lights, a 4 poster bed, and an arrow on the ceiling above our bed pointing in the direction of the nearest mosque, and also a claw foot tub! (if only it weren’t SO darn hot outside, a bath would be lovely!). The Heritage House is so picturesque, that it is a prime destination for wedding photos! We saw three brides and grooms in separate photo shoots around the hotel as we arrived, and the lobby is full of beautiful shots from previous wedding patrons. We embarked from the Heritage at about 4pm on empty stomachs and dehydrated bodies (we hardly ate anything today due to the flight). Chinatown seemed like it was close, but getting there involved crossing several busy roads and meandering in non-pedestrian friendly zones. Finally we made it there, but Petaling street was just full of souvenirs, baggage, jewelry, etc., and many Chinese and Malay style restaurants with all of the food sitting out in trays to scoop onto your plate, and lots of meat on sticks. Not appetizing. Our blood sugar was crashing, our legs were weak, we were dripping with sweat (much closer to the equator here!). We got some water, kept walking , kept walking, culture shock, oh Thailand we miss you! But then we found a hotel and got a map, and then some orange juice, and then a metro stop, asked where Little India was, found out it was one stop away….Took the metro down there, wandered around for a few more minutes, and happened upon a street with incense wafting out, saris for sale, marigold flower garlands, Bollywood style music pumping out of speakers, and a door leading upstairs to some of the best south Indian food we’ve ever had. Hooray! We did it! Averting our near disastrous low blood sugar heat dehydration crash, we ordered masala dosa, garlic naan, aloo gobi, masala chai, vegetable korma, coconut chutney, rice…..oooh, was it good! We were the only non-Indian people in the place (Malaysia has a large population of people from India). Spicy, flavorful, and authentic, our afternoon dining discovery felt like a nice bridge between where we came from, and where we are headed (India!) After being all fueled up, we though, “why not explore a little more?” So we hopped on the monorail at rush hour and headed over to the hugest shopping area in KL. We then entered the largest shopping mall in Malaysia (called Times Square nonetheless!, over 3 million square feet and 10 stories of shopping/cinema/amusement park craziness! We nearly saw Alice in Wonderland 3D but it was sold out, so we wandered around in there, and then went outside to weave around the mall area to discover a street full of dining stalls and durians (yes durians!) We ate some durian on a corner and chatted with two guys from Oman, one of who was trying durian for the first time (he said it will be his last as well!) We walked a little more, and then took the monorail and the train back to our little station room, where I am writing this now. What a day! It feels like such an accomplishment to arrive in a *completely* new place and to be able to navigate our way around so well, even on not enough sleep and empty stomachs! The Malay language is similar to the Indonesian we heard and saw in Bali two years ago, so there is something familiar about it; many phrases are the same. I am sad to not be able to say “kap kun kah” and “sawadee kah” any longer, but will begin to transition to another language tomorrow: Hindi! Carson bought a couple Hindi language tools for his iPod, so we will be trying to learn new words and phrases every day we are there. I really can’t believe that we are finally going to India; it’s been a dream and a fear of mine for years now. Simultaneously wanting to go there and experience it, and being afraid of it, have been a constant feeling for me. After meeting so many people who have been there already, we have gotten many good tips of places to visit and what to do/not to do and expect there. We are going to fly into Kochi, which is in the Kerala area in the south of India. I know it’s already hot there, so we will spend a week or two and then our idea is to fly up north where it will hopefully be a little cooler. We also want to visit Nepal at some point in our journey. If anyone reading this has any suggestions, tips, connections, etc for us, please leave a comment or write to us personally! We’d love to meet friends of friends, stay in your favorite guesthouse, eat at your favorite restaurant, visit your favorite temple or sacred space, take yoga from your favorite teacher, meditate in your favorite ashram, go on your favorite walk. I love how traveling can connect us to each other by visiting the same favorite places and meeting the same favorite people! Our email is carsonandmelissa(at)gmail(dot)com

Oh there’s always so much to share; thanks for reading all of this if you’ve gotten this far! I know tomorrow will be a whole new day and a whole new country and a whole new world! Carson and I are going to learn so much! Some words to illuminate my intention for visiting India: love, open heart, compassion, strength, prayer, understanding, health, bliss, joy.

I love you all!
Melissa

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