the slow boat on to another home

we are traveling again...
what a great few days! cruising away from pai (it was hard to yank ourselves out of there, we had lunch with chino and rata and hugged them both several times before we left, and nuk gave me a seed/bead necklace from burma, put it around my neck and said when i miss her i can wear the necklace and think of her...brought me to tears!) we rode to chiang mai with tim, the new zealand man who owns our cottage, and learned all about his life and his traveling days all over the world. on monday we drove in a minivan through northern thailand and the chiang rai province, past red dirt towns and a huge golden buddha on top of a temple, green rice fields, and humongous rock formations rising out of the green earth....we spoke too soon to tim the day before, saying we hadn't seen rain yet in thailand...of course it rained that day, but it was refreshing and everything looked greener and more alive. we stayed in chiang khong, the thai town on the mekong river, and met a great guy from quebec named aziz. we accompanied him in the morning to the border, to get our thai exit stamps and to go in a little boat across the river to laos. everything was a little slower there, being in lines and clusters of people, getting the forms we needed to fill out, handing in our passports, handing them $35 US dollars for our visa (it was fun to get the US dollars from the currency exchange place, we haven't seen them in so long, crisp ten dollar bills, smells just like US money, distinctive)...we were guided along by a man to the longboat, where they kept letting people get on, i think we had 130 or so! we got a seat by the front which was actually better than the little wooden benches, as we had a little room to stretch out. there were the two cutest little laos girls on the boat, looking at us with big eyes and holding onto their moms. we stopped at different villages along the way to pick up/drop off lao people, and at one all these little kids came on saying "pringle chips oleos (oreos)" with big baskets full of junk food and beerlao to sell. pringles seem to be popular.

the boat ride was stunning, down the brown water sand bar surrounded mekong river, through remote unknown, high green hills and cliffs, rocky shores, bamboo fishing poles bending over the water, bamboo in the valleys, little kids playing naked by the shore, little boys doing synchronized backflips in the sand for our applause, photo-shots, and smiles. we stayed in pak beng last night and had the most amazing indian food cooked by a man from bangledesh...naan, dal, parantha, rice with GHEE (yum!), aloo palak, aloo gobi....i know, eating indian food our first night in laos... :) it was great though, such a sweet man. we also met a lao man outside his restaurant who was so kind to us, we went back this morning for breakfast and he told us about his life and watched him play with his two year old son. everyone we met has been so nice, and the kids are so beautiful. we took the boat for another 8 hours today, through rain and a rainbow upon our near arrival, and cliffs and green green green and the brown muddy river. gorgeous. luang prabang is great. we found a buffet vegetarian street food stand with several dishes, all you can pile on a plate, and they heat it up for you, for .50! laos used to be occupied by the french, and the impact on the food here means there is lots of amazing bread and baked goods to enjoy, including a little loaf of the best banana bread we've ever had :) streets are lined with night market goods, beautiful pillow and duvet covers hand stitched, fisherman pants in rich prints and colors, old tusks and horns, bottles of snake wine with snakes preserved inside, silver jewelry, hand made slippers with spirals and elephants, carved wooden pieces, original buddha art painted in gold....beautiful beautiful. we met some people on our boat and are going to travel to a waterfall tomorrow and also walk up to the wat (temple) up on the hill that overlooks everything. i can already tell that our time here won't be long enough. it's amazing how much you can explore in a place....you could travel all around the world in a year, or you can stay in one country and immerse immerse immerse. even though it was hard to leave our little pai haven, i'm so glad that we did. it feels great to be 'on the road again,' as willie would say.

khap jai lai lai everyone!

new news

hello everyone!

carson here, i have two important things to say in this latest edition. one, and the biggest piece of information, is that melissa and i have bought a plane ticket home! we are both very excited, after days of searching, to have found the perfect plane tickets for the end of our trip. we will be heading back to los angeles on april the eighth, for our own culture shock to the extreme, and to see our great friend Rocket, who it has been almost a year since we have seen! we will spend 5 days there (also seeing a couple other friends from bellingham.) then we will be flying up to seattle on april the thirteenth. ...and then off to hawaii! we'll be home for a little over 2 weeks and then we head to the big island to see our friend abram who we met here in pai. we come back from that trip around may 15th...so that's the plan! in the meantime we are heading to laos today, and then down to the islands more in the south where we will (hopefully) get to spend time with a few of our favorite people that we've met on our trip, and maybe some newcomers traveling from portland! a brother sister combo, jeremy and jennea are coming to thailand and it will be great to see them as well. then down to bali, which is where we fly out of back to the states.

the other piece of news. after debate, i am putting it out there to our communities to help us in the last couple months of our travels. if you are feeling financially secure and you would like to help support us on our journey, i have a paypal account for carsonmead@gmail.com if you don't have paypal, you just go to paypal.com and sign up, click send money and then type in my email to send it to. please do not put any financial strain on yourself to do this! 1 US dollar equals 9345 Indonesian rupiahs...20 US dollars = 186,930 rupiahs!

we love you all and i can't tell you how much we appreciate you all. our communities are what make life so special and help create aliveness in me.

'then you spread your wings and you take fly, feel that morning and there is nothing on you.' a quote from billie holiday. :)

pictures from pai (more can be found in the new "pai" picasa album...follow the link to the right of the page :)

1. adventure to soppong with kate, jim, rachael, mike, abram, two girls from germany...posing at the top of the pass
2. melissa and nuk at the good life
3. carson in our home
4. carson, rata and chino
5. kat and melissa

a tribute to pai

getting ready to leave...
almost....one more day, one more day in the pai-radise. we've met some awesome people lately and every moment with them is an absolute joy, so present and happy all the time just being with them! kat from toronto, sharing meals and humor and lazy pai days and our market/cooking night where we made food for 12 people....the argentinian couple, chino and rata, two of the most beautiful people i've ever seen with their huge smiles and emanating love, chino's great laughter makes us feel like natural comedians, we all adore na's kitchen and have shared meals there the last couple of nights....

today i sat at the pool between chino and rata, feet dangling in, looking at the blue and cloudy sky, those big towering cumulous clouds and rays of sunlight pouring out from all sides of them as they pass over the sun....three perfect songs came on, 'don't worry be happy' which seemed like an ideal anthem for my experience the past few days, then 'stand by me' which is really a sweet classic song, and then 'my girl' which my sister and i used to sing together in the living room when we were little and we even made up a little routine for the whole song in pantomime to the words....rata and i were both softly singing each song as we sat there by the water...oh, what a moment! i felt pretty much ecstatically happy all day :)

we've been deep in flight research internet land the last couple of days, trying to find good prices for our next round of flights and such. we are both listening to a CD we burned from the great music venue in town, phu-pai....it's called billie holiday, remixed and reimagined....taking billie holiday songs and adding beats and breaks and other instruments, weaving it together...SO GOOD! enjoyed our last meal at na's tonight....wow have we eaten there a lot of times, and it's so good every time! thick noodles with oyster mushrooms, egg, kaffir lime leaf, lemongrass, burned chili paste, green beans....panang curry with pumpkin, carrot, fresh baby corn, green beans, lime leaves, coconut milk....brown rice....the beloved som tam salad....coconut banana shakes...all for $6...wow.

i am really just rambling...i wanted to convey how amazing it is to meet people from other places, to sit by a pool in a place that none of you live in and sing the words to a song together...to smile and smile and smile...to hug people you met three days ago and say i love you to them because you really do, truly and simply....to travel as long as we have together and to be more in love than we ever were at the beginning of our trip...(did you know...ten years ago yesterday -the 24th- was the first day that carson and i ever laid eyes on each other at the paramount theatre in seattle at the indigo girls concert, after chatting on AOL for over four months prior!??)...to ride back to our place every night, ascending the hill, lanterns aglow in the sky, pai down below, bungalows by the river, unlocking our door, stepping on those teak floors, reading before bed...breakfast at the good life, always a pleasure, scooping wheatgrass foam off the huge green shot, drinking pu-er tea, saying hello...what a pleasure it's been to spend so much time in this place and really integrate! tonight we're going out to phu pai again to see a great band called the tonic rays (the people we had christmas dinner with)....love to everyone at home and everywhere!!
melissa

dinner at na's with the beautiful argentinian couple and kat (not pictured, she's the one taking the picture :)

favorites

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 :)

a picture from the start of our trip...

my cousin brooke just sent this picture to me...taken in september at her wedding in nashville :)