Soon Come

I ended up writing my travel blogs via FB - Katsvox, because it was faster and easier and went directly to friends and family.  I still plan to add my travel antics and journeys to a website for the public and will let you know when that manifests.  

Peace & Love
K@ wOMan

A peace of Pai

Goodbye Chiang Mai, Hello Pai

PAI - pronounced pie.

Well since it is the King's birthday tonite with more fireworks and blasting crackers going off, I thought I better get the latest blog out.  The King unfortunately lives in the hospital these days.  In Thailand they really honor the monarchy and one can go to jail for slagging it.  There is an unauthorized biography of King Bhumbibol, called 'The King Never Smiles' that was banned in Thailand before publication and they even blocked any website advertising of the book.  They take it very seriously.

A relief to get out of Chiang Mai even though it is one of my favourite cities.  It was festering with festivities before during and post lantern festival.  The fireworks and freakin fire crackers sounded like guns and bombs in a war zone exploding as soon as the sun set and well after midnite.  There was still some lingering gunshots as I was heading for the hills. And now they echo again into the nite to celebrate the King who never smiles.

dreadlocks inner tubes and local musicians

Pai is a laidback town filled with bohemians, artists and musicians, pot smokers and dread heads, old hippies and quasi new hippies and many flavors in between.  It has an element of Nelson and Roberts Creek in BC yet it is a town on its own and the only one like it in Thailand.  You can't blink in a block without seeing a tattoo shop.  There are loads of unique hand made jewellery and leather things, some funky clothing and 2nd hand book shops and some great restaraunts, cool cafes and a healthy restaraunt called 'The Good Life',

Kay, the owner of the Good Life

Making Wheat Grass Juice
w/a little help from his friend

My breakfast - wheatgrass and red tea

 that has already become my haunt with wheat grass, kambucha tea and plethora of other teas and the regular 30 page menu that seems protocol here in Thailand with a mix to satisfy everyone and pix of the dishes for visuals in case the descriptions in cryptic English aren't enough for us who need visual stimulus.  

the menu and my manicure

At the Good Life there are wheat grass trays

lined up like book shelves 

and then there are book shelves

note Junkie by Burroughs and 

The Vinyl Cafe by Canadian Stewart McLean

and people amongst the shelves
of books and wheat grass

There are 3 swings that you can sit on while you eat and they also have a meditation class in the noisy room above the kitchen 3 days a week and I have attended one already and I hung out with the group after for a tropical smoothy, tea and talk.

update:  It seems my life at Pai revolved around food.  I would go to The Good Life in the morning for a hit of wheatgrass and a smoothie, stop at some spot for a young coconut drink, then perhaps a wicked chai tea and some journal writing at Art in Chai, then to Om Garden for lunch and chat w/friends or strangers and enjoy a decadent raw carrot cake for desert.  For supper it was usually Na's Kitchen or Charlie and Lek's.  (I am also adding my foody notes for fellow travellers that will come to Pai.)  

My favorite hangout spot is Om Garden which is a sanctuary offering Western Thai fusion meals and drinks.  I love all the clean tasting dishes I tried like the Thai salad and the red bean falafel and I got hooked on the raw carrot cake for desert.  It is run by lovely English Mark, and the incredible cook Anan, a native of Thailand - former owners of The Withching Well (another good restaraunt). The boys became my buddies and I also would run into a plethora of friends at this very sweet spot.  I have had friends stay there so long that they ate their breakfast and supper there with treats, drinks and socializing in between.  Pooch Wicky will greet you at the gate with a bark yet she is really a marshmallow and just protecting her little oasis as she used to be a street urchin and has it pretty cushy now. I have had two Reiki/Cranial Sacral sessions with Mark and he is great.  I recommend him for this work.

I  also became a regular at my favorite Thai food spot - Na's Kitchen - I love the curry dishes especially the Panaeng Veg dish and the coconut cream shake is decadent.  Her place is so popular that it fills up especially after 6:00 pm and is one of the few places that you may have to wait more than a few minutes for your meal yet it is worth it.  The cook/owner works her butt off there yet still somehow smiles to everyone who approaches her for orders or paying bills as she continues to cook non stop.

Another reliable place that I remember from 5 years ago besides Na's, is Charlie and Lek's - run by C & L - a very friendly couple.  There food is consistently great and open every day and night and have an seating area in the back as well as the front. They have cooking classes as well and comments from their students and customers line the bulletin boards.  They are near to Na's and Om Garden, so there is this great loop I would make most days hitting all my restaraunt haunts.

For a wicked Chai tea, there is another sweet spot that I hang out regularly - Art in Chai - which is down a side lane that starts near Na's.  There is a lovely couple who run it - Otto from India and his charming Swedish wife Sandy.  They make authentic Chai, nice and spicy yet will use Soy milk if you request.  Sandy even makes a delicious decaf Chai.  They have bahjans (Indian chants) on Saturday evenings around 8:00 and have an array of instruments that can be used that night or any time.  It is a great spot for chatting with a travel pal or catching up on emails or writing a postcard (remember those?).

____________

It is very chilled here and just what I needed, and it is also chilly at nite and not what I expected.  Yet there is a natural hotsprings to warm up in and my favorite elephant Sweety to visit.  This is a place where you can lose weeks, months or years.  Was I sposed to go somewhere . . . 

There are more travellers here than tourists.  More backpackers than the type that have luggage on wheels (I am on this page - hey I ain't packing shite on my back these days).  There are more of us that don't know exactly where we are going but know where we have been rather than the reverse.  And people that come back year after year after year with weathered faces, their bodies an atlas of Buddhist tattoo images and script, piercings and tired dreadlocks and speaking in a variety of accents.

The mannequin wigs give a clue of the flavor of Pai 

It was about a 3 1/2 hour rattle and snake drive in a van filled with 10 or so nauseous tired travellers through gorgeous lush jungle mountains to get here from Chiang Mai.  There are hair pin turns like you would have thru the Okanagon yet they are are never ending and begin within an hour of the trip and don't end till Pai - I am not kidding. 

I find a Flinstone like cement adobe hut to stay in partly because I know it will be cool.  I am staying across the dirty river (they all seem dirty here) and you must walk across a rickety bamboo swinging bridge to get to my hut which made it interesting to roll my luggage over.

the bamboo swinging bridge

to get to my hut which is on the left side

Right this moment there are local Thai kids jumping off it into the 3 feet of shallow muddy river 20 feet below.   A cute American guy and I are discussing the precariousness of this feat of the 10 year old boys making the leap.  Travellers also rent tubes and float down the river that is more like a large brown creek at this point.  It rises to flood levels and they are still repairing the damage of the last flood during rainy season a couple months ago.  The only use I have for the river is praps playing with Sweety in it otherwise yikes, who knows what bacteria and parasites live in those muddy waters - likely the same as our tap water.

I met a cool young Danish woman named 'Fleur' (Flower) travelling by herself.  She just came from Indonesia and will go to Cambodia and I believe Laos, then work in Australia.  I am surprised and impressed that she just got out of high school and is only 19 and earned enough money to go on this big voyage on her own.  She is surprised at my age and figured I am 35 and at night she said I look 25 - bless her.  She reminds me of young Gillian from 5 years earlier, also from the Netherlands, who rode Chitty with me.  I quite like the energy of Danish people.  They smile easily and don't seem to let much bother them - I know, stereo typing.

I also met a darling older German woman who I already adore and would love to have tea with.  She has pure white hair and a road map of well earned wrinkles on her face and curious yet wise eyes.  She is rake thin and looks like a sparrow that could break in the wind, yet she has one firm hand shake, like a good German.  She must be well into her 80's and I know she has stories to tell and I would love to hear them.  She looks deep into my eyes and then tells me how I am feeling and shows a nice concern for me, just a wayward stranger that crashed next door to her for a night.  That was my first hotel stay in Pai.

On the grounds where I am now staying there is a 'lady boy' as a receptionist.  She walks like a woman and talks like a man.  There are quite a few lady boys about.  Gender bending is a non issue here.  It is just the way it is. Boys will be girls and girls will be boys in this mixed up muddled up shook up world except for Thailand where it seems rather normal and accepted.   I mean look at Buddha, I thought she was a she till someone called her Buddha and him.  Huh

I share my flinstone hut 

with this toad.

Sandra (not her real name but close) looks pretty much like a woman except for the 5'oclock shadow and a bit too much swag in her strut, and I mean strut.  She has orange size breasts and said last nite as she pied pipers a whole lot of us out to a spot I didn't need to or want to go to, that she also had her genitalia removed.  'I had it cut off last year', was the way she phrased it.  

The spot she took us, her entourage to, was called Be Bop and there was a garish vaudeville type older campy American diva ex show tune dancer type with a Thai backup band.  It was over the top melodramatic like a Liza Minelli drag queen impression yet she seemed serious - bless her and hats off.  Me and Fleur slipped out without saying goodbyes and to avoid the likely 'come on stays' plea.

Sandra stopped at a store 'to get gasoline' and came out with a bottle of rum cooler or some similar facsimile.  She was a wreck today at reception.  'How are you?' I ask.  'I am dying . . .' she melodramas back to me.  I make a reference to her 'free hangover' note at the bottom of the sign outside about what they offer here and I tiptoe around her.  

Even though the huts are all booked today, she tells the cute guys to come back any time to hang out and use the internet.  I say 'Good on you Sanda, invite the cute ones back' and add that there are good looking guys in Pai.  She screws up her face and says in disdain 'Yeh, but men are all pigs.'  

It gets hot here mid morning and midday yet clouds roll in and we have mellow showers that I am grateful for.  In Chiang Mai the heat was less intense than when I first arrived with welcome clouds rolling in and the occasional rain. This is a good spot for chilling and is exactly what I am doing now that it is raining and I am in my little Flinstone hut as the rain pours down and the day has turned to nite and there are no bombs or gunshots.  sigh.  A groovy little town . . . till I get itchy feet again, but first some hotspringing and an elephant visit.

__________

update . . .

As time moves on so do I.  I went for a 2 hour tube ride down the parasite river with a group of Thais and a raucous Irish girl.  One guy brought some 'gasoline' - rum and whatever in a big plastic bottle tied to his tube.  It was quite beautiful for the first hour watching the scenery and the locals doing their thing along the shore.  Then it got dark and cold and rather dangerous as the river got deeper and swifter and we couldn't see a bloody thing and we were still dodging trees, rocks and debris along the way.  Whose idea was this anyway and why did I succumb to it?  Yet I can say now that I have floated in a tube down the dirty river in Pai at nite.  My first nite ride.  I just found out that there are a heap of big snakes that live in that river and my friend saw two when she first started her ride.  'Ignorance is bliss' or is that 'knowledge is power'?  Anyhow I am alive and all.

I also moved from party central and am back to the Golden Hut bungalow just on the other side of the dirty river that I was at 5 years prior which is great except that I am right across from party central and the acoustics are like speakers and louder here than on their premises.  Last nite I woke up at 3 am to Sandra screaming severely foul things at the top of her ladyboy lungs on the swinging bridge at one of the many boys she manages manipulating.  It was nasty and I figured in her wild rage she may just shove him off the bridge.  I just cant win now with tonite's fireworks yet again for the King who never smiles.  sigh.

Actually I have seen many pictures of the King including one posted at the ramshackle castle in Chiang Mai.  He always looks elegant and stately with fine posture.  Just thought I would add that . . . Thailand's prisons are less comfortable than the Flinstone hut.

my bungalow now

I have a slinky young gray male cat (lets call him mister sliver) in my bungalow hut curled up on my lap, or perhaps I am in his hut.  I found out my name in Thai is Meaow.  So now when Thais don't understand my name I say 'Meow' and they laugh and nod as tho now they understand.  Purr central.  I do like this little hut with mister sliver attached, despite the racket outside and I am not moving again till I go the monastery in the wood - so I say today on the Kingwhoneversmiles birthday.

Mister Sliver on my lap

Just ran into this blurb about dos & don'ts in Thailand:

* Show respectfor the King and his family.  Remember, respect for the King isn't just polite, it's the law!!!  (Wow 3 exclamation marks.)

  

The Lantern Festival

The Loi Krathong Lantern festival was spectacular last nite.  The full moon with the lunar eclipse and thousands of lanterns dotting the sky like stars was brilliant.  Imagine a sky full of wishes and dreams - with each lantern that went up, a wish, desire, dream went up with it. Where do they go?  To heaven of course where all prayers and wishes incubate till the timing is purrfect to manifest.

I watched a newly wed couple on their honeymoon
who launched their lantern (aka Khom Loi) up
- what a sweet thing to do.

honeymooners setting sail their dreams

with a little help from a monk

into the cosmos

Like a sea of jellyfish floating into the sky

I decided to launch mine with the monks near a temple.  I wanted to be around their energy rather than the river area which was sardine packed, though at the river I launched my light boat.  The concept with the little boat is to release your sins (providing you are interesting enough to have them), bad deeds, habits, worries - whatever you would like to or need to release and as the boat sets sail off sail your sins as well.  Goodbye.

I bought my sin boat from this sweet 

Thai guy just because of his smile.

Lighting the boats by the river's edge

A pretty collection of them gathered against a wooden pier.

These decorated boats or floats are officially dubbed Krathongs and come in all different sizes and colors handmade by the locals and sold for 25-60 baht - $1 to $2.  They can be quite ornate.  Mainly they are made with beautiful flowers set on some material that hopefully floats.  One woman plucked whites petals one by one to make a lilly looking boat.  In the middle is a candle and incense to light before you consider what you want to launch the heck out of your life as you put your boat of sins into the dirty river to be cast away forever.

The lily like boat

swan like boats

I love the symbolism and I perform similar rituals on full moons yet this was particularly magical with the energy of Chiang Mai along with people from all over the world joining in on the festivities.

Some of the lanterns were really large

and a whole group would set it off

I was just like a kid seeing balloons for the first time as I looked up into the sky in complete awe.  It brought tears to my eyes a few times.  And the kids were particularly fun to witness . . .

This little girl/boy was so excited when it went up 

that s/he ran and gave mom a hug.

With the lantern launch you light up this coil ring (a fuel cell) that is attached to the bottom of your lantern which is made up of rice paper.  You hold it up and wait for it to heat up the lantern.  Then you make a big honking wish and release it.

a monk helping me light mine

My lantern, my wishes . . . 

Letting go

This comes with some side kicks, like I got burned by my lantern which really freakin stung (not sure the significance of that).  So now I have a red mark reminder on my hand.  As well I got burned by my little boat, hmm.  Yet my boat did not sink which would have been a bad sign.  There were also a few fires as lanterns got caught in trees and along electrical wires.  Apparently there are a few mishaps every year and praps a couple deaths but not enough to ban it like they did to our lovely lantern nite in Vancouver.  I mean magic comes with a price right . . . and I am obviously willing.  And though there were big bleepin crowds, Thais are so gentle that they don't trample you down like a herd of holy cattle like they would in India.



There was, and likely still is, so many festivities wrapped around this event.  There was some kind of strange beauty contest where the women/girls look like geishas and the men/boys look like some kind of spartacus era type manliboyness with material wrapped around their loins in a particular present wrapping method.  It was their version of Barbie and Ken I surmise.

Pageant winners

A princess on sticks

 
There was also a parade which I found rather ornate and strange.  Lots of decorated women with loads of makeup wearing bright colored costumes sitting pristinely on top of wooden platforms that young virile menslashboys in their present wrapped loins carried on their youthful shoulders.  The women would pose and smile preciously for us as the gamut of tourists took a gamut of photos.

A lantern float in the parade

Fireworks and annoying firecrackers are exploding perpetually.  This makes me particularly nervous and one went off at my foot as I was walking with the parade down to the river which seems to be the protocol walk.    This event starts as the sun goes down and goes well into the a.m..  I got a good set of earplugs otherwise I wud be looped for zee's.

There are also lanterns and candles lit around
homes and venues.

Plus some fancy boats in the moat.

So far the boats just sit there all lit up like a floating Xmas ornament yet I have a feeling they are meant to do something else at some point though I rarely research these things.  For me it is mostly chance and circumstance which is why finding a hotel was such a chore.  I just didn't know all this was going down.  Mega people, fewer vacancies, hotel prices go up a few hundred baht, yet so worth the experience.

There are also these balloon like lanterns set up in certain areas to view.  Like this little plethora of mock buildings - Piza, the Eiffel Tower and the Orpheum and other monumental places depicted from around the world.  More pictures, always more pictures.  Click click.

In this pic there is a guy who is actually balancing a bottle 

on his forehead and a ball on top of that -  pretty impressive. 

 He was doing all kinds of turns and rolls and acrobatics 

with balls and balancing and with this
configuration on his forehead.

At one point I didn't bring my camera and thought, I can't see this without my camera.  Lately I don't bother with taking pics so much yet they are great to help illustrate writing (in this case blog), so I have been packing mine about and taking pics of things that I already know and have even taken pics of in the past, yet here I go again.  Hope you appreciate the pictorial version to accent my words.  A thousand words for one picture cuts out on a lot of writing yet makes for a lot of picture editing, filing and compressing, sigh.

One thing I observe is how much we document things.  Are we really experiencing things as we shoot pictures of what we want to see later or show others.  It makes me consider taking a hiatus from my electronic gear - laptop, iphone gadget, camera etc.  What kind of world are we living in when we document our experiences rather than living in the moment of now and experiencing it to the fullest.  Which also makes me ponder the idea of writing about it.  Anaiis Nin says, 'When you write, you live life twice'.  Do I need to?  Isn't once enough?

Yet on 'the other side' there is the akashic records and all events and memories throughout time are stored there.  I believe we are here to gather information, learn, share.  I feel this all gets stored somewhere besides our own memory bank.

Here are two wickedly cute Thai toddlers . . . 

they aren't toting any electrical gadgets . . . 

As I write this, I am outside at the Black Canyon Cafe now on Rachadamnoen Road kitty korner to the landmark Thai Pai Gate sucking up all the exhaust fumes that the brick wall from the fortress of the moat boomerangs back to me.  As you can see in the above pic, the locals are wearing masks over their faces even this little tot.  I noticed this first in Korea as many passengers boarded the plane wearing them and more wear them here in Chiang Mai, including a local policeman and one of my tuk tuk drivers.  Makes one think, yet how much good can it do.  You are still breathing the air with it's pollutants.

I am going to move to Aum, the healthy veg restaurant just a door away on the wall side of the street to have a mixed fruit smoothy.

Well the year is about to end so it was such a great time for me to let go of what no longer serves me and to invite in new magical things.  Though I figure my life is pretty magic for the most part.  An astrologer in India told me that the year 2013 would be amazing for me - that I would be in such a great spiritual place.  At the time I cried because that was 2 years away from the time of the reading and I didn't want to go through more difficulties.  I was dealing with dis-ease, injury and pain around then and was ready for a big break.  He didn't understand why that made me sad.  It also crossed my mind that I could be dead and that is why I will be in such a great spiritual place - home, finally, and free.  Yet I am not done.  So here is to letting go, inviting magic in and a great 2013 . . . soon come.

Wishes do come true . . .
Those are not star
Those are dreams

This blog took me from Black Canyon Cafe for mock coffee, to Aum the healthy veg restaurant for a fruit smoothie, back to my hotel room to figure out a system to upload pix quick (done) and then to my fave restaurant Blue Diamond where I had wide noodles with veg and tofu and a cereal coffee that was divine and a gluten free brownie for desert.  I am now waiting for my stomach to digest the food so I can go have a Thai massage and out into the nite again.

David, the sweet Thai guy who works nites at my hotel just came and put a lit candle on my table as I am now sitting outside and it is getting dark as the fireworks and crackers start up again on cue.

Writing this took as long as experiencing it.  Hmm.  
I live life twice and I am ok with that . . . for now.

Clearing the cobwebs

November 23, 2012-11-23

Chiang Mai is seriously hot yet we are not even in the summer season.   I slithered thru the crooked labyrinth lanes the second morning looking for better digs.  I went from luxury to a flophouse -  the hotel in Korea (thanks Air Canada) then the spot I opted for last nite after midnite called 'My Home',  Note the little weiner dog in the pic below in the 'My Home' sign . . . 

My Home, the ragamuffin hotel

I get a shoe box of a room with cardboard walls and windows that just open to the hallway.  A tattoo artist is set up in the front lobby of the hotel so I witness someone getting ink poked first thing in the a.m.   I wanted to check out his work but had my focus on getting out of this flophouse palace first.

The tattoo room

Wall Art at My Home

I got in way late and just took the second spot I saw to get a sleep and start fresh in the morning.  Little did I know that the hotels were all booked up partly because they have a beautiful lantern festival for a week so lanterns will be everywhere maybe even in the dirty river that acts as a moat around Chiang Mai center - the Old City, where I opt to stay.  Being a creature of habit I stay in the same periphery as 5 years prior.

Some things are the same same and few are really not, like the hotel I’d hope to stay at.  It’s just gone.  I was coerced to stay at this ramshackle castle by a tall Thai guy and his shorter oz troll tenant accomplice with purply burgundy gray hair pulled back in a bun and sporting a multi colored flowered skirt – that looks quite good on him actually.  He had a long feather earing in one ear and a dangly silver earing in the other and he smelt like a keg.  He was friendly and fun yet reminded me of the bad ass Texan in Costa Rica.  He even had a eerily similar Diablo voice when he chose to conjure it up and there is even a slightly scarey resemblance   Yet this oz bad ass is into ‘lady boys’ he tell s me too soon.  ‘Slutty lady boys’ he reiterates too loudly as one that fits the bill walks in front of us at the 7-11.  He repeats this line for special effect with no apparent results.

Oh yeh, the 7-11’s are rampant in Thailand and are often used as a reference point.  ‘Just past the 7-11’.  The only recognizable and pronounceable land mark for us westerners being that it is just digits. 
               

‘I am looking for someone to play with my Cock’, he informs me when I ask what he is up to tonite.  ‘Is that too much information?’ he asks.  Not really.  Yet he is willing to stray and hit a Thai straight pub with me so I can just observe like a  sober fly on the wall yet he ditches me the moment he finds out I won’t play the reindeer games and drink with him.  He peddles off on his bike, his short skirt flapping in the wind with his gay pride.

Resident Troll 'Richelle' sporting a skirt.

He seems a permanent fixture here and is even wearing a purple threadbaren shirt with the 'My Home' hotel logo on it.  I like him yet am reminded how I end up in places with a chronic alcoholic in my midst and he may fit the bill minus the chronic adjective praps.  Anyhow, he is a character and helpful, and seems to have taken on the role of a troll/gatekeeper at 'My Home', yet I really want to move from my cell sized room.

I walk around from 12:30 till 2:00 am the first nite and it is like walking thru a dream I had 5 years ago as I remove the cobwebs from my attic of a memory while walking down the snake and laddery side streets -  like a dejavu I see an array of pregnant cats with crooked tails, the wary mutt bred dogs, the street rats and cockroaches looking for scraps from all the food stalls set up selling Thai suppers, soup and slippery food and cut fruit in plastic bags.

I meet a sweet peitt french guy dressed like a monk who tries to charm me with an accent like Peppi la Pew. He has missing teeth that he is having replaced by a masochistic female dentist in Chiang Mai.  Dentistry is generally cheaper in Thailand though the prices have shot up a lot the past few years since so many westerners got on the Thai tooth wagon.  They boosted it closer to 'farang' prices now.  That is the moniker they dubbed us tourists/travellers with.  Not very flattering, yet I don't blame them.  We have invaded their country with no damage control for our rampage.

At the palace I am reminded of how Thais squeeze the shower and toilet together in one teeny room.  So the shower head is attached to the wall in the midst of  the toilet space.  So when you shower, everything gets wet – the toilet seat, the floor, the sink, the tp and most of your belongings if they are not strategically placed.

As well they have special toilets in Thailand - the squat toilets.  Some kind of hole in the floor set up that you squat over and do a one or two and there's a spray gun to wash your butt off and you can use your left hand to wipe off any leftover whatever and you are done.  I never figured out how to dry myself via this method and I try to remember to have tp on me all the time for these special event toilets.  It is custom and polite to use your right hand to pass anyone anything or to touch anything because it is common knowledge what your left hand is used for.  Or is that just in India . . .

The position of squatting is actually better for our bodies esp for pooping rather than sitting up all anal retentive like us Westerners - no wonder. Same with childbirth, squatting makes sense - not to equate the two.  And I am surprised they have a western toilet in my cardboard hotel.  And surprised again that there is toilet paper in the shared bathroom.  BYT - bring your own toilet paper to Thailand - now there is a good travel tip for you . . .  

Okay so this is the dog I dubb 'danger dog'. Tattoo guy Po finds this moniker amusing - it's his dog, which may mean it is his digs.  A weiner dog with major attitude - a chihuahua complex I reckon.  She snaps and snarls when you get close to her yet look at the big suck between Po's toes now - go figure.  He is the dog depicted in the 'My Home' sign pic.  A ramshackle castle where you can get alcohol and a tattoo at the same time.

Do you know the difference between a traveller and a tourist?
Tourists know where they are going but don't know where they have been.
Travellers know where they have been but don't know where they are going.

* I have permission to use Richelle (RCHL), the gatekeeper troll's pic and quote tho I had to make sure I spelt his name right and change 'penis' to 'cock' with 'a capital C'.  He doesn't seem to mind the 'troll' moniker either, yet he still has to read this, gulp.

Orphans & Elephants

A weird start with a car accident on the slippery Blueberry Paulsom pass from Crescent Valley to Vancouver. Then a strange 1 1/2 hour delay at Vancouver International airport. Then an odd turn about with the airplane mid flight due to a generator failing.  Apparently a rare event yet the pilot figured it might be best to turn and head back to Vancouver rather than fly for a day over the ocean on one less generator. Perhaps a good decision.

Now I am in Korea waiting for my flight to Chiang Mai a day late yet in one piece. It actually felt good to reboot here. At night I saw a documentary that highlighted a great Center in Cambodia called "Homeland" that I am now keen on seeing. It helps street kids, children that were human trafficked for the sex trade, and kids dealing with HIV. Wow.

I am also keen on volunteering at an orphanage yet we shall see which place allows foreigners to help out. I have also contacted the Elephant Nature Park to volunteer working with their elephants. This center works with abused and neglected elephants. A lot of them were hurt during their logging careers and some also discarded because they are no longer needed.  The park also have a heap of displaced dogs and cat there that they brought after the floods in Bangkok a couple years ago.  If you leave your door or window open you wake up to meows and a wet dog nose on your finger tips so my travel pal, who volunteered there recently, tells me.

I adore elephants and can't wait to see my favorite one in the funky town of Pai. I believe her name is "Chitty", yet I thought the owner said "Sweety", so I dubbed her that. The woman that cares for her really loves her and only allows Chitty to take people for two rides a day so she is not over worked like many others.

Gillian & I on Chitty (aka Sweety)

She loves to play in the river and that is what my friend and I did with her. She bucked us off, we got back on. She bucked us off and we got back on etc etc. I think Sweety just thought of us as two pesky monkeys yet she enjoyed herself as much as us. That was my favorite time in Thailand actually.

She was relentless with us



The treehouse - I stayed at the top



I stayed at a treehouse just beside where she lived and she walked by my place every day. I would go out and give her bananas when she was done her walk to the river with a new set of monkeys on her back. She remembered me and warmed up to me. She can seem aloof and independent, yet when one likes bananas . . .

Thanking her for the ride

She also likes corn stalks.  I also really appreciated the way the mahout treated her. He never hit her and walked beside us singing, smiling and then laughing at out antics in the river. What a blast. The treehouse was pretty cool to crash at too. And Pai is one funky town man. I look forward to revisiting there.