Sunday/Monday: I will call him Squishy

The reason we got up and left so early the next day was because of the tides. We were set to drive another 3 hours to Phuket where we would pick up a boat to take us on our next leg. On the way though we would stop to sea kayak through some caves to some hidden lagoons. But the tide needed to be out to get through the caves, so our time table was tight.

When I woke up my cold had progressed severely. I felt like death warmed over, even if it was only in my nose/throat. Thankfully someone passed me some dayquil, so I only felt like crap during the bus ride. By the time we'd loaded the big boat I was almost functional. We cruised on the Andaman sea for about an hour until we reached one of many tall, miniature limestone islands. This is when we broke out the kayaks and paddled around until we found the cave. It was pitch black and lacking a headlamp I had to paddle through with my flashlight in my teeth. I felt kind of bad-ass but probably just looked really stupid. Once through the cave we came across a shallow lagoon where we took some pictures and watched these things called mudfish flop around. They are fish with 2 front legs who crawl around in the muck and survive out of water by holding some in their mouths. I have a feeling we covered these fish in some zoology class.

Going into the cave...

This process continued for a few more caves, one of which we got to get out of the kayaks and walk through. But at that point all I wanted to do was swim. The water was so incredibly warm, I'd been looking forward to it the entire time. But once we disembarked on a tiny stretch of sand and got in the water Heather felt something... then I felt something... squishy. We were convinced it was little jelly fish, so we bolted back to shore. Then a few other girls felt it and we migrated down the beach a little. This worked for a bit, then another squishy thing grazed me. Even if they weren't stinging us I still didn't really feel like swimming with jellies. So it was back in the kayaks and to the big boat for lunch.

A smooth 2 hour boat ride later we arrived at a slightly bigger small island, this one called Koh Yao Noi I believe. There we took our overnight bags and headed down the road to our accommodation for the night. This place had a pretty beach, hot weather, and lots of hammocks. It would have been great except the island was a Muslim community. Now I'm all for cultural experiences, but this meant all the girls having to cover their knees and shoulders. I was so incredibly hot. And that also meant no swimming or sunning unless you wanted to do so in your full clothes. Such a waste of a good beach. I spent the rest of the day in a lightweight tshirt and a sarong tied around my waist--as beachy as I could get.

After another cold shower, this one refreshing though, it was hammock time until dinner. Mae talked at length about our schedule for the next few days while we watched the men bbq us piles of amazing kebobs, which we sat there and watched get cold. Torture. And once we finally got a shot at it all and sat down with our plates, the power went out. I'm talking pitch black except for the light of a passing motorbike. We hung headlamps on whatever we could find and made due.

The problem wasn't eating in the dark, the problem was our plans for the rest of the night: a Muay Thai demonstration after dinner. No lights = no boxing. Luckily right as a motorcycle gang of boxers pulled up the power came back on. We cleared the tables away and set our chairs in a circle. Then the guys did some sparring and had us come up to try some punches/kicks. I was so looking forward to this but at the time my ankle hurt too much to kick anything and my nose was too stuffy to breathe. Claudia went up there and showed us all how it's done. I really need to take a kickboxing class next quarter. I don't like the idea of getting hit but I like the hitting part.

Once the boxing wrapped up I took some nyquil and was out early. The next morning we were back to the big boat by 8am for another round of kayaking. This time our guide took us to some island off Krabi to kayak through a mangrove swamp. It was a legitimate maze, but this time I was steering in the back of the kayak while Megan was the engine up front. It was a lot more relaxing with no wind and no waves to fight, just zig zagging through an eerie mangrove forest. In all I think it was about 2 hours. Then we set sail again for another swimming spot, on the way to which the boat broke down. No one knew what was going on except we stopped, dropped anchor, and the crew started yelling at each other in Thai. Maybe 20 minutes later they finally got it going again.

At the swimming island they dropped anchor away from the shore and told us we could swim there or kayak to the beach or into another lagoon. I was all for jumping off and swimming until someone pointed over the side to the water. There were large, white, bowling ball sized jellyfish swimming around and under the boat. Even though they weren't poisonous according to the captain, I got in the first kayak I could and paddled to the beach. There 6 of us hung out in the warm water with the captain and Mae.

Then the captain, Tom, brought us over a dead jellyfish he'd found on the shore. For some reason this fascinated us and we played with it for good half hour. We took pictures with it, threw it at each other, ripped holes in it. Don't ask me why we were so enthralled. We named it squishy. When we got back to the boat we started throwing pieces of the now shredded jelly at our unsuspecting comrades.

An hour of incredibly rocky seas later we made it Railay beach. I tried to video how badly the boat was rocking, mostly because I kept thinking "mom would be throwing herself overboard right now" but I'm not sure you can really see it. Immediately after I stopped recording this we hit a large wave and multiple trays of watermelon went flying towards me. I don't know how that doesn't make me sick but airplanes do. It makes no sense.

Railay is a lot smaller than I imagined. I had pictured a long, touristy beach in a bay. Instead it's a relatively small strip of sand on both the east and west sides of the island. We had to take 3 long tail boats from our boat to the shore. Then since the tide was way out we had to transfer to a tractor to take us up the sand. There we gathered our luggage and had to walk it from the east shore 5 minutes across to the west shore. Not a difficult task except for the guys pouring cement in the middle of the path... We had to pick up our humongo bags and haul them past all the wet cement and construction to our resort. I just kept thinking TIA.

Once we'd found our bungalows we dropped our bags and ran straight to the pool. The pool was small but clean, and relatively cool. After a while my group gave up on it and walked over to the ocean instead. Believe it or not it was significantly warmer. The Andaman sea I believe is part of the Indian Ocean, which explains why I loved it so much. This is still by far my favorite ocean, shockingly warm with big, calm waves. I spent a good while out there until it was time to take a shower and get dressed for dinner.

The whole group met up with Mae at 6 to watch the sunset over Railay. This turned into a photo shoot (as tends to happen with so many girls) with the beach and sunset. But at the end of our time here I expected no less. We walked to the east for some dinner, and on the path I found a wad of American $20 blowing along the ground. I picked them up, then stood there calling "hello? Any Americans?" looking for someone either shopping nearby or perhaps looking for something. I waited for a while and the shop keepers all started coming up to me like I wanted to buy something. Then I decided to just move on and donate it later. Perhaps to DEPDC or the elephant nature park. I need the karma. Now after dinner I've gone home early instead of the bar to get some rest tonight. Tomorrow we are boating to the super famous Phi Phi Island for snorkeling. Here's hoping I can kick this cold in time to enjoy that and a real night out tomorrow--our last real night in Thailand.

On probably the 20th try we finally got one of me in the air. We need practice

Thurs/Fri/Sat: Good-bye Chiang Mai

I'm pretty sure the only thing that got us through the trekking weekend was the promise of a free day upon our return to Chiang Mai. And as if that wasn't enough, our free day was going to start with program-included Thai massages. Now if you've been reading you know that the DEPDC crew is old hat at Thai massages now. This was going to be my fifth and final massage, so I went big. I opted for a 2 hour Thai massage followed by a facial and pedicure. I believe I was there 3.5 hours.

The spa ISV works with is pretty fabulous, better than any we visited in Mae Sai. You would never know it was staffed by ex convicts. There is a massage place at the Chiang Mai women's prison that trains inmates to  be masseuses upon release, and apparently this is an off shoot of that. Interesting right? The only time I got a little nervous was when she was cracking my neck... Even with all the added services I got out of the spa for under $10. That is one thing I'm going to definitely miss about Thailand. This would be the perfect place to retire, once here you spend practically nothing.

I did some writing and some napping for the rest of the day. Then we all headed back to the everything restaurant for one last taste of deliciously unhealthy western food. Then it was off to the night market! Thank goodness I put this off until the last night otherwise I probably would have kept going back and bought way too much. It was 3 large streets that shut down every night to transform into a knock off-filled Thai market. The walk there was longer than expected, it was over by the major hotels, and the streets were lined with bars with hookers and lady-boys waiting at the entrances. There was also about an equal number of old. white guys probably there for one reason.

Our large group of girls paired off and split up to spend a good 1.5 hours at the market. I bought some more weird Thai pants and some fake Ray Bans (my sunglasses broke in my bag a few days ago) to take down south. I'm going to miss Chiang Mai, so far if I could go back to any place in Thailand it would be there. But I'm so looking forward to some beach time  down south.

Friday we flew to Phuket, which even at the airport was packed with tourists. But beach going tourists this time, not the backpacker types like up north. It was mostly couples, likely here to honeymoon. Seriously, couples everywhere. From there we took a 3 hour bus ride out to Khao Sok, a rain forest and national park. According to Mae this rain forest is older and more diverse than the Amazon, something about the ice age didn't cover this area with glaciers like it did the Amazon so the rain forest went undisturbed. It's beautiful up here, huge limestone cliffs with all sorts of tropical plants and trees growing on the rock face. From a distance it looks like moss on a rock, but it's really forest on a rock.

When we finally arrived at our lodge we realized we were legitimately in the jungle. This time along a really warm, clear river. And as soon as we got to our tree house room we found the first of many bugs. It was a cockroach on my bed's mosquito net... I knew we were in for some nasty surprises when Mae advised us to come get anyone at reception to kill bugs for us should we find any. Most of us took full advantage of this offer. First thing I did was get someone to come get the cockroach, but it ran away and either escaped or was hiding in our room for 2 days. I chose to believe It made it out the window, but I kept my bag zipped the whole time just in case. Then later that night Tegan found a giganto spider in our bathroom. I didn't even look, just ran, but I was told it was about the size of a hand. I went with her to reception to retrieve someone, and the guy there said "it's ok, you can touch it." To this I responded, "no, you can touch it." Then when the guy walked into our bathroom he looked a little surprised and just said "Oh..." which was a little validating. Then finally, as we're packing to leave Sunday morning we find a scorpion in our bathroom. A little one, it looked a little like a crayfish, but a scorpion no less. I just wanted out of that jungle, I was done with the place.

Unfortunately we spent 2 nights there because we were going on a lake tour Saturday. We took Thai long tail boats around a pretty massive lake that's surrounded by limestone cliffs and rain forest. It's a man made lake, so you could still see the tops of large trees that had once grown there poking out from the lake's surface. The long tail boats were long and narrow, we sat 2 to a bench all the way down to keep it balanced. And boy did they need balancing, it was precarious getting in and out. But the sun was out and the lake water spray was warm so it was pretty relaxing. We even took a swim in the middle of the lake. I'd like to day I was the first one out of the boat and eventually everyone followed.

We wrapped up the day by getting lunch at a floating restaurant in the middle of the lake. I wouldn't really call it floating though, it was just perched on one of the many small islands in the lake. Then we spent a couple hours sunning and swimming there, which is where we all fried to a crisp. Especially the tops of my legs and half of my knees, likely because of sitting on the boat all morning too. Sometimes I forget how close we are to the equator and forget to sunscreen the parts that don't normally burn. Except here everything burns. Hopefully it will crisp up into a nice little tan by the time I'm home.

I was exhausted that night, slept most of the ride home even. Pure exhaustion and sunburn. Not to mention the start of a nasty cold, my nose is all sorts of stuffed up. But it was up and at em before dawn the next day--the tour must go on.

Monday: "This sucks... but it's kinda fun.": Team Sassy

Sometimes I start to feel really mundane. Then I trek 10km... up a mountain... through the jungle... in the rain... with a sprained ankle.

And it was absolutely miserable.

Our trek involved hiking 10km, almost all straight uphill, through the jungle hills of northern Thailand to visit some remote hill tribe villages. One day up, one night at an outpost at the top, and one half day down. The drive out to the trail head for some reason reminded me of Forrest Gump in Vietnam, which then reminded us of Forrest's description of monsoon rain (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2ihL_FrFPs). That pretty much sums up our time at the wall in the rain. And some of the trek.

To start, I stayed in the back with the self proclaimed slow group (which we named Team Sassy) comprised of 5 or 6 non-hiking ladies like myself. Though I would argue my taking it easy was more a product of my hurt ankle. This was probably the worst thing one could do to a sprained ankle. I taped it to oblivion and wore good stiff shoes, but every time my ankle bent in the direction it rolled, like on a rock, it hurt like crazy. What made it even worse was the slippery mud we encountered about half way in. I'm pretty sure I only fell on my butt once. At first the hike with Team Sassy was kind of fun and funny. As Tegan so aptly put it "This sucks...... but it's kinda fun." Shortly thereafter one girl fell in the mud, and the girl behind her laughed so hard she peed herself. No joke. Or as the Brits call it, she "wee'd." We were taking our time at the back, taking lots of pictures and falling all over ourselves as it slowly started to rain harder and the path started to get more and more slippery. Then I fell, and instead of laughing everyone behind me just went quiet. That was the point in the hike when falling went from being hilarious to sucking.

Minus the rain it would have been an amazing hike; super tough with all the steep hills but the views were incredible. We didn't get to see much of them though as we walked the whole way looking down to be sure of our footing. By 10km and probably 5 hours of this we were wet, muddy, and miserable. So miserable. We were so grateful to reach the outpost even though it was about as rustic as it gets.

The place was raised on stilts and seemingly built entirely of bamboo. The floors, for example, were bamboo beams covered with flattened bamboo slats. We were all convinced that at least one of us was going to break through the floor that night. And every time you stepped the bamboo boards would give significantly or shift so it probably seemed more treacherous than it was. Otherwise it was bare minimum, no hot water, no electricity, not even full walls. Basically camping.

However there were 2 kittens and a couple cats running around the place that kept me entertained. We ate dinner of mashed potatoes and grilled chicken and Claudia and I fed our scraps to the cats at our feet. Then we all gathered around a fire and chatted on the floor until eventually everyone passed out from exhaustion around 930. I found out once we moved to our beds that the floor mats were significantly more comfortable than the beds. And even though I'm proud of myself for making it through and not complaining all that much at the time, basically we were hating life for the day.

The awesome floor cushions and drying our shoes by the fire

Tuesday: Good morning paradise!

I didn't sleep particularly well during our night at the Lahu outpost. I had dreams that there were ants in our bed and woke up completely disoriented and panicked. I heard later that Megan had found a giganto spider in her room on the other side of the outpost, which thankfully she told no one about until we had left. We were essentially sleeping outside so we could have woken up to anything on our mosquito nets. Thankfully all I woke up to was morning dew and the sound of rain outside. Then I heard Tegan next door going outside and simply saying "Good morning paradise!" in a loud, overtly sarcastic tone. It was both hilarious and unnerving as I laid there in my moist bed thinking 'oh great....'

Tegan called it. I opened our door to a fogged in, drizzly, miserable morning. It made for some amazing views later but was also so unbelievably muddy. That mixed with steep downhills the whole way made for a slippery mess. We were taking bets on who would slip first. I was legit scared of injuring myself it was so slippery, you should have seen how I inched down those hills. And the downhill was not good on my ankle, I was in so much pain but I had no choice but to go down. God forbid I stay another night in the hills. It was truly miserable.

A small ray of sunshine was that a puppy from the Lahu village followed/led us all the way down to the waterfall. Then a grown dog that looked just like him took over guiding us the rest of the way from there. It was adorable, reminded me of the dogs in Mozambique that would walk you all the way home at night.

Once the ordeal was finally over we met with the vans at the end of the trail and drove straight to white water rafting. There we ate lunch and got changed into our rafting clothes just as it started to drizzle again. By the time we were on the river it was a light rain, but for the most part we didn't even notice. Having white water rafted 2 or 3 times before I was pretty comfortable with it and went in a boat with some nervous first-timers. As an offshoot of Team Sassy we were Boat Sassy. We did 10km down the river, including four class 4 rapids and a couple of swims outside the raft. I'll admit the class 4's were pretty scary at times but it was awesome. I will never miss a chance to river raft.

We came back to cold showers at beautiful eco lodge. It was at the foot of the hills in a Lisu village (called Lisu Lodge) nestled right up against rice patties. It rained the rest of the night as I hung out and bonded with the girls from the other project.

Wednesday: Elephant kisses part II

We were all pretty excited for this day, even though us Africa ladies had already been to an elephant reserve. But first our trekking guide joined us back at Lisu Lodge to take us through the surrounding Lisu village. He brought us to a shaman's house (witchdoctor/spiritual healer) which I was looking forward to. However, yet again, it was a little disappointing. The tour guide talked the entire time about what the shaman does when someone in the village comes to him while the shaman and his wife looked on. They literally sat there staring, not understanding the English and with nothing to add or demonstrate. Like I said, a little bit of a let down. But then it was on to the elephant nature reserve.

The park was started by a tiny hill tribe woman named Lek, which means small in Thai I think. Once there we were able to feed two elephants and look around the massive reserve before lunch. The two elephants we got were best friends, Maedo (mae=girl, do=limp) who had had her hips broken in a forced breeding program, and Maelenna (don't remember what lenna means) who was completely blind. Poor Maedo looked completely crippled and had an awkward, painful looking gait which really broke our hearts. She also preferred to eat bananas and refused the squash we offered her.

Maedo's hips (and Megan creeping)

Then it was off to lunch, which was a gigantic vegetarian buffet, complete with huge plates. Challenge accepted. I took a little bit of everything at the beginning, only to fill my plate before I hit the noodles. I had to pile those on top. We had all gotten a little overexcited and ultimately couldn't even eat a majority of the food we'd gotten. I blame the large plates. But I'm pretty sure they gave the scraps to all the dogs.

One thing I loved about this place was that it had also recently developed into a dog shelter. There were massive floods in Bangkok not long ago and they opened up a shelter for all the stray dogs that were displaced. Most were deformed in some way, missing eyes or legs, it was so sad. But they were just roaming free with the elephants and volunteers. It was quite the scene. If anyone is looking for a dog, there are hundreds and they're all fixed, vaccinated, and being adopted out.

After lunch it was on to what we were all waiting for: bathing elephants in the river. We got two new ones whose names I don't remember, and with our buckets we splashed them incessantly with river water. I got hit a few times in the face by someone on the other side of the ele throwing their water a little too high. Mae and our guide stood on the shore and took pictures for all of us, each with 10 cameras hanging off their arms.

Finally we finished our time there by going to visit Lek. Our guide led us out to the middle of a field where a small herd of elephants were circled around an older baby. There were people with cameras around it, and once we got close enough we saw that Lek and another woman were sitting under the baby's legs singing to it. It looked like Lek was being interviewed for something by the other woman, then they took pictures of her sitting with the herd. We were all quietly watching from a distance, a line of falongs in the middle of the field with cameras in hand. I hadn't been much for touristy "take a picture of me with an elephant!" photos all day, mostly because I already had some. But as we're watching this herd eat around Lek and the baby, the guide walks up behind me, takes my camera and says to me "this is a great shot, turn around!" And she was right:

Immediately after this a mahout brought up one of the elephants to give us kisses. Everyone for the most part got nice, dainty cheek, neck, even forehead kisses. Then she decided to eat my face. Elephant makeout. This picture is getting blown up and hung on a wall as soon as I get home.

Full contact

It was amazing to get back to the Imm Hotel in Chiang Mai and take a properly hot shower. I scrubbed all the mud/elephant poop off my feet and now I almost feel human again. I'm headed back out to the everything restaurant for a chicken burger and fries (don't judge me, Thai food for the next week after this) then I believe we'll go back to Zoe Yellow. This time I will be extremely careful of curbs.

Charming Buddha

Yep, just a sprain. And I spent the morning at the Chiang Mai hospital to figure that out. However it was quite the cultural experience. This place was so incredibly organized and efficient, and best of all cheap! I spent 900 baht to see a doctor, get a prescription anti-inflammatory/pain meds, and bandages. That comes out to about $30 which I could never do in the states. It took about an hour to go through the whole system. First you go to a registration station, then they send you to specialty department, in my case orthopedics. Each specialty had their own set of exam rooms and nurses. Everyone spoke English and were dressed in the nicest scrubs I have ever seen. Then you pay at the cashier and by the time you sign the receipt your prescription is ready and paid for. It was such a smooth system, I was done in about an hour.

From there Mae and I went to meet up with the rest of the group. I had missed visiting one temple but we caught them at the second. I would have rather just met them at lunch as we're getting really sick of random temples. I'm not Buddhist, if it's not pretty or historic I don't care. But at least lunch was good, a buffet at a really nice Chiang Mai hotel. We found "western food" or bread, pasta and potatoes at one station and all gravitated there. I ate bits of other foods like sushi but spent most of my time on potatoes. No surprise there.

At this point about half of the group bailed and just wanted to go nap at the hotel. But the best and one of the most famous temples in Chiang Mai was up next, so I stayed on even though it was still really painful to walk around. I'm glad I did since the tour guide there helped us figure out our Buddha and we got fortunes and blessings. Apparently the day of the week you're born corresponds with a certain kind of Buddha. Mine is Monday, the charming Buddha. My color that day is yellow (I'm not making this up, it was in a book) which also means charming and lovely, and my year's animal is the horse symbolizing good business sense.

After this we were encouraged to go try the fortune sticks. It's a jar full of numbered sticks that you pray over, then shake until one stick falls out. You can pray questions or just pray for a fortune in general. The number that fell out for me was 23, and the 23rd fortune/prediction answered everything I had been asking. It was absolutely uncanny, or at least the English summary was. I then asked our tour guide to read the Thai portion, which turned out to be a poem that went into greater detail. Thankfully mine was very positive--my luck should be turning around soon, and apparently I should go into business?--but a few got really grim ones about impending bad luck. I'm going to see if Mae can write down the translation for me so I can remember it, like when you keep a good fortune from a fortune cookie.

On our way back to the hotel we stopped by silk and jade factories to do some shopping. Silk doesn't thrill me, especially knowing that they kill the poor worms. But I did find a few jade bracelets. Apparently jade brings luck, happiness, and health and after the last few months let's hope that's true. The shopping continued with something called Chiang Mai's Walking Street, which is apparently a gigantic street market every Sunday. It's right outside our hotel so we all spent the rest of the night eating Thai street food (really good phad see ew this time) and wandering from stand to stand. The place was packed, especially with foreigners. I was really surprised how many French tourists were there, everywhere I went I heard French. Next most might be British.

To wrap it up I didn't buy anything and we've spent the rest of the evening packing for the next few days. Tomorrow we leave for a 2 day trek to visit some of the remote hill tribes. It's going to  be a 5+ hour hike up a mountain, ending at a rustic lodge for the night. The next day we hike back down and on our way to white water rafting (yay!). Finally the day after that we're seeing and bathing elephants at a elephant nature park. It should be a pretty epic few days. No Internet however so expect a long detailed post with our return to Chiang Mai on Wednesday.

Rappel on

For those who don't know I have now spent my fair share of time scaling various forms of rock. Most notably I hiked and abseiled Table Mountain on our first weekend in Cape Town, which you can read about here since today was very similar to that: http://natinafrica.blogspot.com/2011/07/shanghai-wedgie.html

Then I went caving in Swaziland, which was WAY more intense. Today was more just exploring caves and getting a geology lesson. If you're so inclined I documented caving/spelunking here: http://natinafrica.blogspot.com/2011/08/thursfri-horseback-safari-and-caving-in.html

We had an early start today, up and out by 8 and boy was I happy that I didn't go out the night before. I heard they didn't get crazy, just bowled a few games with Ava and her British boyfriend, but we were still crashed out by 10 or 11. We took an easy 45 minute ride out into the mountains to a place called Crazy Horse Buttress. There the guides did a few ice breakers with us, like teaching us different handshakes and animal noises to do with partners and then making us re-find out partners. I need to write them down to play with my class of freshmen in the fall. Then they split us randomly into 2 groups of 10 and my group started in the caves.

Like I said the caves were basically a geology lesson (read booooring), not even any cool bats. But then they had us walk through one cave to a ledge where we learned how to abseil (or repel). As mentioned I have abseiled before, and I really do recommend reading about it above, it was a terrifying experience in the most entertaining way. After that I knew I didn't enjoy it or heights really for that matter. The same held true today. Our practice abseil was only 5 meters down (15 ft), and from there they brought us to another cave. They had us climb up to a ledge where we were double clipped onto a safety line and would wait for our turn on the Tyrolean traverse and abseil. Though I wasn't nervous about it after zip lining, as soon as I reached the ledge that all changed and I knew why we had a safety line...

I ended up towards the back of the line with the most nervous girl, simply because I had been one of the first to practice abseil. Ultimately this helped and hurt because I had lots of time to get more and more nervous, but also watched how everyone else did it fine. But  we were universally scared once we looked down. I couldn't even see the bottom until I reached the traverse line, which ran from our side of the cave to the opposite wall. From there a guide was hanging and waiting to unclip us from the line and put us on the abseiling line straight down. It's hard to explain, I didn't understand it until I saw it.

Mae went first, then everyone else went before me, and they all took some fantastic pictures for me and the others. In the end I abseiled 40 meters down (120 feet), hanging free with no rock to even walk down. I can't even tell you how terrified I was, I did my absolute best not to look down. I just stared straight at the rocks around the cave until I was about half way. At one point I yelled down below "get some good pictures cause I'm not doing this again." I was so worried about not being able to hold the rope tight enough to stop me falling, but it was a double rope so I essentially had to feed it through to move down. Once I got the hang of that it was almost fun. And the pictures turned out incredible, I hope they help give you an idea of the set up.

On the ledge about to traverse across

Made it across, now getting switched over from traverse to abseiling  ropes

Down we go. Terrified...

I'm the little speck dangling way up high

Really dangling...

Almost down!

After we had all gone down we hiked back to the base camp for lunch. My group was completely jazzed from all the adrenaline but we decided not to tell the other group what it was like. We thought they should see it all for themselves like we did. But it would have been the perfect opportunity to psych them out...

We finished the day with basic rock climbing while the other group caved/traversed/abseiled. I think I did one climb then called it a day, all adrenalined out. Now we're all freshly showered and about to meet up for dinner and a night out. I believe we're checking out a Mexican restaurant (so pumped for some tacos!) then a few bars.

...

My asking every Thai we knew what bars to check out on a Saturday night paid off big. After a giant dinner of Mexican food--I got the equivalent of chicken tostidos which were filled with chicken and mashed sweet potatoes, go figure--most of us took trucks back to the hotel. From there we went straight to our favorite bar with live music that we went to the first night. Today we'd found out that one of our rock climbing instructors was the drummer there. We all said hi to him and had a couple drinks, then I led the way to a bar/club called Zoe in Yellow which was recommended by a few Thais.

Don't worry, I scraped most of the sour cream-like yogurt off. Still delicious

When I say 'led the way' I mean I truly led the way. I have always been proud of my sense of direction, but this was a whole new level. The trucks had made a stop there before heading to our hotel, and it was up to me to memorize their route and the landmarks so we could get there later. Originally I thought only 3 girls would be walking with me, but ultimately 10+ girls followed me to Zoe in Yellow. I gave them all a disclaimer that I was only 95% sure of the route, but thankfully I was right. I'm still proud we found it without problems, especially since you can't read/pronounce the street names here so directions are difficult.

Zoe in Yellow was completely worth the walk, it reminded me of an outdoors bar mixed with a frat party. The DJ was amazing and the place was packed--packed with falong! It was literally like being in the states but better. Eventually everyone ended up there and we all had massive dance parties for hours. A few hours in I needed a dance break and went outside with a some of our girls to where the tables are. I ended up talking to a Spaniard named Andres about the impossibility of finding a job in Spain right now. Yes, this then led to a discussion of the crisis in Europe. Nerd alert. Then, the best part, I told him I study Italian and he informed me that he had done Erasmus for a year in Bari. We then spoke in Italian for a good half hour, it was glorious. I love finding Italian speakers.

Finally, on the walk home we were all waiting to cross a street and as Molly stepped off the curb she rolled her ankle on the uneven pavement. I kind of laughed like "well Molly's drunk," then I stepped down and rolled my own ankle. Like a serious roll. I was holding Megan's hand and pulled on her for support as she was stepping down too, but she fell to the ground too. I'm pretty sure she also rolled her ankle but not as badly as mine. It was excruciating but I was laughing that 3 of us were on the ground at once right as we had an opportunity to walk. The rest were yelling "get up we need to cross!" and Claudia extended her hand, and all I could say was "give me a second" while the pain subsided. Then using her support I limped across the street and down 2 blocks home. I iced it and took some advil but it's still hard to walk on, hopefully a bad sprain. But I keep thinking back to when mom broke her foot on the step. This with a tour of Chiang Mai tomorrow followed by a 2 day hiking trek to the hill tribes.

I guess this morning I'll skip the tour and go to a clinic to get it checked. Right now I wouldn't be too bummed to miss the hill tribe trek (2 days hike in the jungle, humidity, and sun, bleh)  but I'll be damned if I miss the white water rafting that happens during the trek down the hill towards home on the 2nd day. Here's hoping its fine and they give me some pills and a wrap.

Coming in hot

I feel so incredibly strange now starting a fabulous tour of Thailand right after our experience with the kids yesterday. I thought about it and felt a little guilty for most of the 4 hour van trip to Chiang Mai. What took my mind off it was watching The Rise of the Planet of the Apes on the van's movie player. This movie was the worst writing I have ever heard. So hokey. Then we spent the last hour listening to the driver's collection of English Top 40 with his overpowering bass. Not to mention we weren't sure we'd survive the ride with our driver's propensity for overtaking during blind corners. They like to do that here.

The hotel in Chiang Mai is amazing! So gorgeous, I wish we could stay here the whole time. But thankfully we have a week here. It is a legitimate hotel, and the best part is there is a McDonald's on the main floor and an everything restaurant a few doors down. Our first night I had pizza and a margarita there which weren't bad at all. Definitely going back for a chicken burger and tacos while we're here.

We are directly across from what looks like a major tourist attraction. I think it's the Thapae gate, though I don't know what it is besides that. Falong EVERYWHERE. As soon as we arrived in Chiang Mai we got lunch at a coffee shop/cafe chain that Ava told us had won awards for the best phad thai. It was pretty fabulous and we ate at an outdoors bar watching white folk cross the street in front of us. We played a good long game of "where are they from?" The people watching was fantastic.

After dinner at the everything restaurant we went to a bar around the corner, just steps from our hotel. This place opened right onto the street, was dark and eclectic and had pool and live music. Pretty decent live music in fact. I can't wait to go back there. We started as the first group in the bar, and by 10:30 it was full of falong. I mean every table taken by foreigners. But I didn't stay long after that knowing what we had planned for Friday.

The next morning we were up and out by 9am to head out to zip lining. Even though today was our free day everyone decided to sign up to zip line together, all 20 of us. We opted for the intense package that included 34 stations of zip lines, abseiling, suspension bridges etc. It was planned for a 6 hour activity and it definitely was. I was excited to zip line, having done it in Mexico I wasn't nervous this time. But I was scared to abseil having done it off Table Mountain in Cape Town. Thankfully their version of abseiling wasn't self-controlled repelling but was being lowered straight down on a pulley system by a guide at the top. I just kept telling them not to drop me too fast and things were fine. We did a 20 meter, 25 meter, and 40 meter drop.

When we first got there they suited us up on full body harnesses and super adorable hair nets. Then they handed us sticks. I kid you not my whole group was convinced it was for beating back monkeys in the trees, likely a result of our previous monkey experience. We may or may not have scared the crap out of the other group by telling them this. However we later learned that these weird hook shaped sticks were our breaks, and we would hook them onto the wire and pull down to slow down when instructed. But I still like the monkey stick idea better.

At one point, probably 20 zip lines in, the guides told us the best view of the area would be on our right. I decided not to video it and to enjoy the long line and awesome view instead of futzing with my camera. Thankfully many people did video it since it ended up being a truly incredible view. I was going down the zip line through the trees, yelling and enjoying it, then when I cleared the trees I looked right and went quiet. Then apparently I was pointing at the view all awestruck, which everyone on the platform informed me was pretty entertaining to watch.

Coming in hot

Almost immediately after we got back from zip lining we had to go to our Thai cooking school activity. We toured [another] market, talked about different kinds of rice and noodles, then went to the cooking school. Our instructor, Gae, demonstrated first how to make phad thai, which we all stir fried and ate our own. Then we rolled and fried spring rolls, which turns out I'm pretty excellent at, followed by chicken salad, cashew chicken stir fry, and coconut-mango sticky rice for dessert. I was so full by the end of it I couldn't finish much after the spring rolls. I didn't like my phad thai, I need to keep working on it, but the cashew chicken and spring rolls came out amazing. It's fantastic how simple all the recipes were, just the fresh ingredients like meat, noodles or veggies, then sugar, fish sauce, and oyster sauce in different combinations for all the dishes. We went home with cook books so I'm going to get myself a proper wok and start practicing.

Perfectly folded spring rolls right?

It's an early night for us now as we have another intense day planned for tomorrow. We'll be caving (which was memorably difficult in Africa), rock climbing, abseiling, and doing a zip line-like traverse. I almost feel athletic describing all that, should be tough.

The man on a scooter

Not much happened Tuesday. I taught for an hour which basically translated to playing games. We taught them clapping games and the human knot. They loved the human knot.
We went back to the supermarket after dinner to pick up anything we might need for bible study or the trip to Chaing Mai Thursday. I was going to use the ATM until I found out that the credit card I planned to use primarily requires a PIN at ATMs.... to bad I had no idea what the PIN was. So I went home and struggled to call BoA's collect number until I finally gave up and called the real number. Probably the most expensive phone call ever but it was do or die. Once I got someone on the phone I told them I needed to do this quickly because I was abroad. She responded with "oh would you like to call back when you have more time?" and I said "no I'm abroad and this is costing me a fortune!" It still took forever, the longest 7 minute phone call ever. I think I hung up on her while she was still thanking me for calling and telling me to have a nice day.

For breakfast on our last day (Wednesday) we had fried rice and french fries! Third meal in a row with french fries. It's the only dish we have eaten absolutely every crumb of so I think they have us figured out and keep making it. And with the fried rice/french fries combo most of us were in heaven.

None of us were eager to get back to the wall, even on the last day. But upon our arrival we learned we were basically done and would be making more metal framing for the foundation of the next half of the wall. We didn't realize how good we had it with the metal work until we got back to it; we had a system completely worked out and were pros. At the end even Ava was telling us to "work slower!!" so we didn't have to go back to cementing anything upon completion.

Alright, here's where things get serious. Really serious.
At 10:30am a man drove up on his scooter with two young children, a boy of about 7 and a girl of about 5. He came over to our work area and started talking to Ava, and her face was unforgettable. Horror mixed with utter surprise. She responded confusedly and then the school's bus driver, an old man I've never heard talk, yelled in response, apparently telling the man to go upstairs to the office. However as far as we knew the office was empty because there is no school this week.

I immediately asked Ava what was wrong, what had happened, and she recounted that the man was trying to sell his kids. He had said "I have two kids, you want them? I only want a little money." We were just as shocked as Ava.

He was told to go upstairs and we all watched horrified as he sat his kids down on the stairs to the office and talked to them for a while. It seemed like a serious talk and they seemed so dejected. I can only guess that he was telling the kids "look you're going to stay here with these people" before he went to 'sell' them to the office. Then after a few minutes they went upstairs, and we sent Ava after them to make sure they found the right people. There was only an office worker there, and she instructed him to bring the kids back tomorrow with paperwork that they're indeed his. Then a little while later he came back to our area and talked to Ava some more, apparently clarifying what he needs to bring tomorrow. He asked if a copy of their documents would work, and she said an original was fine too. Then he responded "good so I don't have to pay to make copies then" and laughed. By his speech he was obviously high, drunk, or otherwise altered, but this disgusted me more than I can even say.

Two girls started to tear up and had to take a minute inside, and I was a little frustrated with myself for not getting emotional about it. But I was so shocked, I couldn't believe we had just lived that. After hearing so much about those situations we were suddenly confronted with one. On our last day no less. I'll never get to know what happened to those kids, I have to choose to believe that they ended up with DEPDC and weren't sold to someone else. Though as I recount it all tonight it thankfully makes me emotional now.

After a while we broke the depressed silence by playing some music, Bon Iver of all things. For me at least that took my mind elsewhere. At lunch we all discussed how we felt about the situation and debriefed. But then at around 2pm the man on the scooter came back. This time with both kids, clean and in nicer clothes. Ava repeated the same thing, come back tomorrow, in fear of mishandling the situation. At DEPDC there are people trained to talk to parents who want to sell their children and convince them to leave them with the school for free, thus preventing them from being sold to legitimate traffickers. And even though we wanted to, DEPDC  absolutely can't buy any kids otherwise more would come and the school would become basically a shop. The man then asked if he could watch us work and we did our best to ignore him while he sat and stared, with his kids pathetically looking on behind him. I asked Ava if it was because we're all women, but she suspected that he wanted money from us. Maybe he thought we would eventually feel sorry for him. But more than anything I was angry, how could he come back like that? How could a parent sell their kids like animals? It was horrifying.

It also made what little we were doing seem even more insignificant. So what, we built a wall. So what, we [maybe, if we're lucky] taught a few English phrases. The people here do real, valuable work and we only got to see it really the last day. They don't need us here, what they need is support. They need help supporting kids like the two today who will hopefully come live and study at DEPDC's shelter instead of being truly sold to trafficking.
If you want to donate, and I hope you do, visit the website at www.depdc.org

She/He

Prepare yourself for probably a lot of 13 year old boy humor.

I just got back from my third Thai massage after a long day of laying bricks. This one however wasn't the best. I was hoping to get the masseuse I had the first time but ended up with the one I got last time, who is a great back cracker but always seems unfocused. This time she answered her phone while she was on the table massaging me. Twice. And I was laying right under the A/C so I was freezing the whole time, even after she covered me with a towel. Then as if I wasn't already uncomfortable, half way through I realize I need to pee. Sometimes you forget to do that here; since you're always sweating everything out to the point of dehydration restroom visits seem relatively infrequent. But when a small Thai woman is sitting on your bladder you remember real quick.

Right as I'm sitting on the table thinking "could this massage get more bizarre?" there is a loud thud in the stall next to mine. There are 4 of us in the room all sectioned off into stalls with massage beds, and everyone in the room simultaneously asked "what was that?!" Molly, in the stall next to me, answers "she [her masseuse] just kind of fell off the bed... but she recovered well." I hope you can all envision that. I absolutely cracked up at this, and I continued to laugh while face down on the table for a long while. Then it turned into the giggles, at which point I'm sure I was near impossible to massage. I'm already the most ticklish of the group during these massages. At this point I have even learned the Thai word for ticklish (chakkachi or จักจี้) because the masseuses have asked me so many times when I start to laugh. However I have learned that I am only (or most) ticklish on my left side. Especially my left groin, which they always insist on pressing their whole fist into even while I laugh in agony.

One thing I always enjoy about Thai massage is the chiropractic aspect of it. They always do a good job of cracking my digits, back, and hips. I don't feel any different afterwards, not more relaxed or anything, I guess hearing the cracks is just satisfying. My hips especially since they generally feel a little out of place; now I know how to turn my leg to get it to pop back. And this masseuse does a fantastic back cracking, pulling me in every which way. I hope I can remember how she does it. I would go just for that.

Moving on to the rest of the day, Amy and I spent the morning teaching English to a small class. It was a group of 6 older students, maybe 12-17, 3 boys and 3 girls. We had a general idea of things we could do but their English was minimal to say the least. They knew the alphabet and numbers and it seemed like that was about it. Thankfully one older boy knew a little more than the rest and we communicated primarily through him when others didn't understand.

We started with easy questioning and writing up questions/responses on the board. They all copied this down unprompted into their little notebooks, then it looked like they translated the phrase into Thai below it. I could tell they didn't really understand what or why they were repeating these words though, and this bothered me. So I suggested we introduce subjects (I, you, he/she, we, they...) and then maybe verbs. Amy wrote out the subjects and we pointed to people while saying them until they got the idea. However they all burst into noticeable giggles every time we got to She/He. Eventually I asked the older boy why that was so funny and he really struggled to find the words to explain. Finally after a few minutes he just said "sex girl." We then assumed that 'he' means sex in Thai and agreed it was kind of funny.

But at lunch we clarified with Ava what 'he' meant in Thai. She looked shocked and asked us "did they say that to you??" That's when we knew it didn't mean just sex... We told her that they were giggling then she laughed and explained that it means vagina. But only when said with a certain tone, the down-up tone where you put more upward inflection on the end of the word. Turns out this is a similar inflection to what you use when trying to encourage someone to repeat after you...

What makes it even better is that Amy kept saying and writing She/He. She in Thai means nun, so we were basically repeating "nun's vagina" the whole time. Better yet, 'he' is not the most appropriate word for vagina, more of a c word in fact. "Nun's c." Yep, it was a memorable lesson.

These poor kids tried to suppress their giggles as I continued from subjects to verbs and demonstrated how the subject changes the verb conjugation. All without saying any of that. We taught them some verbs through demonstration, played Simon Says with them, and then I made really simple sentences with them. I run, She/He runs, etc. I'm sure they retained none of this but at least they humored me. I teach one more hour Tuesday, which I'll probably just do a word search for or something.

After a comparatively easy morning it was back out to the wall. We laid more brick and cemented it in place, and finished an hour early after the threat of rain. No one wanted to do that again.

At dinner we had panang curry for the first time, which I was pretty excited for. However we learned very quickly that panang curry is deceivingly hot. Not at first, but a couple spoonfuls in you start to really feel it. It was so good so we would take a few bites, then bitch about the heat and guzzle water, then after the recovery we would eat a little more and repeat the process. Finally, after dinner we got to talking about Thai lady-men, which we had discussed at lunch right after She/He. We found a website that had a bunch of pictures of ladies and lady-men and we all gathered around to guess about each picture. Then we clicked on the answer and found out, to our utter shock, that they were all lady-men! You should google it, it's amazing how pretty some of these lady-men are. Totally had us fooled.

I think that wraps up today, nothing too exciting but at least a little funny. As I write this in bed there is currently a gecko hiding behind our mirror on the wall opposite me. He has just started to make strange noises. Like a distress call perhaps? Somehow they're smart enough to find their way in through cracks in the door, but not smart enough to find their way out an open door. So I'm not going to bother with him, he can hang out and eat all the bugs instead.

Falong

Our night out at the bar went surprisingly well. It was a place deep in the market called Monkey Island, it was right on the bank of the Maekong river and directly across from Burma. I'm not sure if you could even call it a bar because there was almost no alcohol there. Anything we asked for they shook their heads at, and eventually Hannah informed us that all they had in the place was beer, some wine cooler things, and whiskey (but you had to buy the whole bottle). We couldn't communicate enough to order anything besides a beer tower, which we split 8 ways. I'm pretty sure we ordered 6 of those throughout the 3 hours we were there, each costing less than $9 and consisting of 8 good pints. Once we split our tab the next day I had spent only about $1.50 for the whole night. You really can't beat Thai prices.

While there I also met 4 different Frenchmen and chatted with them for a while about what they were doing in Thailand. Some were our age and volunteering like us, some were just bumming around Asia. The group of French volunteers were led to the bar by some leathery ex-pat with a ponytail, who pointed to us and told them "see this place is good, full of falong." (Actually spelled farang but is pronounced falong. R=L hahaha) I recently learned falong means white foreigners, namely us. Now that I know that I hear it all over the place. Anyways, Molly soon after referred to this guy as Crocodile Dundee, which inspired me to teach her about Crocodile Done-deal. If anyone will bring that back home and continue it, it's Molly. We had earlier been discussing how Neil should skinny dip across the river and over to Burma, and she used it in the sentence "so swimming naked to Burma would be a Crocodile Done-deal." Exactly.

I went to bed as soon as we got home because we were getting up early once again Sunday morning. Ava arranged for us to go to the Golden Triangle, the House of Opium, and some gardens dedicated to the royal family. We stared at the House of Opium which is a pretty cool museum all about the huge poppy fields and opium trade that used to dominate this area. Overall I learned that making and smoking opium is a really involved process, like ridiculously complicated.

We drove from there down the road to the Golden Triangle, where the borders of Burma, Laos, and Thailand all meet at the Maekong river. Look it up on a map, it's pretty cool. There was a giant market there and we spent the whole time shopping for funny looking Thai style (or as Ava would say "Thai sty") pants. I bought 3 different pairs, which I will look ridiculous wearing anywhere but Thailand. Now I need more shirts desperately.

From the Golden Triangle we went to some place called the Dei Tung gardens, which is a giant museum/garden/villa dedicated to the royal family, specifically the Princess Mother or the King's mom. I need to do more research about the current royal family since from what I gathered they have a pretty interesting recent history. I guess at the turn of the century the King didn't have any heirs, so they had to figure out the lineages and find the next closest distant relative. Then they called them up and told them their sons were going to be the royal family. Out of the blue. Can you imagine? Then the first son mysteriously died early in his reign and the next son had to take over. I need to google it all once I have more time.

To go into the Princess Mother's royal villa at the top of the mountain we had to be in modest dress. And since all us girls were wearing tank tops and shorts we were given denim fisherman's pants and shirts. We looked like Asian lumber jacks, and were sweating like crazy in denim suits in that humidity. We all looked fabulously ridiculous. I had a hard time taking the audio tour of the villa seriously because it sounded like a bunch of propaganda. You can't say anything bad about the royal family here, it's pretty serious. Like jail time serious. So listening to the audio tour go on and on about how wonderful and beloved everyone is was a little comical. I just kept rolling my eyes in private.

Photo credit Molly

To finish up we went back to Mae Sai for dinner at a nice buffet place. This meal was expensive, 300 baht or $10 per head. But it was the most variety I have seen yet in Thailand. You could cook your own meat again or eat the stuff already cooked. I opted for already cooked and went through picking out everything I recognized. That meant sushi, tempura, bamboo soup, yakisoba, hum bao, and gyoza. So many gyoza. It was wonderful, the most full I've been yet

Upon leaving the mall we realized it was pouring yet again, making for a quiet Sunday night in. We are all currently sitting out around our meal table journaling, writing postcards, and getting bit by mosquitoes. I am scheduled to teach a 3 hour block of English tomorrow with Amy, and as of yet we still can't come up with what we're going to do. I don't think we'll wing it but I don't know what these kids already know, so I'm sure it will be largely improvised. At least it's not the wall...



PS. I just snagged this gem from my roommate Lee. This is the kind of thing we wear to work in. Or at least I do; I look like a man most days. A man with jelly shoes.

Does it look like I care?

Longest Saturday of my life. And probably also the wettest.

God forbid we sleep in here, we left for our field trip at the normal time, 845. Most of the group had stayed up way late having a few drinks the night before (which we refer to here as "bible study") and were exhausted. I skipped bible study and went to bed nice and early, but was still just as exhausted. And guess what was for breakfast today. Phad see ew and tom ka gai, two of my three favorite Thai dishes. Too bad I wasn't all that hungry, having what I normally eat as dinner for breakfast is too weird still.

Hannah, a half British/half Thai administrator for DEPDC, and Caterina, an Irish volunteer, led us on a walk around the back roads of our area. They took us to a cave temple which we had to hike some major stairs to get to. We were huffing and puffing real quick, very reminiscent of the Table Mountain hike. But once we got in the cave it was pretty unique. There were all sorts of huge Buddhist statues inside and the cave went on and on. There were even a few monks inside praying and meditating. We walked through all of it barefoot, which I normally don't like (we take our shoes off ALL THE TIME here) but in the cave it felt really grounded, really natural to walk through and feel the stone underfoot. Added to the awe.

After the first hike/temple we walked over to another temple on a nearby hill. I see this temple every day walking home from DEPDC and I was really hoping to go see it. It's just a pointy gold dome off in the distance. But up close it is much smaller. We did another set of stairs up this mountain, this time it was much more curvy and jungley so the climb was easier. And once at the top the view was incredible.

We climbed back down to eat our sack lunches provided by DEPDC, then went back to the school to work on the infernal wall. We took an hour rest before heading out to pour cement, and as soon as we got outside the rain came. And I mean real, monsoon rain. We grabbed our rain gear and proceeded to pour cement into the bricks in the downpour. The rain coats didn't help at all as the entire rest of your body got soaked. I thought we might do this for an hour or so and call it a day, but no such luck. We were out there, soaking and muddy, for the whole 3 hours. I wore some crock knock-offs I'd bought on the street that were better for the rain/cement than tennis shoes, but it was disgusting trudging through the 4 inches of muddy water that collected around the wall every time I needed more cement. As I got more and more pissed off my cement pouring got more sloppy, as pictured below. At one point Lee looked observed my less than pristine pours, and all I said was "don't say it, does it look like I care?"

Does it look like I care??

While we were still smiling about it. That didn't last long.

I sassed Ava the entire 3 hours about leaving early and about being out there with lightning while surrounded by rebarb. Nothing worked, this woman is a task master. I was trying to think back to a time when I have been either that wet, that dirty, or that miserable. Couldn't think of anything. But at least we were all hating life together. And it made for one of the best hot showers of my life.

Standing on the bricks to avoid the flood and ants

Now we're off to the bar after dinner for some Saturday night drinks with Ava, Hannah and Caterina. No wall tomorrow, it's our one and only free day, so I'm sure we'll all enjoy ourselves. We earned it.