Grand finale Thailand photos

This is my final posting from Thailand. I'm sitting in my little cafe in Chiang Mai, J J Bakery, which is run by the sweetest Thai man ever. He spent a number of years in New Zealand and speaks English with a mild, endearing lisp. They have the tastiest coffee in Thailand and a peaceful atmosphere as well. In a few hours, I'm off to Bangkok on the overnight train. Tomorrow I'll fly out to Auckland.

I spent the previous two days visiting Pun Pun Farm, just outside of Chiang Mai, where they practice seed preservation and sustainable building. Unfortunately, I spent 24 of the 48 hours sleeping and trying to fend off the grand finale Asian sickness. I'm not sure how one can get a sinus infection AND digestive disaster in the same illness, but I did it again. So I doped myself up with Augmentin, Excedrin, and fizzy vitamin drink. Luckily, the first day I helped with some of the building before my entire body went into lock-down mode, so the trip there wasn't completely for naught.


Elephant bridge in Chiang Mai.

Mangosteen fruit. You just eat the white part- the rest of it is VERY bitter.

Here's the truck we rode to the farm. The two other white guys were on their way to a neighbouring farm to work there- (They'd already worked at that farm for about 12 days and had to do a visa run to renew their visa.) One was from Portland, OR and the other from Prince Edward Island. The guy from Portland had VERY thick glasses. After staring at him for a while, I asked, "Are you a -15.00?" He said, "Yes." I said, "I've met you before, a long time ago at a party." We tried to reconstruct the meeting and eventually figured out where it was - still cannot recall what the party was for... strange small world. BTW, two kiwi guys just walked by who I met a week ago in the hills. One of them was very good friends with my student, Varny. It is a small world.

Nothing better to do than document myself SICK again! Heheh. It's sort of self-punishment. Yes, it is possible to stay THIS white after four months in Asia. I'm not sure whose genetics I am to blame for this.

How I spent my day before I moved to the bed for more rest.

Tools for making bricks.

Bricks laid out to dry and the community centre.

Peggy's new house.

The house that I was helping build the first day.

The road to the farm. (It's up on the hill.)

Thai Farm cooking class in Chiang Mai

Thus begins the day, in the market. I took this one just for you meat eaters out there. It didn't even smell bad actually, so must've been fresh. Still doesn't make me want to eat the stuff.
Rachel with the rice. I can now tell the difference between sticky rice vs jasmine rice.

Yum, veggies! My dream world.

Your usual senorita Thai cooking costume modeled by tall blonde girl.

Mare learning to make Chicken Basil with our instructor.

The first three dishes I made were: (L to R) green curry, papaya salad, tom yum soup. Later we cooked pad thai and mango with sticky rice to take-away for later. I was full for TWO days.

Rachel and Mare in the back of the songtheaw (a pick-up which has been converted to public transportation).

Where we had fruit shakes - in the alley by our guesthouse in Chiang Mai.

My foot and the coffee shop where I whiled away yesterday afternoon.

A lick of Burma and dental remorse

I threw open the door to our room without knocking, afterward thinking, "I hope I picked the right door." But Rachel was at the desk on her matching black Acer computer.

"What did you do today?" she asked.

"I just walked all over town and saw a bunch of art and Wats and went to the dentist. I'm freaked out!" It shot out of my mouth a hundred miles a minute. I'd sped-walk home my face frozen with worry, lip bitten, beating myself up for suddenly deciding to get my teeth cleaned when I passed by a dentist. After years of dental treatments (starting at age 6). feeble-enameled teeth (post-high fever at 9 months), I'm not someone you'd call "dental adventurer." So even with my excellent self-counseling skills, I couldn't convince myself that I'd probably NOT done something stupid in having my teeth cleaned here. I was certain that'd I'd had permanent damage because one tooth was a little sore afterward. After I'd poked my fingers in every tooth in my mouth to look for new holes or pain that is.

I considered taking an Ativan. Instead Rachel convinced me that an alcoholic beverage would do the trick. One glass of red wine and some popcorn later, I was cured of my agony.

And I have clean teeth.

Who is Rachel?

I met her in Mae Sai, the Thai border town with Burma. A few days ago, I decided that I may as well dip across the Burma border, since I was so close. I'd gone into the internet shop and there was Rachel, with the same plan (and she'd spent six years living in Portland, so we had an instant connection). We made plans to meet at 8:30AM for our border walk.

It was akin to a Tijuana trip really. I can mark off that I went to Burma, but what did I really learn in a few hours in a country? I guess we saw that it was poorer than Thailand. And we had the most fantastic breakfast by the sweetest ladies, which was worth the walk and border formalities itself.

After Burma, we bussed to Chiang Mai, where we're staying at Kavil Guesthouse for 180Baht ($5) a night for both of us. Free wifi and NEW flusher-flush western toilets (with the paper labels still on them!) If you don't know what a flusher-flush is versus a self flush, I'll explain: the self-flush has no flusher handle on it. After you use facilities, (and don't dare toss your toilet paper in there), you must pour several buckets of water into the toilet to "flush" it. It does the job, but as much as I'm into simplicity, I prefer the flusher.