Better late than never..

August 15, 2010

11:20 am

Sheesh, where to start? I haven't updated in a while, it feels like. Left the temple on Friday morning after going for a walk again with Sam--this time with my camera. I'm staying at Diva Guesthouse in Chiang Mai, just across from Julie's and it's even the same owner. I went to Julie's and made some friends. Some people from England: Alice, Ed, Henry, and Mike, and some girls (and one guy) from the Netherlands: Sanne, Judith, and Judith's brother, Sjoerd.

We hung out at Julie's and had a few beers before heading over to the reggae club. Lots of fun! Three beers and two margaritas later, I found myself on stage at the club, saxophone in hand. I didn't really know what I was doing, I was just told the key we were in and tried to follow the other sax player. I didn't even know the songs. Too bad but it was fun, regardless! I was told Alice has a picture, I definitely need to see that! Went to bed at 2:30 and after the room stopped spinning a bit I slept until 6:30.

Woke up, ate, and went on a trek all by my lonesome. I was lucky to meet three more English folk, two girls: Fi and Charlie, and one guy, Ian. Ian goes to Oxford and potentially has heard of one of my friends. Weird! It was practically identical to the trek that I did in January but it was still lots of fun. I was lucky that there were people around my age that I enjoyed spending time with. We went to a butterfly garden for like 20 minutes (eh), then the same hike to the same waterfall as January…but it was different in the rainy season and I still love hiking. There were lots of dogs and kitties! It seemed like every group had their own little animal following them. Adorable. After that we went white water rafting! Super fun during the rainy season :D Next was one of the hilltribes, the same place where I saw the tiny puppy get crushed in January :[ After that we went on an elephant ride. It was a little boring…I suppose I've been on quite a few elephants. It was literally just a big circle and not really too exciting but whatever. After that we stopped at the Long Neck Karen hilltribe…I didn't feel like shelling out an extra 300 baht just to see them so I waited for some of the others who decided to go have a look.

Got back from the trek, showered, grabbed something to eat (a cheeseburger mmm…so sick of Thai food since being at the temple!) and headed over to Julie's. I met two MORE people from London, Matt and Sam. I hung out with them for a bit, played some pool, talked, whatever. Then the people I met from the trek showed up and joined us. The three from the trek ended up going out, I was too tired so I stayed at Julie's. The two guys left, too. From then on I hung out with the Dutch girls and two other Dutch guys. Since the fridge with beer was locked, our intention was to quickly grab one last beer somewhere else and then go to bed…but of course we ended up going to a bar and didn't get back until past 3 am. I had a lot of fun, though! We all ended up getting silly temporary tattoos that this one random guy in an internet cafe had. I have a tiger on the inside of my left arm and tiger eyes on the back of my neck. I ended up "marrying" one of the Dutch guys because I said our matching tattoos constituted as an engagement. We made each other rings out of leaves and it was just very silly (we were waiting for the other two to finish up their very lengthy goodbye so it was a great time killer.) I didn't have my camera with me (for any of this, really, except for the trekking) so I'm hoping to snag some pictures off of the others.

Today I don't have any plans…waiting to see if I get an email or something from either Matt or Sam, they're off today (they're training for some sort of Thai boxing/martial arts/whatever thing here in Chiang Mai) I'm pretty tired so I'm okay just hanging around for now. Probably around 5 or so I'll hang out at Julie's and see who I know/meet.


August 16, 2010

9:10 pm


Has it really only been one day since I wrote that? Crazy. I'm waiting at the airport, about to fly back to Bangkok. These last two days were really low-key but still a ton of fun. I made two new friends: Adrian and Darren, both from Australia. Darren and I had some really interesting talks for a few hours and that was great to kind of have those talks filled with content that is constantly swirling around in my brain. Adrian and I spent a bit of time together, too. Especially after Darren suddenly broke out with a fever and went to the hospital. That really sucks, I feel so bad! Adrian and I went to visit him this afternoon, though. It was nice. I said goodbye to Judith but then realized that I'll probably see her tomorrow in Bangkok! That'd be nice. I'm a little disappointed that I didn't get to go to Tiger Kingdom…never got a response back on Facebook from the English folks from the trek. Oh well, guess that's an excuse to come back to Chiang Mai yet again.. Before [read: At the temple] I was so ready to go home, but now I've been meeting a ton of people and having a blast. I wish I could stay in Chiang Mai longer! Sucks. It would've been fun for Sam to come along but to be honest I really loved being alone. Actually, I don't think we would've been "clingy", for a lack of a better word, and I'm sure would've done our own thangs when desired/necessary/whatever. Oh well! Too bad. He and Darren could've bonded over the whole "I'm from the Gold Coast" thing. I'm stupid and left my headphones in my backpack…which is checked. Luckily this flight is only about 45 minutes. I also very much plan to sleep. Super, super tired. I haven't gotten much sleep lately!