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| HOLY shit!!!! |
| 03.16.04 (9:41 am) [edit] |
What up all...?
I have been mmoving on up -
Now into northern Thailand to a place called Chang Mai and its such peace here. You can feel such cool breezes and some silence brushing down clean festive streets. There is much culture and artwork and every block holds a beautiful wat= Buddhist temple in its soft coconut sticky palm. It wouldn't be Asia if random weird stray dogs or goats or roosters weren't lying all around in odd places or scraping their asses around... This city is pretty small, smaller than the CRAZINESS of Bangkok which is ENORMOUS..
This quaint city is split in half by a wall separating the old city from the new. We are living in the old city where there's this crazy moat that separates the old and new I believe erected by King Rama in like 1200's or something. It's an interesting thing- but I haven't much explored the city yet. We will be living here for a week though- how exciting!
After being totally choked out on the smog and shopping of Bangkok and on saying peace and see you soon to the Boston crew who left us, this place is such a breath of fresh air... I feel the light air and its like anything is more possible or something and it teaches you there is time.
We walked around snap snapping away, looking at the wats. We got a chance to chat with a couple of Buddhist monks who showed us an interesting little magic trick of the disappearing tissue. They were silly and the one had a crazy inhaley geeky like laugh that made us laugh even harder. They explained their lives a little and I will definitely try to head down there again. There is some great art work there and I have many questions for the monks. They like to chat with foreigners to practice their English. Plus they fast or beg for food. The monk today told us that one monk ate the dog's food once! But maybe his English got mixed up or my hearing did because they don't feed the dogs and I wonder what the dogs might have dragged from the edges and alleys?
The temple I think is the oldest in Thailand (Bret correct me if I'm wrong) and the main one is quite run down, sunken from 900m to 600m by an earthquake.
I was lost in a beautiful little shrine house, that housed this scary wax monk -crazy when Karen and Brett urge me to come along because its time to
"Water the Buddha" -
I thought oh ok ok I'm coming -- noo-- now wait - is this one of their little expressions for taking a shit..?
I have been hearing new ways to say taking a shit lightly and not so lightly. Not a surprise that our bowel movements work their way into every conversation while backpacking when you are eating little and new spicy sweet odd foods --you're stomach tries to deal with...
There's the "I need to drop some kids off at the pool" and lately Karen has been saying
"Man, my kids are kicking"
And there used to be one Brett was encouraged to STOP saying
"I 've gotta go Drop some Bombs"
ew.. in public in a Muslim country, Karen was sure people gave doubletakes when they would hear him say that, and so they found other ways...
OK so now - "Watering the Buddha" was not toilet talk but an activity at this wat in which you pull a water holding vessel up a rope pulley to the top of the highest temple roof and pour water on the big Buddha... to cool him off for good luck....
and that was my day...
First day in ChangMai and its time to explore and read what this place is all about -- I have a feeling I will be chilling with elephants - BABY ones no less! real soon...
I have this list of accomplishment things I must do and see in my life, walking through a bamboo forest on a windy day, hiking through a jungle, riding an elephant, seeing a banana tree, picking a pomegranite, you know the little things and today I knocked another off the list: the ability to have long conversations with monks...
its all happening just by KEEPing emphasis on the I-N-G!
I am in search of a good Reiki class (Energy Healing) and I may have to travel 3 hours northwest of this city to Pai to get to a good one- but I still have to do my research here so we'll see. I want to chill with my little crew K and B,
because ---- they are the shit ! Ha!
and so I hope I can stay here the whole time before we move into Laos...
more stories to come
much much love respect and peace to you....
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