noodle quest 2006

hello friends. so i am still inchiang mai. i have been really tired and a bit sick as the stress of trying to change the ticket and the speed at which i’ve had to make decisions and move myself aroudn has been really exhausting. i am just feeling worn out. i am compensating by enagging in frenetic shopping behavior. i think i have spent more money in the past 2 weeks than in the past 2 months, seriously. i am not worried about it. so i am having my third fitting of my dress today- hopefully it will look better than it did last night. the shape and color are great but it needs to be cleaned up- maybe i wil have some last touches done on it in new york.
tomorrow night i am flying to bangkok and am spending the weekend there. i will go to the weekend market, finally, and then drop off all of my one jillion photos. wow. that is a lot of photos but much cheaper here than in new york. on monday night dan and i are going to the beach at koh tao until the 26th or 27th and then i fly home the 28th. whirwind! i am really glad that jes and i are flying home together. wow! is it going to be freezing in ny? at this point i have had 10 months of summer and i don’t think it’s quite enough! brrrrrr i don’t want to be cold!
today i am going to eat some kow soi, have my dres fitted than meet laurie, jeff and ro from my massage course for dinner tonight at 7pm. tomorrow i will go to the local market called warorot mkt before i leave- as if i could carry another thing on the plane- me and the night market went a little out of control last night but actually i bought all gifts, as usual.
more later….
wow a week and a half until i come home… weird!

look who’s waiting for me at home!
so after an arduous struggle it seems clear that nothing financially feasible or realistic can be done about my ticket. thus, i am comign home on the 29th of march. prepare the feasts and festivities!
i am in chiang mai now- going to have my dress made for the wedding this afternoon. isn’t that fun?
that is the only thing i am sure about today.

hello.  so i met tida at the bus station and we spent the next 24 hours chatting and catching up incesently.  dan went to a friends house in chonburi, about an hour from bangkok so we had the place to ourselves and endless hours of talk time.  i cooked a nice panang curry for us and we talked and talked and decided that tida’s brain was a bit too mashed from cambodia to not do somethign abotu it so we searched for meditation retreats and the next day we ate some beccofinos and took a super luxrious bus down to surrathani where we then caught a ferry to koh phangnan at thong sala pier, a taxi to had rin, and a small fishing boat to had tien beach.

we stayed at a great little bungalow called love and lips where we ran into katinka our super quirky friend from koh mak.  we spent two days there with the funny chracters mr. love and mr. lee who ran the bungalows.  then tida wanted to go check out this one center called wat khao thom so we headed back to had rin.  had rin is the super hectic euro party goer spot where the full moon parties happen.  life here is like a roxy ad- everyone with bleached blonde hair, small bikins and tattoos.  not exactly our scene.  we met some turkish guys who put us up for two nights at their home above their travel agency.  i spent most of the first two days trying to change my ticket which is becoming increasingly difficult as it seems that no JAL office in the world wants to take responsibility for my ticket.  i spent the third day, yesterday at a beautiful beach about 15 minute walk from the craziness which was almost totally empty.  very nice.  i swam and sunbathed and read and was very happy not to be flipping out running from fax machine to copier to travel agency and back. 

today jess went to baan thai, the beach near her retreat.  she will be in the retreat from the 13th to the 22nd.  i don’t know exactly what to do.  if i can’t extend my ticket i will have to fly to chiang mai tomorrow to take another thai massage course that starts on monday and lasts 5 days.  if i can extend my ticket i would like to spend a few more days at a beach called thong nai pan but really i need to make a decision faster than JAL can get back to me so probably i will fly to chiang mai tomorrow regardless other wise i will screw myself out of the option of taking anothr course if i need to fly home on march 28th instead of april 19th as i would like very much to do as dan has i nvited me to his village which i would like to see and also i would like to go to pai near chiang mai ad just generally not be totally rushing liek a mad woman out of thailand.

 i will keep everyone posted as things unfold… slowly. 

hello friends! three great things today!
1. an excellent market smorgasbord breakfast with mangos, sticky rice, papaya salad, bbq chicken and soup
2. we pick up tida today from the bus station!
3. NEW PHOTOS are up at last! as usual- click the photo link on the right. we start with my cooking course in chiang mai, then the lahu village where i took my massage course then a series of dan and mali pics from the chiang mai to bangkok night train. ENJOY!

just when i think i can actually manage this devil’s playground, it turns around, spits in my eye, then decided thats not enough and it kicks me in the head.

yesterday was very relaxing- just hung out with danny in the air con all day and then at night we went on a nice date to see the movie brokeback mountain which was totally awesome.  the jump to attention at the start of the national anthem image montage on teh movie screen is always a surprise and a pleasure. 

today i woke up with the sole intent to go to pimelay spa and get a massage with the insipration for my thai massage quest- a namelsee little thai lady who works there.  so danny and i ate some fod then i called up at around 11:30 and tried to figure out the name of teh woman so can make an appointment.  in the end the rcepeiotnist and i decided that it must be Blah.  yes, the massuese that inspired me to learn thai massage is named blah.  love it.  Read the rest of this entry »

hey yall.  i went to cambodia today at popet to renew my visa.  damn was that heinously unpleasant.  i had tto leave dan’s house at 5:30 am to get to kao san for my 7am bus.  so the ride there was okay- i got my fave seat on the bus, the one by the back door where nobody is in front of me to lean back.  however, i was left at the rest stop, fuckers! Read the rest of this entry »

hey faithful fans.  i am back from my stint as a lahu hill tribe village masseuse.  it was totally WILD and amazing.  i will post all of my journal entries as links when i can scan them in bangkok.  for right now, dan met me in chiang mai on friday night and since then i have been eating noodles like crazy.  tonight we are taking a train to bkk and i will spend a few days there until i’m not sure what.  i have to cross the border REAL soon as my visa expired two days ago and i don’t want to pay hefty fines. 

i just found out that ms. tida jessicA maffia is en route to thailand! so probably she will kidnap me to the beach and i wil allow this although i am going to come back to chiang mai and take another thai massage course, i think.

 more on all of these things tomorrow when i have endless hours of free internet and am uploading my four zillion photos and videos. 

hello! i am leaving for massage school in about 20 minutes.  i am going to meet my group outside fo the old city at the base school in  chiang mai and then we will all travel together to go to the school in the mountains. Read the rest of this entry »

so actualy after i posted on the blog i didn’t leave that night.  dan and i spent the evening fleeing the wrath of his psycho ex-girlfriend who was threatening to come over to his house to do what, exactly, wasn’t know but couldn’t have been good.  we went out and ate some noodles and walked around for a while.  i taught dan the art of hotel crashing whereby you walk into any 5-star hotel and sit in the plushest of lobby seats like you own the place for as long as you want.  using the bathroom and taking neccesary supples (pens, candy, toilet paper) are more upper-level add-ons that take a bit of time to learn.  the next day i left on the train bound for chiang mai at 6pm.  i bought a second class sleeper seat but all they had left was top bunks.  before the top bunk goes down the bottom bunk is two seats and mine was facing backward.  i felt very sad to say goodbye to dan so after tearily looking out the window at all of the things i was leaving, i decided i needed to find a seat where i could face forward into the things i was heading toward. Read the rest of this entry »

Well lookey here, all of your teary emails worked and now Prong #2 is posting her first post from Phnom Penh, Cambodia. It won’t be a long one (I see my guesthouse closing from across the street) but it is setting a new precedent for many posts to come so dont worry.

I have been working in an NGO in a super small rural village in the Cambodian countryside for the past week and what a difficult week it’s been. What with not having my other prong around, not speaking but a few words of Khmer, and having no electricity, Ive been struggling to say the least. But Ive been doing some really cool work, writing grants for a really active grassroots organization. So I am going to stick it out at least for the next week and see if the Cambodian farmlife can work for me.

thats all for now.

Um, signing off?

with lots of love

Thyda (thats my Khmer name, for all those who havent heard)