noodle quest 2006

noodlequest has been split into parts like a two-pronged fork:

hey readers, friends, family and otherwise. jess left for cambodia on tuesday and since then i have been hanging out with chai dan (best known for his role in the short but wildly succesful indie film; “chai dan; the boy on the moto with the cigarette” available on google video) for the past week. it has been really fun and relaxing- just eating a lot of noodles and watching movies. we saw “memoirs of a geisha” which was pretty rediculous as expected. i have been reading my most amazing book a lot called “spontaneous healing” by dr. andrew weil which is making me really excited for my plans to get involved in alt. medicine in some facet when i get home. the other day i was alone in the huose and two small birds flew into the kitchen! for some reason even though they were really small i felt really scared by their tiny little pointy beaks and i had to scream a lot which eventually prompted them to leave the house.
tonight i am taking a bus to chaing mai where i will hang out for a few days before heading to my massage course on the 12th through the 24th. this will be another long gap in blog updates as i will be out of internet access in the mountains. how will i survive? we shall see….
some new photos are up on shutterfly (link; “MY PHOTOS” to the right of the screen). these photos are from luang prabang, laos and bangkok. a whole bunch of the ones from luang prabang were taken by some super drunk dude at the wedding i went to with my friend tia in the small village 2 hours outside of LP. i was a little nervous that this dude left with my camera for an hour but happy that he documented because my presence was invasive enough and i felt uncomfortable taking photos myself. also, it always intersting to me to see what another person sees, feels is important/beautiful to document and enjoys capturing, so i am very happy to have those photos.
i have gotten a whole mess of e-mails from jess and truth be told i am not exactly sure where she is. she took a bus from bkk to poipet, the thai/cambodia border town and then shared a taxi with four super nice cambodia ladies to pnom penh. they then invited her to dinner, and told her she had to stay at their beautiful home with them for a few days, so, jess being the kind of accomodating human she is, decided to take them up on their hospitality. since then she got in contact with a man named sim dara who she has been talking to for a while that runs an organization called “APCA” where i imagine she is now based out of. HOWEVER, i feel that you, my readers who have followed with me every step of the way have the right to know more details about this two-pronged portion of the noodlequest. you MUST all write to jess and tell her IT IS HER DUTY to post on the noodlequest about what she is doing. JessicaMaffia@gmail.com is where she can be reached. i suggest sad, desperate, tear-filled tones to the e-mails you write so that she will most likely comply. WHY?!?! why does she treat the noodlequest like a bastard child whom nobody wants to claim resonsibility for or give love?
maybe we will never know….

hey friends- i am back in bangkok. jess is heading to cambodia the day after tomorrow. how will we live?!?!?! i am heading to the north on thursday i think. i need to buy some warm clothes around here before i go. more on what we have been up to recently and the story of our 27 hour trip with 6 different forms of transport from Luang Prabang, laos to Bangkok, Thailand, later.
I fixed the video link! as of yet, google does not have a direct link to my video account but this is the link to the google video site. from here you can search for my videos by titles. the two that are up are called “dancing thais” wich is barely visible (too dark) but has some cool thai christmas music, and one called “chai dan” which is a video of my friend dan smoking a cigarette on his motorcycle… pretty cool. this one is sideways and i’m not sure if it can be fixed. ENJOY!

hello… role call is still looking real shabby. come ON! who are you all? thanks goes to all who responded already and pain and hardship to all those who have not yet. come to the other side!
1. i now have a new link on the right side of the screen called !!!! MY VIDEOS !!!! some super grainy horrible videos for all of your viewing pleasure. Click on the link entitled; “you can view it here” under the status column. feeling super techno-savvy- just in time for an online job interview i am having in a week which will take place on webcam… technology is truly amazing.
2. new PICS up on shutterfly from luang prabang and vang vieng… check it out! also there are comments below many of the photos to explain what you are seeing since i can’t be there in person to give you legnthy explanations… lucky you!
3. elyse bought her wedding dress! she sent me pictures and it is stunning.
4. i went to a wedding in my friend Tia’s village yesterday at 10am and got home today at 11am. not ready to hash ut the details. in short, it was a nice time, that lasted too long with food reminiscent of whatever made me really sick the other day and tons of people who were super nice and pretty drunk.
5. new date home is march 22nd. prepare the parades! prepare the feasts and festivals!
bye bye

ROLL CALL! hello friends! it’s roll call time! i am very curious who has been followng the noodlequest beside the slim few of you who occasionally post. So…….. call it out! just respond with your name, and who you are or a comment if you want. Don’t be shy!
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today jess and i woke up at 6:30am to go meet this nice guy named mr. vong who invited us to a ceremony that was being performed at his house in his village, a 2 hour “bus” ride from luang prabang. i was still feeling really nauseous in the morning and teh thought of sitting down to a meal with his family sounded near death- but i thought i would give it a try anyway… Read the rest of this entry »

this is a picture of where i will be atending thai massage school at the asoka sunshine thai massage school 80km north of chaing mai! i sure hope this is my teacher!

hello there- we have been in luang prabang for the past couple of days. the day after i last wrote, we biked to a cave and walked around it for a while. i don’t really know what the big deal is about caves. i mean they are cool but would be so much more so if they weren’t destroyed by abhorent lighting conditions that attempt to heighten the experience (i.e. green strobes behind a nice old stalagmite). then we biked to the river, hung out on a sun deck, went for a swim. the current in the river is SO strong i was pretty afraid but eventually went with it for a bunch of scary meters or so. then we went to a beuatiful scarf shop and watched my big fat greek weddng at one of the lounges where we met some very funny japanese guys who were drinking mushroom tea like it was going out of style- or out of stock. Read the rest of this entry »

vang vieng increased in okay-ness soon after this entry. jess and i rented bikes and biked out to the organic farm about 5 or 6km from town. we ate some delicious fresh vegetables and mulberry green tea (it is a mulberry farm) and walked around a bit. then we got back on our bikes and went to go to a cave which we got distracted from because we decided to stop at this party place/bar on the river. we just wante dto swim and lie in the sun and there was no clearing anywhere else besides this place which was a riverside bar of sorts for all of the passing people in tubes that are on a floating adventure to jump out at. pretty weird. the river water was super cold but refreshing. then we biked home. later that night i went on a very nice date with chai dan, the thai boy from vientiane. the next day jess went back to the farm and made bricks out of clay and i did some errandy things around town. today we get back on the bikes and try to see some of the caves that vang vieng is known for. tomorrow we will leave and go to luang prabang, laos!
bye bye!

this is vang vieng- but probably a few years ago- all of these places are now outdor lounges with lao/thai/western food

we have been in vang vieng the past 2 or 3 nights and it is a really “chill” place. by this i mean it fits every western ideal of “chill” that could hope to be obtained; outdoor lounges cheap “happy” and western food, teas with mroe than leaves in them (i.e. types of psychadelically charged fungi), tubing day trips, and endless episodes of friends and movies beign played everywhere. however, we are feelign a little bit over it. i mean we are in LAOS for freaks sake but it feels like we could be in any backpacker haven in the world. i woke up yesterday morning to the sounds of jimmy buffet’s “margaritaville” and saw two bare chested brit boys in surf shorts and a slutty girl in booty shorts and a cowboy hat walk down the street with the backdrop of these outrageous jagged mountain cliffs and lao women in traditional floor legnth hand embroidered wrap skirts and a cow that was getting in everyones way. it is really a juxtaposiion that we are at this poin all too familiar with and relatively uninterested in. it feels very hard to stray from the toursit paths in this country (i.e. VIP bus from vientaine to vang vieng to luang prabang and out) and we dn’t know if we are really motivated to try as there are other places we feel more inclined to. we both are really anxious to get working and do some volunteer work- all of this lazy privliged backpacker life has become extremely dull and frustrating. so tomorrow we are going to check out this organic farm outside of vang vieng that we have an opportunity to volunteer at. if we like it, we will stay for a week or two and if we don’t we will bounce to luang prabang for a few days than hit up the ploaces we need to get to faster (i.e. northern thailand for massage school, cambodia for work).
jess is on the phone right now extending our tickets and i am super excited but also nervous as after laos jess and i are going to be parting ways for a while. she is goign to head straight to cambodia i think to work at APCA an ngo and i am going to head to northern thailand to attend a two week thai massage licensing course and explroe chaing mai and chaing rai which HOPEFULLY will not feel as tourist packed and lame as laos has so far….
i am on my last day of strep medas and hopefully i have kicked it from my system…
and the journey goes ooooooooooooon!

i will try as hard as i can to make this post coherent as jess has somehow convinced me that whiskey will help my illness and after only two glasses i feel a bit loopy….
i went to see a lao doctor today at the international clinic. she and her assistant laughed at me when i asked if i had bird flu which i know statrs with upper respiratory. thankfully- i do not have bird flu as it onyl lasta a day or two until the victim falls deathly ill, which, praise buddha, i am not. she did however diagnose em with strep throat which is straneg as she never did a strep test but whatever the case my tonsils are huge and red. she gave me three kinds of medicine and everyone in the waiting room including her laughed when i asked her to explain to me what they were… why is this funny? one is for the infection, dolox or soemthing as teh antibiotic, one for the cough and one is an herbal drop you dissolev in water. all in all 24$ for teh visit and the meds which is double teh cost it would have been any other day btu sunday… go figure illness costs more on a certain day of teh week…
i am very happy to not to have bird flu. on other notes- teh date with the cute thai boy ended up being held nto at the clinic but instead at the buddha park i posted a ipcture of yesterday. we rented a motorcycle and droev about 35km out of vientiane to this park which was kind of cheesy with buddhist and hindu statues built in the 1950’s. highlight of the day was taking pictures of this boy taking pictures of other things and also listening to a lao man play a recorder out of his left nostril- no joke.
some new pics are up. they are all of friends from koh mak and some pics from today in the buddha park. for some reason they got all scrambled out of order again when i loaded them onto the computer. ENJOY!
p.s. i think we go to vang vieng, laos tomorrow. bye bye!

this is in vientiane at the buddha park- maybe go there tomorrow if feeling better….

to be sick, tired, toe-nail-less and still desperately in love with a country after only 24 hours is truly remarkable and YET! I LOVE LAOS! we arrived after 15 hours on a bus to vientenne, laos which the super cute captal city. it feels exactoy as one would imagine a fench colonial asian city- croisat and espresso shops everywhere with giant gold and red temples as backdrop. it feels much smaller than bangkok, saigon, or pnom penh although i really have not seen much of the city. we got into vientenne at around 10 am. we stopped at a couple of immigration checkpoints on the way- i had taken a sleeping pill at around 12am and was so tired and out of it and sick i feel like i could have dreamed about stopping at these places. in one particular office where we had to pay fnes for overtsyaing our thai visas i fell aslee right in front of the desk of the official dude who was doing our paperwork. luckily everything was okay no problem… Read the rest of this entry »

hello friends. i have a very bad cold and am heading to laos. ugggggggggh. jess just bought me some cough drops. we will leave today at 6pm and arrive in vientenne, laos at 9am. woah. i really hope the bus is okay. ouch i am sick ugggggggggggggh sick on a bus. okay i don’t really have anyhing else to say right now. bye.