pai is love...

so....in our first 3 weeks of traveling we have discovered a few things...cities seem to stink no matter what country you are in--stick to the country and small towns and life is sooooo much smoother. there is nothing quite so beautiful as a rice paddy--there is literally something almost therapeutic about its terraced, gorgeous green flowing rows. i personally want one in my back yard. thai iced tea is best with lots of lemon and a little sugar--no milk please (as is pictured above). bamboo is amazing and used for everything here from hats to roofing--i suggest you grow some in your yard. open windows on a bus are more reliable than AC (and easier to take pictures from).. but TRAINS(opened windowed trains) are the best way to see this country...and the cheapest ($0.85 to travel almost 200 km) it's nice to be isolated in a foreign country and feel as if you are the only one traveling there, but it's also refreshing to meet people and speak a little english every now and then. there is no shortage of food in thailand...fresh, clean water is another story. we do not miss our cell phones. iPods, however, are an invention straight from god/buddha! ... and most recently we discovered that pai = love...or maybe we were just convinced by the tShirts sold at our favorite photo gallery...

Pai is the name of this little town in northern Thailand where we first sort of put our feet up and relaxed...so do hundreds of other travelers yes, but there was something about the town that made us meow. small streets, few cars, kind people, an amazing local farmers market (as they ALL are here), a cheap bungalow right on the RIVER, mountains in view and lots of young funky artists...i guess it felt like santa fe to me personally and i was inspired by the small shops of artwork i saw that were original, GOOD and not just thai tourist art. . . an older Australian man we met said he loathed Pai since it had become so gentrified...I agreed with him to a degree, but i think I was just so refreshed to see people creating and not simply just subsisting that it was sort of a relief to me. I love and respect the farmer as much as is possible. I am equally as inspired by a good photograph as I am by an ingeniously engineered and crafted rice paddy...and i guess i have seen more rice paddys than photo galleries.

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we ventured even further north towards the Burmese border...We based ourselves at Cave Lodge, which Joel Coen recommended to me as a spot to check out...it was way out in the woods near Tham Lad - one of the largest caves in the area. The owner was this caver/adventurer/nat'l geo type Aussie named John Spies who has lived here and amongst hill tribes for almost 30 years...it was a unique spot above the Lang River but also sort of had this vibe where when you turned out the lights at night you could hear the faint sounds of a banjo playing across the valley...or perhaps it was because we were the only guests at the lodge besides a quirky older australian man who seemed to have the potential to be a very good banjo player. In addition there were also quacking frogs and bugs so loud we needed ear plugs...not to mention the ant colony forming near our pillows...good times.

Tham Lad is an enormous cave and probably one of the most amazing i have seen. unfortunately it is now the wet season and so many areas that we could have explored were off limits. Mud is a common factor on any hike..and since we only brought sandals, we are getting very familiar with it. we also chose to avoid certain parts of the cave because the smell of bad guano almost made us ill. ahhhh nature.

we hopped another rollercoaster bus ride back to Chiang Mai in order to hop right on another bus to Chiang Khong, where I write to you from now---a smallish town on the Mekhong River border between Thailand and Laos... Tomorrow we will hop a small boat from the shoreline in front of our gusthouse on the river (which offers Mexican food on their menu), get our Visa stamped and then take a two-day "slow-boat" trip down the river to Luang Prabang.

hi to everyone. i personally am missing my comfy mattress and autumn in santa fe... But other than that, we seem to be pretty darn happy here on our trip. 9 weeks to go. peace.