(  Written on October 5th. Another interesting weekend spent traveling around Chiang Rai: Opium lords, Buddhist temples, and pie. )

Signing out now.

( October 9th: I spent Yom Kippur at the top of a waterfall. )

Pretty much, the best Yom Kippur ever. Happy new year, darlings.

October 21st: The past few days have been intense, because I was doing take home finals and studying for my Thai language class. I made some flashcards with my new friend Josh on Saturday and we spent several hours drilling eachother and managed to get a pretty good grasp on the Thai alphabet (which is ridiculously complicated). It felt so strange to look at my test today, and to see a sheet filled with foreign symbols but actually be able to decipher words. I've been doing alright with being illiterate during the past two months, but it feels good to have actually put some effort in. It was also lovely hanging out with Josh that night. I made him a mix CD for his birthday and we spent a while sitting around listening to it, and he was in raptures.

Also, I ate delicious fried marigolds today.

( November 11th: Fireworks, Buddhist holidays, screaming Asians, and long lost acquaintances )


( November 13th: I was charmed again by how sweet the people here are )


( November 19th: Motorcycle accidents, the Byzantine empire, and elephants! )

That's all for now, I really need to get to work.

Signing out now.

( November 25th: Return to Wat Srisoda )

( Reaction to the PAD protests in Bangkok. )


( December 8th: Tiger Kingdom! )


( Hanging out with the Lisu tribe was amazing. Mud huts, animal sacrifice, and copious amounts of rice whiskey for breakfast. )

( Halloween in Chiang Mai was awesome: Zombies, ladyboys, and rasta bars. )

( Laos: Giant leeches, Buddhist monks, and The Racist Adventures of Prince Wensentara. )

( Thursday was spent at a local gay club, in which I was literally thrown at some Thai lesbians. )

In 18 hours I will be departing for Vietnam! I'm so very excited, to travel from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi and explore the old underground tunnels used by the Viet Cong in their guerrilla resistance efforts against the American troops. We got a prep talk from Ho Nguyen the other day, which was very relaxed and friendly.

I'm excited to go to Vietnam and then come home, but I'm also sad about leaving. I think this has been the happiest semester I've ever had, and I fully intend to return to Chiang Mai one day. It will be such a shock to return home, especially since Maryland is going to be freezing in comparison. One great thing about this country is how warm it is, even in December. Every time I step outside into the 80 degree weather for a cigarette and feel the sun beating down on my back, I think, "The smokers at St. Mary's are probably huddled together cursing the wind right now." And I smile. Schadenfreude is a beautiful thing.

Anyway, despite my leaving Thailand pangs, I'm still very excited to return home and see all of the people who I've so sorely missed (many of whome read this blog).

I may or may not update from Vietnam, depending upon how busy I am and whether I can find a decent internet cafe. Either way, I'll be home in 12 days!

Signing out now, because I need to go to Carrfour to get an extra suitcase and also to buy a gift for my roommate, who stayed up till 1:30 a.m. last night helping me with my Thai language homework. I'll browse through the most expensive items in the Hello Kitty store for her.

Sorry I've been so negligent in updating this blog! It started out as laziness, and then I became further delayed when my laptop stopped working and I was unable to access several partially written entries that I had saved there. Anyway, here is a long chronicle to make up for my previous lack of writing in this journal.

We were asked to write about our goals. I feel that in the six weeks that I've been here, I've already accomplished some of them. Anyway, they are as follows:

Travel around to other parts of Thailand.

Make new friends, both in my program and outside of it.

Make decent progress on my independent study regarding Thai concepts of happiness.

Be diligent about going out and stumbling across new experiences instead of sitting in front of the computer chatting with friends back home (I've only been partially successful there).

( The absurdly long plane ride (reading Spermatagonia was fantastic) and my first few days here. )

Classes have begun today. After hearing all of the professors speak today, I'm kind of sad that I won't get to take the course on Burma, taught by a Burmese political exile. However, I will be busy with my independent data gathering for my senior project.
Signing out now.



August 29th:
I just rode a bike to town and back.

I haven't ridden a bike in five years, so this was terrifying. But I managed to make the trip without falling over. This makes me feel like THE CHAMPION OF THE WORD.

I got a foot massage (EEEEEE!) and some amazing ice cream. And the night's not over yet!

I'm off to go hit up the Rasta bars.

SIGNING OUT NOW.



August 31st:

( Zip lining through the jungles of Thailand, or, how Terry Pratchett can be related to everything. )

Thailand continues to thrill me.

Signing out now.



September 9th:

I spent the weekend visiting my friends's family. This had its ups and downs, but it was pretty interesting.

( Friday through Sunday )

I skipped my classes today because I felt sick, but I am feeling much improved now and plan to celebrate my 21st birthday tonight. My birthday is actually tomorrow, but I will be on the road then, to stay with the West Hill tribe for five days. So I'm horribly excited about tonight, and about the camping/homestay.

Signing out now.



( I'm finally updating about Mae Chaem! )



September 29th:

( Teaching two classes on the 22nd and the 24th was interesting )

The sun has set already in Thailand, which means that Rosh Hashanah has begun. It's strange to be celebrating it all by myself. I miss going to services back home, an option which is not available to me here, since most people I've talked to haven't even heard of Judaism.

I'll try to find some apples and honey tomorrow if I can. Failing that, any sort of sweet food. I am looking forward to the period of Contemplation during the Days of Awe, and fasting on Yom Kippur. It usually makes me more content and stable for a while.

L'shanah tovah, darlings. I hope that we'll all manage to be happy and healthy in the year 5769.


September 30th:

I visited the city of Pai on Friday, accompanied by my new friends Josh, Sam, and Junko, as well as some other St. Mary's students (Rachel, Nick, and Peter). The bus ride was not pleasant. I enjoyed the first hour, which I spent happily chattering with Josh about music and occasionally forcing him to listen to certain songs from my collection (thanks to me he now loves the Magnetic Fields, the Unicorns, Jens Lekman, the Hold Steady, and Richard Hell and the Voidoids, among others). He made me listen to a Modest Mouse song that I think was called Third Planet, which I liked. About an hour into the trip a woman sat next to me, and for the next three hours she kept vomiting into a little plastic bag. I spent most of my time curled into a ball by the window with my headphones blaring trying to breathe through my mouth and pretend that she wasn't there, because I was afraid that I might start vomiting myself if I looked at her or even glanced at her while staring ahead.

Pai is a lovely city though, and wonderful to wander around in. We ran into a beautiful German tourist named Tiffany and she ended up hanging out with us all weekend. We had some amusing conversations. She told me, "Come to Germany! Eet is chock full of lesbians, and zey will adore you!" She also told me that she liked traveling all by herself, which I thought was really cool.

Things I liked about Pai:

The friendly people

The fact that there are mirrors all around with signs above them saying "Are you Ting-Tong?" That word means crazy in Thai, and I imagine that it feels very appropriate to stare into one of those mirrors and ponder the question while wandering around while intoxicated late at night. Which is pretty much the thing to do when you're a tourist.

Cool stores to browse through! Though I didn't go overboard with the shopping. The only things I ended up buying were a book called The Seal Wife (described on the back as "an enchanting fairytale and disturbing portrayal of sexuality and one man's obsession with a mute Inuit woman"), and a purse for Jen Yogi, a friend back home.

Awesome restaurants, offering such things as avocado scrambled eggs. I've never had avocado melt in my mouth like that before.

Sharing a room with and talking to Rachel, whose company I've really come to enjoy.



September 30th:

Again, it felt strange yesterday to not be able to go to a synagogue or a family meal on Rosh Hashanah. After I mentioned this to Hannah Cann she suggested that we skip Thai Studies class to go to the mall for some apples and honey. Easily tempted creature that I am, I readily agreed to this. It was a pleasure to bike through the campus and the outskirts of the city and gather a few necessary materials for the holiday (as well as an ice cream sundae and some delicious bowls of pumpkin and corn soup for lunch). Later that evening, we invited Nick, Peter, and another student from St. Mary's who briefly withdrew so that he could go teach English in China for a year and is visiting people in Thailand for a week (Brian Alexander) up to her room and I borrowed Peter's knife so that I could start slicing up apples.

The knife slipped on the first cut, and when I held up my hand I saw that the nail on my left middle finger had been sheared off. My finger could have been sliced off if the knife had come down at a slightly different angle, and I felt this surge of happiness at that thought, like HOORAY FOR NOT CUTTING OFF MY FINGER!!! Then I realized that there was a tiny scrap of skin attached to the nail and that my finger was bleeding a bit. Hannah gave me a bandaid and took over cutting up the apples so that I wouldn't bleed on them. Typing hurts a lot right now.

Anyway, we dipped organic apples in wildflower honey, which was delicious. I'm glad that I got to eat something symbolic to wish myself and everyone else a sweet New Year, though this felt like a very token celebration. I have still not planned out what I'll do for Yom Kippur. Perhaps just sit in a Buddhist garden somewhere, with my thoughts and some relevant reading material.

Also, I've realized that I was being too sensitive about my friend, in regards to her chattering about how white I am. It was weird to hear her going on and on about it, but I've realized that that's how she talks about everything. Last night she happily babbled for fifteen minutes because she was so excited about her new Hello Kitty cell phone. When I told her that she should come to Pai with me at some point, she started squeaking in joy.