Apr 2007

After about 5 days in Pai, I headed to a small town near the Myanmar border named Mae Hong Son. The scenery on the way there was spectacular, and this time I took the big local bus so I was able to enjoy it instead of concentrating on keeping myself from barfing. Mae Hong Son itself is just a quiet little town, but there are a lot of natural attractions and hilltribe villages near it. I met an English guy and a Finnish guy and jumped on the back of their motorbikes and we went to visit a longneck Karen tribal village. To be honest, I'm not quite sure what to think about it. On the one hand, it was interesting to see, but on the other hand, it seems like the people are just set up to be looked at by tourists...

I'm now back in Chiang Mai and I'm heading to Myanmar tomorrow for just one day to do a visa run. After that, it's back to Bangkok to look for work. I'm soo overjoyed at the thought of that...

After spending my last few days in Chiang Mai with an eye infection (from the water festie), I decided it was time to move on to Pai. Pai is a little town northwest of Chiang Mai, but it is full of wannabe hippies - I don't know why, but I have a massive dislike of white people with dreadlocks - and the ride here was murder. I was in a minibus with the driver determined to get here as fast as possible around a bunch of tight curves - I wanted to hurl the entire trip.

Anyways, after spending a couple days here just chilling out, I went for an elephant ride. The first bit was hard, getting used to the elephant and the massive toll it was taking on my thighs, but overall I really enjoyed it. Our elephant was a bit naughty and I don't think it liked us that much because it kept blowing snot all over us. Also, the guy I was riding with was a bit of a bigger lad and after it tossed us in the river, it wouldn't let him get back on.

I'm going to spend another day or two in Pai chilling out before heading to Mae Hong Son to do some trekking.

The last week has been completely mad. Since Friday, it's been Songkran, the Thai New Year's, but being Thai, they decided to start it 4 days early. Last Sunday, I ended up getting wasted with the Chiang Mai chief of police, then having him drive me around the city on his police bike...gotta love Thailand! Simply put, Songkran has been crazy. Imagine an entire city having a massive waterfight...people everywhere are armed with waterguns or buckets, people are driving around in tuk tuks or in the back of pickups with massive tubs of water and waterguns, and the bars and hotels are in constant war with eachother. And everybody, from tiny little children to grandparents gets in on the act. They've even been having a foam party in the middle of one of the major streets. I can honestly say it's one of the best parties I've ever been to, and that's including the full moon parties and carnival in brazil...If any of you ever have a chance to come to Chiang Mai during Songkran, I guarantee you'll love it!

FINALLY!!!...I'm finished my CELTA. To be honest, it was nowhere near as hard as I'd expected, it was just a lot of work. I only got a pass, because I realized early on I would really have to work hard to get a B or an A, but I could get a pass with a minimum of effort. The people on my course were pretty cool for the most part, except for the fat, balding, old American pedo who got booted from the course for downloading child porn on the school computers...what a freak! Also, in a strange twist of fate, I ended up studying with a girl who worked at my old, crappy school in Busan.
With the courseload, and the fact that the school was way out in the middle of nowhere, I only got to do one night of partying a week, but I generally made up for it as I had some pretty mad nights in Chiang Mai. On Friday, we all finished the course and headed into town together for a night of partying, which ended up with a few of us on a mission to get the 18 year old guy on our course laid for the first time...mission accomplished.

Anyways, I'm going to stay in Chiang Mai until after Songkran, the Thai New Years festival which is basically just a massive drunken waterfight, then I'm probably going to head up to Pai and Mae Hong Son for some fun and trekking.