Fast Forward through Thailand.

(I wrote this one and skipped a lot to catch everyone up to what I was doing at Bamboo School)

Entering Thailand by water was a chore consisting of begging Lao immigration authorities to waive the $10 exit fee and haggling with a cab to take us to Chiang Rai for less than the gross overcharge of $6 a person. We finally arrived in Chiang Rai tired, hungry and disappointed as it seemed as if it was a western strip mall. The only sights to be seen were old men clutching to their new found thai “girlfriends” and many tourists wondering why they were there. After finding no room at 3 different inns, we settled on a cheap room with a fan that resembled a dilapidated soviet bedroom more than a $5 a night suite. Karolina refused to sleep on the actual sheets, and personally, I don’t blame her.

So the next morning we packed up, found the bus to Chiang Mai in hopes that the change from R to M in the name of a city would suit us better. Chiang Mai indeed was much better, especially when we rode around on a rented motorcycle to the hills and checked out an overlooked national park and a tourist saturated golden temple. The nights were spent laughing in a local tavern at the disgusting old men picking up the ladies of the night and the awful but surprisingly welcome attempt at Mexican food.

(temple in Chiang Mai, under construction)

Chiang Mai wasn’t disappointing though. We found an excellent little hippie enclave – a supurb vegetarian restaurant/bookshop where I picked up a 1960s copy of Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf and then somehow bought a mini laptop (which I am using right now) for super cheap. The ‘netbook’ as they say was purchased minutes before we had to be on the train to almighty Bangkok and we narrowly made it thanks to a supportive tuk-tuk driver and a lot of luck. (We literally ran for the train as it was starting to chug-chug-chug-chug, time mismanagement skills are fun)

(my new mini computer with a much needed beer on the train to Bangkok)

Bangkok got a few minutes of our attention the next day, but was limited to the area around the train station and a desperate search for coffee and something edible that didn’t involve meat with flies or “carcass like” features. Hop on a bus to Kanchaniburi, a medium sized river town that unknown to me was made famous by a movie called “The Bridge over River Kwai”. We stayed for cheap on the river, watched Sex and the City on my laptop (sad, but true) and lit paper lanterns over the river that floated into the sky… beautiful.

All this detour away from Bangkok was to visit Karolina’s friends (I knew one of them from Vietnam/Jungle Beach) who were doing a malaria project for medical school in Sai yok about an hour’s drive outside Kanchaniburi. We reached this place by motorbike, got a tour of the hospital and field malaria clinics by the intriguingly smile less Dr. Su Pat. But then we got a little tour of Bamboo School.

(candle festival in Sai yok)