Scorpion Tailed Village Chiang Mai

... annees dans le tourisme avant de retourner etudier (le kras du Baht, la monnai thailandaise a fait bcp de mal et a forcer bcp d<entrepreuneurs a se...reorienter, semble t-il).

Elle a passe la journee avec moi et, avec l<aide d<une de ses copines chauffeur de tuk-tuk (les femmes qui font ce metier sont tres rares ), nous avons fait le tour de environs. Elle m<a fait visiter les temples les plus importats en me donner un ABC du ...

... rice. She even gave us a thick Thai cookbook so we could learn to cook more dishes on our own.

When class was finished they dropped me off at my hotel and Tip sorted out the mistake with the hotel clerk who had booked my class. It was pretty funny to watch because at first they were just yelling at each other in Thai but after a few minutes they were laughing and smiling. I wish I could've understood what they were saying.

After that got sorted out I decided to ...

... mistakes. The other Canadian teacher Paul is really critical, so I was relieved not to get him!

I felt quite calm working through the massages and it was going really well - that is, until half way through and disaster! Trying to move Sophie into a particulalry tricky position, where you stand in front, lift her legs up to 90%, then bend her knees into a cross legged position to rest on your legs. Doing ...

... funny experience as my butt went for quite a ride today. While riding the elephants, we bought bananas to feed to them along the way. Carsten and Kathryn's elephant came up behind ours and began looking for our bananas with its trunk which were right between me and Kari. But instead, the elephant found my butt and was trying to suck it up its trunk. Finally, the elephant found ...

... received not the tribe itself, anyway we got to see some long necks and their simple way of life. They grow their own crops and have chickens running around and their own little school, it was a shocking contrast to how commercial our lives are in the west. Anyway we then went back for a bit of pool time and went to check out the night market which had many bargains! The next day our two day trek began, we drove 3 hours to Pai (in another pick up truck..not too comfortable but I ...

... Tribe. From out trip to the tribal museum I learned there are less than 100 in the world. The all displayed their wares and posed for pictures. None of them looked very happy and even the small girls looked robbed of their joy. As Jessie said it felt like you were at a zoo looking at the animals on display. She bought a couple of items and I bought a dragon head keychain. We are now off to the elephant ride. We arrived and there were 3 elephants staked out in a ...

... reasons. Mel then gets a chance to ride the neck of an elephant, stepping on via it's left leg before some of the elephants hurtle past us down to the river to bathe (and they really did hurtle!). There is then a short show before we all go for a 45 minute ride on the elephants - crossing the river twice. We get plenty opportunities to feed our Ele on the way (for money of course). Next we ride on ox-carts to the place we're to have lunch. The ox-carts are ...

... and continue to witness the world and regional economic situation worsening. It is very disturbing as we read the English language papers here and things appear to be more serious than Americans understand as we are such provincial people. Everyone believes that Obama will save the economy here also. Strange how they believe that. Well it is time to find an ATM as this will be Ernie's big shopping day. God Bless America!

... for example I remembered a car journey I took when I was 10 - really, really random stuff... and it can also get quite distressing... and I kept imagining the things I was saying in my head in different voices - often that of a Dalek, which was most distracting!! But as the week went on it got easier and easier and actually pleasurable, to the point where I was jumping out of bed to meditate... I don't think ...

... and starting aching immediately, which was a bit of a worry as it was a THREE HOUR course and we were only on the second stretch, ten minutes in. Wonderful, thanks mate. To cut a long story short(er), apart from my throbbing ear, the experience was absolutely wicked. We negotiated rapid after rapid, only falling in twice more, and one of those was when ...