Bunlam Tak

... starting to get lot's and lot's of random stuff to bring home.<br><br>We were back at the guesthouse at about 1730 and at about 1815 the mini bus rolled up to take us to the bus stop. Everyone inside the mini van looked just as sullen as us about making the journey overnight in what was sure to be a bust struggling to stay on the road driven by a 12 year old wearing a back to front.<br ...

... doing", &#8216;could you have ever picked a more solo mission&#8217;, &#8216;finding it hard to breath in the heat, feel panicked ahhh&#8217; to &#8216;go girl friend, rock it.&#8217; I have never fully travelled on my own before, whenever I intended to it didn&#8217;t quite work out that way. But my first days in BKK looking at couples ticking off their to do Asia list, and proudly wearing their new tattoos and dreadlocks&#8230;I soon realized that it was truly just me ...

... due to his terrible plague of sand flies in Jamaica, turning his body into a beautiful array of mosquito bites. Beau is known as Sun Diver, since he drunkenly dove into two feet of water after attempting to ******** a sea cucumber. This caused the bridge of his nose to spew forth arian blood and leave behind a memorable scar. Emma is Cake... If you know Em, you should know how much she loves chocolate, but that isn't a worthy name and while in Pai (pronounced pie) we dubbed her ...

... following community based sustainable development projects - A local youth tour guide training program - Income generation for hilltribe families via homestays and handicrafts - Recruiting foreign volunteers for hilltribe schools Our sustainable tourism venture (which we have yet to find a name for) offers homestays and guided trips around Mae Hong Son. 'We' are about many things. 'We' are about paying a fair price to ...

... stay two nights, and use it as a base to explore from on the day in between. That night we ventured into a night market and were fairly adventurous in trying some of the local wares. We bought some of these little fried coconut pancake/pattie things that were devine. We then tried some coconut paste that had been BEQ'd in lemongrass leaves (yuck!) and water chestnuts raosted in coffee grinds (hmmm OK). Finally we ...

... mostly agriculture-sugarcane, and some crops I didn't recongnize. little villages. Controlled fires burning, can smell in the air. Car dealerships, even Ford-seemed odd vs. all the Nissan, Toyota. Gas stations, including familiar golden Shell with red and white. Motorbikes with families of four riding, no helmets. Teens on motorbikes. Watching sun move down the sky through mostly gray blue clouds ...

The border town of Mae Sot was our next stop. It was a short detour, as Pete didn't like the somewhat edgy atmosphere of the town. This could be because we chose a hotel that is a) next door to the gem market, where all the dodgy dealers congregate b) known to be the place to stay for the Myanmar secret service when they are in town. Mae Sot is definitely interesting from a cultural standpoint - walking the streets you get a ...

... so much time spent creating radio programs means hardly any for finding music. I'm leaving the house mostly for food, interviews, or to fix my former students' computers or minidisc recorders. The Organization has packed up and left town by now, taking much of their equipment back with them. But the students continue to produce their weekly radio broadcasts with whatever means they can obtain. Some former soldiers have taken to smuggling weapons for ...

... camp. Some people have told me that there are specific sections of the camp for each religion, but I don't see that. It seems completely mixed. On a Sunday morning, we walk to the oldest section of Mae La, where a pastor called Dr. Simon has the largest Baptist church in the camp. The choir is beautiful, but the pastor is nowhere to be found. A girl with excellent English takes us up the hill to a smaller chapel, where a church has been set up specifically ...

... that it could be used for non-civilian purposes. It's just been allowed back on the air, under the provision that it only be used for educational purposes. We walk on, to the center of camp, where the Karen Women's Organization has an office, which consists of a storage space for UN donated goods, and several looms where women produce colorful fabrics, one of the few ways refugees can legitimately earn money. Let Let Win is the woman in charge, a badass grandma who used to ...