chok di = good bye and good luck

dear thailand

thank you for lessons learned, dreams experienced, adventures granted, weight gained, comfort zones obliterated

for your people (oooh the people), beauty, vivacity, humility, hospitality, sticky rice, pulse, colors vibrance, skies, warmth, revelations, humor, realness, frankness, foreigness. for a summer of transcendence.

my last view

ode to nim

a quick story-

once upon a time a month ago, in a rot dang bound homeward, i saw a table of puppies and pressed the let-me-off-buzzer. maybe i walked away minus 400 baht but plus a newborn, tick infested nugget of love with a then-unknown perpetual diarrhea and a then-dormant inclination for skin boils tucked under my arm in the thai rain.

goodbye nim. may you grow big and strong, stop losing hair and get over your liquid bowel syndrome. i bet my host family is grateful for my impulsiveness. ( i couldnt just bring him home. dont worry. pee loves him)

dissa

apparently the only thing funnier than a sweating white girl in a tank top with bare shoulders trotting down a cattle path at the break of dawn is a white girl in a polka dot bathing suit with bare thighs lying in the sun at high noon. score!

(my morning runs were starting to lose their shock factor, so i had to whip this one out. they never expected this)

from back in the days of phi phi island <3

(ps....my 293 day absence from the internet was due to the end of working ((and thus wi-fi)) and a transcendental week in laos.)

isa-careem = ice cream

as the queen of detrimental self deception

i have tricked myself into believing i earn one ice cream every day

oh i most definitely will miss it here

(i shuffled the chronologicality so you cannot visually track the weight gain. so dont try.

also yes, i do only have one ice cream eating face)

sunset #2984

i keep getting surges of gratitude, love and most importantly, life.

adventure: meditation retreat

he's better at meditating than i am ^

morning

and last night too

try and guess my favorite time of day

(who's sick of sunset pictures? haHA!)

fell inlove last night again

nok yai = big, big bird

gai = chicken

and then we played with the chickens

uncle nikons single passion in life (besides whiskey and calling me fat) is his chickens. which is why the house has a small amount of yard and a large amount of chicken city

the munchies

today i single-mouthedly consumed
1 frozen mango, 1 coconut yogurts, 11 langorns (they are small and are fruits, ok?), 2 mini chupachups, chicken curry and rice, mini box of cereal, 3 sesame crackers, 1 (my favorite) black forest flirt ice cream, .5 pepsi, 2.5 sesame balls filled with fermented tarot cream (*see note), .5 bag of sweet basil chips, cauliflower, sticky rice, 1 moo ping, 1 chah moo,1 vanilla and 2 blackcurrant wafers and alot of bugs on the bike ride home. ( i understand that some of these are unfamiliar and in thai. that is to further mask the actual quanitiy eaten)
believe it.
(*note: me and desiree play the 'every day buy one new thai thing you've never tried before' game. i love. although its really a game of luck, and we miss more often that we hit. see above.)

fon tok = rain

last night i fell in love with this big giant tractor with flood lights lighting up the rice paddy behind my house. how is it that a big giant tractor with flood lights is so romantic and rustic and mysterious in a thai rice paddy? i dont know. but it lulled me to sleep alllll night.

and

at three i was woken up by the delicious pattering of tropical rainstorm on the ceramic roof. the morning was ethereal.  every color was instantly more vibrant (i love how rain does this) and the lush jungly hills were half hidden in fog and everything was clean and fresh and (dare i say) COOL. i was so twitterpated with the weather that (without thinking straight about my fitness level) i decided on going for a run. down the cattle path, rice paddies and watter buffalo on one side, jurassic park mountains on the other, everything made 2049234 times more beautiful with the rain.

 (now of course its cleared up and scorching everything alive)

(abicycling to school with bag of longans for breakfast)

adventure: orphanage

i have had a serious lack of photo taking and also of blog posting! which is a bad, bad thing because every day is chock full (is that the saying) of foreign, eye-opening, vivacious experiences and i want to remember every second.

this past weekend we all went up to an orphanage in the mountains. most of the kids are deaf and come from the hill tribes to live at this farm. they wake up at 6 in the morning, work on the farm, go to school and then work. they can play with rocks for hours, eat sunwarmed fruit right of the trees and are the sweetest, most hardworking children i have ever seen. seriously. it was amazing (and deathly) to be up there in 100 degrees digging a trench of some sort. i have completely forgotten what life would be like with
1. any conscious effort put into my appearance
2. no sweat
and im loving it to pieces.

and unfortunately i took zero pictures. nice, margo.
its back to working this week!

clouds

sometimes i get worried ill never feel as alive as i do here

every inch of this country has a pulse

adventure: fourth of july weekend

which included

a 16km two day jungle trek hike of death (also beauty) through this:

 being skillfully and shirtlessly lead by this (this being rambo of the hill tribes):

who did amazingly manly jungle machete things like this :

and we slept here:

and ate this (this being fry ri in banana leaf):

and just you wait for pictures of the HIGHLIGHT of the jungle trip. no seriously. dreams came true. and not just my dream of being shown the secrets of tropical jungle by a bare chested thai named rambo. just wait.

and as an afterthought, we decided we should squeeze a little america into our fantastic fourth of july weekend. thailand graced us with a firework and american flags in our sundaes.

thank you thailand.

adventure: cock fight

i was lying like a vegetable in bed (actually productivity was present , i finished jurassic park AND three muskateers) and nikon yelled up through my screen 'mahko, we have something to get, yes?' this actually meant 'margo, wrap up your flesh wound, get on my motorcycle, bring your gas mask, we're going to a cock fight'
no. for real.

it was smokey, 99% male, barbaric. i was jammed between sweaty, yelling, betting thais. i may or may not have enjoyed every second, was at the edge of my seat and had to stop my self from jumping up and yelling 'ONE HUNDRED BAHT!' i may become a regular. and also get cancer from second hand smoke.

i know youre all dying to know. the yellow headed one won. and nikon lost a hundred baht