Good-Bye Chiang Mai

Our Chiang Mai stint is ending. We leave on a night train for Bangkok in two hours. Both of us are eager to see the difference between the Chinese and Thai train experience. I'm sure we'll fill tell you the endless details.

We've made a comfortable routine here: yoga classes, lots of papaya salad (kind of like cole slaw at home, but spicier), dental work, eyeglass appointments, moped rides, massages, mountain hikes and even kickboxing fights.

Yoga classes abound in this city. We found an instructer that worked for both of us. He's a British fellow with crazy eyes and huge teeth that almost impair his speech. But the guy's a great teacher-- encouraging and brutal enough for both of us. And eccentric as hell. For instance, he rolls his r's in English and Hindi and lectures us on his yogic beliefs as we're in a backbend with sweat soaking our mats. Jim hates for me to use the term "power yoga" for the practice we've studied, but isn't that what fast-forward yoga in a sauna is? The class was hard even for Jim, which lets me know it's on the edge. We dreaded going every session. They lasted 2.5 hours with no breaks and he prodded and bossed the whole time. If he thought you could stretch further, he'd climb on you and press you into position. Students would moan and wimper but he kept pushing. He described his style as somewhat stern and military.

It was great fun, I suppose, but I'm glad that crazy Britt's not pushing me into down-dog no more.

Also, I've needed a dental procedure done for nearly five years, so I figured Thailand would be the place to do it. In case you haven't heard, health care here is top-notch and less than half the cost of home. So, if you've only got catastrophe insurance like me, this is the place to get your teeth cleaned. Although it was kind of awful to get an injection in the gums with people speaking a foriegn language over your dentist chair, the experience was good overall. They gave me a brand new smile at a third of the cost.

Another Chiang Mai event for us was the arrival of our friend, Ben. He's a classmate of Jim's who's finishing up his master's project with a photo of a Thai pimp. His subject matter is the seven deadly sins. Great fun, huh? He came to Chiang Mai over the weekend and it was great fun to explore "amazing Thailand" with him. We took him to a Muay Thai (kickboxing) fight with us on Friday night. Talk about county fairs, man, this was it. Great ringside food, music, and fun. Some of those fighters couldn't have been over fifteen. The style of fighting was kick boxing. Not too bloody or dirty. Really, the most interesting event of the fight was the dance beforehand, which was completely dependent on the musicians in the corner. The music consisted of two drums and a strange oboe-like reed instrument that only played in harmonic/melodic scales. The music orchestrated the fight. They'd speed up the rhythm and the fighters would get more aggresive. And the spicy cole slaw there was the best in Chiang Mai.

We also went hiking on Jim's favorite mountain in the world with Ben. It's called Doi Suthep and lies west of Chiang Mai and has a golden temple on top. We hiked to two waterfalls and a beautifully huge fig tree. The insects and foliage in the jungle are quite different from anything I've ever seen. Some seed pods on the ground were as big as my arm. We had great fun doing that, too. Yeah, the hike was great, but since Ben was with us, we got to rent an extra motorbike and I got to drive. Talk about fun. A moped on the left side of the road all the way up a curvy mountain road built by a monk. Amazing Thailand!!

You can check out Ben's photography of our time together and many other things at:
www.portlandmonk.blogspot.com

You can visit our wacky Britt yogi at:

www.cmyogasala.com

So, we leave on a night train to Bangkok in two hours. We extended our trip until the beginning of October, so we're hoping to have enough time to visit Cambodia before we leave. Goodbye, lovely languid Chiang Mai!