Good To Be Back Under Water!

We got to go diving! Been in SE Asia for so long and almost all of it far away from the coast- it is good to see the bright blue waters of the Gulf of Thailand and the Andaman Sea! We dove Chumphon Pinnacle off of Ko Tao where a whale shark had been seen two days before, four days before and six days before. Unfortunately on the eighth day it rested leaving one more thing on our list before we die. Still it was wonderful to get back underwater and there were plenty of cool things to see. The brilliant hues of the giant clams are now up there with nudibranchs on my favorite animals to stare at and wonder at the amazing diversity and beauty of life.


Just as exciting as the diving was the snorkeling, especially when it was black-tip reef sharks swimming around us in Sharks Bay, a place that lived up to its name (though would have been more accurately named “Sea Cucumber Bay”) Now we need to go buy some lotto tickets in the hopes of winning to get to do some more diving.

Running Down the Street Dragging a Wedding Dress Behind Me

Today we were supposed to have a relaxing day where we headed to the tailors, picked up Brooke’s finished wedding dress and my suit, walked to our friend, Ginger’s to put the clothes in a box that she was going to send for us, and then meet up with our old friends Kate and Maryellen (who we randomly ran into on a crowded street in Bangkok and knew from a hostel in Guatemala two years ago. Small world after all) to hang out before catching our 6:00pm bus to Southern Thailand. The heading to the tailors was about the only thing that went as planned. When we arrived the wedding dress was far from the perfect state we were hoping for which made seem very small the fact that the last little tweak on the shirt they were doing for me turned in to a new shirt from scratch. Start the time ticking in the back of my head. Try the dress on, adjust, painfully tear pieces apart, sow, try on, adjust, and repeat! To make a stressful story short, in the end I decided to accept my shirt without looking at it (too afraid of more adjustments) and Brooke, almost happy with her dress, settled for discounts and some extra boning (no idea) that I hope someone in the states will know where to stick it. I left early for Ginger’s sprinting down the crowded streets of Bangkok, backpack on, dragging my new suit behind me. After wrong busses, traffic, and bad choices of when to get off (which meant more sprinting), I finally reached Ginger’s only realizing then the daunting task I had of fitting every strange and abnormally sized object we could find in Thailand into a nicely rectangular, possibly a little too small, box (a rice steamer basket? Really?). Brooke arrived at quarter to five with even a crazier tale of travel and after some tape, a little more tape, a little extra cardboard here and there, a little more tape and done! 5:00pm. Oh crap!...We forgot to put in the boning! After a few cuts and tears and a lot more tape, it was 5:15 and our real adventure was about to begin! - Getting back to Khao Son Rd in Bangkok rush hour traffic before our 6:00pm bus left.

At 5:30 we were still on the street being turned down left and right from taxies that were saying it was impossible or they didn’t want to go that far. At 5:40 we were begging a moto driver to take us and finally for 100B a piece (expensive $3.00) he and his buddy agreed. The next 15 minutes were a blur of passing stopped cars (stuck in traffic), dodging oncoming traffic (I don’t think this is our lane!), popping the moto over curbs and medians, and evading pedestrians as we took a shortcut through a park. At 5 min to 6:00pm I pried open my ghost white knuckles and handed each driver a sweat drenched 100B note. I really hope our moms do not read this one! We were safely at our bus stop. Kate and Maryellen were also there prepared to stall the bus with whatever tactics were necessary until we arrived. They are wonderful people and I am glad that they are the last sights we saw we finally escaped the big city!

A Simple Life

One of the more unique places we have come across in all of our travels (and that’s really saying something, we’ve been around a lot!) is the Asoke communities in Thailand.  They are Buddhist communities where we were lucky enough to spend a week and a half, part at Santi Asoke and part at Sisa Asoke.  We only wish we had more time at each and to be able to visit the rest since each sounded so wonderful and different it its own way.  They are so pure in their thoughts and practice- hard work and simple living, and the practice what they preach.  The food here is vegetarian, both out of respect for all sentient beings and to tread more lightly on the Earth, and they grow almost all of it themselves.  They pride themselves on hard, self-less work, and it is in their work that they do their meditation and grow as a community, by working together.  No words can describe the wonderful hospitality they showed to the two of us during our time there- we feel we have made life-long friends in some of the people that helped us along our path for knowledge and understanding.  We only wish we could thank them more adequately, but they certainly do not do it for the thanks- when we left it was with hugs and the open invitation to return, plus a bundle of food for our journey- they would not even take a donation from us if we tried.  True generosity of giving without the hope of anything in return, just to be good human beings and maybe get some good karma in return.

To see our album on life at the Asokes, go to picasaweb.google.com/GROWinitiative/AsokeLife

Down on the farm

Daruma Farm might only be 2 acres, but they are 2 beautifully maintained and thought-out acres that have inspired us as we move along our path of sustainable agriculture.  While we only got to spend a week there we had a wonderful time thanks to the hospitality of all- Neil, Troy, Nang, Choat and Am!  We shared all of our meals together and got to try many new Thai dishes like morning glories.   Am taught us how to make them and now they are our new favorite, and so easy!  While work on the farm is not all glamor (like the rock hauling) we did get to get our hands dirty initiating a new composting system, watering, mulching, harvesting food, and helping with the building plans.  We learned from their experiences and shared our own and filled the nights with our nose in their great library or with great conversations with Troy and Neil.  We wish you guys the best! 

Bright lights, big city

Bangkok, thriving metropolis, and the first time we saw it we were coming from India and so thought it was the cleanest city we had ever seen. We’ve hit the streets of Bangkok quite a few times now heading in and out as it is jumping off point to most places, and while roaming the city streets we did what many tourist do: got a custom made suit, and while we were at it something probably no tourist ever does, I’m getting a custom made wedding gown! We also stayed with a Buddhist community in the city, but that deserves its own whole blog so more on that later.

And while in the city we have realized yet again what a small world it really is. Being almost exactly half way around the earth from our home in America you don’t usually expect to see familiar faces. So when we ended spending time with a friend of mine from Colorado (who I hadn’t seen in seven or eight years) and a friend of ours from Peace Corp Jamaica in the same week, we had to do redo the math on figuring how small the world really is. Our linking with Ginger (CO) and with Lauren (PCJ) were both wonderful, but very different if you were to compare the two. Lauren, like us, has caught the travel bug and I am not sure I can name a country she has not been to. Our time together was spent eating street food and hula hooping with locals in the park.

Our time with Ginger was more like a scene when the Beverly Hillbillies role their dilapidated wagon into Beverly Hills for the first time. Ginger is the Secretary to the US Ambassador here in Thailand and her plush apartment in a skyrise building in the center of Bangkok is a little bit off from the open air, bamboo mat huts were we stack our dirty clothes underneath our head when we lay down to sleep for the night.

On our arrival Ginger and Doug were open to trying our vittles and sticky rice (although they used fancy chopsticks to eat the rice instead of their hands) that we brought from the countryside and in exchange added in delicious wine (made from grapes) and a magical heating contraption they called a stove. The next day we hours marveling at their washer and dryer and even more time trying to figure out how a little light in the closet automatically turns on and off each time you open the door (light goes on…light goes off…light goes on…light goes off). Is this heaven?

Really though, a couple friendly faces and short escape from the developing world was just what we needed to refresh us and prepare us for our next projects and adventures. It was great seeing you, Lauren and Ginger, and thank you Ginger once again for the wonderful hospitality!

Karma:

(noun) the cosmic principle according to which each person is rewarded or punished in one incarnation according to that person's deeds in the previous incarnation.


So we apparently did something good at some point in our lives since our karma seems to be pretty great. Or perhaps it is just how wonderful the people that we encounter are in gaining good karma for themselves. In any case, our second big hitch hiking success since getting back to Thailand came right after Koh Chang when we met Pata. She knew the obscure forest monastery we were trying to head to and took us out of her way to get there, only to find that it didn’t so much exist in the way we thought it did for us to go and stay for meditation. Ooops! (and thank goodness she picked us up or we would have been trying to find it for hours and hours it was in such an obscure place with only Thai alphabet signs!) But when one door closes, another opens and at her suggestion we went and stayed at a wat near to her house where she has a rubber farm. The monks at the wat where we did stay were so warm and welcoming, I think we were the first foreigners that had ever been there. The Wat itself was still under construction and we slept on the marble floor with a thin reed mat for “cushioning,” got up at 4am with the monks for meditation, took our meals with them and enjoyed the tranquility and novelty of it all (as did they as one monk took pictures of us while we were meditating one morning- interrupts the tranquility when you see a bright flash through your closed eyes!).

After a few nights with the monks we moved next door to Pata’s who turns out used to have her own Thai restaurant in Canada where she lived for 20 years and she taught us to cook! Cultural exchange, cooking lessons and great conversation, doesn’t get much better than our time with Pata and her wonderful hospitality. She certainly has some very good karma coming her way.

What a Thumbs-Up Will Get You

While we understand that standing on the side of a dirty, desolate road waiting for the awkward meeting of a complete stranger to pick you up and take you to who knows where is not for everyone, it is amazing what just putting yourself out there sometimes will bring you. The start of our trip back in Thailand was one of these times. Not to mention other rides by wonderful people, the crowning jewel of this trip was getting picked up by a smiling Thai local named Toat. At the time we were heading to a forest monastery for meditation about 100 km past where he was going- which was to Koh Chang. Koh Chang is a beautiful island we had read about and originally planned to go to, and when he said it was where he was going we decided to utilize why we keep ourselves flexible and told him we’d love to go along with him if that would be ok. He not only said OK but included in the trip a wonderful visit at his mother’s house first where we were given heaps and heaps of delicious fresh fruit to gorge ourselves on, then keeping on going in his truck a ride across the ferry to the island and down to a secluded little tip aptly named “Dead End” where he had 2 bungalows, one of which was generously given to us for the 3 nights we stayed. It was on a quiet cove of crystal clear blue water and snorkeling right off the shore, meeting other locals, waterfall hikes, sharing delicious meals and learning to cook some of them. All of this and never even asking us for a dime, though in the end we offered a nice “donation to the cause”- I guess that cause of being hitch hiking friendly travelers that are looking for an adventure and real cultural experience. Thanks Toat, Chang, and everyone else we met on Koh Chang, it was incredible!