We left Chiang Mai by plane to Bangkok to go meet my brother and his wife Ana. It was good to see him and finally meet Ana, and long overdue. After a fun evening with them eating by the river and having a few drinks (purchased by them), I felt unusually bloated and full. This wasn't that unusual as I consumed a copious amount of food and beer, but something was different about this feeling. When I got into the taxi on the way home I started sweating profusely (even more profusely than usual) and felt dizzy. By then end of the taxi ride I was doing all I could to not belch forth whatever demons were in my stomach (something i'm pretty good at; both the holding in of, and expulsion of stomach demons).
We made it to our hostel, and I went straight to the lavatory. I prayed to the porcelin god for a few minutes, but none were answered, so I grabbed the rubber-maid trash bin on the way out and took it to my room. Moments after, I began a chorus of contrapuntal convulsions, likely looking like a cat coughing up a hair ball, but sounding much more violent and loud. Luckily the trash bin had a plastic bag lining. The next 6 hours were spent in the bathroom, alternating between oral and anal explosions. Anita felt fine. Good times.
The next day I felt much better, but my appetite for food was destroyed. Best diet ever. We caught the train to Vientianne, Laos, that evening. The train itself was something that was probably state of the art 50 years ago. It was very well put together but seemed shabby with age and the lack of newer facilities. It was comfortable in a Russian sub kind of way. It was a 14 hour journey, but we had sleeper seats (I had bottom bunk) so it wasn't too bad. At the border we received our visa, took a 30 minute taxi to Vientianne, and checked in. No a bad trip considering I was recovering from a stomach flu and it was 14 hours.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Finished in Chiang Mai
Anita just finished her 5 week massage course, and we are off to Pai now.
The cool things I did in Chiang Mai:
- Lit some latern baloons. These light paper lanterns capture the hot gases from the candle until they are bouyent enough to take off into the sky. It looks very cool to see something take flight from only hot air, and I have never seen it on such a small scale before. Once it takes off, it looks quite nice as it rises into the night sky, an orange dot against the blue black. There will be a festival where hundreds of them are released in a few days, so that will be good to check out.
- Finally finished a demo for my RPG book, Plutocracy 2060. It ended up being 203 pages long. I printed out 10 copies, and am looking into some E-publishing. Now it's on to the truly massive amount of spelling and grammar mistakes.
- Went to a fish spa. Garra rufa is a tiny fish species that eats away at the dead skin on your body. So, a fish spa is a place where you put your legs (or your whole body) into a pool filled with the little suckers and they immediately begin to nibble away all your detritis. It's extremely bizarre seeing scores of these things surrounding your legs, giving you an extremely intense tickling feeling. Anita and I sat there laughing for about 15 minutes until we got used to it for the last 30 mintues. Pretty cool experiance.
- Went to an herbal steam bath. Very hot, hard to breath, and somewhat uncomfortable. Felt nice and clean when I was done though.
Thats about all the touristy things we have done there, since Anita wanted to rest on the weekends and I was more than happy to plug away at my RPG. Now, its back to backpacking for a while.
The cool things I did in Chiang Mai:
- Lit some latern baloons. These light paper lanterns capture the hot gases from the candle until they are bouyent enough to take off into the sky. It looks very cool to see something take flight from only hot air, and I have never seen it on such a small scale before. Once it takes off, it looks quite nice as it rises into the night sky, an orange dot against the blue black. There will be a festival where hundreds of them are released in a few days, so that will be good to check out.
- Finally finished a demo for my RPG book, Plutocracy 2060. It ended up being 203 pages long. I printed out 10 copies, and am looking into some E-publishing. Now it's on to the truly massive amount of spelling and grammar mistakes.
- Went to a fish spa. Garra rufa is a tiny fish species that eats away at the dead skin on your body. So, a fish spa is a place where you put your legs (or your whole body) into a pool filled with the little suckers and they immediately begin to nibble away all your detritis. It's extremely bizarre seeing scores of these things surrounding your legs, giving you an extremely intense tickling feeling. Anita and I sat there laughing for about 15 minutes until we got used to it for the last 30 mintues. Pretty cool experiance.
- Went to an herbal steam bath. Very hot, hard to breath, and somewhat uncomfortable. Felt nice and clean when I was done though.
Thats about all the touristy things we have done there, since Anita wanted to rest on the weekends and I was more than happy to plug away at my RPG. Now, its back to backpacking for a while.
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