Sunny Little Paradise

Last night the electricity went out over the entire town of Vang Vieng while I was eating dinner with friends. The waitress walked over using the light from her iPhone to bring us candles, assuring us that this happens all the time, and it should be back on in half an hour or so.

I love Laos. Stuck between the paddy field mentality and the influences of a modern age, it is everything I could want. Two weeks ago I took a wooden longboat trip up the Mekong River from the border of Thailand to Luang Prabang, which took two full days. It is quite a rare thing to travel for 48 hours on a boat and not see a bridge anywhere, but only a handful of houses. The tourist industry here is but an infant, which is why so many backpackers are drawn to the peaceful mountains and the ever-calm "Lao-wegians" as I call them, because the "Laos people" just sounds weird. No one hassles you on the streets because it's hot and they can't be bothered to try to sell you something. If you want a taxi you're probably going to have to wake one up and then convince him to work for a bit. The guy running the internet cafe I'm in right now is asleep to my left, so I'll have to wake him up to pay him. The honor system is definitely at work here.

And then there's Vang Vieng. Some genius figured out that if you build a few bars and rope swings by the river and buy a couple hundred inner tubes, then the foreigners will come. So for a few dollars a day you can tube down the river, which is the only thing to do here by the way, and be pulled up to a bar by guys on land with bamboo poles.

There are good and bad points to this, the good obviously being that it's ridiculously fun and it might just be the best party I've ever been to in my life. You meet some amazing, fun people, the rope swings are wicked and the mud pit is great for wrestling your new best friends in. The somewhat bad side to this is that you have a bunch of young people swimming around when they're too drunk/stoned to realize that it's a bad idea. Apparently there were three broken legs from Swing Five last week, and yesterday the rope from Swing Three snapped and some Irish guy got thrown half-way across the river. It's now the most popular swing.

Another interesting thing about Laos is that, unlike Thailand, they aren't at all strict on drugs. Rachel's Travel Tip #47: Do not try the Marijuana-Mushroom-Opium-Whiskey-Red Bull Milkshake while trying to float down a river. It's just...wrong. Instead, perhaps just order a cocktail, but beware because they are only served in buckets, quite literally.

Now Laos sounds like Spring Break in Cancun, but I can assure you it is nothing but divine. The people are so friendly and helpful, the purple-green mountains surrounding me are ever-present and the baguettes are always fresh and warm, being the lasting remnants of the old French rule. The balance of the old ways and new is beautiful: how many of the villagers still bathe and wash clothes in the river but have a camera phone to take a picture of you from their moped as you walk down the dirt road into town. Although it is still technically a Communist country, I have never seen or experienced any indication as such and feel comfortable and happy in my sunny little paradise.

Hopefully we'll have electricity tonight...

Jing Jai (True Heart)

I finished a month of Muay Thai training on Wednesday. Two to three hours a day, six days a week for four weeks. Now I'm not quite sure what to do.

I was thinking about doing another month before I looked at my bank account. Then I was thinking about doing a week or two more, purely because I like this new healthy lifestyle and the boxing community is more of a family than a training regime. Plus I adore Pai. I fall in love with Pai every day, with all of its funny quirks and good energy. I also have my vintage clothing store that I am settling down with nicely, so when the thought to leaving Pai and Thailand entered my mind, I was completely unprepared.

Confused, I asked my friends, family, absolute strangers and my dog Crystal what I should do, and all of them responded with some version of "Follow Your Heart." So I asked my heart what to do. At that particular moment my heart was napping, so it took quite a few days to get a response. When I did it was loud and clear, and this is what it said:

"Rachel, you have done what you said you would do, and that is an accomplishment. You completed an entire month of Muay Thai, and that is an accomplishment. You know Pai and you have many friends who will be sad to see you go, which is an accomplishment. If your biggest problem in life is whether to stay in Pai or go traveling in Laos, I'd say you have a pretty good life. It is now time to move on, and when you are ready the next adventure will find you."

Turns out my heart was right.

Accomplishment is a many splendored thing, and I was floating on a cloud my last day of training. It was such a high, such a rush to follow through and complete something I told myself I was going to complete, even if I doubted myself most of the way. And I miss it. Two days of freedom and all I do is get up early and want to go back to Ay kicking me and laughing, but pushing me to be just a little bit better, knowing that I could do it. I will miss Bee yelling at me about my left side-kick technique which is never right. I will miss Tong flirting with me, Egg teaching me phrases in Thai I should never use in public, and Tree singing while preening his chickens for the next cock-fight. I will miss all the guys and girls I train with, always joking around and laughing but so supportive of each other when needed. I will miss waking up and walking through Pai early, when the mist hasn't quite yet risen and the absolute beauty of the morning surrounds and swallows me in the greens of the mountains and the golds of the monk's robes as they collect their morning alms. As I write this, I fall in love with Pai all over again. As I write this, I smile knowing I have an excellent path ahead of me, albeit unknown. As I write this, I know I am ready.

It's a night bus and a two day boat trip down the Mekong River into Laos, landing in Luang Prabang. After exploring Laos I'll head up into northern Vietnam, travel down the coast and cross into Cambodia. If time, money and visas allow, I'd also really like to get to Myanmar. So much is uncertain, but that is simply a part of life.

"You cannot escape from your heart, so you might as well listen to what it has to say."
-Paolo Coelho, "The Alchemist"


******I have finally got up more travel pictures!!! Check them out here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/20085426@N05/sets/:

Soi ching ching katoi tuan

It was when the eight year old knocked out the other eight year old and the crowd started cheering that I started biting my fingernails.

Maybe I'm just a weirdo, but that sort of stuff makes me squeamish. Here I am kissing my little Buddha and praying that everyone comes out unscathed, which kinda defeats the purpose of being at a Muay Thai fight at Tha Phae Stadium in Chaing Mai. What can I say? I'm a lover, not a fighter.

Two people from my gym fought last Monday: Mary from Canada and Joe from England. About fifteen of us piled into a mini van that could comfortably fit eight and drove down the treacherous "highway" through the mountains from Pai to the big city to cheer them on, farang style. Mary was the seventh fight of the evening against a giant Austrian girl with a killer right hook. She, however, had a stunning victory for her very first fight, and now I'm not so sure about Canadians being all that peaceful. Joe was the eighth and headliner for the evening, fighting one of the best Muay Thai fighters in Chaing Mai. He was ready, held his own, got some major kicks in, but lost to points to a guy who has been fighting since the age of six. Not really fair, is it?

All in all the evening was fantastic, except for the loss of my fingernails due to stress from watching my friends take a beating, even though they were dishing it out as well. I have realized recently that I have zero agression in me, I have no desire to punch anyone not wearing sparring pads, and I severely dislike getting punched. All that said, I'm in my third week of training and I absolutely love it. I feel fit, energetic, more confident, and I've developed quite a tolerance for small, annoying pains like knuckle bruises, which I now only have three of.

Life in Pai is fantastic, and I've got my little routine down well. I have moved from my bamboo hut and am now living true Thai style in the back of my shop. It's great, cheap, challenging, and I'm getting creative with what people might call "roughing it." I get up at seven a.m. every morning and go fill up my shower bucket, which is next to my sink bucket. The water is really cold, so once my bucket is filled I go put it out back in the sun for my shower later. Then I go about my morning and head off to a two to three hour training session, which I'm finally getting the hang of. The rest of the day is split between arduous tasks of reading my book (Moby Dick), napping, practicing my fire spinning, talking to nice people, occasionally going to the pool, playing with my dog, napping, etc.

Oh yes, I have a dog. Her name is Crystal, and technically she has me. She takes me out on walks all the time, and introduces me to everyone as they all know her and keep wondering who the new farang in town is. Which brings me to how much I love Thai people. They are hilarious, and they think I'm just about the strangest thing that has happened to them, so we get along well in comical disbelief.

Reasons I Love Thai People:

1. They are always smiling, laughing and singing.

2. The slight chill of the Pai evenings has everyone coming up from Chaing Mai for the weekends to parade around in their winter clothing, such as earmuffs and snow boarding goggles when it is literally 90 degrees (30 Celsius) every afternoon.

3. They take pictures of everything that is not beautiful scenery, such as post boxes, unimportant cafe signs, and me. Yesterday I saw a family of seven take a group picture in front of the cement Pai Bank sign, with the photographers back to the mountains. They also hugely enjoy taking multiple pictures of themselves in different lights, never forgetting the Stereotypical Asian Pride Pose of a peace sign in Every. Single. Picture.

4. Their respect. Bowing is such a huge part of daily life, and I love the intricasies of the proper bow. If someone is older than you then palms together at your heart as you bow your head is appropriate. Lower head bows for monks. If you're not sure about age and don't want to offend someone, a simple head bow will do. Farang are included on this should we choose to participate.

5. Muay Thai is the national sport, and kids can start learning at the age of six. It also wields great respect and has been something of a shock to me to get bows from people when I walk through the main street in my Thai boxing shorts at 7:30 every morning. To them a foreigner training in Muay Thai is pretty shocking, especially girls, and yesterday a policer officer gave me a slight bow, which was totally unexpected. I had to stop mid-stride for a low bow as a compliment to his, and we parted as new friends.

6. Thai food is the second best food in the world, the first being Mexican. My favorite person in Pai is a tiny lady named Na, who runs Na's Kitchen and is the best and cheapest restaurant in town. For a full meal of Pad Prie-Waan, which is a sweet and sour sauce with tofu, fresh veggies, pineapple, cashews, an egg and rice is less than an American dollar. I love this woman as she is always singing and skipping about her kitchen, and calls me Lay-chee because Thai people can't pronounce r's. We have become quite good friends seeing as how all the Muay Thai fighters eat at her restaurant/house every night.

7. Thai language is really difficult to learn for Westerners, but is actually quite a simple language. There are no past or future tenses, and instead of saying something like, "Where are you going?" they just say "Where go?" I'm learning more everyday, especially from my trainers, and today Egg taught me "Soi ching ching katoi tuan," which means something like "You're very pretty for a fighting ladyboy."

Ahh, Thailand, you had me at "Sawadii kaaaaaaa." (Hello.)