Every time I sit down to write in my blog I get a severe writer's block and have a hard time relaying the details of all my adventures and the stories that I have to tell. But while sitting on an overly crowded bus where the southern half of my body is completely numb I can think of exactly what I want to say and how I want to retell my adventures... but then as soon as I find myself in an internet cafe, my thoughts have vanished... we'll see what I can come up with today!

Jumping back to Lao... after the trekking in the remote parts of Northern Lao our 'small' group of five quickly became a group of 7/8 with different people coming and going (we had the Kiwi (Mark) kid for a few days, our English (Timmy) friend for a few more days, then another American (Sam) joined our group and just as the Kiwi was leaving we adopted a Chilean (Andrea) girl). As much as all of us loved staying on the tourist track and seeing all the artsy and European esque cities it was time to see more of the real Lao, where they don't speak much English, have running water in their homes, where every bit of food is made from scratch, and these places are only accessible by tuk tuk or boat.

We found ourselves in Nuang Kuheo, a little fisherman village on the Mekong River. This little fisherman village was divided by the Mekong with the small market on one side and a few random bungalows on the other side. There were few white people, and not much to do but explore the country side, eat amazing Lao food, discover caves, avoid the rats and burn down Bungalows... sleeping in bungalows there are bound to be creepy things crawling all over you in the night. We figure we had a few options to get around this... 1. just embrace it, and accept it for what it is 2. tuck yourself very tight into your bed with no way that anything can get threw the misquito net 3. place the incense bug repelling coil at the end of the bed and hope that it deters not only bug, but rats too, or lastly, 4. live in shear panic and not sleep for the next 48 to 72 hours.

There were three in my bungalow. Michelle and I were tucked very tightly into our beds with the misquito net around us, and Timmy, sleeping on the single bed that had no netting, decided to place the burning coil at the end of his bed in hopes of detouring the rats... the three of us were sleeping as best we could in these 'oh so fancy' bungalows when I woke to not feeling very good with my eyes and throat burning. I asked if there was any chance to open the window, and they both looked at me like I was crazy, thinking that the rats would be crawling in through the window. So I just tried to go back to sleep when Michelle woke about 45 minutes later asking if something was on fire. We all sat up and noticed that our room was completely filled with smoke. It turned out that Timmy knocked his pillow his bed landing on the burning coil and catching on fire. It was smoldering for at least and hour, destroying the pillow and burning through the bamboo mat on the floor, oops. We did some rearranging of the bamboo mats before we left.

It's strange being in a small group now. No more monopoly playing at dinner when trying to figure out who owes what, no more bargaining for two rooms or cramming the 5 of us into one (those were fun times), no more taking over the place with 5 American girls, and no more 5 Coloradoans, so sad, now were just 3.

The three of us have been trying to figure out our next move. Thoughts were flying around of trying to get into Burma, or maybe dropping down into Indonesia or the Philippians, but with only two weeks left we finally decided that it's better to stay in Thailand and explore this country that we have yet to really see.

We crossed the border back in to Thailand with no problems and started more Thai adventures. We made it to a city called Chaing Rai and got back to our challenge of 'blending'... We want to eat where the locals eat, eat what they eat (or something similar), and experience things more on their level. But being a white person, visiting some random town in a country that I've never explored and in a language that I don't speak 'blending' is hard. But we found some noodle shops where the signs aren't in English and to get what we want we have to point and pray that were not getting monkey's brain or somethings crazy along those lines in our noodle soup.

Northern Thailand has more indigenous tribes that have immigrated from the surrounding countries. With no idea how to see these tribes and no other option we hired a guide to take us up into the hills of Northern Thailand where we able to 'see' them (it was more that they are placed on display for the westerners to see and they have no other option of a life but to look pretty and smile for the camera). The tribes were fascinating, but then again I can't get into their heads and understand how their minds work, how they do things the way they do, and the finer details to their culture and customs. All we could do was buy things from them as a means of income and take pictures to show our friends and family what we saw (pictures will be posted later). The first village that we saw was the Karen-long neck. Where they have rings placed around their neck to elongate it starting at a very young age. This is only done to the girls and it is seen as a sign of beauty. The neck tribe that we say was the Karen-big ear. Where their ears are gaged stretching them further than any ear should be stretched. And the last tribe we saw was the Lost Tribe of China. Where this group of Chinese immigrated to Northern Thailand and were hidden away in the hills. Both Thailand and China knew that this tribe was there but yet they did nothing to remove them. In the past few decades the Thai government accepted them into their culture giving them Thai citizenship. It was possible the closest that I'll get to China for a while, but it was like steeping into China, with Chinese looking people, Chinese language, Chinese food, and Chinese buildings. Rather interesting. We ended the day by drinking mass amounts of Chinese green tea over looking a green tea plantation.

Currently I'm in Chaing Mai, the ancient capital of northern Thailand, learning how to cook Thai food, getting dresses custom made, exploring the Wats (temples), buying one to many things in the night market, and doing other random acts... so exciting!