be glad of life.

Hello everyone!

Sorry to leave you all high and dry for the last bit. It is difficult to update this here blog on a regular basis--this is an update-as-we-want-to creation (we want to keep you up to date, but--hey--we're traveling and sometimes the blog-juice just ain't flowin'). This way you get more juicy updates rather than a few lines saying 'we're alive--we left chiang mai and are now in the island of Lanta in southern thailand. that's all for now, cheers!' Well, unless you want that, too...?

Sidenote: I want to reassure you that we are eating well and are living off of more than "food on a stick" which was mentioned in our last post.

Anywho.

Misra and I arrived in Chiang Mai after leaving BKK via night train (pretty fun way to travel). We lost no time in getting to the ecovillage outside of Chiang Mai called Panya Project (www.panyproject.org) . Here we could wiggle our toes in red mud used for their earthen building projects, eat fresh food from the land and from local village markets, and get to know some very interesting people of the Panya community. There were several other people, slightly older than us, who were just passing through to get an idea of what Panya is all about--what working towards sustainable living looks like and what living in the boonies of thailand looks like (by the way: with a community like Panya's, the picture which was painted for us on the way through was awesome.) The regular members of Panya are very inspiring and totally jazzed about the direction their lives are taking with the help of their community.

We left the ecovillage too soon (anytime would have been too soon) with another passing-through-Panya-person, Aletta from New Zealand, and we stayed one (yes--only one) night in the city of Chiang Mai. Misra and I are really getting the sense now that one month is barely enough time to sample a few cities in Thailand--let alone the whole country.... Chiang Mai was a much nicer experience than Bangkok: cleaner, easier to take in and met some neat people.

Shoot... the internet cafe we are at right now is closing--so I will finish this update sometime soon. But let me say that we are on the beautiful (and small) island of Lanta in southern Thailand. Juicy bits about the beaches, funky cafes, snorkeling, resorts and motorbikes are soon to come. Happy Holidays!




(umm...hmmm. that's an interesting whirlwind-ish post. ha!)

Cailin with Misra over the shoulder