Pai is a pretty sweet town

Supposedly its pronounced more like 'bye' than 'pie' but then.. this morning at the guesthouse in chiang mai I told the owner I wanted to go to Pai ('bye') today and she said 'oh, where you want to go to buy?' Yah, I guess the accent isn't quite working for me. But I did use another phrase out of my arsenal today! A Thai lady serving me my lunch asked me whether I speak thai and I told her "nit noy".. a little bit. Huzzah! Three weeks and I have.. what, maybe five or six phrases?

It's really quite ridiculous how pervasive english is here. Basically wherever I've been there's been someone who speaks enough english to be able to figure out what I'm trying to say and respond. I've only very rarely been forced to take out the phrasebook. It seems a bit frightening, doesn't it? That you can travel all around a place and never actually have to learn the language.. that a country that's never been colonized has such a gigantic foreign influence. Of course, on the study tour, in the places where there were absolutely no english speakers, we had Ted, who translated (interpreted) everything for us. There were multiple three hour stretches of straight interpreting on his part, sometimes in the same day. Pretty amazing considering I had a tough time holding my attention to the speaker for a third of that time. But then, it's hard to be attentive to a language you have no idea how to understand.

Anyway, I was gonna write about Pai, which is here, where I am. Compared to Chiang Mai, it's a wonderful escape; very laid back and full of hippie backpackers and awesome handmade clothes. Great setting, too. It's in this valley between not so tremendously tall green mountains (these ones look totally untouched by loggers, unlike the ones near Phra Paisal's temple in Chaiyapoum). Probably the best part of the day today was the bus ride here. I opted for the cheapo non air conditioned public bus where you can put your window all the way down (or up, as it works here in thailand) and let the wind blow over you. It actually got kind of cold up in the mountains, a really nice change from the sticky balm that you usually get pounded with. And it rained on and off til we got over the mountains and were within sight of Pai, when the sun came out and warmed me up. The four hour trip went by so quick.. it was great to just sit back and watch the forest and mountains go by.

I finished my first book (I bought two) and bought another. I highly reccomend Everything is Illuninated by Jonathon Safran Foer. Very excellently written family history shrouded in hilarious and emotive narration and travels throughout Ukraine. Multiple narratives.. oh, it's great, go pick it up. It was funny, I finished it on the bus today and reading about these villagers in Ukraine who the protagonist was meeting.. he talks about this woman who had never heard of America (the last person on earth who could claim that ignorance, he supposes) and all these others. I couldn't get the idea that he was actually describing thai villagers out of my head. Of course, I know that thailand today is so connected to the rest of the world (not as much in the smallest vilalges, but even the hill tribes have their tourist economies) but I guess it kind of made me realize that people are so similar everywhere.. I could imagine displacing Foer's story to thailand with so few changes to the personalities.

righto. So now I have a new gigantic book to amuse myself, and maybe a day or two here.. then I think I wantot go to Laos to get my visa renewed and take a slow boat trip down the Mekong to Luang Prabang (its supposed to be a great trip).. then back to Bangkok to meet mama and live it up.

check out pictures from the study tour on facebook (Karina Karakulov, and Stephanie Isberg) and Meagn's pics here: http://community.webshots.com/user/megowitz