First post!

So the idea here was to start a joint travel blog so that both Steve and I would be able to remind one another to post....as this is the first one and it is 3 weeks into our trek, you can see how well that worked out :) But here is the jist of the last 3 weeks:

I arrived in Bangkok, we met up with Toom from couchsurfing (couchsurfing.org), we visited the Baiyoke tower, then bused to Maisot. 

We were in Maisot for one week. Steve taught class, we ate a ton of delicious Burmese food, the other "farangs" (westerners/steve's friends) all came over for a massive pizza party (very exciting since cheese is so hard to come by) which we made on a bunch of Naan special ordered from the Burmese breakfast place we would go to get chickpea and red curry on nan with sweet condensed milk tea for a traditional Burmese breakfast, visited a local waterfall that you can climb right up and crawl into the cave hidden behind the falls, there were also these local kids playing on a tree in the resovir below the falls that had piled about 15 of them unto one of branches to drag it down to the water. We biked to the Burmese boarder. I was amazed at how close and obvious the illegal crossing was- only a few meters away from the official crossing really, all you need is money. 

The highlight of Maisot though were Steve's two going away parties. The first was put on my his students. They cooked us a feast of Burmese foods and coconut rice, and their usually shy nature vanished as the played guitar (even some green day, and the country song "when you say nothing at all" which is really popular here for some reason), sang and even did some dancing with their other teacher Ben, from France, who was teaching swing dance. 

Then Steve's own party where we made stencils, and spray painted this awesome concrete building on the boarder, set off fire lanterns, bid farewell to friends, had three legged races, drank to much, played lots of games, found abandoned buildings, visited the night market and stayed up til 3am. Epic.

We then hitch hiked to Chiang Mai, got tattoos from Pooh the Poi Spinning tattoo guy, motor biked north to the village of Chiang Dao and visited the massive cave system there, learned to make Thai curry and curry paste as well as papaya salad and fish cakes and met up with some friends who were also traveling north. I got to see a bingturong at the zoo! Thats my favorite animal for those of you who dont know, and we fed a baby elephant. 

I got sick on our last day in Chinag Mai and couldn't eat for 3 days. We took a bus on the 643+ curve mountain road to Pai, but miraculously I was not the one that threw up, the girl sitting next to Steve was.

 In Pai, a hippie farang town, it was really smoky out when we arrived. All the forest fires and no rain had made it impossible to see the mountains the surround the town. There are a lot of yoga, detox, raki, spa, herbal, belly dance etc... sort of shops all around pai and plenty of foreign foods to be had which was great since my stomach was not feeling up to much spicy thai noodle :) We stayed in a bamboo bungalow by the river and it cleared up a bunch over the three days we were there. There is a great waterfall with a deep swimming hole, we saw a guy riding an elephant down the road, played cards and got our token wheatgrass shots :) 

We took another bus to Mea Hong Son, a smaller village in the mountains and spent a day at the "Fish Cave" where hundreds of large fish swarm into this cave for no known reason. It was especially great to get out into the mountains for some fresh air.

Which brings us to today. We bused t Khun Yuam, and even smaller village, to hit up some of the more remote national park sites. I'll try to be better about posting, but this should hold you over!

 Waterfall in Maisot








The curry I made