Chiang Mai = Best place in Thailand

Captain's log:
Location: Inner moat of Chiang Mai.
Date: July 11th or 12th. Saturday, anyway.
Time: According to Jesse Helfrich, there is no such thing. It is, however, 11:33 am to everybody else.
Mood: Peaceful.

This morning I stumbled out of bed in my second-story hostel room into the shower where I mostly just enjoyed the heat radiating into my skin and muscle. Relief from the stiff, unyielding bed I slept on with it's technicolour wool blanket that someone easily could have stolen from Joseph. (See: biblical reference).

Real coffee. An americano at that. You can tell because the girl at the restaurant left the espresso too long and it went bitter, lost its crema. Still, it was real coffee and that means something when you haven't had anything but the powdered shit for the last month.
Granted, they make avacado shakes here, and that makes up fully for the scarcity of ground brown gold.

Our group has scattered. Scott is staying in Vang Vieng to work at a bar for some friends, Angie is getting a tequila (yes, tequila, not blood) transfusion down in Mexico, Jake and Haley made it back to Canada, and all of our Brits have scattered themselves from Vietnam to Cambodia to Australia.
The remaining core team: Soup, Scoopy and Kooter, as well as myself, Dhum Michael (Dungeon Master).

Note: Nicknames are infinitely more fun to use than real names.

Today's plan:
-Reassemble team and cover some area of the city previously unexplored.
-Eat, as everything in this city tastes fantastic.
-Yoga, because my body hurts after sleeping on what felt like itchy cement all night.
-Inspect various tattoo parlours.
-Buy children off of black market to sell to celebrities in L.A.
-Visit 'La Femme Fatale', Chiang Mai's only lesbian bar.

Whether any of these plans actually occur, who's to say?
I've quickly learned that plans become compromised as easily as an A.D.D. affected child forgets about his homework and wanders off to fix a cheese sandwich.
So there you have it: Travellers have A.D.D.
It's what unites us.

Bouts of homesickness.
Mostly for my mom's cooking. Borscht, tofu shepherd's pie, BBQ salmon.
Mostly nostalgic for all of the wonderful cheeses I've met in my life.
Mostly they all taste like processed Kraft slices here.
Mostly I yearn for feta, wish for camembert, pray for jalapeno havarti.


Today's (revised) plan:
-Find cheese shop
-Buy exquisite cheeses
-Pair with red wine
-Lay like a fat, bloated Dionysus on my scratchy wool blanket and have hired public women fan me with banana leaves.

I rule at life.