Mae Hong Son

Liiiiiiii! Ginaaaaaaa! That's how we greet each other. Li lives in Mae Hong Son and that is pretty much the only reason I came all the way out here. It's a lovely town hemmed in on all sides by hills and forests. The feel is small town and relaxed and the locals love seeing foreigners in their little heaven. A good place to relax before moving for a few days again. Li is busy working but it has been nice seeing her regardless. Girl loves heself some air-conditioning despite the fact that the temperatures drop to somewhere between 17 and 20 degrees at night and are not too hot. I had to make her turn it off the first night because I was freezing my ass off. And in true Li fashion she still lives in a guest house after 2 months in Thailand. Apparently homes are hard to come by in a place with only 9000 inhabitants.

While she has been at work I walked around town and had my picture taken on elephant sculptures at a monastery on a hill by a monk. He was very insistent about taking my picture and made me put the camera down before he picked it up. That's the sort of thing that takes getting used to. Women are not allowed to touch Buddhist monks, so when he kept pointing at my camera and motioning for me to put it down I was totally lost. I kept thinking "but how are you going to take my picture if I put the camera down on the railing?" That was a bit dense on my part I must admit. He picked it up after I put it down which is how he avoided touching me. I knew that! I read it in my guidebook. Duh. He and his monk friend were so cute trying to figure out the digital camera and framing the perfect picture. It took them ten minutes before they had the perfect composition for the shot.

The wat (monastery/temple) itself blinded me when I got up the hill. The thing was a pristine white and the sun reflected right off it causing my corneas to completely shut down for a moment before readjusting. I've never seen so much white in one place since the all you can eat buffets at Uncle Willi's in Vancouver.

The day took a turn at the tourist information office in town. I met Jerry, an American travelling alone by car for the last few weeks. He was starved for companionship and turned out to be one of the funniest, most neurotic, sarcastic people I've ever met. He lives in Trinidad and is a psychologist (something that made me laugh when he told me because he constantly interrupts you when you speak). We went to the fish caves together but first we accidentally stopped at a forest monastery where a group of zen-over-the-top-California-type-spiritual Americans tried to tell us how 'special' it was to visit the spot and be blessed by the monk who lived there. We went up and sat in front of the monk in a cave and he smiled and chatted in Thai. I have no clue what he said but Jerry got up and walked away which he said is all he could do to fight the urge to crawl into the cave to get a better look at the Buddha sculptures lit up by candle light. Those hippie Americans were right after all, it was 'special'. The monk began to tie a white string around my wrist and bless me with a prayer. I called out over my shoulder "Don't worry, I'll get the blessing for the both of us." We did eventually find the fish cave with the hundreds of carp swimming into a cave in the clear, clear water. The experience was slightly disappointing because the fish weren't jumping, which is what I expected, but on the upside the grounds were idyllic, much like in an old English painting. The sort of place I believe Whistler would have painted had he not been painting his mother. A picture of the fish and the grounds is posted on my flickr site.

Jerry rushed back to his hotel to make a phone call and then we took off to the hills beyond Mae Hong Son. The Mexican daisies (which is what they really are although they are billed as sunflowers on the brochures) were breathtaking. The hills were covered in them for miles. We stayed for the sunset and the hills took on a misty glow with various shades of blue, pink and eventually red undulating into the distance of Burma. One of the greatest natural sights I've encountered on my trip. My camera didn't have a good enough depth of field to do the horizon justice.

Tomorrow I am off to Laos. It will likely take me somewhere between 36 and 48 hours to reach Luang Prabang as there is some backtracking involved. I am so looking forward to Laos!

Here are some pictures Gavan sent me:

Me, Sandra and George

Sea of Love bar where we hung out at Tonsai beach before going out.

It was a climber's paradise. Lots of hot muscle flexing action on the limestone rocks.

Gavan is ready to snorkel.

Pai in the sky

Pai is described as being a place that is reminiscent of a town between Kabul and Kathmandu on the old hippie trail. It's a laid back sort of place where everyone is a tourist, the locals all speak English and the hill tribe people come into town for the market.


I was being entertained by a Thai punk rocker at a local bar when I spotted someone familiar looking. After many minutes of staring intently at her I went over and sure enough, it was Sandra the Swiss girl from the Mahasi Centre in Yangoon. She just got back to Thailand after a month in Burma. The world's a small place. Apparently not to many Afghan women travel these parts of the world because Sandra mentioned that she kept running into people that had met me on her travels through Myanmar.

We hung out the rest of the night and went to a reggae bar where the local band butchered a few Bob Marley tunes before the microphone was handed over to a travelling musician from Britain. He performed a very good version of one of my favorite songs, Leyla by Eric Clapton. It was a very special moment and I almost cried but then was distracted by the balloons being set free to float into space above us.

Poi is a favourite past-time in Thailand. Everywhere I go the locals seem to be playing with fire. It is now on the list of things to learn along with guitar, singing, horse back riding, fencing, salsa, Spanish, Arabic, Hindi, Farsi and juggling. I was going to add neutering dogs to the list but I felt it was inappropriate.



There are a lot of stray dogs in Asia. Makes me wonder why they don't start a national neutering campaign to control the population. Maybe it has something to do with their religion. Regardless, there were about twelve dogs at the Family Guest House where I was staying. I took a picture of two of them playing in front of my hut and then almost squashed a litter of puppies on my way to the hammocks in the restaurant.


Took the bus to Mae Hong Son in the afternoon with the locals. All the other travellers got on the special minivans (at double the price) for some reason. It was fun to hang out with the kiddies on the bus on the beautiful ride through the forested hills. Once I arrived I discovered that Li had not actually made it back from Chiang Mai yet. Again, I ate myself through the night market by the lake near her place.

Chiang Mai

Chiang Mai was going to be a good place. I figured this right after I saw the sign forbidding missionaries and pedophiles entry into the hotel I was staying at. To top it off my room was a large all wood, big bed sort of deal at 200 baht (7 dollars). Not bad.


The city is surrounded by a moat and a really, really old city wall. The guidebook tells me exactly how old but it's in my hotel room. At the bar downstairs I met two Maltese guys (a first) and a Sri Lankan. They made an odd trio. It was the Sri Lankan man's first time out of his homeland. He missed his wife so much that he had decided to leave that day to go back after only one week of travel. It was so sweet I almost cried. He showed me pictures of his house after the tsunami and told me stories of finding dogs eating babies and people rotting on the beach. That put a human face on the news event for me. The Maltese guys had shown up and were supposed to be in Sri Lanka for six weeks and ended up staying for a year at his guesthouse. My appetite for Ceylon has grown exponentially since meeting these guys. If people like that travel and live there then I want to go!

After breakfast with the trio it was time to look at some monasteries. There are loads of monasteries in this city. I walked out of town to a forest monastery called Wat U Monk. It was so nice to be in nature again after a mindboggling amount of traffic. The trees here seemed to be decorated with bands. And the lessons of the Buddha were illustrated with pictures of dogs gambling.

There were maybe eight of these pictures set up but the best one was the one of the dogs at a strip show. Seeing these led to some deep contemplation in brick tunnels that were built for a clairvoyant monk at the monastery a few hundred years ago. Once the sun set some more walking led to a rather beautiful two hour conversation with two Cambodian monks studying in Thailand.

Today I am in Pai. I haven't seen or done anything in this little mountain village except for nap and walk down the street to an internet cafe.

The Beach

Sunsets on Raileh West Beach

This was taken two minutes before the sunset

The boats were so pretty

We danced at the foot of this limstone rock on my 'last night'

This guy danced with us and then took us to a place for breakfast

Ahh, holidays. So nice.

Bartender at Sea of Love

Jamming at Chill Out

Yanky Speak on Hat Ton Sai

You pretty much have to be a cyclope not to get any action in Southeast Asia. Seems that as long as you have the necessary equipment and a pulse you'll likely see some sort of jiggy jiggy. For men, it'll be relentless pursuits by Thai women who are after a new wardrobe, some baht and a good time. For women it's pretty much constant flirting initiated by any guy you meet strutting along the well tread tourist spots.


I wasn't quite ready for any of that when I left the monastery. So, I headed straight for Tao Tong Villa's on Koh Tao, turtle island. It's the furthest island from the east coast and a small quiet spot. I arrived and was delivered into a smoking scene like no other. The bungalow I was staying in was up on a hill overlooking my very own spot of ocean and the French woman next to my place took a liking to me. This meant that she would smoke a large spliff and then hand me a snorkelling mask and take me out into the water to explore the technicolored fishies. One day I took a break from the fishies and watched them in the clear, clear water from the restaurant deck. I got bored pretty quickly of watching the fish in the water and walked up to a guy to ask him to look through his guidebook. I didn't get so far because it went from "hello" to "sit down, what's your name?". And that is how I met Ahmi, Sandra and Gavan. Two Iranians and an Irishman. I spent a week with Sandra and Gavan but first we had to ditch Ahmi.


It took Gavan and Sandra a little longer to find their way to Ton Sai beach off Krabi's coast. A walk along a dark path led me to chatting with Helen and voila, I had formed a lovely little team for my time here. Of course there were other people like the Swiss couple, Olli and Christine, and the British couple, Sandy and Sami, but they hung out and dissapeared. Olli, I learnt, was a bun baking champion in his native land. Sandy told me to stop using yanky words and to just tell him how I felt without the yanky speak.


The night's are a blur but I know that one night I crashed a Thai wedding and ate very well. That was followed up by watching a ten year old kid juggle fire, then watching some Thai boxing followed by a snake show. That's the first time I saw a king cobra and I must say that thing scared the crap out of me. If that is the sort of cobra they were talking about in the monastery then I would have wet myself had it appeared in my concrete cell. The animal can raise itself 3 feet off the cround and is more than seven feet long!


My last night on the beach we went out. Sandra had already left and so had cute, adorable Afghan-girl-look-alike Jorge. Gav, Helen and I decided to hang out. The evening started off low key at Chill Out bar and then took a turn when we showed up at Freedom. A bar fight between a man and a woman broke out and Gav had to grab me and pull me away because I did the classic Gina stop and stare.


Then I realized that Gav's male intuition was way off that night. Supposedly Ed was "gay as Christmas." Hearing the words "spread your legs" after Ed lifted me up on the dance floor was not what I expected. At this point I still trusted Gav's intuition. I walked back to Gav and told him that Ed wasn't gay as Christmas. I think the words were "dude, he's just English." In fact he was drunk and high on E. The lady boys liked Ed a lot that night because he was wild on the dance floor. I liked the dance floor a lot that night because there were fire works and a huge limestone formation towering above us as we danced. The night slowly progressed. Gav got some of his stuff stolen off the table in front of us. Then he went and complaint to the staff and got three buckets of drinks. I wasn't drunk. "Ah, go on" was the line of the evening. Apparently it's a popular line from the Irish sitcome Father Ted.

In walked Doog. A strange sort of fellow. Quiet. Gav turned to me and said "now that's the sort of solid guy I was tellling you about." If by solid he meant cheating bastard then he was right on. Doog had a fight with his girlfriend and then wanted to walk me home. The male intuition wasn't working at all that night.



Then it was morning and time to eat breakfast. The Thai guy that had just rubbed my lips with his thumb for no reason at all suggested a place and we followed him. Helen was toasted and then dissapeared suddenly. Gavan checked into my hotel and walked away to get his bags. I knew I wasn't gonna see him again that day. No way. It was 10am and I was just about dead. Needless to say that I had to stay an extra night to sleep off my 'last night' on the beach. Gav walked away and then got into a bong, some more booze and a pool game or two with the bar owner next door. I saw him and Helen again for dinner that night and then breakfast the next day. He did manage to check into my hotel. Helen left for Phi Phi after me.


I did my visa run into Burma from Ranong. A tough Lao/Burmese chick at the Kiwi House helped me out on that one.

That's us. Sandra, Gavan, Helen and me.

The Dhamma Police in the Garden of Liberation

It's time to relive the meditation experience at Suan Mokkh:



Most of you would cry if I told you that for the next 11 nights you would have to sleep in a concrete cell on a concrete bench with a Buddha pillow, which is fancy speak for a block of wood with an indentation for your head. You'd probably howl if on top of that you'd have to check your room for spiders, frogs, scorpions, centipedes and snakes each time you enter. Though the spiders may be impressive, they are harmless, the green snakes are not poisenous but better not approach a cobra if it finds a way into the cell. There's a bucket and a hard piece of cardboard set aside just for scorpions and centipedes. Though the real danger is slipping on the wet concrete floor and splitting your head open. Also, in case you are wondering, there will be no reading, no writing, no air con, no singing, no drinking, no drugs, no sex, no speaking, no dancing while you participate in this retreat.

Once again I took a vow of silence but this time they were actually serious about it. Men and women slept in seperate buildings and sat apart in the dining halls and during meditation. Each person had to do a chore to contribute to maintaining life at the monastery. The day started at 4am with gonging and then some meditation and a 2 hour yoga session. Breakfast, consisting of a yucky rice soup, was served at 8am and then I took off to the hot springs to digest the tasteless goo. To be honest, the hot springs were a big selling feature for showing up to meditate in the first place. At 12:30 the last meal of the day was served and thankfully it was much, much better than breakfast. The food was still half as good as the Mahasi Centre's fare in Yangoon but on the upside, the abbot of the monastery reminded me of Yoda. Most days I had to suppress a chuckle each time he began to speak. He sounded like a real jedi master in his saffron robe. The talks he was giving were pretty deep and totally Star Wars.

Lectures were given by various learned people. My favourites were Yoda who was really hard to understand, Nun Piroh who got so very excited by her speaches that she screeched and chuckled and Tan Dhammavidu, or as he is called by all the staff at the monastery: "the British monk." He was (surprise, suprise) British and a very, very good public speaker. His daily Dhamma talks were followed by pali chanting that drilled the words dhamma, samsara and dukkha into our heads. Teachings on loving kindness, karma, samsara, and the bad things like sensual pleasure (aka sex) and drugs were constantly reinforced. Personally it was difficult not to think about sensual pleasure and drugs because they kept coming up.

The hardest thing by far was to exercise 'loving kindness' towards the mosquitos. I swatted, I slapped and really I donated enough pints of blood to these insects to sustain them throughout several life cycles. Sitting was followed up by walking meditation which meant that I would stand in the coconut grove swinging my arms around to prevent the mosquitos from swarming me. Every once in a while I did get the chance to look at my feet and really contemplate what it felt like to take a step. That's all meditation is really about, being mindful and being here, right now and not taking off into the past or into the future. Sounds simple but it's the hardest thing I've ever had to do. Even with all the modern day distractions gone my mind kept running through thoughts at lightspeed. I had no idea that there was so much constant chatter in my head. It was hard to calm down most of the time.

The group was pretty much average except for one guy that seemed to have been teleported from the flower-power seventies, complete with beard & long hair & acid washed shirts but he proved me wrong at the end of the retreat. There were days were I looked around during meditation to see if I was the only one fidgeting and going balistic. Luckily, the 350 pound American at the back of the room was also stealing glimpses of the room through his tightly squeezed eyelids. He closed them immediately when he saw me looking at him. The German couple I met on the train seemed to have it down pat.

Although I expected all the days at the retreat to be the same, I was pleasantly surprised by each day.

Day 1
The chanting monk (he leads the chants) picked up a dog that hung out with us and tried to carry it back to the Thai monastery. In the process of being carried the dog decided it would like to stay and so began to growl and bite the monk. Our entire group was already istting in the walless, pillared hall by the lake meditating. I was doing really well because I was watching the monk the entire time. He threw the end of his robe in the air to get away from the dog. It was like watching them dance in a lush slow motion painting of green and saffron. He grabbed the dog, flopped on it and called out "help me". Ten guys jump up and run towards them.

Day 2
It rained. Really rained. It was like someone turned the tap on a powerful showerhead. It fell straight. It fell for hours on end. The entire group moved from the walless hall to a drier spot.

Day 3
For a brief moment I meditated. Really meditated, not just repeating "geez, just focus on your breath. Stop thinking" to myself. It was quite a high. Difficult to describe. My posture straightened out and I felt light and clear for 15 minutes.

Day 4
The bats were back. They flew through the walless dining hall during evening tea in the dark. It stopped raining.

Day 5
It was a full moon in early November. The festival of Loi Krathong was celebrated. Tiny candle lit votive boats were set adrift on the lake outside the meditation hall. We sat in a dark sea of warm floating light. Loi Krathong pays tribute to the river goddess. It's a festival of letting go of all the things that create suffering in life. They simply float away on the boats down the river.

Day 6
I realized that I had formed an attachment to the British monk. He is funny and smart. He thinks that Colonel Sanders was probably reincarnated as a 15 legged chicken in one of his factories. His technique for overcoming sensual thought is to really think about the 'thing' that turns one on as it is. In all it's clinical detail under fluorescent light. Being all spiritual, I tried it. His technique didn't work for me. The 'thing' still does it for me. However, the technique for overcoming the desire to eat could work: "just imagine the food chewed up or better yet, imagine it vomited on a piece of newspaper being licked up by a dog. That should get rid of any desire to eat." Try it and let me know if it works. Is it lunch time yet?

Day 7
My mind was still having a million conversations a minute. It's hard to shut the constant sputter of thoughts off.

Day 8
"Why is this retreat 10 days long?" That's what I thought about while swatting mosquitos all day long.

Day 9
Only one meal was served at 8:30am. It was a full day of self directed meditation on an empty stomach. No schedules to follow except the 4am gonging and the 9:30pm lights out.

Day 10
I was scared. This was the last day and then it was off into a world without 4am gongs, prepared meals and regimented schedules focusing on breathing and spiritual development.

Stop the Flagging

Seems that whereever I go a Canadian with a flag has beaten me to it. What is up with that? It's actually embarrassing because people in the most random places will ask me for a flag (pin or postcard or patch) once they find out I'm Canadian and when I tell them I don't have one they look at me as though I am a freak. A monk at a monastery in Burma asked me casually where I was from. When I told him he said "you have a nice flag" he then pointed at the wall behind him and there it was, a handful of Canadian flags glued to a Buddhist calendar and all around us there were cats jumping about haphazardly.

Then last week I got on a boat to get to Raileh beach and the strange Estonian group I met pointed at the mast to let me know that I wasn't the first Canadian to visit this beach. I took a picture and now I would like to plead with Canadians everywhere to stop taking the freaking flag on their backpacking adventures. It's embarrassing. Germans don't do it. The Americans don't dare. Why us?


Ton Sai beach near Raileh. I spent all of last week here.

Happy Birthday

I've missed some key birthdays already and I'm sorry. I've been either in a meditation retreat without access to the world (Daniele) or in a bus (Aisha) and in the next couple of days I will be drunk (Lauren) or crossing the border into Laos (Paul). I didn't forget. I just couldn't/or won't be able to be near a computer when it all happens. Regardless, it hurts to miss so many great events in one month.

Happy Birthday Aisha! I wish you had sent me your phone number.

Islands in the land of smiles

I've made it to Koh Tao and walked straight into a strange love triangle between a couple of Iranians and an Irishman. Then met a Mexican guy that looks like the Afghan girl in that picture everyone knows. Went snorkelling with a French woman who smoked a big one just before entering the waters. Am now in Raileh on the famous rock climbing beach. A guy with an amazing body just asked me for a hug. Life's pretty good. Internet is reallllly expensive. More later.

Death by coconut

Here's what Hasina sent me in the email and below that is an interpretation and a personal threat and then some really purdy pictures of a hot guy. In case you missed the point of the first sentence: it's worth reading this post.


"i love that things double as a gas station AND a beauty parlour in bangkok. i guess the fumes from the gas station really open up your pores.
have you been to cabbages and condoms? make sure to get some cabbages after your meal...condoms are less nutritious.
i had a dream abotu you last night. i had a dream that i closed the window and accidentally killed this bird/vulutre (his beak got stuck in the window). then three more of these birds came to avenge the poor bird's death. i also killed them all because i was scared. then a few black cats came and i closed the door (whcih was made of glass) but this cat coudl talk and told me she coudl cut through glass and attack me. she cut through the glass and then in the next scene i met this really wonderful guy i had met. he liked me and i liked him and we were at this huge meeting and then dad walke din and i freaked out because i was with this guy. nothing happend he just sat down. then you came in with this black cat that wanted to attack me and the cat was really lovign to you and it didn't attack me but i was still really scared of it.
what do you think that all means? i should probably stop doing acid before i go to bed.
anyways. gotta get back to work."

Okay, I looked up vultures and black cats and hot guys. Vultures are symbols of prey and rebirth. Killing one in your dream means that you will defeat your enemy. Cats, on the other hand, are a bit more difficult to analyze. Some internet sites say they are symbols of female sexuality (duh) and that black cats are warnings of impending danger. Other posts say that cats are about you and your own feelings of vulnerability. Now on to hot guys. I looked up hot guys and an image of this fellow popped up.


If you dreamt about this guy then that is okay. A little gay, but okay. Life will go on. You will defeat your enemy and explore your female sexuality with him. However, if you dreamt about my man, this guy


then you are in trouble. You will probably die by having a coconut fall on your head as you walk down the streets of Vancouver. I, of course, will be petting a black cat right at that moment somewhere in Southeast Asia. Then I will get a tape worm and this will be followed by some very bad surgery and then some really great shots of me in a bikini on a beach in southern Thailand.

Let's look at my man, Dino Morea, some more.

We'd get along real well. As you can see, he's been to a beach before in very large jeans. I've been to a beach before too! Hence, we'd have lots to talk about.

Sometimes, he will be mad. Not at me, of course, but at the lack of really good male lead roles in Bollywood films. I will teach him how to meditate and help him overcome all that dukkha (suffering).


He will lift his shirt up for me using his mouth so that I may marvel at his pack. I like this shot. I've used it before on this site.

I like his face. A lot.