In april 2005 i spent three weeks in thailand. i had just finished three months traveling solo around new zealand and two weeks checking out australia (as if it's possible to check out australia in two weeks). i met my girlfriend mallory for a week of rock climbing and relaxing on railey beach, which served as a greay way to decompress after 4 months of traveling downunder. to summarize, My three weeks in thailand could be broken into 3 distinct segments...

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Week 1. Simply put: Paradise. A vacation from vacation. Is that possible? Yes. It happens when you isolate yourself from the rest of the world on beautiful sandy beaches surrounded by dramatic limestone cliffs, rock climb 5 feet from the ocean, drink papaya smoothies every day, watch the sunset over the ocean every night, and experience it all with a wonderful partner. Mallory and I found this paradise on Ton Sai beach in Southern Thailand and i will never forget it.

Week 2. Back on the wagon: traveling again. After saying goodye to Mallory in Bangkok i dug into my reserves and took a lonely night train to Chiang Mai, the northern capital of Thailand. But i was not alone for long. For the first time on my trip, i met a fellow traveler that i really connected with (besides mallory) and we became best friends for my one week in Chiang Mai. Matias is an Argentine from Buenos Aires. There were two main things that we had in common: food and photography. Both of us loved hunting around the city for out-of-the-way food stalls and strolling the side streets in the evening waiting for a photogenic situations to unfold. We talked about life in Buenos Aires, life in Boulder and life on the road, with the zeal and curiosity that only traveling brings about. I've never met someone who shared my travel sensibilites as much as Matias, and that alone made my trip to the north worth while. Also in Chiang Mai:

• Meeting two other friends Simone (from Germany) and Tracy (from Seattle). The four of us did everything together.
• Drinking beers in the "So Cool" bar and talking with the owner Oodie "The Houdini" who lost his bar in Phuket to the tsunami and relocated to Chiang Mai.
• Going to the sunday market and eating the real food of Thailand. Food that's wrapped in banana leaves or served on a stick. Food that's spicy and sweet and salty and sour at the same time and engages all your senses. This will endure as one of my finest asian experiences of all time.
• Learning to make Tom Kah Gai (Lemongrass and coconut soup), Gaeng Hanglay Gai (Northern style chicken curry), Khao Neow Dam Piak (black sticky rice pudding) and much more during several full day cooking courses.
• Getting one hour Thai massage almost every day
• Running into Lara Day at a yoga class in a city of 1.5 million people. Lara was a yoga instructor of mine back in Boulder.
• Volunteering to sell yoghurt drinks with some local kids in the market and being offered a job as a "celebrity salesman" at the end for $5/day.
• eating the spiciest Som Tom (green papaya salad) ever in a small village outside Chiang Mai.
• Banana Roti (aka banana pancakes) on the street
• Sticky rice with mangoes. All time favorite thai snack.

Week 3. Decompression: Back to the beach. Chiang Mai had amazing food, great friends, friendly locals, and a taste of real thai culture (instead of beach culture), but the pollution and heat of the city was insufferable. So i decided to return to the clean air of the beach for my final week in Thailand. I found it on an Island in the south called Ko Lanta. It was here that i also had my first experience with the aftermath of the tsunami. The first beach i arrived at on Lanta was almost completely deserted. Bungalows were destroyed, there was no reggae music playing and i had to search to find any sign of people. I then moved to a bungalow resort further north that was relatively unharmed. I spent my days on Ko Lanta going for morning runs on the dusty roads (passing by elephants, rabid dogs and motorists bewildered by that fact that i was running with my shirt over my face to protect from the maelstrom of dust), reading books by the pool (yes, the pool. as if the ocean wasn't enough), and doing evening yoga in my bungalow.

That's thailand in a nutshell.

the following is a journal entry from bangkok:

March 20, 2005

after four restless hours of sleep, the first tuk-tuks are heard sputtering down the street below. it is our first morning in bangkok and i'm so happy to be here. i met mallory at the bangkok airport at midnight last night; she, arriving from denver after a 28 hour journey, and me, arriving from sydney after a 12 hour journey. we finally get to sleep around 2am in our air conditioned room, which we splurged on by paying $10 (cost of a sandwhich in sydney).

no better way to explore bangkok than on a run in the city. i step out of the guesthouse and am confronted by the smoggy, humid air like a brick wall. bam! welcome to bangkok, i think to myself. i had glanced at a map before i left the room an decided i would stick to the main backpacker district, known as banglampoo, which is surrounded by a series of canals. as long as i stayed on one side of the canal, i figured i would't get lost.

five minutes later, i was completely lost. i tried using temples as landmarks but i soon realized that my untrained eye could not tell one buddhist temple from the next, and after crossing several bridges i soon become completely disoriented. i didn't let that concern me for the moment because i was enjoying the sights so much. thankfully, it was sunday morning so the streets were relatively calm. i passed through temple upon temple with ornate golden rooftops, markets selling flowers and sticky rice, and shopkeepers outside sweeping their stoops.

the sun was just beginning to burn through the thick cloud of smog that permenently resides over this city as i made my way around the golden palace. by now i was feeling a burning in my nostrils and a rancid film developing in the back of my throat from the intense smog. finally i found a park in the middle of the city and i ducked in through the gate to have a look. loud techno music was pumping for the morning aerobics classes performed by the fountain... teenagers were playing soccer on the concrete court and elderly folks were sitting on benches doing interesting stretching and coordination exercises. there were even some runners jogging around the park. apparently nobody else is dumb enough to run on the streets in bangkok. i joined them for a couple laps and decided it was time to find my way home.

after 20 minutes of asking local shopkeepers and pedestrian

s "where is kao san road?" and getting different answers every time (or frequently just a smile and a sideways cock of the head indicating they had no idea what i was talking about), i decided to give up and jumped in a tuk-tuk. i was so far away at this point that it took me 10 minutes to get back.

mallory and i had lunch of green curry, papaya smoothie, and warm vegetable and tofu salad (total cost = $1.50) and set off on a journey down kao san road. she's out shopping while i take a breather in this internet cafe. it's great to have a mallory as a travel mate here and i'm looking forward to our next week together. tonight we get a night train down to krabi and eventually tonsai, where we'll be rock climbing, swimming and soaking up the sun!