Chiang Mai, Again:

With only 15 more days in Thailand, I rushed back to my Northern haven to do all the little things I had neglected to do when it felt like I had all the time in the world. It also worked out that I met up with a few old friends.




































Alice and I were finally able to spend some time together after she quit her job. It was fun to go shopping with a GIRL! We also ran into Scott and Shannon one night on our way to the market. It was like an Emergency Communities reunion.





And then I had a little Lewis and Clark reunion with Bret and Kristin











They are both amazing artists, so it was easy to convince them to take a batik class with me just outside of the city.











I also made new friends, including an adventurous French cyclist. We rented a motorbike for a day and did our own little Hill Tribe tour, visiting several villages north of Chiang Mai



































































Though the villages were remote and described in guidebooks as "traditional," or "primitive," in some ways they are extremely advanced. I loved seeing bamboo and thatch huts with their own solar panels.


















I also looked up my friend Joshua, who I met on my trip to Laos, and went to visit him on an organic, permaculture farm near the village of Mae Jo, north of Chiang Mai.












And guess who was staying at the farm next door: Alice!



















Josh and a handful of others are interns at
Pun Pun Farm, learning how to build with local, easily accessible materials. They are helping in the early stages of a yoga center, using adobe and cob to create a work of art.

I had a great time cooking in their open kitchen, and I was even able to get my hands dirty on my last day there.









































But then it was time for me to leave Chiang Mai. I had one more place to see before getting down to Bangkok to fly home. I cried when I left. When my bus broke down just south of the city, I thought maybe the universe was conspiring to keep me in Chiang Mai, but really it was just making my trip a little easier. I was able to sleep really well in the broken down bus, and the delay put me in Ayuthaya at a more reasonable hour.





Ayuthaya. My main objective was to visit Wat Mahathat, with the buddha head in the tree. I was a little embarrased by my obsessive desire to see this tourist icon, but the head was fantastic, and the tree glorious. I loved that the temples of Ayuthaya were in ruins, that you could see layers of building and rebuilding, and then the simple picking up of pieces and letting them be what they were: broaken buddhas, leaning stupas and crumbling pagodas. I liked the stacked-stone look of the multitude of buddhas: torsos balanced on crossed legs, and small stones set on top like heads.



























Wat Mahathat is not the only temple in Ayuthaya. The former Capital is packed with spectacular ruins.