Hello everyone! Spent the last few days in Phuket picking up our luggage, hanging out with our TEFL instructors and eating in our favorite restaurant, known as "chicken place". I cannot even convey to you how amazing this place is. For less than a dollar you get the best chicken meal ever, Rach and I ate there at least once a day (sometimes for breakfast) while we lived in Phuket and have been talking about it since. Being reunited was greatm, the owners remembered us and tried to convince us (through our huge langauge barrier) we should move to Phuket Town. Rach and I printed out this picture for them, framed it and wrote "best chicken in Thailand" with a Thai translation for them. The woman actaully started crying when we left . So if we don't return to the states we may be at "chicken place" trying to learn the secrets of perfect chicken.Now we are back in Bangkok...had a freakout moment today when we could not figure out a good way to ship our teaching stuff to Korea and realized we either had to carry it all overland or buy a plane ticket to Korea. We were pretty close to abandoning the overland plan even though we have been really excited since our British friends planted the idea in our heads. Luckily we came across a very nice UPS man, the only helpful person in the entire Thai shipping buisness, I am sure of it, we talked to a lot of them. After a couple hours we figured everything out, handed over a wad of cash and our stuff will be in Korea in 3 days, way ahead of us. Our plans were not crushed and so we decided to celebrate and relax (which is all we wanted to do after days of going non-stop) by going to see a movie at the mall. We had some time to kill before the movie and so we decided to eat some crazy food. First stop: KFC ( in Thailand it serves rice instead of mashed potatoes with meals. ) You can also find quite a concoction on their menu: Corn Sundae...whoever thought that was a good idea was wrong, but we had to give it a go. The sweet salty thing is good at times (like mango sticky rice) but corn and ice cream should never be served together. After that experience we decided to cleanse our palat with a MC rice burger....basically a burger with a bun made out of rice. McDonalds is never good (I actually cannot even recall the last time I ate there) and I wouldn't say this was any different...but how can you not try a burger with a rice bun????Tomorrow we are out of here, I am ready for sure...I wonder if Cambodia puts corn in their sundaes???

Climbing Again in Krabi

The climbing was amazing, the crowds were not. We woke up early each morning to try to avoid the inevitable clusterfuck that would happen. Early mornings also saved you from the suffocating heat and constant sweat dripping from you while on the rock. However, nothing could save you from the monkies. At times, I would be near the top of a climb and they would start jumping from tree to tree all around me, making crazy monkey noises. I got the impression that they didn't want me there. It is crazy to watch them fling themselves into space, completely trusting that they will land on something. I had one hurl itself over my head one day. Monkies also really like bananas. Enough that they will break into your room in the middle of the night. Our friend Chris (the guy in the picture-he is from Durango, Colorado) woke up one night to crashing noises in his bungalow and found himself face to face with a monkey stealing his bananas. Another guy in our bungalows woke up to a 16 foot python in his bed. Fortunately, the worst that happened to me was a gecko dropping on me in the bathroom. It scared the shit out of me, but luckily I was in the bathroom already. Animal encounters, fun times.

We were sad to leave Ton Sai, especially because it is being turned into a resort next month. But our visas are running out and we needed to make a move towards Korea, so we left. I don't know if we will ever go back. With a tear in our eyes and a tightness in our throats, we bid farwell to the limestone cliffs, the longtail boatmen who screamed Ao Nang Ao Nang Ao Nang every few minutes, the Pyramid Cafe where we ordered coffee from a guy named Chai everyday, the bars where we drank buckets on the beach, and our fellow climbers from around the world. We move on to another place, fill our minds with more memories, and hope to see the friends that we leave behind again someday.

Spiritual Epiphanies

Since I love tallies, here is one for my meditation retreat:
Days spent living like a monk at a "forest" monastery- 10
Hours spent not talking- 250
Hours spent sitting in some sort of meditative posture- 71.75
Hours spent meditating- 59.25
Meals eaten each day- 2
Words spoken to Paco- zero
Glances we exchanges- occasional
British monks we fell in love with- 1
Times I spaced out while meditating- countless
Spiritual epiphanies- 1

We spent ten days at the "forest" monastery Suan Mok International at a silent meditation retreat. By forest, I mean some banana trees and a few coconut groves, but don't try to meditate under a coconut tree because coconuts fall and they are HEAVY. Every so often, the silence would be broken by the loud thunk of a coconut hitting the ground. Paco had a few thoughts of If a coconut landed on my head right now, would I be happy with how I have spent the past few days... Of course, the answer is yes.
Ten days were spent learning about Buddhism, meditation and ourselves; all without speaking a word. To be honest, I did say "It's only 2 o'clock" to an old woman on day six when she didn't understand my hand-waving elicitation of the information. The strain of those four words on my vocal cords made them ache for about two hours. On day ten, I think I whispered "Hey there, what are you doing?" to a spider that was jumping on me, but I am not sure if that was out load or in my head. Overall, I consider that to be not speaking for ten days.
Just imagine us, 180 people living in close proximity, walking around in a zombie-like state, trying to pretend that no one else is around them. The zombie-like state is called "mindfulness," but I just think of it as moving in slow motion. Since I am pretty bad at being mindful (easily observed by my general clumsiness, which by the way, is not good when you are trying not to disturb the silence and you keep knocking over chairs), I just pretended by moving in slow motion. If you move in slow motion, it appears as if you are paying careful attention to your actions. This is "mindfulness."
I did get some insight into Buddhism; it's connectedness to nature and constant reminders of dukkha, or suffering. Good karma and meditation are the answers to all of this dukkha, and I tried to be mindful of good karma by not killing the mosquitoes that were biting me. I also tried to meditate, but I am not very good at it. Meditation is supposed to be calming, but I found it to be a rollercoaster. By 10 a.m. on the first day, I gave up meditating, but by that afternoon I was bored enough to give it another go. I spent a lot of time spacing out and giving people nicknames. There goes shrooms girl- named for the "mindful" way that she examined each piece of lettuce before taking a bite, which made her appear as if she were on drugs. Sometimes I would look over at Paco, and she would be sitting there, ever-so still, looking ever-so enlightened, but I knew she was just as bored as I was.
Des (British friend from Laos) said that he thought that the most difficult part would be thinking of clever things to say but not being able to share them with anyone. That part didn't bother me so much. I got used to the running dialog in my head. The difficult part for me was not being able to tell Paco when something happened. Not a lot happens when you are meditating, and when something does, you want to tell someone. Like when I was attacked by ants. Every morning, Paco and I would "rake" a pathway as our chore. The term "rake" is used loosely because it was done with thai brooms, which are most ineffective. On day one, I was happily "raking," when I noticed that my feet were a little itchy. I looked down, and to my surprise, my feet were black. I wasn't wearing contacts or glasses, and couldn't see very well so I leaned closer. I discovered that the itchiness was from my feet being completely covered in ants. I jumped around, trying to brush them off without killing them (bad karma), and then looked over at Paco, wishing that I could tell her what just happened. I had stepped on ant super-freeway and been swarmed. I was so paranoid about being sprayed with some sort of ant-attacking-pheromone that I went and covered myself in DEET. The next day, I was mindful of ant super-freeway and avoided it when raking. Unfortunately, my feet started itching again, and again I was swarmed. This time I had stepped into ants that were carrying off some larger insect. As I watched the ants carrying a considerably large object off, I had visions of the ants doing the same to me-like a scene from Gulliver's Travels. Ants can be scary. I saw that Disney movie when they took on the grasshoppers. The swarming ants became an almost daily experience, and it kind of freaked me out. So here is my spiritual epiphany, Jefe: ants are taking over the world. Just you wait, they are plotting things. I can tell. I tried to get a picture of ant super-freeway, but it wouldn't turn out. Ants. Watch out for them. Ok, maybe that's not a spiritual epiphany, but I didn't really have any so I had to make one up.
The pictures are of our meditation hall, the British monk we loved, my "cell," and my view in the meditation hall. They really do call your room a cell, and it comes with a wooden pillow- a block of wood for you to rest your head on. Seriously. So that is my meditation for you. Now that I am enlightened, we are off to climb for a week.