Today I had booked a tour through my hotel.  It didn’t turn out to be a tour so much as it was a 15 year old kid leading me through the jungle to see a waterfall.  I wanted to see the waterfall and some rice terraces and that’s what I got so it was ok that it wasn’t a tour.  The waterfall didn’t seem to have any way to it other than the tiny trail we took and there was no tourist parking lot and no other people so that was cool.  The rest of the walking was beautiful too.

I can’t remember if I wrote about this before or just thought about it.  When I was in Vietnam and got sick, I didn’t want to eat.  Part of it was because everything made me feel bad, but part of it felt like my body wanted to fast.  I’ve never fasted before and I know that if you fast for more than a few days your body starts to heal things and it becomes like a full body reset.  I felt very strongly like my body wanted to reset, but because I was traveling, I felt scared to fast.  Since I didn’t have time to exercise for a few months before I left the US, I haven’t exercised since I moved to Thailand, and I was sick for so long, I’ve lost a lot of weight and it’s mostly muscle.  My arms and legs are super tiny.  For whatever reason, I’m still holding some fat in the belly just in case?  I don’t feel overly concerned about it though.  It kind of feels like a reset, like I’m down to muscle ground zero, and when I start exercising again, I’ll start re-growing muscle from a reset place without all the old stories I use to carry in my muscles.  I’m not sure if that’s even possible, but that’s what it feels like.  I count the tiny walk I did today as the first day of new muscles.

After hiking I went to the pool.  It was sooooo delightfully cold.  I tried to work on lesson plans and some engineering work, but the wifi here is so spotty, I didn’t get as much done as I hoped.  I changed into the room I booked.  It’s huge.  There is a queen bed and a twin in here.  The balcony is bigger than the entire room I had last night.  It overlooks the rice fields and has a rushing creek behind it.  It has a roof that is open where the roof meets the wall so I’ll be one with the bugs again!

I took a class at the hotel in making offerings.  They weave intricate baskets and decorative things out of palm leaves, then put flowers and other things in them and use them as offerings.  It’s like paper cut out snowflakes meets origami.  So, one lady who didn’t speak English tried to teach me how to make them.  Another lady joined in.  If I didn’t get it right immediately, the second lady would take it from me and do it.  I’m not sure if it was really difficult or if they were really bad teachers.  Considering I am quite artistic, I’m going with bad teaching.  It basically became an exercise in watching them make things and then decorating them with flowers.

Now it’s dark and I’m sitting in my giant room.  The amount of things out there calling to each other is ridiculous.  I assume the really loud ones are frogs, but I am not sure.  This is the noisiest place I’ve ever been.  I grew up in Florida on a marshy creek and there was never this much going on at night.  There are at least 20 different bug/frog sounds, the stream behind my room, a cat with a lot to say, random motorbikes, and off in the distance, a gong.  But, so far, no tokay!

(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore