upward and onward and all good things to come.

so i'm waiting for the delivery of a CMR250 to head off into the wilds of Thailand, Moosie and I are going on a 3-4 day off road motorcycle trip, we've got a map and a small bag packed and a vage idea of where we want to go and see, first stop should be pai if we can make it there before night fall. the map we picked up shows the rough dirt trails that connect small villages, and they are 4x4 dry only so should keep it intresting, only7 thing i don't know is how far to expect to make it each day, so hopefully we won't get stuck in the middle of no ware.
while in chaing mai i have been taking full advantage of the great medical facility's, have gotten a bunch of xrays and a ton of tests, trying to take advantage good hospitals and medical service while I'm in a country where it's available and cheap. (fuck i hate Americas medical system)
anyways, I hope going with a 2 stroke isn't a mistake, it sure would suck to have it break down.. gonna keep my fingers crossed.
I'll try and hit a computer at our next city to update how it's going.

ugg

gurm.. i hate this bloggy blog blog..
but i guess I'll babble a tad.
seeing how in the last 14day I've had 20 message not responded to on myspace, so no one to write back to..
just got back from heading out of town, whet out to a place called 2nd home. in a tiny village of 14 family's thers a monk who speaks English and you can viset him and help him work on his property and learn about local plants, mud brick building ect. ok, sounds cool, a fucking ass twisty 5 nauseous hours getting thrown about in the back of a pick up with tons of boxes and house wife's and puking children. we get to a beautiful temple on a beautiful hill on a valley, on the other side is some low mud huts to sleep in, and i small living space.. and about 12 obnoxious khosarn road travel hippie kids.
bitching and playing the worlds worse crappy music on the guitar, and bickering and generally acting like people under 20 do. hell.
pure fucking hell, the bit of work i got to do out there was nice, i helped a local farmer plant some of a peanut crop, but in reality the people out there were helping no one, the villagers humored everyone by letting us "help" but i have the feeling they probably would have gotten it done faster with out us there.
after that i helped on very nice, well meaning goober with a compost project that he had been working on, i guess he had been at it for about a week and had about 3 sticks cut. in an hour I helped him get it planed out, 1/2 built and on secured foundation (I still give it a 90% chance of falling off the side of the hill.)
we were invited to a mediation at night, but i left once 1/2 of them were asleep on the floor with there feet pointing a the buda image.
hell.
and really I've realized why Israeli people travel, to make the French look like less of dush bags.
i'm going to try and go buy a GPS unit and go on a few day motorcycle ride..
anything else, well, my foot still feels broken, it's been about a month of trying it ignore it. I finlay when to a Doctor, i thought the fact that it now snaps every time i step is probably a bad sign... we'll that was useless.. they told me the same thing every Doctor has ever told me every time i've gone to one about an injury, "take some ibuprofen and come back again if it doesn't get better" fantastic.
well, ok, guess i'm a bit pissy, it's hot.. bla.

well, at least i don't have some fuck-tard singing anymore 4 non blonds over and over and over....

Myanmar

Well, it's been imposable to post at all from anywhere in this country. so this is the first time, but i was a bit over the blogger thing anyways.
so far I've spent a week in Yangoon, mainly training traditional Myanmar boxing, which is quite crazy. unluckily i missed the one of the few time a yea they had live fights, but I'm still keepijng my eyes pealed, there boxing here isn't quite like Muay thai, they use more sweeps, trips, arm locks, head buts, switching strong side and spinning back fists.. oh yea and they don't fight with boxing gloves on! yeiks.
the training in Yangoo was great, the instructor pulled me from the class (at the YMCA) and started giving me private instruction with some of his more advanced students, and he started bring me to his Akido studio. what was pretty cool, I only wish it was possible to spend more time in this country to train, buy Yangoon is filthy, hot, and crowed so donb't know how long i'd want to stay in it anyways.. that and tanning on super smooth concrete floors sucks..
next I went to golden rock which was preaty amazing, huge fucking bolder balancing on the last 2 or 3 inches of a cliff, and the bottom of the bolder which is touching is only about 3 inches, it's a poplar pilmragig point for budest, and they've covered the bolder in so much tiny bits of gold left theres not a bit of rock exposed.
after that I hoped on the top of a pick up with a bunch of Burmese guys, they get pickups build a steel cage over the bed so lady's can sit in the bed and men on the roof. it was a long brutal 6 hours in the sun but the view was amazing, and all the guys packed on top got a good laff at the check points where we had to get off, or cross through areas holding onto the sides ect, and I was clue less, but they were super nice (this was before I could speak any Burmese) and offered me snacks of deep fryed Beatles (bright green and yellow suckers with heads that looked like praying mantises) I took that truck to Bango and spend about 40 min trying to negotiate a fair price for a bus to Taungoo where I was searching for Akiko a famous boxer who might teach me. on the bus I met some super nice Nuns and chatted with them a bunch, at the end I went to there convent and hung out and talked a bit and they showed be a good guest house, Taungoo was really nice because there were no tourist at all, I didn't see one white person, so I was a bit of a celbraty when I'd go to the market, after a couple of times of going they got to know me and I'd get followed by a herd of little kids jumping up and down saying hello over and over again, and father back a pack of giggling teen age girls.
thge markets had some great handmade products, and I finaly got a pair of handmade sandals made for truck tires, with tire tred on the soles and all, the'll take forever to break in, but still sweet, (all set for the Apocalypse, you homos can prance about in your new rock fashion booties, lol)
while in Vietnam I tryed to find a pir of the ho chi men sandals, but at the chi nchi tunnels they only had really huge ones and super small ones..:(..
I finally got to meet Akiko and his father, crazy ugly scary huge guys that were super nice, but they didn't seem interested in teaching so I just said hi and got a photo with them.
after Tangoo, I headed to Kalaw, or tryed to, I sat (with my pack of nun homies) at the side of the road for about 4 hours but no bussed wanted to have a white person on it, I guess it's an added responsibility, and theyre whiny. but finaly I got a bus and got into Kalaw ass early in the morning. I wanderer arou8nd like a zombie looking for a guest house, and after walking the whole town I found one and checked in, then I headed out again to look for a trek guid to get to Inlay like, after several hours of wondering around and talking to people, none of which could understand who I was traveling alone, I found out it would be ass expense to get a guide, and they had rairly ever had someone alone ask so i'd have to find someouther people to go with, but, I hadn't seen any honkys in town so there didn't seem like much of a chance of that.. back at my guest House i found out a couple of Canadians had set off earlier that day and if i left right away I could probably catch them and there guide.. so without even getting to use the room I had rented I got my stuff together and headed out, I brought an extra shirt, a rain jacket, tooth brush, water uv pen (to sterilize water), my canteen, and a small scarf type wrap from Vietnam to use as a towel ect, and some soap and hit the road, it took about 4-5 hours of practically running to get to the village where they were but we made it before sunset, the canden people were nice. it was funny they had big back packs with stuff hanging off them everywhere, I felt a bit silly with just my hip pack with my stuff in it (of course i still brought more than I needed).
it took 3 full days of a quick paced walk to get to inlay lake, along the way we hit a few hill tribe villages which were intresting, preaty much forgotten by time, the second night we stayed in an old (150 or so year old) budest monastery, where we got woken up at 5 am by loud chanting. kinda cool.\
in the morning we got to spend some time talking to the head monk, who taught us all about how the world was a big frying pan that spun and that we should stay away from the country's on the edges so we didn't fall off (all this while he's wresting hjis arm on a globe) but he explained they the globe was just round to it was easier to spin. he also tryed to explain how the Moon was eaten by some big critter in the sky but it was kind of lost in translation, our guide/translator didn't seem too keen on telling us all about what should be common knowledge. he also talked about how Myanmar is the biggest and wealthiest country in the world, ect ect(*it's funny, anywhere you go in the world the back wards people always think there country is the biggest, best, ect.. it reminded me of all the "America fuck ya" people in the usa) but you could tel the monk was quite bright, it was just all the stuff everyone there knew to be true, like that the foragers that go there have the same color skin as the Burmese people, but we put on makeup (sunblock) that turns our skin white)
Inlay lake was great, a whole little town built over the lake, all the houses on stilts and little boats to get around, so cool, even little baby kids paddling around from here to there.
I spent one day out on the lake going to the different shops and seeing the neighborhoods and floating gardens. another day I spent biking around on a rickety old bike (cover your eyes bike nerds) and petaled out to the west mountains, I was trying to hit some hot springs out that way but when i finaly got there they had jacked the price up 3x so I said fuck that. on the way back a monsoon shower started dumping so i hung out under a tree with a big pack of monks, I ended up helping them huld cut down trees and then when the rai got worse I hung out with them under a huge Chinese truck. they put a monks robe over my shoulder so i didn't get cold and gave me coffee candy, they were great, joking around and laffing up a storm, but after about 45min under the ruck i decided i better just deal with eh rain and keep going, even though i would have liked helping them finish moving the wood.. oh well. the way back took a long ass time, the roads out there are just rocks pounded into the dirt, and the bikes are old 40's style so it was rough going. I stooped at a road side bamboo shack and got some food, but there were some government guys there and that made it really uncomfortable there (the government here is like George Bushes wet dream, they are rich from taking bribes (just like all our politicians) and if anyone doesn't agree with them they re killed. so they all strut around in there fancy uniforms and in there big shiny cars while everyone else is poor as fuck) anyways got to start wrapping this up... the next day i walked to the east mount ans and brought some donations to the monks there, toothbrushes, pens and such.. it was a nice 4 hour walk there and back, then I needed to get to the junction to catch my bus to Mandalay, yesterday I took a tricshaw around looking for military truck parts which was interesting but i didn't have much luck (except for getting a cool Bemuse license plate) and I climbed Mandalay hill, which except for getting followed up and back down by the police was nice, and I even joked with the police so they weren't too bad... today I think I'm going to try and head to Saggin, but I worry there a $10 fee to get in and I'm getting worried about $, there are no ATM's in this country.. so well see what happens...