so i missed my buss stop, and i find my self trudging through downtown nam phong trying to get to my hose, when i take stock of myself,
i realize
1 im carrying a massive backpakers backpack full of wet clothes and my guitar
2 i havent showered like 2 days
3 ive got jungle mud in my hair and on my clothes
4im wearing the cleanest clothes ive got (which are not clean at all)
5 i smell terrible
6 my nalis are painted
7 ive gotta be at a meeting in one hr to renw my visa, or i get sent home
8 the last thing i ate was boilded chicken feet over 15 hours ago
9 and i couldent be happier
how did i get in this position
well let me enlighten you
(and mom dont worry i made it to the meeting)

so this week was pretty much the same as the last, only i finnaly started to take thai lessons my name in thai is
the lessons are ok, im still learning the alpha bet, theres 47 characters! so it might take a while!
anyways, at the end of the week,i was told i was going to some trip with the other exchange students, we really didnt know where we were going at all, but we had an ideqa that we were going camping and i was kinda afraid of what that ment, seeing as we were in thailand, and the only place we could really camp was the jungle!
so friday, i went to khon kaen to stay the night with the other exchange students and leave in the morning, so that night, we went to this carnavale that was going on at the lake, first we lit candles in these bouquts, and floated them down the lake(its a buddhist tradition and looked beautiful) they only do it twice a year, then and in november!
then we had the brilliant idea to go into a haunted house thing that was set up,
for those of you who know me, you know that underneath this manly physique im pretty much a pansy, so anyways w go in and they have things dropping from the celings (which are scary on its own) but the scariest thing there was this thai dude who had bones painted on this body(there was a blacklight on) who chased and came pretty close to molesting me until i threw that thai carnie into some 12 year olds and ran away!
ok i over reacted, but theres nothin scarier that a thai carnie!

the next morning we left and had a very long boribng bus ride to some ladys house, well actually they played some movie that was dubbed in thai, and those kind of movies are hillarious !(all the voices sound the same
hmmm when we got there it was a massive house, but what really drew my attention was thw yard, beside its beaing huge and full of plands fountains and a gazeebo, there were about ten little two man tents piched uyp all ove the lawn!
so i guess i didnt have to worry about the tigers, as much as i had to worry about the sprinkler system!
after exchanging pleasentries with our hosts we took off again to visit this massive resort(owned by the lady who owned th house) and our rotary guides decided, that instead of sleeping in the tents weed stay there, (finne by me!)
so after that we went out hiking, which led us to this massive river that we were alowed to plya in!
so pretty much i have to ad mit i am now ryan the rver king, becasue basically i forded the freezing watters and when i got suck, i actually CLIMBED VINES THAT WERE HANGING FROM A TREE and swung to the side of a massive iverturned tree, climbed the stump(it was like a ten foot climb in serious!!!!) and used the thing as a bridge to get to the other side!!!!!!!!
oh yeah i felt like freakin' indianda jones!!!!!!


after my conquest we went to a memorial for a some battle ontop of this one hill, it was awesome it overlooked the valley down below, and the place was absolutly increadible!
later that night we had dinner at the resort then all the exchange students went to a spot by the lake to hang out, play guitar and cards,snd after that, i was walking back to my room with my guitar when i ran into this dude with a guitar, he asked me if i wanted to play with him, i said sure, we started talking and his nmae was ryu(awesomw, just like street fighter!!!) he lives in bkk, hes chinnesse and has been playing guitar for 13 years and let me tell you this dude was amazing!!!
he was a little bit drunk, and he would periodically take his shirt off to play certain songs, but he was so cool!
the funny thing was he could play amazingly and everything, but he didnt know any of the words to the american songs,hed just make up words that ryhmed, so id sing and play my guitar like a jimbae, while he shredded his way through tears in heavean, texas flood, hotel california(this son had an awesome drum part that was fun to play) wonderwall, and just tons more, around midnight, i was tierd, so i said sawahdee krup and left him to his shirtless guitar playing and went to bed!

the next morning right befoer we took off to go hiking again i ran into Ryu again, words to me were ryan, i think im a little sick, was i drunk last night?"
i laughed and told him yes, and piled into the van to go to this waterfall!
when w got there, we foud out the place had a cave, so we went to explore, this place was huge, it went about 10km into the mountain, we couldent go the whole way, cause the thai dude that was leading us said that rains made it flodded!
but the part that we went to was amazing, there were bats, stalagtite/mites and in some spots was pitch-cant-see-your-hand-infront-of-your-face-balck!
after we left the cave we wentout to swim in the waterfall, and inderneath the fall, we found an underwater cave and it was soooo cool!(we carved out intitals on the wall!)
so we swam and fed the fish and swung on vines for a couple of hours before we headded home,thuis time to the tents, after dinner some monks came to pray the lady wo owns the houses mom, she died 100 days ago, and its tradition for monks to come and pray after 100 days, pretty sweet!
after that the five of us(sarah, maria, freya and cart(art is our thai friend hes cool)) started to get bored hangin out...
this is where i got my nails painted...
pink and lime green, the girls all agreed that i have very pretty feet, so i went ahead with the toenails too(i had to remove the paint on my finger nails for the meeting, but the toes remaim!)
after that we went hunting for fire flys, but wereunsuccesful in our mission and went to bed losers....
the next morning i woke up and had a breakfast of dragonfruit(its this awesome fruit thats pink and green on the outside, but white black on the inside! delicious!)
and we left to go and visit some mountain temples, the second one was way up in the mountains, and had this old monk that was literaly tatooed head to toe in charge.
then we went to another waterfall, this one was even cooler thatn before this one we had to wike over this rock bed, but the cool thing was that the rock bed wasnt total rock, it was more like honeycombed rock bridge that is 10 feet over the raging water, you had to hop from rock to rock to get to the water fall, until we got to the water falland climbed down to the bottem and swam for a while, after that we were allowed to ride in th back of this safari like pickup as it took us the 20km to the highway, the waterfall was in the middle of a valley, so to get out we had to go over a mountain or two, and every bend we turned around was higher than the last, and the view just kept on getting better and better as we flew(i really mean that this driver was nuts!)across the mountainside, calling out to the villagers!
after that we were all beat, so we got back in the vans and drove home, we got back to khon kaen around 8 o clock, and i was exhasted, so i stayed the night at carts house, and he showed me his favorite food, and that is, gai tao, boiled chicked feet!!!!!
they actually werent half bad, considering i was eating skin and cartilage, kinda tasted like chiken!
i imeadiatly konked out abd woke up late, threw on dirty clothes and hauled myself into the bus(th "busses" are actually pickups with benches and roofs on them)and well thats my story, you know the end already!
hmmm oh yeah a thai word/ phrase
oh hers one i use often!
"ไปนอน"
"pai nohn krup/kaa" (kaa if your a girl and krup if your a dude)
what it means is
"im goin to bed!"
i use it alot, cause welll... i get tierd!
there you go another thai lesson!
well that about sums it up




oh i met a girl,
but i bet you dont want to hear about that though

till nex time!
ryan