Month ten of my journey brought me to Thailand. As I'm sure all my loyal readers (anybody? 👀 ) will remember, I already went to Thailand and wrote a whole post about that amazing trip. Thailand had been my favorite pre Remote Year trip in my entire 32 year old life and so naturally I was pretty psyched to go back as a 33 year old. This trip, however, I was going to the north....to Winterfell (sorry, thats a Game of Throne reference, but you already knew that cause you watch Game of Thrones).
We rolled into the city of Chang Mai (Winterfell) on a Saturday (we roll into every new city on Saturday, so really this is completely irrelevant) and immediately got into the action with a Muy Thai fight. The members of the group fought each other in a Muy Thai match to the death.
I think we know who won this fight....it was me.
After I killed everyone in my group in the fight, I found a replacement group of people who all had the same names and looked exactly the same as my old group.
Along with my new group, I quickly followed up the violent damage and death with a meditation session for inner peace.
One of us doesn't belong...
Monk chats are available outside some of the temples in Chiang Mai so that the monks get a chance to practice English and the white heathens get a chance to ask questions about the monks. Then they try to convince you to become a monk, but I told them it would conflict with my strong Jewish beliefs.
So many monks
Chiang Mai has an abundance of two things; temples and coffee shops (sometimes coffee shops in temples....monkachinos...too soon?). The city is a huge digital nomad hub (which I assume is why the monks hang out there) and we met plenty of foreigns living in the city. Despite the abundance of white people, locals still like to laugh and take pictures with us whities. Like after we finished our half marathon.
Running brings people of all races together
I ran the second half marathon of my trip in Chiang Mai. It gets pretty hot there during the day and the pollution becomes pretty bad from all the motorbikes, so we actually got started around 5AM. I ran, I finished, I took a group picture with some random Asian people.
Just like home
Other than the early start, the race was just like any race back home...
Mush has long been my favorite post race food
When I wasn't running in Thailand, my favorite mode of transportation was scooter. Everyone goes everywhere by scooter in Thailand, so I had to rent one for the month. We even took the bikes on a 3 hour road trip over to a hippie westernized town called Pai.
Don't mess with this biker gang
Was it dangerous? Yes, yes it was.
In Pai, they have a giant white buddha, which is something I can get behind because I'm very white.
Thats my type of god
The highlight of the month, though, was the ties. Great ties. The best. The best ties. You are not gonna believe the quality of these ties. I'm telling you, magnificent.
But other than the ties, the next highlight was the elephants.
An elephant's trunk is so bizarre
We visited an elephant sanctuary where they save elephants and treat them well. And one thing I learned is that riding elephants is really bad for their spines, so if you go to an elephant place that lets you ride them....that's bad and you should open the gates and set the elephants free. Here's some more elephant photos for your enjoyment.
New girlfriend?
They eat a lot
They sometimes try to climb hills
I dunno why I picked this picture to be here
Elephants love me
We were in Chiang Mai in December which meant we got to celebrate Christmas...Thailand style. Actually we just dressed up as Santa Clause and went to a bar.
Stupid Americans (actually I'm the only American in the picture, he's from Belgium and she's from Singapore)...stupid American
But being there in December also meant I had a whole week off to party in Thailand. And party we did. I went with a group of people to Bangkok and then another group to Koh Phagan (an island). And I got back to my Thailand roots....
Soi Cowboy...one of the seediest places in Bangkok
A condom restaurant...pretty random
China town...in Thailand....why not?
Drinking buckets and getting massages on Khao San road
And then we went to Koh Phagan. There is one thing that Koh Phagan is known for and that is its full moon party. An all night party on the beach. And they just happened to be having one on new years eve (how convenient).
Actually now that so many drunk foreigners go there for the party, they have lots of other parties too. Like the half moon party and the jungle party and the quarter moon party and the Tuesday party. So we went to many a party.....and they were all very similar. They call that same-same in Thailand.
Getting painted for one of the many parties on the island
Different night...same-same
Oh cool...no way. Black light paint
I hope they have black light paint here
I love this creepy photo...that's a random guy photo bombing
Oh yeah, we did some stuff during the day too
But we did a lot more stuff at night
And New Years
The NYE sign exploded at midnight with sparks flying everywhere seriously burning people #thailandParty.
Total countries visited on my trip: 22 (Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Peru, England, Belgium, Italy, Czech Republic, Ireland, Portugal, Austria, Hungary, Serbia, Germany, Croatia, France, Spain, Qatar, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia (Bali), Thailand)
