Off the Tourist Trail in Nan

I know I can't compete with Michael's exciting updates, but I figured it was about time for me to write again. Here's what I've been up to:

Last Friday I called the Akha Hill House with the idea that I'd be going there the next day. But they said they currently had a volunteer already who would be there for another week. So then I figured I'd stick around Chiang Mai till Sunday to do the free Meditation retreat offered through the same temple where we went for Monkchat. But no luck there either--when I called the monks, they said the retreat was cancelled for that week because of a Buddhist holiday. I was ready to get out of Chiang Mai so I took a look through my guidebook. I could have gone west to Pai, but from all the tour agencies selling tickets to there, and from what everyone I talked to was saying, it sounded like that was just the next stop on the tourist path and I wanted to step off of it for a little while.

I decided instead to take a bus to Nan, a smaller, less touristy town to the east. I got there in the late afternoon on Saturday and set out on foot to find a guest house. I stopped by a little store to ask for directions, and they ended up calling the guesthouse for me. While the guy was calling, a huge bolt of lightning lit up the sky and seconds later it started pouring. The shop owners invited me to sit down on their sofa while I waited out the rain. But it showed no signs of letting up so the guy drove me to the guesthouse himself. I ended up having the place to myself, and the only other Farang (foreign) tourist I saw the whole time I was there was a British guy who was leaving the day I got there.

After exploring town, the morning market and the museum the next day, I rented a bike and rode a little ways out of town. It was beautiful but way too hilly for the bike I had (just two gears) so I didn't get very far. On the way back I ran into Tao from the guest house who invited me out for a tour on his motorbike. I managed to get a nasty burn on my leg from the exhaust pipe (second time on this trip--when will I learn?) but other than that it was a beautiful trip. We rode through small villages and stopped to buy some bananas from a woman who insisted on also giving us some sticky rice (the staple food up here) and mangoes. Later I visited Tao's house and his sisters brought over dinner.

I was planning on leaving the next day, but Tao convinced me to stay so I could visit his sister's school, as well as an Australian monk that he knew that was living in a forest monastery. Visiting the school was lots of fun--we counted, did the Hokey Pokey, and learned animal names. I even got a kiss on the cheek from my new boyfriend, six year old Gang. I had a great time in Nan thanks to Tao, his sister and her students.

Yesterday I took the bus from Nan to Chiang Rai--seven hours of going up and down hills. I really wasn't sure if we were going to make it up some of them, we were crawling so slowly that I'm sure Michael would have been faster on his bike. I better go now, I'm getting picked up at 4:30 to go to the Akha Hill House. Oh- and I posted some of the cooking photos here.