Hey blog, what's up?

So I haven't been posting on here, probably for a variety of reasons. First of all a lack of motivation to do really anything. I'm not really sure where it comes from, or I would stop it. Like when I was like, I'm going tide my bike a lot every day and get things done at my site and learn how to do things like cook Thai food. Okay, so I learned how to make sticky rice, but now that I'm eating fruit and sticky rice on a regular basis, I feel like I just did that because you can eat it with your hands and so I have thus eliminated the need to do dishes.

Also, mainly the reason I write this is to show pictures right? I can't imagine what I write being that terribly interesting or useful, but pictures of things I'm doing in Thailand are cool right? And the people following are all my friends and stuff anyway, so you can just talk to me, which is way better anyway. The whole Peace Corps rule about my blog being protected does make it seem kind of useless. Where was I going with this? Oh yeah, I lost my camera.

So a few weeks ago I woke up at 7am in the morning, cause damn it I was going to go hiking. Somewhere new as well. The trail up Khao Chamao, the big mountain next to my site has a trail going off of the back side. During a conversation with someone who lives at the base of that trail, he suggested that it may go to the National Park on the other side. So I was going to hike to that National Park. And, since I don't have a car or friends to go with or anyway to set up a one way hike, I was going to then hike back over the mountain. Which is why I woke up at 7am in the morning.

Its about a 12 or 13 km bike ride from my house to the trail. I probably got 3 or 4km before it started pouring rain. This however was the weekend before a 2 week long meeting where I went to central thailand to listen to people talk at me from 8am to 5pm 6 days a week. So I wasn't going to let a little bet of torrential downpour (pa-yu in Thai) stop me. Fortunately by the time I got to the trail it had stopped raining. In fact, it hadn't rained there at all. I locked my bike to a tree, geared up, and started hiking.

It probably took about half an hour of hiking before I could hear rain up above. This lasted for an incredibly long amount of time before I felt any rain. Lots of large leaves up above hang onto the rain for a while apparently. Eventually it did start raining, but I've hiked in the rain lots before. Its kind of refreshing when its 95 degrees outside. So on I went, probably 2/3rds up the km high peak of Khao Chamao.

Which is when my knee felt kind of pinchy or itchy or something. I scratched through my pants, but felt something weird. So I pulled my pants down in the middle of the trail (no worries, Thai people don't hike.) Interestingly enough there were two leeches sucking on my knee. While back home we think of leeches as aquatic, Thailand has terrestrial leeches. I knew this, but hadn't really given it much thought until I saw two of them on me. I shrugged, and put my hand down pulling the first one off. It immediately turned its head around latching itself to my thumb. I flicked my hand around but it was already on there really well, and the only way I managed to get it off was flicking it with my other hand really hard. For the next one I grabbed a leaf off of a nearby tree and jerked it off after 3 or 4 tries. They do not let go easily. These things varied in size, but were mostly probably about as thick around as an average worm,a nd maybe half as long.

Having removed these two, I checked around for more, and seemed to be clear of them. No big deal, they didn't really hurt, even if it was a little gross. I tucked my pants into my socks to keep more from getting up in my pants, and started hiking again. About 30 minutes later I stopped to find 3 of the things crawling up my pants. Slightly annoyed, I grabbed a leaf and proceeded to jerk them off of me. In another 30 minutes, I looked down to check my pants again. I was somewhat horrified. There were 10 to 15 on them for each leg. All of the crawling upwards, looking a lot like inch worms. I looked on the ground and could see 5 or 6 more crawling across wet leaves coming for me. I climbed up on a small rock grabbing leaves to begin jerking the things off of me. Considering how hard they hang on, by the time some were off more had found there way to my rock. Eventually, after probably fifteen minutes or more of pulling leaches on me. But, it would probably be good to give one more check. This is when I discovered that one had gotten up under my shirt and was sucking away just below my belly button. Also, there was another one on the back of my leg inside of my pants. I have no idea how it got there. I quickly realized that leg hair makes leeches way harder to get off.

At this point I had had enough. I took off down the trail (running) despite it being very steep (4-5 km, 1000m) and covered in wet leaves mud, and lots of leeches which I can't imagine help very much with traction. Soon I realized that in my haste to get off the mountain and away from leeches, I had lost the trail. I was pretty sure I knew how to get back to it, but to my left I saw a rocky drainage that began heading off of the ridge. The leaches like hanging out on wet leaves, apparently rocks not so much. I made a (probably poor) decision to head down this way to avoid more leaches.

Getting to where there were lots of rocks, I began removing leeches again. This time they had figured out how to get in between my pant legs and my socks and there were a cluster of 6 of them on my right ankle, and other 2 that had gotten up onto my leg. There were also 3 on my back and another crawling around on my backpack, not to mention countless ones of them on my pants. I hastily began jerking them off with leaves again, until finally I felt I was leech free. Oh, also there was one way up on my left hip. Whatever events in my life led up to me wearing boxer briefs instead of boxers, I am thankful for them.

So I began making my way down the rocky drainage, thankful for not seeing leaches. It sometimes got overgrown with lots of thorns and branches, where I would try and find my way through. Eventually it turned into a little bed rock stream, and I could just lay down flat and slide underneath them. There were some fairly large waterfalls, 20 to 30 feet in succession, though not much water, that I climbed down with the help of some fortunately very strong routes and vines. After what seemed like forever of descending this drainage, it flattened out. The stream eventually disappeared. Apparently it is intermittent, and I had passed the run off from the rain event which had died down a little.

The stream turned into a sandy bed that curved back and forth. Apparently wasps of some sort like to live in these stream beds. I don't know if they were pissed off, because they realized they built their home in a stupid place that was about to get flooded, or if I stepped on their nests or what, but I got attacked. I wasn't sure what happened at first, and kind of just stood there like, "What the hell is wrong with my chest and why does it hurt so bad?" Then I got stung two more times and it became apparent why my chest hurt, because there was a small angry wasp stinging me.

I ran down the stream away getting them off of me. Then finally made it out of the woods after walking along the stream banks through more thorns rather than risk finding another wasp nest.

I eventually came out to a road, fairly certain I knew which direction the trailhead was, I started walking down the road. It started pouring rain again, and I had 3 bee stings, was soaking wet, had lost plenty of blood from leeches, falling on rocks, and thorns, and I was not happy. After walking for I think around 5 km a person I know from my village drove by and asked me if I needed a ride somewhere. I happily jumped in the back of his truck and he drove me to my bicycle. Funny, that guy never asked me what I was doing walking down the road in a rainstorm covered in mud, branches, and bleeding in spots. I'm kind of glad, I definitely didn't feel like trying to explain it in Thai.

Oh yeah, and in the course of that my camera came out of my pack. I don't even know how to find where I was hiking again, so its pretty lost. I bought another one in bangkok last weekend, so hopefully more pictures soon. Maybe of some leeches sucking on me?

Anyway, people are yelling at me to "Gin Kao" or eat rice. They have to yell it at me at least 15 times a day, even if I'm obviously going there already. At least we eat outside and I don't have to listen to the same playlist of Thai songs in the office. There's seriously only 20 songs on it, and they just play it over and over again. It motivates me to get out and try to do things in the afternoons though. But doing things in Thailand is hard for community development, because Thailand is already pretty developed, and people don't think I know how to do things like cook food, or wash my clothes, so I can't imagine they actually believe I know what I'm talking about with the environment.

Bike Race and Koh Chang

So its been a while since I have posted on here. Sorry about that, I'm kind of lazy. Anyway, I guess it was 3 weeks ago I went to a bike race in Rayong, one province over. I didn't do particularly well or anything, fell on the downhill and racing my heavy trail bike cross country when its 100 degrees was a little rough. And I'm out of shape as far as racing bikes up hills goes. Regardless, it was a lot of fun, great to meet people who like to ride bikes and hang out, even if the whole language thing was still an issue sometimes.

Apparently there is pretty big series of bike races. Unfortunately the next one in Phuket I can't make it to because there is a Peace Corps , meeting, but I plan on trying to go to several of these races. The Rayong Mountain Bike club has offered to give me rides so why not?

Oh and I never ever thought I would be doing bike races during Peace Corps. I suppose Thailand is far different now than in 1962 when Peace Corps first went there


Last weekend I headed over to Koh Chang, the second biggest island of Thailand to hang out with some friends. Lots of rain kept us from backpacking like we had planned, but it did make the waterfalls particularly pretty. The beach was also beautiful, white sand and very clear water.














This is me with Melissa and Kale, who live up in Surin in Eissan (the north east section of Thailand.) There was some excellent swimming here, just jumping in at the bottom of the waterfall and letting the current carry us down. Fortunately we got there early enough before ridiculous amounts of tourists started showing up.






So the last day Kale and Melissa had already left since they have a longer trip back to site. We had been trying to find trails that trekking companies on Koh Chang guide on. This was way harder than we thought, and it turns out they keep the trails secret so you have to pay them to take you.

Looking at their brochure, I realized that from white sand beach I could see one of the mountains they hiked up. So, I figured if I could see it, I could probably hike there. I started out by walking along the road through town until I found a creek going under the road. So I climbed over the bridge into the creek, gathering some strange looks from other people around, and proceeded to hike up the creek. It started out a trash filled wash, but after maybe half a mile the trash was gone and it began to turn into a series of beautiful waterfalls and pools that I would swim/wade through and climb up. After maybe 15 or more falls this died out and I began to bushwack up towards the mountains (bushwacking is particularly difficult in a rain forest.) However soon enough came across the trekking company's trail which took me up to the top and some beautiful views of the island. I ran back down the trail, intent on getting back to my hotel room in time for a shower before checkout at noon. The trail as it turned out came out several miles up the mountain in the back of someone's fruit orchard and then right next to their house. The people were very friendly though, and kindly pointed me the way back to the main road, which I quickly walked down back to my hotel.

Oh, and the trekking company says this trip takes them 7-8 hours. I did it in 4, with no trail on the way up, an a good hour of walking on roads. I'm pretty sure my way was more fun than paying 1000 baht to wait for some middle aged out of shape tourist to go up the mountain and stop every 5 seconds, probably to complain.

Monkeys!

Saturday I was remembering the first time I came to visit my site 2 months or so ago, and remembered these small but really steep cliffed out mountains that I saw on the way in. So I decided to go ride my bike to check them out more, which turned out to be an awesome decision.

After discovering that a lot of the cliffs I had seen were up against a quarry that was being mined for gravel, I continued to ride my bike around the little range of mountains. I started to see little caves into the rock.

Around the next corner I came to a bunch of old abandoned temple buildings, a small shop, lots of Bhudda statues, caves, and monkeys everywhere. I think these are called gibbons. Anyway, I went into the shop and talked to the lady running it, who told my I should "kun khao" or climb up the mountain. She offered to watch my bike for me, so off I went, slowly walking past the monkeys to the set of stairs ascending the mountain.




The monkeys mostly got out of my way, walking up the concrete path in front of me as I took pictures of them and the scenery. This is probably one of the coolest places I have ever been. There were huge Bhudda statues everywhere, caves heading back into the mountain that I decided best not to explore alone, and crazy buildings and pathways built into the side of the rocks.

The scenery was also epic. In between this Bhudda and the rock, you can see Khao Kitchakut, 1500 meters high, the biggest mountain in Chanthaburi. In the other direction the horizon was the ocean.
This bridge went from one little peak on the side of the mountain over to the main portion. There were lots of monkeys on it, probably took me about 15 minutes to get across because one of the monkeys did not want to move. Eventually he went over to the side and let me past.









This is looking up to the north. The hills you can see to the left is Khao Wong, which are cliffed out and filled with caves on the other side. My house is about 15 km back behind them.



Anyways, things are still good in Thailand, meeting lots of people, my Thai keeps getting better, and I may be doing a mountain bike race this weekend.

...

So Thailand is still pretty awesome in case anyone was wondering. Enjoying delicious fruit and beautiful scenery every day hasn't gotten old yet.

This is a snake I found hiking the other day. I'm not sure if he's poisonous or anything, but he didn't seem particularly interested in biting me, so I guess I'm not too worried about it.








A few steps later I saw this crab. Apparently in Thailand, crabs live in creeks and waterfalls in the mountains. I personally had never heard of such a thing.









This is a rubber tree, and the white stuff is latex flowing out of it. I learned how this all worked the other day, as its the main source of income in the community I live in. The rubber hangs out just before the cambium layer, so two out of every 3 days you cut down another half inch or so
releasing the rubber. There are rows of these trees everywhere, looks kind of like a darker aspen forest. I'll have to take a picture of that sometime and put it up here.


Sunday I went on a bicycle ride, and got what seemed to be a completely unprovoked flat tire. I patched it, started pumping it back up, discovered a new hole. After going through this sequence until I had 5 or 6 patches in the tube, I realized my rim tape was jacked up, probably from getting 8 flat tires in Chainat during peace corps training. Chanthaburi has much less thorn action going on for which I am eternally greatful.

Anyway, yesterday Balat Tanin, the government officer I'm currently staying with, drove me down to the neighboring community to see if they could fix it. Apparently cheap bikes don't use rim tape? which I did not realize, so we headed down to the next town, which still had nothing, and then decided to go into the city to it fixed. There we found a legitimate bike shop, that fixed me up for 75 baht, about 2 dollars. Another Peace Corps volunteer Shawna (green shirt and jeans in the center of the picture) lives near the city of Chanthaburi, I called her up to see if she wanted to get lunch before we left. But, instead of going to work after lunch, Balat Tanin decided to take us to first, a dolphin show (left my camera in the car), and then a waterfall Namtok Pliu. It was pretty hilarious when Shawna's mom called her, and she replied over the loud music "Sorry I can't talk, I'm at a dolphin show." No, Peace Corps was not what we expected. Namtok Pliu is pretty beautiful despite the absurd amount of people. Definitely the most amount of other farangs (foreigners) I have seen since Bangkok.

Songkran

So the last week has of my life has been occupied by Songkran, the Thai new year which I'm assuming is Thailand's biggest holiday. Its the hottest time of the year, which I guess is a big reason why it is celebrate by pouring water on each other, or shooting it at people with squirt guns, whatever the case may be.

So last monday night (you know you're in thailand when they wait til night to have a giant squirt gun fight because its too hot out) we headed off into the city of Chanthaburi, about 70 km away, with 3 50 gallon tubs of water in the back of the truck, around 15 or 16 people, each armed with a few squirt guns. And yes, 1 truck.

As soon as we start getting into town, other trucks set up similarly start passing us, and so basically it turned into a bunch of drive by shootings, except with squirt guns. Once in town, probably every other car was involved, as well as people driving around on motorcycles, usually in pairs with the person in the back holding the squirt guns. There were stations where people were refilling tubs of water, as well as selling giant ice blocks so that everyone's water could be nice and freezing cold. I'm not sure that the picture here does justice to how bad this messes up traffic. We were there til 1 in the morning. Oh, and people played loud music which quickly turned in to dance parties in the middle of the street.



Also a big thing in Thailand is putting baby powder on your face to help cool off, so some people would go around with baby powder spreading on people's faces. The police officers were covered in the stuff. I had trouble getting a good picture. My little point and shoot water proof camera with water on the lens taking pictures at night with bright lights everywhere isn't the best.

This is our group. If any peace corps people read this, don't worry, I was being entirely safe about my riding in the back of a truck activities, I got into the front when we went down the highway at 140km/hr. Most of the time in the city we were parked anyway. Oh, and kid in the red shirt is named Fook. He lives right next to me, and can open a beer bottle with his eye socket. Also rides a bike like a pro.

The rest of the week was more relaxing, we went on this house boat trip in the neighboring Jangwatt where we played cards, drank wine coolers, and sung karaoke... Which sounds a little odd I guess, but karaoke is really popular in thailand, and completely heterosexual guys drink wine coolers without even thinking about it. I went on a few bike rides, which were never too hot since people were throwing water and baby powder on me the whole time. Riding long distances soaking wet is a little tiring though.

Anyways, hope you're all doing well, give me a shout (or email?) sometime if you want to hear more.

Thailand!

So yeah, I kind of bailed on the blog thing for a while...

I finished hiking the AT, with the exception of 50 miles in the smokies where I got swine flu. Then did some kayaking, some biking, a couple really cold backpacking trips, and then shipped out to Thailand January 17 2010, and haven't been cold since.



I spent 10 weeks training and trying to learn Thai in Chainat Pronvince. I got to site almost 2 weeks ago. I'm in the Northwest of Chanthaburi Pronvince, trying to figure out what kind of community development I can do, working more on my Thai speaking skills, but mostly having a really awesome time. And my site is also within biking distance from the beach and surrounded with mountains :P !

at home

I'm finishing up a little break back at my parents house, heading back onto the trail this morning at Max Patch, north of I-40 since I-40 is closed and all. Looks like there should be mostly good weather for the Smokies, only 250 miles left! Should be done in 2 weeks or less.