From south Thailand to Silence

OK so Thanks for circulating the blog address around to those who might be interested, my contacts list are in such dissarray that I can only rely on the path finding intellegence of the rhizome.....

Cha CHAA and I are back in bangkok, we are sufficiently goldened from the south beaches, we were staying in krabi province which was so beautiful and hot. As a sid note also where the tsunami touched down, We had the chance to talk with a couple of boatmen who were out on the water when the big one came in... They told us there stories with a smile. The Thais seem to be always smiling, incredibly resilient and resourceful people. The tourist track has some well worn grooves in that part of the world so we, mom, dad donät fill in the blanks...rented a m_ _ _rcycle. This was by far the only way to see the province. The roads were quiet and cut through rubber palm oil and incredible limestone karst formations. We ended up at the mouth of a little mangrove seemingly in the middle of know where and where renting kayaks that didnät look like they had been in the water for some years. See, this is a thing I love about thailand theyäll rent you a boat for a dollar or two give general directions, like paddle that way for a couple of hours and you shoul find the ocean, they neglect to mention the water vipers and shadowy alligator monkeys that seem to scurrying through the mangrove. Mangroves are haunted, for anyone who has been in one you know that feeling and that smell. We passed by a fishing village, we were such a strange site that a gaggle of kids came out to greetr us practising their english, or at least ther HELLOS and then when we responded they would fall into laughng fits. Just passed the village we also encountered a village of monkey about a hudred or so emerged from the woods and let us in on their daily dramas. We really haveät come that far, beside the glaring lack of clothing and cellphones, as the thais say same, same but different.

On our way back form the villages we encountered a MASSIVE water snake, he looked pretty badass and was holding his ground so. we were about ten feet from the eight foot giant which made us about six feet to close. Night started to fall and so we returned to to the kayak rental agency and met a farang french american man named bernard. he greeted us with you dont see to may farangs in this neck of the woods. Farang is thai for foreigner. We sat and had a beer in a bamboo slanty shanty and he told us that he was there volunteering at an school where many where orphans of the tsunami. he was volunteering through an organization called open mind projects which places volunteers around thailand for sure but I think it is global heres the linkÖ


Bernard invited us to come to the school for lunch and to help teach an english class and that is what we did. You want to feel like a rock star, show up at a small muslim village school in south thailand. when all you have yto do to makethe crowd go wild is say HELLO. we have some great pics of this day and our class was a lot of fun. when asked lead the lesson and maybe start with a song after scratching our head s, bah bah black..no, london brid...no alicia startyed sing
earth my body
fire my spirit
air my breath
water my blood
We busted out many rounds of this rainbow hippie classic and worked on pronunciation then jumped at'round like monkeys to english commands...ah the life of the english teacher rockstar, I expressed to bernard that I sometimes feel funny with the concept of going into places like this and teaching english. with images of what has become of many of the beautifull beaches in thailand, falling to the tourist trade provided in english mostly I felt a bit guilty. Seeing with rosy hue the pastoral beauty of the localeof these kids I expressed my anglo guilt, he replied that english is also a great unifier it allows for ideas whethr negative or positive to flow more freely around the globe. This made me feel much better about the situation....

we met another couple from bc, who we share freinds with, more small world syndrome....

and now we are in bangkok. We are going to ayathyaya, the old siam capital and then on to vipassana. I know I have told some of you of vipassana, I went for the first time for my birthday last year, it is a ten day silent meditation. Vipassana teaches that we are constantly responding to sensation that we experience in our bodies, emotions,thoughts, moods are all responses to physical sensations that we exerience in our bodies. The thing is we attach addictions or aversions to these sensations and these attachment start to rule us. Vipassana is an oppurtunity to learn how to master this through experience, we will be waking at 430am d meditating till about 9pm for 10 day starting on the 13th. heres the links and I am going to try to uplad a streamed documentery called doing time doing vipassana, which about how this technique came to be taught in the largest prison in india and is now starting to be taught in prisons in the states.


www.dhamma.org/

vipassan international website

http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/doing%2Btime%2Bdoing%2Bvipassana

the above is where you can find the documentery about vipassana in indian prisons, make sure you watch them in order, it appears in a confusing way on the site... i think it has five parts on the video stream...

ok Ive got to keep moving, going to have breakfast which is a bowl of muesli, fresh pineapple, dragon fruit, watermelon and banana with homemade yoghurt which can be bought off of a street vendor for the equivalent for a buck and a half cdn here in bangkok....

yum

much love to all of you
thanks for taking the time to read this