That's a wrap for SE Asia. We fly out of Bangkok this afternoon en route to HongKong. It's been a fairly short but great visit in Thailand. After our final day in Laos which involved a Tuk Tuk, bus, Tuk tuk, Boat, Tuk Tuk and then one more bus ride for good measure we bid farewell to the murderous transportation woes of Laos. Thailand still has some gritty old buses that are fun to ride in, but it's way better and faster than what we were accustomed to.

First stop: Chiang Rai. The big hit here, other than a bit of relaxation time, was the night food market. Lots of awesome choices for dinner. Stall#20 (henceforth referred to as "Barbara's lady") was visited pretty much everyday. She had these huge pots of soup and curries boiling in front of her stall and ALL of the locals were eating there so we joined in the fray too. So delicious, and a whole bowl for a dollar. We had such trust in her food that I ate a bowl of mystery soup one day that the locals were going mental over. It had these huge brown cubes of jelly in it. It didn't taste like liver, nor like kidneys but had that kind of bodily sense about it. Mystery cubes never tasted so good.

Chiang Rai also gave us an opportunity to see what Thai's like for tourism. We rented bikes one day and cycled the 18km's out to the white temple. This gleaming white temple was overrun with Thai people. To be honest, had all the Thai tourists not been there, we would have been really disappointed with the "attraction" as it was pretty gaudy and...well...boring. It's a temple! To its credit, it did have 2 gargoyles, for lack of a better description, at the front entrance that were utterly perverse. As I giggled like a child at the males genitalia lying out in the sun I wondered how the designer thought this would help monks achieve Buddhist enlightenment. Certainly the female version was a distraction the monks didn't need.

We also both saw our "stylists" in Chiang Rai. My visit set me back 100 Baht (~$3.50) but I gained an appreciation for how all those sheep we saw in New Zealand felt. This woman held my head with one hand and then would ram the clippers/shears against my head from a half a foot away. I don't get many hair cuts that aren't self inflicted so I was hoping for a very gentle experience but this was an utter letdown. At least the pain only lasted for about 10 minutes. Barbara, however, had an entirely different experience the next day. For twice the amount she had 2 shampoo/head rub sessions, then one with conditioner, then a hair consultation (though in Thai), she got to choose which supermodel she wanted to look like from magazines, then she was clipped away at, and then blow dried by 2 people. I was beginning to think she was abducted as I waited at our guesthouse! In the end, it's not exactly the haircut she wanted but a heck of an experience.

Our next stop, Chiang Mai, I had this mystical place in my mind. We've talked to no end of travellers that have gone trekking in the hills surrounding this remote Thai outpost, visiting indigenous hill people...or so goes the legend. My dream of being Indiana Jason was crushed. Chiang Mai has a population of 1.5 million. Trekking, despite how it may sound, involves about 45 minutes of walking in between mini-bus stops as you drive from village to village taking pictures of people who don't really want you there, but can use the cash they get from hawking their scarves and beads. Needless to say we didn't go "trekking". We did, however, hang out with monks for a day at a 24 hour meditation retreat. The retreat was great. Neither of us are very strong meditators. Even after all these months of having no pressing issues buzzing through our no-longer-over-worked heads we found it tough to stop the chatter that goes on in the brain. Mine went something like this:

Jason: Focus Jason...you've never been able to focus.

Monk (in the most mellow and soft voice you've ever heard): Mindfully (sounds like minfuwwy in Thai) breaving in deepwy

Jason: I'm so centered I AM the universe...hey, I wonder whatever happened to that brown corduroy blazer I wore to church as a kid? Arghhh, focus!

Monk: Breaving out slowwy, concentrate your breaving

Jason: I wonder who invented corduroy...how do they get those grooves in the fabric like that. More importantly, why?!?!

You get the idea. I solved a lot of the worlds problems in my 24 hours. It was neat to not talk for an entire day, with a few minor exceptions, and it was surprisingly easy and nice to just shut up for a change.

Baebs also finally managed to squeeze in a cooking class and she talked them into letting me show up mid-day to help eat all the goodies. This was a very neat experience and she got a lot of questions answered around blending ingredients and flavours. They have a magical mixture of sweet, sour and spicy that blends together like nothing we cook at home. She also managed to answer the question of what the brown chunks were in the Chiang Rai mystery soup - congealed blood. Some questions are better left unanswered, don't you agree?

We took our final night bus (hopefully of our lives) to Bangkok. Last night we had a reunion with Clare who we met in Australia at Birdwoods Down (you recall our very first meditation experience at the Hotel California, don't you?) Great to chat with her. She's been living in Thailand for about 8 years so she could answer a bunch of our cultural questions. We stuffed ourselves for the final time on delicious Thai food, then stayed up 'til 1:30 last night sitting with a group of older Thai people in varying degrees of booziness who were singing folk songs and strumming a guitar. Great fun.

Next stop - Hong Kong for 3 days, then on to the final frontier. Japan.

Pictures will follow soon.

Love from Bangkok,

Jason & Baebs