Revisit to Thailand

Back in the good old motherland! We arrived in Chiang Mai with about 10 days to fill including April 13-15 which we would spend celebrating the Thai New Year.  The entire city comes out with water guns, buckets, and complete water pipe systems leaving not a trace of the city dry.  It is ironic because originally the festival was created to evoke rainfall in the area and bless the Buddhas.  Now it has turned into a Spring Break water fight with music, food, and thousands of people out to have a good time.  We stayed with Judy and Richie, two food connoisseurs who did their fair share of taking us around and helping us to celebrate Songkran (new year) appropriately.

Prior to Songkran, we spent a couple days back at Ryan's adobe building house putting the finishing touches on. The roof is finished and the first coat of paint is now complete.  It felt satisfying to be back in Thailand living the markets and language again.

We spent our last couple of days in Chiang Rai visiting a few Hilltribes and hiking in the north.  Holly arrived on the 16th for which we enjoyed a wonderful 3 day bike ride in the mountains and hills of northern Chiang Rai.  Stopping at temples, handwoven shops, and destination Burma borders, we really got a great look at this part of the country by bicycle.  Finally we rode to the Laos border before departing for our 2 day trip (14 hours total) down the Mekong River to Luang Prabang, Laos.  The most beautiful rolling mountains, villages, people panning for gold, pink water buffalo, teak trees, and fishermen were the most sought after views on this ride.  Happily in Luang Prabang, the old French colonial style town, we prepare for our journey north tomorrow where we might get the chance to do a homestay!

The Mir, Menjangan Island

The Mir

We had the pleasure of spending a day on the Mir, a 100 year old sail boat that had made its way from Singapore to Bali!  Docked in a Bay near Menjangan Island, this boat held our dearly beloved, Oliver Bierman himself.  We were lucky to find him tucked away with surrounding volcanoes and the most beautiful skies I've ever seen!  We boarded and met the crew which consisted of many people deeply involved with studying and saving the coral reef.  We spent our last couple of days diving on unbelievable coral walls off Manjangan Island which landed us a few more black tip reef shark spottings, the pygmy seahorse(which is the size of half of your pinky finger), a frog fish, and thousands of species of colorful fish.

Evening drink on the Mir

Volcano on Java

Ceremonial Cleansing

Ceremonies are the backbone to Balinese culture.  They are performed everyday and usually are the cause of the one main road that is two lanes wide around the entire island being blocked off.  We took a ride to the East Coast with Ketut and Nyoman and their entire extended family of a couple hundred to perform a ceremony that hadn't been done in 5 years.  The main idea of this ceremony was to cleanse the souls of all of their ancestors.  Everyone is fully dressed in traditional garb and snacking on various dried banana treats and peanuts.  In groups of about 30, people file toward the ocean holding offerings and essentially attempting to cleanse their ancestors souls.  One man carried a live chick and duck on the end of a bamboo stick over his shoulder to dunk in the water in preparation for their later sacrifice.  The second stop was across the street at the water temple where the entire extended family (about 150 people) prayed and offered gifts to the ancestors.  The temple was set right next to a bat cave where a couple thousand bats nestled and shrieked in the background.  We ended at the main village temple where everyone had rice and noodles out of brown paper and did their last cleansing gestures.