Day Off in Chiang-Rai

We finished the first week of training and since Fridays are the day off here, a bunch of us jumped on a shuttle and toddled off to Chiang-Rai for the day. When I say day off, I really mean part of a day. We still have 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours training so we’re actually 4 hours less a day. Oh yeah, have to be back for dinner at 6 pm and the shuttle doesn’t leave til 11am. Oh yeah, did I mention it’s a one hour drive each way?? Okay so we get about 36 seconds in town haha.

Nonetheless, you’ve never seen a happier group of campers in your life. We had about 8 people in my group and everyone from everywhere. Big big smiles the whole time. We all had a Thai massage at the same time which was total fun. Like a row of sausages getting worked over by an efficient squadron of middle aged Thai women who filed in from nowhere after we all changed into the outfits they gave us to wear. They’re like hospital scrubs only the pants have a size 120 waist. Too big even for e Sumo. Technique as we found out is to wrap the waist and then bring ties around from the back to the front. Then a standard bow tie. No worries. The little mattress gizmos are lined on the floor with little hospital screens in between. Looks like a bad operating theater. So I figure we’re all going to wake up in an ice filled bathtub missing a kidney (kidding) or get the same basic massage. It was fabulous. For only 200 Baht (a little more than $6) we had an amazing hour massage. Incredible.

I needed to buy a new tank top so I could rotate in clean versions for asana practice. It’s too hot here to practice in a t-shirt. It just gets soggy and some of the poses either stick too much or not enough. I found a good one and also bought a very cool pair of Thai pants/shorts I can use for practice or walking around later. They roll easily to different lengths and are super comfortable. I’ll have to post pics when I have some.

In the back of the multi-person Tuk-Tuk

I forgot to mention that Alex downstairs stepped on a scorpion in the dark last night when he went for a midnight pee. Maybe I better take a flashlight next time. I don’t want to experience that very badly. He was lucky he didn’t get stung. Anyway, mealtime is over and I have to get back to it now.