I just have a few minutes here at the guest house internet station to check in with the blog, before going and waking up M so she can shower, eat something and then join me on the 5 hour trip back to Chiang Mai. Me, I'm showered, cappuccino'd, dressed and into my day (though I do need to pack my pack and make a 'meditation' stop before boarding the bus. 'Meditation' is code for uh, oh never mind, I have to make a meditation stop, OK?
We had a great little sojourn together, lots of quality time, closeness, one hiccup along the way that was short lived, but a wonderful window out of Chiang Mai nonetheless. Sukothai is an ancient kingdom and Buddhist center in north central Thailand, a Unesco 'World Heritage Sight' because of spectacular temple ruins over a tract of several square miles. We got rolling early yesterday, rented bicycles for a dollar a day and started exploring.
It took us a little while to find a tourism rhythm with one another, she is pretty independent and I felt a little bit powerless as she was snapping a bunch of pictures, not really communicating, kinda doing her own thing... which is cool with me, but just say something like, 'I want to take a bunch of pictures' rather than just go off and leave me hanging... It's a communication thing mostly. So I said something about it, which she took badly and we had our hiccup, her bumming out, getting that look in her eye, the unhappy 'what's the use' one. Then she'll say something like, 'Fine, I'll follow you, whatever you want', (as if that's what I wanted, which it isn't). We ended up sitting down, in front of a little pond, she unhappy, 'I don't know what to do' and she started crying, which is very unusual for her to let it go like that. And I immediately held her and opened up my heart, and that was the end of the struggle. Something got released, the energy moved and we had a wonderful day from that moment on....
We tagged along with a couple of tour groups, learning some stuff, we rode to 'the Big Buddha', a 50 foot high statue in a temple a couple of miles away from the main area, where we got on our knees and prayed. It was part of the plan for this trip south... pray at the Big Buddha. We took pictures, spent about 5 hours in tourism mode, bought some souveniers, but mostly just enjoyed being boyfriend, girlfriend on the road. We had a nice meal for dinner, Tom Kha Gai soup, papays salad, mixed vegetables, ate some great home made ice cream, had some more food later, no beers, just a cigarette or two, so pretty healthy living... I guess the best part was getting to spend a full day together with no 'I have to go to work' pressure as part of the mix. She's happy as am I. But of course, now it's time to go back to work, after a 5 hour bus trip north. I have a student at 4 and a gig at 9. She's got her 'ladies night' shift beginning at 4:30. But for a brief spell, we get to just hang out and enjoy life. Which we did...
