Carrie: It's hard to dress for the day. In the mornings it's downright chilly, but by midday we're in the mid eighties. So when Eric and I went to the local market where the hill tribes supposedly come into town to sell their wares I was in a fleece. Just thought I'd do some complaining for all of you winter goers back home.
Eric: Turns out the market's mostly people from town selling clothes, but we saw some interesting stuff (no more details until Christmas presents have been received!). We then spent a lot of time looking for an internet cafe, and a longer time trying to find one that burns CDs (we've been putting our pictures on CDs so we can delete pictures from our memory card).
Carrie: Each place we'd stop at would point us further down the road, until we ended up at a cable/computer store. Not what we were looking for.
That took a long time, and we eventually ended at a guesthouse/restaurant that also rents motor scooters. Between the owner and one of the guests, they burned Eric's CD for us. And when the guy who loaned Eric his computer heard we'd walked all the way to the caves the day before, he gave us a lot of ribbing, and talked us into renting one of the motos.
The moto we were using was a lot different from the
dirt-bikes Eric rode in the States when he was a kid. His had had a clutch and shifter that you
pushed up with your foot, and this one you had to kick down, and then it didn't catch very
well anyway. So there was a whole lot of jerking and thrusting and
kicking going on because he thought he was upshifting when he was downshifting. To his credit he got the knack of it pretty quickly
considering, but I'm low on balance anyway, and would freeze up everytime he
kicked, or else let go of him completely (protect the face!), so I was making
thing a whole lot worse. Plus I liked to look around the side that Eric
needed to see behind checking for traffic. I'm better in cars.
We were exhausted so we rented a scooter to get back to the guesthouse. Also, we brought some small toys with us to Thailand (bouncy balls) to give to kids, but we didn't have them with when we saw the kids yesterday and figured we'd drive back to pass them out.
Eric: At this point, it would be appropriate to mention a Taoist concept, wu-wei, which roughly translates into "non-action." Many of you will have heard me mention the term, as it relates to a large tattoo that I want, but that's another story. The idea is that you should live life more-or-less by going with the flow. This isn't a fancy way of justifying loafing or being lazy. Rather, it means that you shouldn't force things that clearly aren't meant to be. It is better to tweak the circumstances to your favor than to control the entire situation. I like the concept because it goes against my personality, but is a way of living that I find attractive and try to emulate as much as possible. I might not always be good at it, but I try.
At this point in the story, we have about an hour until we are supposed to be at Ek's for dinner. Because we had walked to the village yesterday, we weren't quite sure how long it would take to get there, but we estimated it would take 15 minutes each way. Carrie isn't feeling well, and she is hot, tired, and in need of a nap. The heat here really wears you out.
Driving out to this village, passing out toys, and getting back in time for dinner is the opposite of wu-wei. Wu-wei would have been to pass them out the first time, when kids were running up to us. Now, we're running out to them in hopes that they run out to us, running through the motions in a short period of time so we can run back to Ek's. We debate what we should do, as this is the opportunity for gift-giving that we've been waiting for, and now we only have 40 minutes until dinner.
Carrie wants to go, physical misery notwithstanding, primarily because this trip was one of the main reasons we rented the damn moto to begin with and she didn't want to waste the money spent to rent it. I didn't want this to ruin Carrie's day, which it was already starting to do, and suggested we didn't go. It became increasingly clear to me that Carrie was miserable anyway, and the only thing that would be worse for her would be to be miserable and waste money. We went.
On our way driving out there (which went more quicker than anticipated), Carrie got sick to her stomach and ended up losing her lunch. (Carrie: And several other meals as well. Who knew I had that much food in me?) We apparantly arrived at the time when the entire town eats dinner, so we didn't see a lot of kids at first. After Carrie had given out a few bouncy balls, however, word got around and we probably handed out 15-20 of them. The kids really seemed to enjoy them.
Carrie continued to lose all scraps from her lunch. On the way back, we stopped several times so that Carrie could make sure that, no, she had no more lunch. I eventually left her, miserable, on the side of the road while I went to Ek's to tell him I'd be a little late and Carrie wouldn't be joining us. I had anticipated a large feast to be set out in the front, but the place was empty. When I went to the door, a child handed me a note in Ek's hand saying "I sorry. I go to Chiang Mai." Under normal circumstances, I'd be sad, but skipping dinner with Ek was the most wu-wei thing that happened that day.
I went back to pick up Carrie, who made it through the rest of the ride home fine. Then, it was back to the guesthouse for a much-needed calm evening.
