i am now living in a small town about an hour from the bigger town of Krabi (where I'm at - at the moment)- we have rooms in a residency hotel - a bathroom with a western toilet, cold shower, a big room with a bed, a tv, a wardrobe and a vanity, and then a balcony - all around us are limestone mountains - as if a giant with skin of limestone had laid down his palms on the soil with his finger tips pointing to the sky - growing emerald trees on the nails...everywhere you look people have wooden bird cages hanging with little black and white birds with dashes of red on their heads - i've seen men on motorcycles holding their birdcages -bringing them...? big cows grazing on the sides of the roads - and as usual in thailand most people are selling something or offering some sort of service from the front of their homes - so there are plenty of places to eat and mostly we order by pointing at noodles and things... there is a little stream with bridges over it behind our building and everything is very green and very wet - lots and lots of rain so that i can't tell if the sheets on my bed are wet or not - everything feels damp and moist now - already - and the power has gone out at least a half a dozen times this weekend - so that it feels like we were back in Taos, we bought yellow buddha candles for light and played cards by the open doorway of amber's balcony as kids played with fireworks and men smoked and drank whiskey down below
this is when the culture shock becomes real and we figure out how to live without language - or food - or the distractions we have been used to...
this is when thailand really sinks in and we come out different on the other side
