we are back from the trek... and still alive!
my thighs still quiver anytime i start to walk, but i tell myself it's because i'm hardcore. not out of shape, no...
on monday we set out for a 3 day excursion through the jungles of thailand. we first stopped at a wildly entertaining orchid farm (...) and then went to see a snake show, where all three of us got to touch a cobra! so cool.
after that we headed for the hills. it was good at first, as we all started hiking with vigour and energy. the enthusiasm waned, though, after about 2 hours when i began to have to hoist my legs upward with my arms and my lungs started to make wheezing noises indicative of their near combustion. having spent most of my life in southern manitoba, hills are something that i'm relatively unfamiliar with, and it showed. i kept up with the group, though, and obviously when we reached our destination i agreed with everyone about how "it really wasn't so bad". neither is childbirth, i hear.
we stayed the first night in a bamboo hut in a hill tribe village. the tribe was called the Lahu, and the children came and performed a few songs for us- they were so cute! derek even made friends with one of the kids and they were best of buddies until she got snot all over him and derek decided that she should find another friend.
our group consisted of a few girls from new zealand, one from australia, a guy from denmark, and a couple, him from switzerland, and her from thailand. very fun! we had such a good time together!
the next day we hiked some more, but took a break to go swim in a waterfall. being in the fresh, cold water, surrounded by bamboo forest seemed pretty close to paradise.
we hiked until we reached a camp, where we spent another night in a (draftier) bamboo hut. the next day we awoke to go ride elephants, do some "white water" rafting (don't get too excited, it was pretty tame, but still fun), and then cruise down to our lunch spot on a bamboo raft.
elephant riding was pretty cool, they are pretty nimble for being so huge, and even karlene was feeling a loving disposition toward our elephant. then he put up his trunk and spewed elephant snot on her and the love light was significantly dimmed.
now we are back in chiang mai for a few more hours before heading out on the night train to bangkok. hooray... i love night trains... ....
love to everyone and write write write! i'd love to hear from you ;)
love becki

hello friends!
just writing a quick update before we head out to the sunday market in chiang mai... should be interesting since apparently anyone can have a space there as long as you have something to display. darn, i knew i should have brought my violin. i think karlene, derek, and i might have to form a 'singing for donation' group to fund our market-going. not to mention the best smoothies are made right across the street, so we may be headed that way as well.
we have spent the last few days just checking out the scene here- our guesthouse has free bike rentals and we have been cruising everywhere on those!
we have explored markets in the morning and seen all kinds of fish in buckets flapping away, only to come back in the evening and see skewers of them on all the grills. that's fresh. we also found some friends from winnipeg of all places and spent a day biking around with them, swinging from sketchy tire swings over grotty rivers, exploring parks, making friends as we go...
we had people from all over the world joining us in our tire-swinging by the end!
last night derek and i ended up being the ugliest white honkies in a club full of the most stylish thai people... not too many people spoke english, but it's amazing how dancing will break language barriers- they were loving the goofy-looking canadians!
tomorrow we take off on a trek to the hilltribes, where we hope to meet all kinds of neat people, as well as ride elephants, and float on a bamboo raft. i only hope that i do not die on the 5 hour uphill trek the first day. sometimes when i think about it i start to pant.
anyway, i'd love to hear from you all, and my apologies about the random picture posting- i posted some of the wrong ones by accident, and then the page froze so i couldn't even add some redeeming ones, haha. i love being so savvy on computers.
hope that your day in canada (or wherever) is wonderful!
love to all!
becki

tales of the overnight bus:
backpacking through southeast asia on a budget occasionally requires a person to experience things that would not be considered by ordinary folks to be comfortable or even desirable (things i try to positively refer to as "adventures").
the overnight bus we took to chiang mai last night was a prime example of that. we boarded the bus at 6pm in bangkok, sweaty from our trip to the bus stop, but ready to settle in with our books and planning. all the lights were immediately turned off, except for the flickering tv, which flashed and spazzed for another half hour before it, too, was turned off. so we made the best of the darkness by chatting with our neighbours, a couple from israel and two girls from australia. derek was the exception since he fell asleep almost instantly, but i'm sure the guy he was sitting beside and lolling onto thought he was great company.
the bus drove for awhile before pulling into a random stop in the middle of nowhere, with the driver flicking on the lights as bright as they could be turned, i'm sure, and yelling " TOILET! FOOD! FITEEN MEENIT!"
after using the squatties (which i am getting quite good at, by the way), we went to check out the food selection at our little outpost. it was filled with every kind of chinese cake you can imagine, in any colour you might want. it was like finding an oasis of hello kitty las vegas in the middle of a thai desert. odd, but fascinating.
our next stop was even shorter, with the driver now shouting " GASOLINE! FY MEENIT OK!". he wasn't kidding: as soon as he paid, he gave one warning "TANK FULL I'M GOING!" and was already in third gear by the time the last people were lunging into the bus.
i didn't sleep well, but kept my eyes closed... tight. i opened them once to feel the bus swaying from side to side and torquing down the highway at speeds that made me unsure of whether the trees were all blurred together or i was just crosseyed. so when i say my eyes were closed, it's true, but only because i was praying for my life.
anyway, we are now in chiang mai. smelly and tired, but here and ready to begin our northern experience. thanks for your prayers, just keep at it as we're definitely not through with these aventures!
love to you all,
becki

we're back in bangkok!
after a fantastic week in cambodia, we're back in thailand ready to set out on another adventure!
we spent the week with jaymie and her friends and housemates, and had such a great time.. not only did we get to learn about the fantastic efforts she's involved with (working with kids from slum villages and girls rescued from brothels or other abusive situations--teaching them skills like jewellery making and photography ), we got to check out markets, temples, a local lake, and develop an addiction to cambodian ice coffee from the nearby market. we also got the pleasure of going on a river boat to celebrate the birthday of fellow kleefelder, con isaac! we rode motos, and even hit one with the bus we were in one day, but everyone survived (thankfully).
it was incredible to see the amount of people/ things that can be perched on a motorcycle. often vehicles were stacked impossibly tall with supplies, or hay, or boxes, with the passengers sitting on top of it all! our biggest count was a family of six on one scooter. needless to say, karlene and i did not learn the balancing skills required for this kind of ride!
yesterday we were joined by my brother, derek, and the 3 of us will embark on a night bus to chiang mai, where we hope to ride elephants, go to markets, and see the city by bicycle! we were so excited for derek to join our adventures, we even made a lovely welcome poster for him at the airport.... out of a barf bag. hey, resources were limited.
hopefully will update again soon, but don't hesitiate to wrote before then! let me know if you are all still alive!!!
love to everybody,
becki

so here we are in cambodia!
upon our arrival on tuesday we were greeted with a friendly face from home- the travelling musician wonderwoman jaymie friesen. we got to stay the night with her, as well as spend the evening with her and a friend at the Boat Noodle restaurant. gastronomically satisfying, to say the least.
first thing the next morning karlene and i jumped on a bus to take us to siem reap, home of the 8th(?) world wonder Ankor Wat. we saw a huge number of ancient ruins from kingdoms in the 11th and 12th century. it was fascinating to walk around and explore all these places. pictures do not do justice to the grandeur of some of these ruins. but that didn't keep us from taking about 500 each. we also took the opportunity to chat with people from a bunch of different places : sweden, england, finland, israel, and of course, cambodia. so cool!
we have also realized that cambodia is host to a variety of foods that we may consider questionable. on our bus ride up we stopped at a stand that carried whole roasted birds (beaks and feet included), cockroaches, and tarantulas. a restaurant menu we checked out tonight (and passed on it) included crocodile, snake, frog, ostrich, kangaroo, and more. eating could be quite the adventure here!
the bus ride up was beautiful, the epic asian countryside complete with thatch houses perched on stilts, cows with large back humps in the front yard (or lying in the river), and beautiful little cambodian children running around. it was beautiful, and unlike any place i've been before.
anyway, our time is up and we're off to paint the town... nah, just kidding. but we're off anyway. big love to you all!
becki and karlene

hey friends!
here's to another day in bangkok: karlene and i just spent the last two hours stuck in rush hour on a rather full bus. and by rather full i mean like sardines-in-a-can full, i'm sure you can imagine. we were dowtown after meeting up with a fellow manitoban friend janessa plett, who is teaching/outreaching with an organization called Reach.
it was janessa who took us to our first thai massage experience. the three of us got dressed in scrubs that were just a little too short and a lot too baggy. hot stuff. then we all made to the top floor (perhaps so they couldn't hear our cries of pain?) and had our feet wiped with a cloth that smelled of the candies grandma and grandpa brought from paraguay. remember those chalky, minty ones?? ...never mind.
after the minty feet, our masseuses proceeded to twist our bodies like pretzels and pound out different muscles in a style reminiscent of tenderizing meat.
"does anyone else feel like a limp noodle?" i gasped before my foot was wrenched somewhere around my mid-back and i caught myself looking straight at the back of my thigh.
karlene giggled from the bed next to me, something she had been doing throughout the entire experience due to her immense ticklish-ness. or maybe she was getting nervous about the soft-sized masseuse who had just jumped onto her calves.
"does this hurt?" she asked in thai.
karlene giggled.
after we swivelled and swayed our way out of the shop, we unanimously decided that it had been a good time and we all felt very... flexible.
we went for dinner before heading home on the bus. on the way to the bus stop, in a twist of fate, i happened to be the victim of a rather large stream of bird excrement. karlene found this particularly funny since she had gotten bird poo in her hair in the ancient city and i had been less than sympathetic. so i braved the bangkok rush hour traffic and a crowded bus with a conspicuous stream of white on my right shoulder. add flecks of toilet paper where i had madly tried to wipe it off, and my black shirt was fashion central.
this past weekend was a mosaic of new experiences, from taking the skytrain, a water taxi, seeing ancient temples at Wat Pho, going to church, and shopping in the biggest market i've been to yet. but these are stories for another day, till then, i love everyone and good night!

Transportation and the Colour Pink

so karlene and i are quickly discovering the quirks of the thai culture, one such being their obsession with the colour pink. rumour has it the king went into the hospital once and emerged wearing this colour of gown, and it has been know as one of the "kings colours" ever since. there is even a pink day of the week. let me tell you that this isn't just any pink, it's a sort of bubblegum-with-a-hint-of-hospital pink that is painted on everything from shirts and houses to taxis, trucks, and buses. charming? something like that.
but the mention of taxis and buses brings to mind the situations we have encountered with transportation out here. there is a strange phenomenon of the ordinary 4-lane highway becoming about a 16-lane, particularly at traffic lights. there were more than a few times that we worried about seeing those large pink buses cause a motorcycle casualty, but it all seems to flow remarkably smoothly.
smoothly, that is, unless us farangs (foreigners) get in the way as i (becki) discovered yesterday when i nearly got thwacked by a motorcycle. now we take extra caution, wait for a large gap in traffic, and run (screaming) as fast as we can across the street. nothing like drawing a little attention.
the vehicles here are quite remarkable in the way that each one sounds and feels like it is wheezing it's last, but they all just keep going! we have been rattled and jerked and belched on with exhaust, and the vehicles just keep chuggin. this is why i drive an import. never say die.
to top off our transportation experiences, karlene and i spent the day touring a gigantic park on a rickety tandem bicycle. once we discovered how to get it going- karlene doing something of a run and jump and push, and becki pedaling like a madwoman clutching the wobbling handlebars- we found it quite enjoyable. karlene only scraped her knee on the pedals once.
now we're off to have some dinner with kendall and debbie, karlene's bro and sister in law. we're headed to mem's, the trusty and tasty neighbourhood restaurant. so till next time, stay safe on the roads, eh!
becki and karlene

sawadee kaa!
this is becki and karlene reporting to you from thailand.
our day began bright and early at 3:30 am, when i (becki) got up to use the loo and came out to find someone sitting in the living room. after my heart decided it was not going to fail, i realized it was karlene. she very much enjoyed my reaction, and our coordinated crazy hours proved there may be some residual jet lag.
so after trying to sleep the rest of the night (hard to do with the now elevated heart rate), we woke up and tried to find some breakfast. then we proceeded to hop on a song tao (taxi) and make our way to the school where lorissa taught. our taxi driver had told us that it was the Harry Potter school, and in truth it really looked that way. It had a huge pool, statues everywhere, marble courtyards, and people cleaning everywhere. flash doesn't describe it.
when the parents came to pick up their kids, they were all rolling up in mercedes', acuras, bigwig SUV's of every kind- and they had to scan and check in to pick up their children. a little different than this small town kid is used to.
we helped out in centers in lorissa's kindergarten classes, and the kids were soooo cute! and also soo loud! i admire lorissa for the job she has. i'm going to stick with being a hairdresser ;)
after school we visited one of lorissa's fave restaurants for some cashew chicken and tam yam (really delicious soup)... again, so good. i love thailand. my belly loves thailand.
so this brings us to this evening, where we have settled in for bed and barely staying awake to write this blog.
tomorrow's on to another adventure....
biggest love to everyone back home
becki and karlene

so yesterday karlene and i began the adventure of a lifetime... we awoke at 3:00am Sunday to go to the airport, and didn't leave airplanes/ports for another 30 hours when we arrived in bangkok at 11:30pm monday evening. we travelled so many different time zones, over 10 000 miles (!) and it was day light the whole way. crazy!!
i (becki) cried like a little baby through customs and it made me thankful to know such wonderful people that it was hard to say goodbye. i have since stopped crying, for the record.
a little recount of our airport experience: by the time we thought about writing anything down, we were feeling quite charming with fuzzy teeth, stiff necks, and backsides that had lost any feeling hours ago. the airplane food was all beginning to look like it was all cooked from one main ingredient: pasty mush. but we kept our humour up making various airport friends and inventing a new routine called 'airplane yoga'. it was while i was in the Crane position (think Karate Kid) by the airplane bathrooms that i started getting funny looks from people and decided to stick with the stretches listed in the airplane magazine.
clearly this yoga did little to improve my incredible coordination because, as i was writing, i managed to wipe out (yes, i was sitting) and grab the thigh of the guy sitting next to me. i was a little embarrassed but we both giggled and so i think it's okay. if not, i only had to sit by him for another... 6 hours or so.
anyway, now karlene and i are in a little internet cafe with a semi-vicious dog on the loose. karlene feels very comfortable with that, let me assure you. we just spent the morning wandering bangkok and ate the most delicious pad thai you could imagine for about one dollar.
i think i am definitely going to like this place.
so the writing on this screen that is all in thai, so i hope i can post this properly. i love you all and hope you stay warm and wonderful
smooches!