ThaiPost1: Who Are You?

Chiang Mai and the outlying mountain villages have become the fuel and backdrop for the stories we've been told; it makes a person realize that although there are universal truths, there are ways to experience them that we would never have imagined. These people's lives are not anything like ours. Thank you, thank you to our hosts and interpreters, the Sanborns, who have allowed us to hear the fringest of foreign thoughts and histories, and realize how completely our American worldview is imperfect.

On the shuttle bus, there was a man from Cambodia who became a commercial pilot, a proud father of 2, happily married and very giggly when asked about his wife, though when he was 10, of course, his parents and 4 brothers and sisters were all executed by the Khmer Rouge. In the tiny mountain village of Musikee, the chief authority is a soldier named Haan, married seven times, no children, once severed his own finger to accompany a family-less fallen friend into the afterlife, and is now considering becoming a monk. You, too, can interact with your body parts and see what we can live without!

Every house has a spirit house beside it, a dollhouse they make very cozy and fill with food to keep the evil spirits from living in their house with them. There are spiky ornaments along the rooftops, as well, to keep them away.

You take your shoes off. You bow and smile. You do not ask for chop sticks- if you need them, you will be given them. You don't touch another person's head, laugh hysterically, get upset, or cry, in public. How many people have seen mysterious and otherworldly things in their lives? (a majority raise their hands) We are interacting, sharing, watching, and listening, and collecting a mountain of material that will assemble itself when the time comes.