Note: This is taken from emails sent in Sept/Oct 1999. Hemi
hi !
hope u were signed for life on yom kippur.
i am writing from chiang mai
we returned after a 2 day rafting expedition in the western area of PAI and MAH HONG SON. it was pretty fun, though there were no true rapids or scary parts. on the way we saw waterfalls, hot springs, monkeys and lots of jungle of course. we had a good group, 2 locals that were the guides, and 4 more travelers, a nice german guy with remorse and shame for what his grandparents did, a young bisexual german girl, and 2 friendly australian girls that we had met previously.
previous to that we rented 100cc bikes for one day and drove to a cool place called thamlot – it has a series of caves that have a river running thru them. u pay 100 baht and a lady guide takes u for a tour with a little gas lantern.
later on in the evening hundreds of thousands of birds swarm into one of the caves.
it reminded me of the movie “birds” by hitchcock.
when we wanted to return to PAI it was raining so hard that trees fell down on the road so we decided to stay in a nearby village called SOPPONG. we stayed in a posh bungalow farm called T-REX!
the proprieter was an ex-east german and we had an interesting chat – mainly he talked and told us stories of a thousand nights.
the next morning it rained some more so we managed to get back to PAI only at noon time. the rest of the day we just lazed around, talking to inrterseting people like Ming, a new yorker born in hong kong who is a computer genius but works as a bicycle delivery boy, or 2 australian girls that eventually came with us to the rafting trip as well.
tommorow we fly out to the islands. plans are ko -phangan for 4 days (full moon party) and then ko- tao for some scuba diving.
so start working on the huts (sukkot) and we will be in touch.
h e m i : )