As Thai as Pai............

Hey!
It's been a while since I've posted. We have been in full on relax mode since arriving in the Northern Thailand town of Pai and it has been hard to get to an internet cafe due to all the exhausting work of sitting in hammocks and floating down rivers lined with rice paddies on innertubes. I know, I know....life is hard. We're thinking this may be our final destination before we head back to start teaching.
After our beach life ended a week ago we headed back to Surat Thani to take care of some work visa issues. Mainly, we had to go to a hospital and be examined as fit and healthy to teach. This consisted of me giving a doctor about five dollars, him asking me if I was voting for Obama in broken English, followed by the question "are you sick?". That was all he needed to stamp my papers and declare me in perfect health. Yay! The fried spring rolls are going down a lot easier.
No sooner did we get declared to be in perfect health, then we were off on a night train to Bangkok. The perfect way to try anyone's health.
The night train can be a variety of experiences depending on what class ticket you want to purchase and having the right frame of mind. On our first ride up we hung out at the train station and made friends with two guys from South Africa. The overnighter was great. We paid the extra three dollars for air conditioning and slept like babies.
Things changed on the next train.
After the six dollar splurge we decided to take it down a notch and take the next 12 hour train North in the lower class. I guess its not fair to completely blame the train for my bad nights sleep. I blame Bangkok's train station.
As we were waiting for our train we decided to hit up the noodle shops just outside (again, saving money...a bowl in the train station cost, like, a buck fifty and we knew we could find an alley with noodles for fifty cents). We sat down to steaming bowls fried rice and meatball/ noodle soup and were happily digging in when I noticed a pinto bean in my soup. Weird, must be a Bangkok thing. That was until I fished the bean out with my chopsticks and realized it was an entirely different type of protein. The kind with a hard shell, legs, and twitching antennae. The same kind I found scurrying on the floor of our new house in Surat Thani that I accidentally stepped on my first night in the house. The same kind that found it's way into Codie's toothbrush holder only to leave brown stains on the bristle. The protein I'm talking about is our amigo in a nuclear holocaust. The survivor of survivors. The cockroach.
As I looked down at the tiny stewed disease carrier, I tried to shake it off like so many things you shake off here in Thailand. Dogs chasing us down our street (that I"m sure have rabies), strange smells of urine surrounding bus stations, flies buzzing over meat that has been left out in the market all day (which you are pretty sure will be in your noodle soup later). For some reason, this one got me. We handed over our 50 baht and walked out. Even watching a pirated copy of last week's Amazing Race at an internet cafe could not take my mind off the idea that this city dwelling cockroach had been the flavoring for my soup. It's strange. I've eaten tons of bags (just had silkworm larvae last night) but I know that these ones are nurtured in pristine environments. Free-range, grass-fed, organic bugs. Not city sewer living cockroaches. OK.....I'm over it.
But I wasn't during the train ride. We were in the non-air conditioned car The one that for no extra price comes complete with a wet, dirty floor (which I'm sure is somehow connected to the squat toilet in the bathroom), loud crying babies, and old Thai men who like to stay up really late drinking whiskey and smoking enough cigarettes that I am sure the train could run on their fumes alone. I don't know what it was, but I couldn't sleep. I stayed awake, train light shining in to my upper bunk, sweating, and imagining that cockroaches are surrounding me, flinching at every brush of my compartments thin screen as it hit my leg.
No sleep, but we got here. And here is beautiful. We arrived just in time for the end of Buddhist lent and the town is alive with monks getting new robes and the people form the highland villages coming to town to live it up Thai style. With tons of new foods to try (coconut mashed potatoes, tea from bamboo cups, NO COCKROACHES). The town of Pai itself is filled with musicians and artist (last night I saw a Thai band belting out Nirvana and Radiohead covers) and is surrounded outside with rivers, waterfalls, tiny adorable villages, and panoramic mountains that stretch to Burma. We have been spending each day renting a motorbike ($2.50 a day!) and cruising around to wherever sounds cool. Yesterday we spent the whole day at a waterfall with a 25 foot wall you could slide down into the pool at the bottom. Scary = fun. I think I'm going to go back and chill by the river here before the night gets started with more cool music and fun people.