I suck

Sorry. That whole "Shorter, More Frequent Posts!" didn't work out at all.

In list form, interesting things since January 28th...

1) I went to Ratchapreuk again, this time with Katie and abdolutely loved it. (The first time I kind of felt "eh" about it so I hadn't tried very hard to go back. I forgot to bring my camera, but Katie brought hers and I'll put the link up when I find it again.

2) I met Russ and then he moved into my house. Russ is a friend of Mike Kurtz' from Amherst. He's mad cool, yo! He's a writer and photographer and he's been to Thailand before so he's back to do get stuff done and learn Thai at AUA. He's renting this little room across from my room. It's fun. He has internet in my room, I have a bathroom in mine, so we share. Look at his pictures. They make Chiang Mai look good. Chiang Mai pictures start on January 29th I think.

3) Jeff and Lee came back! Yay! It's nice to have friends now.

4) Katie left. This was sad. This is the first long term Chiang Mai friend I've had to say bye to.

5) Last Friday and Saturday were both ridiculously fun. Fridays my friends and I meet up at a place called Salsa Kitchen and bring anyone else we know. So last week was big. It's was Katie's last Salsa, but it was also the first Salsa for Jeff, his friend Chris, Lee, Russ, Reneta's boyfriend and two of her friends visiting from home, and then a couple of other people who brought new people too. So it was big. Maybe like 15 or something. So after way too many burritos, fajitas and nachos, a good group of people made their way to Warm Up. Warm Up is a big club on Nimmenhamin (my new road) very popular with Chiang Mai University students. There are some tables outside, a dancy dance club with really fast music and a DJ, and a big room with hip hop and hundreds of bopping Thai uni kids. And, it's right across from my soi (minor street off of a major street). The problem with these really fun Friday night things is that I work on Saturday. Bummer.

Then Saturday was awesome too! Russ, Jeff, Chris (Jeff's friend from home that's here for a couple of months) and I got some pad thai. Then we met up with Tessa, a couchsurfing.org-er. Couchsurfing is a website to connect travelers. People make up a profile and can either host couchsurfers or couchsurf. I haven't actually hosted anyone or been hosted, because I've alwasy lived in tiny rooms and now there isn't any room in my house, BUT, I have on my profile that I'm down for meeting up for coffee or a drink. I usually meet about 1 a week, and, more often than not, they're cool. Sometimes they're weird. But Tessa was cool! A hippie girl from Seattle who has been traveling for a while and is going to New Zealand and then maybe Africa?? Crazy. She's into all things good for the earth, permaculture and some other words I've forgotten, but I've got friends that are into that stuff too! Renata's friend Ashley works on this farm in Mae Taeng (same town as ENP) that does all that stuff and makes mud houses or something too? Oh, I'm not sure, but organic, sustainable, good for the world stuff. It's fun to hear about. And Jeff gets really excited about that stuff too. So then we headed over to The Couch. If you read Russ' account of the night he gets all the info wrong, so listen up.

There's an area with a ridiculous amount of bars that exist only to honor Bob Marley with beautiful Thai guys with dreads who have a new farang backpacker girlfriend every week. Probably in addition to their Thai one. So these bars can be a bit much to handle sometimes. Lots of young, drunk backpacker kids.

BUT, behind all these bars is this little gray room with a couch and some instruments. And outside there's another couch. So you can sit outside or inside and watch people play. Jeff and I went there early on and realized that when we ordered with the guy who worked there he was just walking to the minimart right next door and buying it and then bringing it back and serving it. They didn't have a fridge. So from my understanding is that there are a couple of musician guys who throw in 1,000 baht a month and then they have this room where they all play and chill out and 1/2 way run a bar. There's no name on it and they don't have a name for it. Whenever I talk to Thai people about it they say, "Pii Puen's bar!" The guy who is there most often's name is Puen, and pii is how you talk about friends or people older than you. So Jeff and I have tried to explain that they should name it "The Couch." So we tried with Puen, but he didn't know the word couch. We pointed to the couch and said "couch."

"Oh, so-FAAAH!" (In Thai the stress always seems to be on the second syllable)
"Yeah yeah, couch means the same as sofa, so you should name it The Couch."
"Oh. The Sofa Bar!"
"No, no, no. The... Couch."
"Ok ok, sofa same same cuch. The Cuch Bar?"
"No bar, just The Couch. Couch. Cow - chuh."
"The Cow-chuh Bar?"
"The Couch."

This was several months ago. And they still don't have a name or a sign, and all my friends know it as The Couch, so I think I've accomplished my goal. This name'll spread.

Back to Saturday. Tessa, Chris, Jeff, Russ and I went to The Couch to have a drink before meeting up with Sabine and friends. (Sabine - a German working for a human rights NGO in Thailand, but is leaving in a week or two I think.) But the couch was too much fun and Sabine and friends were at a bar playing some soccer match, so I went there to tell her we were at the couch and all the cool kids were coming there. So she waited for her other friends and then came over. I also got in touch with another couchsurfing dude, named Tim, who was in that area and came to The Couch with his friend Murphy and a Thai guy named Jack. Then, on the way back to The Couch, I ran into Ben, Renata's boyfriend. He was by himself. He came to the couch and Renata and her friend from Oregon soon followed. Russ' friends Jiw and Aom (CMU kids) came and somewhere in there Ashley showed up. The Couch was rocking. But there were three minor problems. First Puen wasn't there because he had to go get a new string for his guitar. He left some 15 year old kid in charge of the bar. Fifteen year old kid didn't speak English and had a tough time understanding it. Second, I'm faily sure The Couch had never had this many people at it. There weren't really enough seats or glasses. That was a first. Third, the cool thing about The Couch is that there are usually random Thai and farang musicians walking in and out and playing music. And it's stuff that's not just Jack Johnson and Bob Marley. But because no one else was there I think they were just playing a John Mayer CD which wasn't that impressive. But oh well.

(Oh, FYI, any white guy that plays guitar and sings that isn't Eric Clapton is Jack Johnson. This is a conversation from November with Puen...

"You like Jack Johnson?"
"Well, I do, but this is John Mayer."
"This Jack Johnson!"
"Do you have the CD case?" "See, this says John Mayer. He's different than Jack Johnson."

"Not Jack Johnson?"
"Right. His name is John Mayer."
"Jack Myr?"
"John... May-yer"
"John... May-yer. Ok! Thank you!"

And then two minutes later his friend comes in and says, "Oh! Jack Johnson!" and Puen nods his head with excitement, "Jack Johnson!")

So pretty much the 15 year old is freaking out and I just tell people they should just go to the mini mart cause the boy looked liked he was about the cry. He didn't care where the drinks were coming from, he just didn't want to have to listen to people speak English to him.

We got out of there and made our way back to Warm Up and got a table inside at the hip hop room with all the boppy uni kids. SO MUCH FUN. I can't even describe it. I guess I never went to dancey clubs in Madison or New York, but man, they are cool. Well this one is at least.

So after Warm Up we made our way to Discovery which is like Warm Up on crack. It was intense, and really late. But I did get to see a Thai cover band playing all those songs I miss from my TV watching days.

So that was Friday and Saturday. SO MUCH FUN. And Sunday was a big lazy day of nothing. And it felt good. And Monday was my first Monday off since coming back to work. And I even went to the gym.

Oh man, I haven't even talked about my gym yet.

http://www.californiawowx.com

Next post.

LOOK AT RUSS' PICTURES - photos.russjuskalian.com (Chiang Mai pictures start January 29th)