Hmong village to Mae Sai

After about a week in Chiang Mai, I headed up to Chiang Rai. I didn't stay there long since my cousin lived an hour away by car. The brief haggle of tuk-tuk drivers was too familiar.

I arrived at my cousins village around five. The sound of my own language brought ease and simplicity back into my life. That night I had fresh boiled chicken for dinner and talked with my new brother-in-law. If you don't know Hmong people, the older generation tend to talk about the same subject matter about three to four times in different wording. So for the rest of the night I pretty had the same reply- yes, no, kind of, not so much.

The next day I was woken up quit early, about 6 am. The last two weeks I have been getting up at about 1030ish. Its kinda weird that they get up so early but yet they don't do anything. The only time they do do something is when they have to plant the rice feilds, which have already been done.

Later that morning the girls next door took me out to the jungle to look for the tip of the banana branch for dinner. Its in the shape of a american football and red. I had to cut down five trees which was fairly easy. Along the way, the girls picked wild vegables which was tasty at dinner. On the way back I was walking to a lake through some large rocks when this long dark snake came flying by my right foot. It scared the crap out of me. I pretty much yelled like a little school girl.

Next day, I went out and bought a pig for dinner. My brother-in-law also did a religious ceremony for my nephew, it was to call his spirit and give blessings.

We later BBQ my pig and had beer and some pretty nasty thai whiskey. Everybody got wasted and threw up. I also met up with a guy that I went to middle school with. He had moved back to the Hmong village and got married.

They next day a bunch of went up to the Golden Triangle and looked at the river and the three bordering countries. We later drove up to Mae Sai and crossed the bouder in to Myanmar for a day. After shopping and looking around at pretty much the same stuff we stop by the Mekong river and had dinner at a food stand. The sky turned blacked suddenly and we were hit with torrential down pour. The best place for a nice dinner with the worst weather.