chillin in nakhon pathom with my frined Yo -staying with her mom in a big teak house outside of town. talk about peaceful compared to india. nobody honks. public pissing is not such the national passtime. the food is great (although i confess to have cheated and eaten fish and had pork literally put in my mouth by her mom! well... when in Rome;b. the temp is great and humid. and most of all the company makes it feel like home. Yo is one of those people i will always know and connect with no matter how much time has gone between us. she's super into Buddhism and is very wise and soothing to be around.
presently i can hear the monks chanting prayers from the temple on the rise across the street -tallest standing buddha in thailand. he's absolutely beautiful. and so few people know or think to come to this place. although otherwise it's just a bustling typical thai town of several 100 thou.
followed Yo to her IT classes the last couple of days. now i gotta look for the bus sched to Khao lak... looking forward to being in the water... oneness...

but will also have to backtrack to tell of my last days in Kolkata -the city of Kali, Shiva's dark consort -the godess of mortality, the ancient banyan tree and endless people. pictures too! tomorrow...

off to teach with Yo and her EFL students -she'll be wondering what happened to me.

गोइंग नॉर्थ तो...

back from...
Assam!! look north and east past the chicken neck to the tea regions of india. Flight to darjeeling was cancelled so headed to Guwahati instead and then onto Shillong in the hills which was all i really wanted -green, ups and downs to walk, interesting new faces. met up with a honeymooning couple from Nagaland -now i want to go there too! found a lovely guest house at the top of the town. it was run by a true gentleman who appeared to be perhaps an ex-military, raj era or something by the likes of his taste and travels. From there it was time to stretch our legs along a trail to a measely waterfall and then through the hillside houses down to the police bazaar -didn't seem like a likely place where merchants would gather but however -a great cappucino was had! (comforts of home cannot be underestimated even this soon in;)
but we couldn't stay there for long; the nexst day it was time to return. Not so easy though with a bandh on -a strike barring all publik transport! so onto a lorry we climbed and sped down towards the airport at about 30km an hour the whole way -woohoo! the lorry driver and his sidekick were quite the comic relief to counter balance the rising panic of a fast approaching flight time. After many random stops we came to the end of the road for the lorry ride and then by auto-rikshaw(which i swear went fastar than the truck did) to arrive at the airport just in time to hear the flight take off. ye. fortunately our excuse of the bandh worked (true too! it was quite astonishing how vacant the roads were) and the tickets were "refunded" (we shall see...) hopped a later air india flight and made a late return to the ever bustling kolkata. this place never stops -the honking and beeping and merchant calls or crows and cats, even the hindi song hummed or blasted creates the symphonic assault on the senses that only subsides in the late evening and takes up again as the sun rises. sometimes it lulls me and other times, it makes you feel traped by sound. that's not to mention the smells and stenches that are inevitable in a city of some 15million at a foggy 31+degrees.
off to Kalighat and to find a banyan tree to mediate unde or something.