spoiled in time & soaked in water

Believe it or not, it's still summer vacation in Thailand (and will be for another 3 weeks). It's entirely, unfairly awesome. Things I've done since I last wrote in here:

• kicked it with 30 8th-grade students on a field trip in the south of thailand, sleeping on concrete floors in school auditoriums and encouraging the kids to speak english to overly-tanned, saggy-skinned europeans on a tourist beach. 

• drove a motorbike across the northern-thai countryside (and also kind of biffed on the bike at one point- a cool enough spill to feel like a bad ass but lame enough to not have gained any problematic injuries). if anything is a natural high, it is driving a motorbike in thailand. 

• wandered down the Mekong river in Laos for 2 days, a totally legit way to approach a populous former-capital city in Laos (Luang Prabang).

• jumped off an insanely beautiful waterfall near Luang Prabang. 

• swam with dead skin-nibbling fish in yet another waterfall (this time in central Thailand, not Laos). 

• participated in probably the biggest water fight in the world: Songkran. Thailand's new year festival is everything you would imagine a nation-wide water fight would be: get everybody around you as wet as you possibly can. the amount of (dirty) water that covered me for 4 consecutive days is telling of the fact that thai people really know how to bring in a new year!

this festival was the most fun I've ever had being soaking wet. and now? I am heading off for EVEN more vacation: the islands of koh samet and koh chang, then the main cities of cambodia and a TBD adventure of Laos. I feel really pretty choke dee right about now...