North, South, and everywhere in between
A month has gone by and to let November's events go unrecorded would unforgiving. In an effort to be a self-knowing woman, I'm continuously and brutally honest with myself, discovering that my current ongoing struggle is being able to hold onto the memories that keep passing with each train. Not finding my way through a grocery store or connecting with a culture inherently opposite to mine; my struggles consists of basically having too much fun and not enough mental memory space. With each ticket up and down this country, my butter spread of knowledge's edge creeps farther, but also thinner.
To sit down with my thoughts is like a homecoming traveler lying down in her childhood bed. My back is strong but it is string compared to the rope that pulls me back to a conversation with myself. My feet met miles of earth, aching and oozing with blisters, bug bite constellations, raised scars, and well endowed muscle retention, but all of those are minor ailments compared to the brokenness of my heart that crumbles in front of this page, aching with a loss of compenmanship. You see, I’ve explored miles of this city all the while sitting idle in my mind. I’ve got bruises and scratches, debt, and accumulated fat in my belly but my journal has suffered the most: left starved and abused by months of neglect.
Why can't I write, why can't I look within?
Why do I feel like oil in the city of water I live in?
Am I doing something wrong? Have I committed some great sin?
Cause, boy, do I want to remember all the places I've been!
C.B.
Most of these photos were from a weekend trip I took going back to Ayuthaya. To be honest, I only went to show a friend around and stick my head out the train window, and I expected the rest to be like an unstimulated rerun of tourists and temples. But, I was going with a girl I'd known for what could have been a week and I adored her like a sister of my own and I severely underestimated the magic of Thailand. We chatted the entire train ride about boys while sitting on the laps of locals (it was crowded ok?) and snuck photos of the barefoot woman sitting across from us who refused to move and slept in 5 minute intervals with her eyes open. The motorbike rides were pure mayhem, with a lot of Elizabeth apologizing to entire stoplight intersections as we swerved back into our lane and blatant hand motions so everyone knew which way we were going. We spent the majority of the day in a huge temple in the middle of town that I have never seen before and right when we got our fill of golden hour, we ran for beer.
Not only is the nature of Thailand and Ayuthaya (the original capital) simply aesthetic, but so are the people! They offer tourists and locals costume rentals at temple entrances to make you dress like the attire of this 1500/1600 time period. Or they just simply support a perfect Instagram post, I must not be asking enough questions. Elizabeth and I didn't pay for a costume, but we did meet a beautiful couple who lent us their umbrellas and let us frolic through the ruins and dance with Chinese grandmas, AKA the methodology for any good photo (see right).
Meeting Elizabeth offered me some of the greatest memories in a 3-week period that I have had in awhile. She is the bottle opener to my extra large beer, the Lloyd to my Harry, and when I started crying at breakfast, she cried with me and showed me funny videos of her friend's awful kids (she said it not me!). We took forever to do anything because she was giving her full attention to any/every dog she met for atleast 10 minutes. She too finds fulfillment in running around the world and proudly stumbling home with mad stories and scraped knees. Strange to think about the idea of chasing something that reminds you of home while spending your whole life chasing something exotic and unfamiliar. But I guess vacations do come in many forms.
Months ago I was on a tourist travel agency site looking for upcoming Thai holidays and saw that the festival of lanterns and lights, Loy Krathong, was in November. I did all my bookings, grew my hair out, and looked for my Fin Ryder to recreate the Tangled scene. Now, my hair is the same length and Fin Ryder ended up being Elizabeth, but I was more or less ready for Chiang Mai. Chiang Mai is a northern mountain city, I wrote about it previously on my post to see elephants and have now accepted that each visit only unveils another layer of magic.
We essentially went to an organized celebration that charges tourists $100 USD for entry, and spent the lantern celebration there. Personally, I was at odds with choosing a scheduled, structured, tourist event over walking the streets of the old city and celebrating with locals, but I knew what I wanted to see when I first booked these tickets. I feared I would end up lost in the streets, out of view of lanterns if I risked staying local and I just simply could not pass up an opportunity for a perfect night. Had I not flown in late from Bangkok and had more than two days to wander, I would have had not qualms. But, regardless, I settled for the crowds of tourists, the fenced in events, structured schedule, painted faces, and promised perfection. And I was amazed.
Everything was beautiful and delicious and colorful and crowded and loud.
We walked into the old rodeo field and entered, what seemed like a Thai Shire under a giant willow tree dripping in lights and trapped by candles. An open and communal event of offerings that brought you closer to Thai tradition and farther from your need for the perfect pictures. On bamboo woven and banana leaf plates we were served spicy finger food and drank butterfly tea in clay pots, accepted blessing from a grandmother monk dressed in white and barefoot on a shrine of flowers, then took home priceless paintings of unknown languages. It wasan alarming amount of candles, string instruments, and people. I looked up to say Thank you and saw the moon and began crying into my pad thai.
I hope you bring good things back to your country, they wished to me, as if they haven't already gifted me with presence I'll never forget. How did I find myself here? A broke, forgetful, impulsive, and childish person somehow found the road that led to a million lights. When I swam with bioluminescence with my loved ones, when I watched the parade of shooting stars in Fiji, when I listened to monks chant and almost caught fire at Loy Krathong, I was in corners of Earth, closing my eyes and reopening them to see if what was happening was truly real, taking mental snapchats and begging my mind to keep this moment safe if all the others go up in flame. Everything was magic and everyone was happy.
Shout out to Elizabeth who never freaked out over my driving and followed me down all the sticky waterfalls.
If there were words that could open my chest and show you how filled with love my heart is, maybe you could begin to understand how thankful I am for this life. The times I've had in 5 short months are cookie-crust coconut sugar sweet compared to what came before and perhaps it is from the unpromised and unforeseen that make each day surprising. To be alone is to be with myself alone in quiet moments, and to be free is to find my boundaries and build fences when I decide what protection I need. There is so much freedom in control and growth in celebrating my youth. 
I finally left the country for work and did everything I would have wished to do had I been on a personal trip. Welcome to Cassian's ideal vacation.
KulKul farms is located in Bali, a biodynamic farm that encapsulates the ideaology of what permaculture is. It is the brainchild from the Green School: a bamboo, open aired international primary school that redefines how learning should take place. Everything feeds eachother and what I learned most is 1. Organic Matter matters and 2. I have so much more to learn. What grand validation to recognize how everything has a place and how the concept of "waste" is just a resource out of place.
The compost toilets smelled just fine and the food might have had dirt in it but my body felt full in the best way. I lost too much blood to the freaking mosquitos, but it was okay since they contributed to making the whole farm function well. A coupled that tended to each other's needs as much as the garden's taught us how to properly steward the land and use our opposable thumbs for good, as well served us a single serving of a year's worth of knowledge on natural herbalism and how remedies for all ailments can be found in our backyard.
I met the people that make my job so great. I tasted the fruits we beared and took a second serving. I love my team and the places they take me. I can't wait to see where I go next!!
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