Videos and pics

This is really odd with those stupid golf videos of some dude linked to my blog. UGH!!! Anyway, if you go straight to you tube, you can see my channel with all the videos listed down the left side. I'm not too sure about the playlist thing, seems like another way to spend more time on the laptop and less getting out and about. Not even sure how I did that one for Malaysia.

Pics and videos here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/hellokittyinlondon/PhuketJuly2009#

youtube/hsgworld

Having an internet connection that works is FAB!!!!

Rewind, unwind, and move forward

This was my room at the fab Indigo Pearl in Nai Yang, Phuket, Thailand. Yes, I had my own salt water dipping pool and a huge private patio. I spent 3 days here before joining up with my CELTA course at the British International School. This hotel is on the northern tip of Phuket which is two big national parks and a huge expanse of beach that goes for miles and miles. It is really lovely part of the island. I didn't expect to find anything so natural on Phuket.

Do check out the new videos posted to the right. That storm in Nai Harn on the southern tip of Phuket was really amazing. I listened to those videos again myself and decided I sound a bit...well...out of it or something. Anyway, it was 7 a.m. and I had just gotten up. I woke must faster than usual when I turned over only to see a gigantic spider in my bed. Thankfully, it was dead but who knows how that happened. Nevermind, I don't want to know. That was the weekend of July 12th and the storm lasted the whole weekend. The next two weekends were fabulous and I took full advantage by driving back to the southern tip of the island and the lovely Nai Harn beach.

A bit more about the CELTA course. We had 24 teacher trainees divided into two groups. It was actually two separate courses so we didn't get to know the other group nearly as well. At our award ceremony on the last

day, I found out that we had 3 PhDs among us, one of whom I had become quite close to, the lovely Mary Carey, a doctor of Eng Lit. Check out her blog at aboutamherst.blogspot.com. She is a journalist and teaches at U.Mass - Amherst. Here she is enjoying the lovely Nai Harn beach without the monsoon storm.

Mary and I became quite attached to this beach community on the southern tip of Phuket. It was just fab. Plenty of restaurants, shops, pharmacies (I am still endlessly fascinated with them), massage, and a wide range of hotels. We stayed in options from $12 to $100 and there are many more. I had the best massage of my life there for $15 for 2 hours and supplemented by a wonderful herbal steam bath which is traditional in Thailand. Our last weekend we had a 3 bedroom house in a lovely lush garden about 1 km from the beach.

Here is a view of Nai Harn from the viewing point above. It is such a nice little hideaway. I've realized there are some excellent benefits to excess tourism in certain places. Most of all I found I didn't have to see Patong at all and I didn't miss a thing. At the same time the island is full of diversity and is quite mature in what is available. I was able to rent a car (right hand drive, manual transmission) for a month without a hitch and return it to the airport on my way out. The Tesco, about 10 minutes drive from the school, was a huge asset for everything from club soda to magic markers to document covers. There is a huge variety of food including many great ethnic restaurants in every price range. We had an exceptional meal at Da Vinci, a lovely Italian eatery owned by a Brit who hasn't lived in the UK in 25 years. I actually lost track of all the places he lived but remember that he went to cooking school in France. The food was delicious!

The best thing about the school was a tie between the 50 meter pool and campus cats. Both FANTASTIC!!!

We had one kitty who became a bit of a permanent resident in Karon House, our dorm for the duration of the course. The room was adequate and I was thrilled to have my own bathroom. The freezing cold air conditioning blowing on my head every night was not as pleasant. I tried going without the air cond and that wouldn't work either. I think that is part of the deal at these intensive courses, it is a bit of everything thrown together. Could you make it through living with 24 strangers for a month in a boarding school style? Getting away on the weekends made it all worthwhile for me and I cannot understand how some of the folks did the course without ever leaving the school.

I had another wonderful night of sleep in my huge bed in Taipei and am starting to realize I'm done with the intense training stuff and now it is travel, travel, travel. Today I am going in search of a lovely yoga teacher I met in Kuala Lumpur who lives in Taipei. Turns out she teaches at a studio not too far from where I am staying. I'm anxious for her to give me some tips on what to do in Taiwan. Did you know there are big mountains on the island and it has the most natural hot springs in the world after Japan? Some people say it is the most underrated Asia destination. Finally, the internet speed is FANTASTIC and I can upload my pics and videos to keep in touch and keep my own record of my big adventure!

Happy Monday!!!

I survived!!!

My oh my...I completed the CELTA course.... I really didn't know if I was going to make it. At the beginning of the third week, I really hit the wall. Anyway, it's all good. Here I am on the last morning of the course. I still had one

(full hour) teaching practice to go. As you can see by the look on my face, it didn't matter. I was SOOOOO ready to be done. I may have overdone it a bit by doing the intensive YTT for a month followed by CELTA for month.

BTW, I am enjoying some delicious chicken congee for breakfast here.

It was a very intense and challenging month. I don't think I have been that challenged on so many different levels in many, many years. It was exhausting. Last night as I lay in my huge king size bed with crisp white cotton sheets watching Sex in the City reruns and sipping a Taiwanese beer, I knew it all worth it and I am thrilled to have completed it. Towards the end of the course I realized I needed a break from the third world so jumped on a plane to Taipei, Taiwan where I am currently staying in a lovely boutique hotel in the heart of the fashionable Da An area of the city.

I have lots more to say about the last month but will save it for later.

These pictures pretty much say it all about Taipei so far:

Yes it is a Hello Kitty bakery and it is right down street from my hotel.

Cheers!

YTT and beyond

Well, I've done it! Completed my 200 hour Yoga Teacher Training and can now apply for my RYT 200 certification. It was a great experience albeit a bit controlling at times. I learned a tremendous amount and do feel ready to teach yoga although it is good to know that it involves a lot to be a good yoga teacher.

Another post without pics as the wireless connection here in Siem Reap doesn't seem able to handle the bandwidth.

http://picasaweb.google.com/hellokittyinlondon/Angkor#

The location of our training was a huge complex (Tao Garden) and rather remote. My room was completely austere and plain though functional. Bare white walls, a wardrobe, a bed, and a desk. The gardens and grounds were exceptional and the daily birgsong and gecko chirping was pretty amazing. The personal space was not luxurious but the complex was quite nice. The room was, at first, quite a shock from the lovely Dreamcatchers B&B with the personal items and antiques all over the house. In the end, the simple room at TG worked fine for the purposes of my stay which clearly was not for luxury.

My hatha yoga poses are very strong and I've learned many new tips that I use in my personal practice and will use in teaching some day. The sections of the course on yoga philosophy and history, taught by a UC Berkley professor, were particularly engaging. Somehow through all these years of yoga, I had not learned much on the history of yoga as a life practice, not just hatha yoga or asanas.

We also had a guest teacher for anatomy. A craniosacral therapist from LA with a sideline in sexology. Only from LA...right? She was incredibly knowledgeable with quite a unique angle on the links of the esoteric and physical aspects of deep yoga practice.

Our main teachers were very knowledgeable and led great classes every day. We were assisted with work in asanas (poses), pranayama (breathing), meditation, and self practice. I am quite fortunate that I have had a very strong self practice for awhile now but the help I received in that area was quite valuable.

Being marooned at a remote setting, seeing the same people day after day for a month, and eating the same food is a unique part the setup that I found quite restrictive towards the end. Thank goodness I had the sense to get a private room. I honestly don't think I could have survived the entire month otherwise. The people were great, mind you, but I have been living alone for a long time now and I have no desire to share a small room with someone I have never met...for a month. I loved having my own room especially for the silence requirement from 10 p.m. to 10 a.m. which meant completing the morning practice and breakfast in silence.

The last day felt like a whole new kind of freedom. I decided to leave Chiang Mai and head to Siem Reap (Cambodia) where I am spending my last day today. I actually needed about 3 days of decompression from the YTT experience and Siem Reap and Angkor have been the perfect place for that.

Fast forward to the fab Viroth's Hotel in Siem Reap. Siem Reap has clearly been living the tourist mania for years now and it shows. Walking down the street yields constant calls of "tuk tuk madam?" and many other attempts to get you to buy something. Thankfully, the amazing sites of Angkor make it all worth while. I spent the entire day seeing the ruins on Monday and it is spectacular. Known as the largest religious ruins in the world and the only ones visible from space, the complex goes on and on. I had a tuk tuk driver to take me around and arrived at Angkor Wat (the main temple) just before sunrise. The clouds at the horizon obscured a spectacular sunrise show but the temples did not disappoint. Much of Angkor has not been excavated and/or preserved and much of that work is going on now. I found myself particularly fascinated with the relief stone carvings which represent many Hindu gods. The additions of the Buddha images came later as the temples were originally dedicated to Hindu gods (11th century), then Vishnu, and finally Buddha (13th century) which required the conversion of many Cambodians to Theravada Buddhism.

Yesterday I had an amazing 3 hour treatment with scrub, wrap, and massage to ease my aching legs from hours of temple hiking. The coffee and cocoa scrub was particularly good and my skin is soft and smooth. I think perhaps a job as a spa reviewer would be good. I've become quite a massage connoisseur over the past couple years. From overpriced London massages in lovely settings by eastern European child like women with no hand strength to unusually large Thai women in Malaysia hell bent on showing you how they can cause severe pain in a single move of their elbow and EVERYTHING in between. In my opinion, the best massages and treatments are those where the therapist is skilled at sensing and treating those areas of your body that need it. I could go on and on but will leave it at the Frangipani spa in Siem Reap is lovely and is right up there with some of my favourites.

I am going to try to see one more part of the Angkor temples today, a remote area known for its pink stone bas reliefs. I am back to Thailand tomorrow where I will have a couple days on the beach before I join up with my CELTA training on Sunday afternoon. I do expect this next month of in depth English language teacher training to be quite intense but fun and exciting as well.

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.__Mark Twain

Pics and Videos

http://picasaweb.google.com/hellokittyinlondon

New folder with pics of Laos and do check out the videos now linked at the bottom of the blog dashboard.  

Hope your Saturday ROCKS!!! 

Love, El 

Lost in Laos

Another thing that I need to "let go" of is my typos or, god forbid, my grammatical mistakes in these posts.  For some reason proofing my own stuff is quite hard and even harder on the computer.  I used to print them out and for some reason that helped but that is not currently an option so I've decided to let it go.  Of course I couldn't resist the chance to ensure that anyone that might read this would be aware that I know I make mistakes, I just don't always get them corrected before posting and never seem to have time to correct them after they are posted.  

The week of 29May I had the exceptional and rare opportunity to experience one of those magical places on this earth.  Luang Prabang, Laos reminds me of the feeling I've had in 2 other places, Zipolite, Mexico in 1983 and Olu Deniz, Turkey in 1989. Wonderful, out of the way places that are just starting to experience the good and bad of increased tourism.  Thankfully Luang Prabang was designated as an Unesco World Heritage site back in 1995 and it is very remote so that will help.   By the way, Laos is pronounced Lao as the "s" is silent.  Yes, most English speaking people say it in incorrectly.  The people are Lao and they speak Lao.  It is a communist country but over 90% of the people are Buddhists.  

It was actually a matter of having to renew my Thai visa as it would expire on 30MAY.  I found that I could fly directly to Luang Prabang on Lao Airlines from Chian Mai.  Sweetness!  A lovely prop jet soared us over the mountains and down into the Luang Prabang.  Visa on arrival, currently $35 USD to enter, a prompt and efficient process and I was off to my hotel.  You can save $1 USD by having your own passport picture.  I had originally considered Vientiane but it is much bigger than Luang Prabang.  

I had decided to arrange a room in advance but this is definitely one of those places where, during off season at least, you will find many guest houses and I imagine the majority of them do not have any listing on the web.  I guess the primary time to visit is Nov-Mar but the off season is perfect for me.  Luang Prabang sits on the confluence of the Nam Than and Mekong rivers.  The mighty Mekong and it is huge.  I suppose it depends on your age but I immediately think of Apocalypse Now whenever I hear anything about the Mekong River.  I adore large bodies of water anywhere in the world but big rivers have a character all of their own.  I could watch the Nam Than from my hotel and was fascinated by some of the fishing practices using a large circular net and the fisherman gathering it up and folding in a very particular way and then throwing it out where it would land in the water in a perfect circle.  

Luang Prabang has one of the highest concentrations of temples and monks anywhere.  Living at a monastery and practicing as a monk, even for a short time, is expected of all young Buddhist men.  Some only participate for 2 weeks.  On my second day, I climbed to the top of the temple at the center of town and had a lovely time chatting with a young Lao monk.  He wanted to practice his English.  At one point in our conversation he asked me how old I was and I told him to which he responded "wow, you're old"....he was all of 20 and had never been out of Lao but is hoping to continue his Buddhist studies in India someday.  

There is still a very distinct wildness about this place.  It is quite obvious that even though there are lots of little eateries and guest houses, especially along the Mekong, it is still quite innocent.  The edges of the river are wild with overgrowth and all kinds of life.  The boat drivers seem just as happy to go back to their games with their friends when you say "Baw, Khawp Jai" to their offers of "boat ride".  The buzz of the jungle can be heard steps from the center of town.  I took the opportunity to rest a moment at the end point of the town at the river confluence and saw TONS of butterflies, a beautiful orange snake and bright yellow lizard all while taking a few minutes rest just steps from the town road.  

My title for this post is based on my activities the first day.  I jumped on one of the free hotel bikes and took off towards town.  The high and narrow bridge over the Nam Tham seemed quite mild on a bike.  I covered the main streets of the town in a short time, although the searing heat and single speed bike made it a bit of a challenge.  Although the seat was adjusted high enough for my legs, the crank arm is so short it makes taking a good strong pump through the pedals quite difficult.  Overall, it felt great to be on a bike and was a fantastic way to get around this beautiful little town.  So I set off in another direction hoping to see some more local colour.  I weaved my way past little village after village each seemingly having some type of specialty going on.  There was the mechanics village, the basket village, a weaving village, pottery village, and many others.  Before I knew it I was on a busy road with trucks and fast moving traffic and I realized I had no idea where I was and that I was lost.  Lost in Laos...sounds pretty cool.  I knew I couldn't have gotten than far away so persevered and made it make in about an hour.  I was soaked in sweat and exhausted and proceeded to stuff myself with beer and a delicious Lao lunch.  YUM.  

I went back to Chiang Mai on 29 and headed straight back to the Dreamcatchers B&B before joining up with my YTT on Sunday 31May.  

Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books. __John Lubbock

Pics and videos updated too.  

Finally...some pics uploaded

http://picasaweb.google.com/hellokittyinlondon/BangkokAndChangMai#

Finally was able to post some pics with that go with the last 2 posts.  

Lots more to come.

Peace!