Warm greetings yogis and friends,

I am happily home, and nostalgic, and refreshed, and overwhelmed, and changed, and peaceful from the travels I've had the deep and affecting pleasure of enjoying these past few weeks. I've missed the sangha (spiritual community-you!) of home, but am returning filled up with the borrowed stuff of other sweet sanghas.

First. I love Thailand. We should all go together on a giant yoga pilgrimage. Can we?

Arriving in Bangkok was sweet. The trip was long, but I was excited to be there, so any traces of tired disappeared immediately. I had slightly prepared myself not to like Bangkok for its bigness, its busy-ness, its chaos, and its stinkiness, cause i'm not a huge fan of any of those, but none were present. Except for the bigness, and the busy-ness. Oh and a bit of the chaos. And it was a bit stinky, but its powerful and sacred shakti far outweighed any of this. I was struck quickly by the openness of people instead. I was struck by the sacred spaces, some sort of hidden, and some sort of towering, right in the middle of the thick of things. A temple ground, right off the main drag, close to where I was staying. Monks. Roosters. Best. Thai. Food. Ever. And then sky scrapers. And then nuns. And then traffic. And thai insence wafting through the streets, calling us to prayer. The paradoxes were unbelievable, but also essential. They were what made these people able to move through the chaos with such grace, I bet.

One morning, as all the rush hour traffic drove relentlessly past, a woman on her way to work stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, faced one of the nearby temples, put her hands gracefully together, and then knelt down, placing her forehead to the cement, bowing down humbly to her god. And then got back up, filled up, and carried on to work in her business woman suit.

Regardless of all of the strangeness and the paradoxes (or maybe because of them) I felt instantly at home in Bangkok. At home, safe, taken care of, at ease. As I think i've said, I've had more difficult trips to the grocery store than I did into Bangkok and thankfully, the ease would follow me through the rest of the trip.

My first day there, I went for a walk in the morning and stumbled upon some delicious, rich thai coffee. There was a quote on the wall of a coffee shop later in the trip that described the thai and laos coffee perfectly. I don't remember which guy said the quote, but I'm pretty sure he was drinking this stuff when he said it:

"Black as the devil, hot as hell, pure as an angel, sweet as love."

So the coffee became one of my passions (obsessions) while I was there, and the other one was the fruit shakes, which are simply fruit blended with ice. For the most part, we were finding them for about twenty baht (or less than a dollar) which was good, because on many days, I had about five of them. It was mango season, and the insides of the mangoes were the very same saffron as the monks' robes.

Very near to where I was staying was a pretty spectacular temple ground. It opened up onto Rambuttri (our street) and another big main drag. But inside, was a quiet market, a tiny restaurant called Mama's (my friend Darren's favourite Thai food) make-shift-fully set up, and a beautiful temple ground complete with some kind of gigantic, holy tree, where between the two of us, we made daily offerings. It was a bit of a ritual, if rituals can be made that quickly. I love that tree. (It was my first love, before the coffee or the mango shakes, and it was at first sight.)

Imagine how many prayers this tree has heard?

So, having met Bangkok, and found out about thai coffee, and visited an insane weekend market that was too big in which to even get orientation, we moved on to Laos via overnight train. The train was air conditioned and there were sleepers in our class (which was decidedly second and felt an awful lot like first. This is called flash-packing, i've learned. Back-packing is when you choose the wooden benches on the trains to sleep on. Flash-packing usually involves getting to similar destinations, but a lot more high maintenance and fancy. This would not be the end of my flash-packing. Many rooms with air conditioning were to be had.

So we crossed the Laos-Thai border, via the Friendship bridge. Getting Laos visas took about three seconds and then they were all, 'welcome to Laos.' The US could learn some lessons from these guys. I'm not going to go into the details of getting back into the states after this trip, but i will say that it was not so friendly, and certainly not so quick.

So I arrived in Vientiane, the capital of Laos via tuk tuk with Lao locals, where we learned the salutatatory words we would need on our way from an old Lao lady with a very kind and patient spirit. Lao is cute.

I was charmed by the Lao people instantly. They were quieter and kind of almost shy compared to the Thais, but still filled with a simliar quiet grace that was never missing from any of the people on this trip. Vientiane itself sits on the side of the Mekong River and on the other side of the river is Thailand, which you can still see. Vientiane (like the other places I visited in Laos) was colonised by the French in the 1900's and they left a European imprint on much of the architecture and food. Look at the photo of the door to the guesthouse below. Pretty, hey?

We stayed at a nice guesthouse which was very close to-just down the street from- where everything happens (which isn't so much. It's a humble city, Vientiane.) A night-market (tiny compared to what we would see later) gets set up along the Mekong, and restaurants serve Lao food and beer Lao along the Mekong at night. The twinkling lights are charming. First taste of mosquitoes, less so. (Especially with my Malaria fear still intact.)

We rented a motorbike one day and headed off to the Buddha park, which was one of my favourite things of this trip. Majestic, gigantic (the picture of the lounging buddha below has a tiny me in the picture to demonstrate the degree of gigantic-ness), ancient Buddhas as well as statues of many Hindu Gods (that's Hanuman, the monkey god below) are all gathered into one park and you can walk through and get a good look and then walk up into one of the monuments and get a sky view of all of it. It was pretty amazing. We met some monks and asked them if we could take their picture. And then they handed us their camera and asked if we would take pictures with them for them too. After that, we couldn't shake them (I wouldn't have wanted to; they were cute), and they were our permanent companions the rest of the afternoon in the park, graciously showing us all the sights, and hamming it up for many photos opportunities. The pictures of me and the monks were lost with Darren's camera (but a photographer took some too, for his magazine, and will send them to me by email at some point) but here's one of the boys:

The view from the top was humbling, and inspiring, and to honour all of this, a metta meditation (loving kindness) was done. Is there possibly a better venue for this Buddhist tradition? If yes, could you tell me where it is?

From Vientiane, we went by bus (not flash-packing) to Vang Vieng, a bit of a back-packers town with tvs blaring reruns of Friends epidsodes (for real) and giant, but still soft and lush mountains in the close background, with low-lying clouds nestled into their sides. Rented bikes one day and went for a 7km bike ride to some nearby caves where we had two little boys as our tour guides. They had a half-working flashlight to lead us just deep enough into the caves to see an alter to the Buddha, and then we came back out, headed in the thick heat to a pretty lagoon where we swung off a rope into the water, rich with minerals.

The lagoon was a saving grace that day, and there is no doubt in my mind that its waters were holy. Afterward, we returned to town where we were fed delicious Lao food (similar to Thai food, but not quite as wonderful) by the road side and shot glasses filled with Lao Lao (a whiskey with 'strange' 'herbs' marinating in it.) I don't recommend big amounts of this, but I had to try it. I'm polite. And it was a gift...

Next, was Luang Prabang, the old capital of Laos. This town is rich with temples and monuments and the town itself is built around a beautiful temple high in the sky. You can climb (a lot) of stairs to get to the top and see a pretty amazing view of the surrounding area.

This is the Buddhist shrine at the temple at the top of the stairs. (I put down the circle of marigolds.)

Luang Prabang is also known for its large numbers of monks. If you get up early enough, you can participate in (or watch) the giving of alms, where the monks come through the town and receive offerings from the people there. It's really a beautiful ritual, where the streets are lined with people waiting to offer rice and other food, and the monks move through slowly and quietly, gracefully receiving the offerings.

Spent a few more days there, visiting a waterfall, being sprayed, squirted and dumped on with water- constantly- as part of the Songkran (new year) festivities, and enjoying the occasional Beer Lao, before heading to Chiang Mai, where I took it easy: Enjoying their famous massages (daily), petting elephants (the usual), a yoga class, and back to Thai food.

And then back to Bangkok...

And then back to Winnipeg... refreshed, soothed, and hopeful for all the beauty and wonder and health that this new-new year certainly holds for us!

May we all be well, and peaceful, and at ease.