In which I bid a fond farewell to Chiang Mai...

My bags are packed, my excess stuff sold or donated, and a massive box of trinkets has been shipped to my parents' house. I'm down to my last hour in Chiang Mai, and I just ate my final bowl of Khao Soy, a delightful dish available nowhere else in the world. The experience would have been more poignant had a massive splatter of coconut curry oil not arbitrarily erupted into my left eye, causing searing and undignified pain, but I'm still heartsick at the loss of the stuff.

Weird to be leaving Thailand, it is. I haven't got a job arranged in Vancouver for when I get back, and nor am I certain where I'm going next. I've been looking at something in Ethiopia, but I may have sabotaged that by losing my passport last week and thusly depriving myself of the time necessary to do their 10-page questionnaire. I may just take a few weeks to do a hardcore job search back home - I've got a long history of taking the first job that comes up rather than searching out the best one for me, and maybe I should switch that around.

But in the meantime, I'm heading down to Bangkok on tonight's overnight train, and spending some time whining at the Canadian Embassy to give me a temporary passport. Then, hopefully, I'll spend a few weeks at the lovely Ko Chang island, going kayaking and snorkeling and surely getting sunburnt into a smoking black ooze. Then back to Bangkok and, Vishnu willing, home to Vancouver on August 14th. A year passes quickly. My tribulations last week derailed my blogging plans (yay, more excuses!) but I did find a bit of bandwidth to upload some of my New York photos. I'll post photos from around Thailand and Burma when I get home and can access the sweet joy of true broadband. See you all soon.