Va Keki in Chiang Mai

Rewind.

To three weeks ago, when I arrived at the Atlantic Hotel in Bangkok and I was naive to all the adventures my future would hold. But I was real excited and took a series of pictures of myself in the mirror.

My adventure truly began in Naruto.
I dropped my car off and grabbed a ride with two strangers. One of whom was a four year old Japanese girl- really cute, obviously. The person in the driver seat happened to be a Japanese woman who learned English in America.
"What city?" I asked.
"Pittsburgh," she replied.
Wow!!!! Hey God, thanks for the positive sign at the beginning of the trip!

From Bangkok I flew to Chiang Mai where my sister and I started the vacation off right. Eating lots of delicious food and speaking unedited English over cups of coffee.

We spent Christmas Eve at a wine bar where a plump British man was enthusiastically serving mince pie.


Christmas morning we woke up with the exact same thought ...
Our mother was not climbing the stairs to the den of eternal adolescence (the attic bedroom of 105 Inglewood Dr.) to tell us in a soothing voice, "Girls, Nana and Papa are going to be here any minute, so if you want to take a shower you might want to go ahead and do that now."
And we were not in the States to moan about how we cannot get up because we were watching television, in the basement till the sun came up, on one of the hundreds of movie channels.

Instead, we had gone to bed fairly early so we were able to climb on the motor bike, before noon, and speed around Chiang Mai to shop and pet dirty street dogs.



Brad showed up to Chiang Mai on the evening of the 26th and got on the phone, that evening, with one of his friend's, Jon who was also in Thailand.

Jon, who is currently teaching in Korea, also decided to hit up the land of warm weather for the holiday season with his friend, Tom.

The next day the three boys and I went up to Doi Suthep Temple.

Much like most of the temples I have strolled into, alongside Brad, it was breathtaking and I found another piece of the puzzle that is the meaning of life.

Then the four of us went on a hike at a nearby national park.
We saw one of the coolest trees in the world on our hike.

Hiking with three other boys was exhausting. I fell on the slippery rocks when we finally made it to the waterfall.

My favorite temple in Chiang Mai was the one that served organic vegetarian food. I was really excited about it because healthy eating is the new trendy thing I am into.

It certainly was delicious. But, Brad is allergic to peanuts and being that peanuts are featured in much Thai cuisine he had a bad reaction to some of the food.
My sister had been feeling under the weather as well so we decided to take it in.
We went back to my sisters apartment where we pulled the blinds shut, watched episodes of The Sopranos and two movies. One of the movies being The Devil and Daniel Johnston, which I had never seen before and I recommend it to anyone else who has not seen it.

We finally got our act together enough to order a pizza ... that was delivered to the door!
When the pizza was gone we decided a piece of cake was in order. So we went across the street to the kind of restaurant where everyone drinks blue drinks.
But the cake was MARVELOUS.
Thus, the vacation turned into va-keki. Keki being the Japanese word for cake.
I have not really stopped eating too much cake since.