Thailand in a nutshell

Thailand Thailand where do I begin? I think I'll just ramble if that's okay. I love the food; everything about it. The freshness and spiciness and cheapness of it all. I love Thai iced tea and fried rice and banana chocolate pancakes. I love the 30 baht phad thai from street vendors. I could eat this food all day every day. Which I have been. The people in Thailand as well are warm hearted and kind and helpful except when they're hustlin you, which isn't too often. One thing I don't love is the streets and the traffic and the noise, I could do without crazy cars and motorbikes and tuk tuks swerving all around and honking all day and night. Cheap ass shopping and markets oh my! Massages. Inexpensive, sometimes painful, but awesome all the same. The King's glorious face on billboards and clocks and calendars and murals and well pretty much everywhere. Golden Temples and Buddhas and some of the coolest art and shiny craziness I've ever seen, only in Thailand. Not really Thailand but I'm including it here; Laos. I loved the baguettes and the cheap mojitos and the scarf buying. The slow boating and the bus riding I will always remember fondly because they taught me to be patient and I've carried it with me since. Tubing was a shit show but I loved it all the same. And I loved that hangover day afterwards as well. I will always remember the glorious week of fun I had with Jackie and Yumi when they spur of the moment decided to come and visit and I got to take them around and shock them with tuk tuks and street food and shitty train rides. And drunken buckets and street bars and chatting up new people and i did not love that hangover day no siree. Mostly it was just fun to see my friends and get to catch up and hang out no matter what we did. And although I was really sick, the time we spent on Railay was amazingly fun and relaxing and ohhh that ocean water. Eating at Mom's and drinking honey by the shotglass and bamboo tattoos and swimming with jellyfish and the kayaking adventures. I am very glad the Malaria scare went over well and negative most of all but it taught me as well to slow down and take it easy sometimes, and that sometimes not going according to the plan is just as good. I think I learned that most of all, that you can plan the shit out of something, but then life finds a way of putting its own spin onto things and you end up somewhere even better. Farming in Chiang Dao was a good time, mostly when I wasn't totally out of shape and going through sugar with drawls, but I got to meet some cool people and work hard and nap hard. Overall I loved my time here and I feel rested and healthy to begin my next adventure. And to begin the second half of my traveling year.