hill tribe mania

we spent a weekend hiking in the very green mountains of karen territory, one of the many thai hill tribes. beyond incredible. the hikes were beautiful and surprisingly legit--most of our "hardcorenesses" in thailand have been doable in flip-flops--and we got to spend the night in a hut with some karen folk at a beautiful waterfall past some terraced rice fields. whoooaa ; )

glassy rice fields in the mountains, especially in the evening and morning, are probably among the top five beautiful sights in the wholintire world. see evidence:

sorry i'm too lazy to mess with the colors and try to make it nearly as amazing as it was in real life, but pictures never capture the full glory anyway right?

and the three kids were adorable. the 8-yr-old-ish boy walked up next to me as soon as we got there, threw off his shirt, dropped his pants, and jumped into the freezing water completely naked. despite the 15-ish college girls present, he had no shame. hoorah!

nick must've felt mighty inspired, because when we were jumping off cliffs into a river the next day, he decided to moon everybody, including many innocent thai onlookers who were probably scarred for life. according to everybody else, my face as my husband's tiny butt said hello to the world was the best part. i don't know who gets to claim the bigger diss there ; ) that's my boy, though, and i love him...

oh yeah, and we rode elephants. combine crouching tiger, hidden dragon with excessive animal torture and an amusement park, and that pretty much sums up the experience. i loooooove elephants and have always felt a certain affinity for them, probably because i was born in houston the same day as an elephant at the houston zoo (i realize that doesn't really make any sense, but it's always made me a bit sensitive to the graceful dears), so it was really cool to ride them and see the little babies, etc., but i felt like such an evil cow the whole time. their keepers are fond of chains and metal hitting hooks. sad day. after our ostrich-riding experience this weekend (see later post somewhere), we've begun to consider ourselves connoisseurs of strange animal transportation and exploitation.

these little termites put LA traffic to shame. there was a line of these guys at least 100 meters long.