I am still here in Pai after a week and I am starting to get that nagging feeling that I need to move on. Maybe it's the holidays (with no friends or family and only a 20 minute conversation with my sister and nieces over a shitty line), maybe it's the mass quantities of western food I've been consuming (has anyone ever had banofee pie? holy mother of yum), maybe it's how lazy I've been (after those first two days of mountainbiking, the most exercise I got was paddling with my arms on a tube down the river), maybe it's just the feeling that it's time to move on. Not just from this town but from this country where after two full months, it's beginning to feel like old hat. That's not really the feeling I want or the attitude I want to be conveying so here I am, hours after the last of my American Christmas Crew has left town, trying to figure out what's next.

My current companions in the Golden Hut now that Nina and John have left are a young German guy who gave me a great restaurant recommendation, a Dutch couple with questionable fashion sense and Chris and Michael, middle-aged twin brothers from California who enjoy bragging about how many passport stamps they have and who I swear are *both* still in the closet. Unfortunately, I took the liberty of outing Chris on Christmas Eve after the rum and cokes we'd had on Nina's porch kicked in. Fortunately, in his insistent denial, he was good humored.

I got an email this morning from Chris Pryor, a friend of my ex-boyfriend Jon's from Rhythm Society who I got to know at Burning Man this year telling me he'll arrive in Pai with three friends this afternoon. He has also been traveling around SE Asia for the past few months. Until now we've missed eachother; while he's been off in Indonesia and Burma, I've been in Thailand and Laos. So my plans to leave tomorrow will be on hold while we spend some time catching up and comparing travel notes. I'd like to pick his brain about Burma since that's likely my next destination. Who knows, some time with new company could breathe new life into this town.

Merry Christmas everyone! Just a quick note to say I am thinking of you, my friends and family, and wish you all a very warm and wonderful holiday. I spent my Christmas Eve with seven Americans. We started the night off with a white elephant gift exchange on the porch of Nina's treehouse bungalow, which she had decorated with Christmas lights and candles. I ended up with donuts and a bookmark. Someone in a nearby field set off fireworks and we ooohed and ahhhed between sips of rum and cokes. Afterwards, Nina and I piled onto the back of John's motorbike and rode out to Pai's most lively watering hole, Be Bop, which had a decent swing band and the biggest congregation of people I'd seen together in one place in weeks. All in all it felt pretty festive.

I slept late today and then John and I had a remarkably picturesque breakfast together at The Curry House... toast, eggs, french toast, fruit, coffee and OJ. Later in the day we met up with more friends and watched the sunset in Pai Canyon over a picnic of takeout pad thai. Aside from the big group of sloppy drunk Australians wearing matching white t-shirts and Santa hats I have seen on and off throughout the day, it doesn't feel like many people are getting into the Christmas spirit, including myself.

I am off to find a phone to give my sister and nieces a call. It will be only my third phone call in three months. Merry Christmas to all!

Arrived in Pai on Dec. 20 after spending a few unexpectedly good days in Chiang Rai with Jeff the Mad Quebecoi and a very lovely and *very* California couple from SLO, River and Shandra, all of whom I met at the Akha Hill House. In a rush to find a place to lay my head over Christmas, I left Chiang Rai on my own and arrived in Pai with Melanie, Frauke and Sonja, three German girls I met at the Chiang Mai bus station where we spent one night en route to Pai. We stayed at a guesthouse owned by a plump and jolly-looking American named John, who cooked me up a full Turkey dinner with all the trimmings for an early Christmas or belated Thanksgiving treat. It was defrosted and microwaved, but still worth every baht (299 of them, about $7.50).

Turns out Pai is rather empty for this time of year and even today, open accommodation is easy to find. I love it here. It's like Vang Vieng with better food but not quite as spectacular a landscape. The small downtown area is surrounded by rivers, streams and rolling hills scattered with restaurants, bars, chillout spots and guesthouses best reached by motorbike, but I am a big uninsured chicken (I've been putting off getting travelers' insurance. If you think this is dumb, email me.) As such, I've been exploring on a mountainbike and have already ridden 34 kilometers in two days, up and down the hills to waterfalls and hot springs.

This morning, I took a Hatha yoga course taught by a 55-year old former Thai beauty queen who is having a tough time accepting the aging process and is quick to demonstrate how yoga has kept her so fit by routinely displaying her breasts to anyone willing to look. According to her, if I faithfully perform a proper Sun Salutation every morning, I too can have "strong boob muscle!"

The German girls and I were staying at the same guesthouse but I found they moved a bit too slowly for me particularly when heading in the general direction of food, so I've been spending most of my time alone. Yesterday at the hot springs I befriended a group of five Americans all traveling on their own but staying at the same guesthouse. This morning I moved over there (Golden Hut) and we are going to celebrate Christmas together along with anyone else we meet along the way. We're going to have a White Elephant gift exchange (150 baht limit) and a nice dinner somewhere. I feel very happy and could see myself spending a good amount of time here. I may head to Chiang Mai for New Year's though as I am beginning to feel the need for a night out in a town that doesn't go to sleep at 10 PM.

I hope those of you wanting one get a White Christmas. Pai is freezing at night, which I would be enjoying the seasonal-appropriateness of if I were properly attired. Instead, I've been lamenting the fact that I left all my warm clothes in Bangkok and have been sleeping in socks, two pairs of pants and three shirts with three blankets over me and still waking up cold. At least it feels like Christmas! Fortunately Pai has no shortage of cozy-feeling cafes (my favorite, Edible Jazz, has a good assortment of tea, makes really tasty brownies, and is a little too-conveniently located right next to my guesthouse).

I am heading out now to get an extremely overpriced (500 baht) haircut from an Australian girl who I discovered also makes a mean eggs benedict. (I knew I'd find it somewhere!)

Just spent a wonderfully relaxing four days at the Akha Hill House, a guesthouse in an Akha village 23 km north of Chiang Rai. My days mostly consisted of reading, trekking, getting extremely lost while trekking, talking to a hilarious guy from Quebec, eating yummy-but-way-too-greasy food, writing in my journal, playing with a tiny black kitten, listening to music, and thinking a lot about what comes next for me. I find my plan-making is extremely volatile in large part due to the rants and raves of other travelers and that every day the big itinerary in my head receives another tweak.

The village and environs were remarkably reminiscent of Laos and I was happy to see that N. Thailand still has some untouched mountainsides. The village chief who runs the guesthouse wanted me to stay and teach English for a few weeks in exchange for free room and board, but at this point I still feel compelled to move forward. I did, however, spend two hours today helping him with his website, which I found surprisingly enjoyable in a "hey! It's nice to remember I am good at this!" kind of way. Check it out... http://www.akhahill.com. My changes aren't live yet but you can see where I was anyway.

It still doesn't feel much like Christmas and in fact I find myself losing track of the day quite often. Today I went into a Boots pharmacy (a British export I am rather thankful for) and they had a little plastic Christmas tree that put a smile on my face. Pai, where I will spend Christmas and possibly New Year's, is supposedly full of expats and other travelers. God willing, I will find some like-minded good Christian folk with whom I can celebrate the birth of our little lord Jesus. Or, you know, like sit around and watch movies over a plate of pad thai.

Tomorrow I am off to Chiang Mai armed with a kick ass map some Belgian girls gave me. I will spend a few days there both before and after Pai as it seems there's no shortage of things to do there.

Hello from Chiang Rai, about three hours from the Thailand/Laos border. I am enroute to a guesthouse up in the hills as this town doesn't offer much more than the usual hustle and bustle of so many recently-overdeveloped Thai towns. After Laos, I feel spoiled and wonder how much time I will want to spend in countries that seem to be catering mostly to tourists... even if I am one. Driving through some stretches of Laos, especially in the north, you can go hours without seeing a single manmade object other than the beautiful bamboo hut villages the locals live in. No powerlines, so paved roads, no stores, nothing but natural beauty. I loved it.

I wanted to get more down about the trek. First off, the hilltribes are ethnic minorities not assimilated to the culture of the country in which they live. The two I saw originated in Tibet and China and speak their own tribal language, have their own customs of dress, religion and beliefs (they are not Buddhist), social customs, educational systems, and are for the most part living in another century.

The children I met gave me some of my best photos and memories of the trip. Every village we visited was aswarm with them, all so excited to see Westerners since organized treks to the hilltribes is a new thing and a foreign face is still enough to elicit giggles and stares. Some of the more curious and courageous of them hung around our bungalow and the morning we left, I had an audience of about 10 children, mouths agape as they watched me put in my contact lenses. And you should have seen their faces when they saw my digital camera! One look at themselves onscreen and a line formed for individual portraits. It was so much fun to have something to break the ice and make them smile.

During the trek, our guide Ye Pao invited Susana and me to her cousin's wedding reception that evening back in Muang Sing where the trek had started. We got as dressed up as we could in our limited backpacker wardrobe and went to the reception where we imbibed copious amounts of Lao whiskey, ate some real Lao food complete with sticky rice in plastic bags (anyone planning a wedding, take note on cost-saving measures), and danced to bad Thai and Lao pop music while surrounded by young Lao boys gyrating and gesticulating to try to communicate with us.

The next morning, Reinder the Dutchman and I were both headed to Xiang Kok on the Myanmar (Burma) border as we both had visas about to expire. There's a boat trip down the Mekong to Thailand that sounded like a nice alternative to the 8-hour pick-up ride along one of Laos' worst roads from Luang Nam Tha to the bordertown of Huay Xai. Unfortunately we were the only tourists and the rate quoted was extortionate, so we opted to leave the next day and head back to Luang Nam Tha to catch the pickup. I knew I'd be overstaying my visa and be fined for doing so, but I easily put it out of my mind when I saw the guesthouse's charming bungalows perched on a hill overlooking the Mekong snaking into the horizon and the lush, sparsely inhabited coastline of Myanmar not more than 50 meters across the river. On a small beach, we could see Burmese people panning for gold and milling about a crude beach hut and it occured to me that these people have quite possibly never seen Westerners. They live in remote villages with no electricity in a government-protected area (i.e. closed to tourists because there is all sorts of crazy shit going on in there, the least corrupt of which is the cultivation of a large part of the world's opium supply). I wished I could swim over, say hello, get my passport stamped and stay for a bit.

I finally made it into Thailand after four different pick-up journeys of varying degrees of discomfort and had to pay a $30 late fee for overstaying my visa. That's more than the original visa cost... yikes. I will spend the holidays in N. Thailand, which seems to be a good decision since everyone else is heading to the islands of S. Thailand. I spontaneously began singing Christmas carols the other day and even though I hardly feel in the Christmas spirit, I imagine the goings-on back home now, the cocktail parties and fun times with friends. Happy holidays everyone!

Just a quick update, will write more when I get to Chiang Mai and the internet's cheaper. If I owe you an email, I'll write soon I promise!

I just spent a wonderful yet-strange few days in the north of Laos in the towns of Luang Nam Tha, Muang Sing, and Xiang Kok where there are limited hours of electricity in the towns and none in the surrounding hilltribe villages. I took a 2-day trek to see Akha and Hmong villages, two of the largest in the area. The treks in Laos are controlled by the government and in cooperation with Unesco, so I felt good about where my $24 was going.

I went on the trek with 6 others I'd met along the way to Muang Sing where the trek began, including Susana [Sweden], Reinder [Holland], Eglantine & Eduarde [France] and John & Natalie [Australia and S. Africa]. We visited about 4 villages each day and spent the night in an Akha village on the night of the full moon. Seeing the villages was a wonderful experience, particularly since I have heard from other travelers that the tribes in Thailand are much more exploited and jaded to tourists. The same will probably happen here in Laos, but for now, the villages are completely unspoiled and the people are still absolutely intrigued to see white people in their homes.

While in the trekking office, we heard a commotion across the street. We looked up to see a man brutally beating his girlfriend, repeatedly punching her in the face and pulling her hair while she cried, screamed, begged him to stop. My heart just swelled with sympathy for the woman and my body raged with anger toward the man... I just wanted to simultaneously run over and beat the shit out of him and cradle her in my arms. I couldn't believe how much emotion I felt at that moment, and what really surprised me was how long I felt that way. For days afterward, I repeated the scenario in my head, felt sad, depressed, and pissed off as hell.

More details later. Internet costs a fortune here. I will be crossing the border back into Thailand tomorrow and exploring a bit of the north for some more trekking, and then into Chiang Mai.

Today I got groped by a monk and a monkey. Not at the same time, but within an hour of each other and without the slightest bit of remorse from either. The monkey was chained to a tree outside a temple I visited with Tyler this morning here in Luang Prabang. It appeared to be a baby but proved to be an adolescent when it jumped on me, sprung a mini-monkey erection and began to hump away furiously at my arm. Tyler took video of the monkey later tangled in my hair.

The monk was also an adolescent, 16 to be exact, and almost as forward as the monkey. After initial niceties with Tyler and me, the orange-robed monk began to follow me around the temple, cornering me at every opportunity, brushing and squeezing past in whatever way allowed for the most contact. Tyler found it amusing and disappeared, seemingly to give the guy more room to work. I gave the monk a chastizing look and ran to find Tyler.

Luang Prabang has been quite a change from Vang Vieng. It's much more bustling with both locals and tourists, full of restaurants including some upscale French places (maybe $15 for a multi-course French dinner), and has some excellent shopping. My favorite is the night market. On one street you have dozens of vendors selling handwoven silk scarves and wallhangings in an array of stunningly vibrant colors, all lit by bare white bulbs that tend to flick on and off periodically. On a perpendicular street, a narrow alley is lined on both sides with prepared food for sale. At the end, there is a series of long tables where mostly tourists cram together on low plastic chairs to eat whatever food their particular table happens to be preparing. The food's pretty bland but it's fun and a great way to meet people.

Tyler and I have been spending some of our time sightseeing and hanging out with a Dutch couple we first met around a fire after our tubing trip in Vang Vieng, Hans and Saskia. They are both in their 40s, both rebelliously sexy, and met only four weeks ago at a bar in Amsterdam. By coincidence, they were both planning long trips to different places and made a quick decision to travel here together and see what they've got together. I admire them.

Tyler and I are starting to move at slightly different paces and in different directions so we'll be parting ways in a day or so. He'll head to Chiang Mai for a little solo adventuring before his trip ends, and I'll go back to being solo myself and head farther north to the next province of Luang Namtha. 'Til then.