Transportation in Thailand

It was quite the journey from Bangkok to Chiang Mai.
We stopped along the way for a few hours in a smaller town called Ayutthaya, rented some bikes and biked around the ruins there. It was very interesting to see the ancient architecture and quite an adventure biking on the roads. Since there are no bike paths, we had to bike down the road, sometimes in the middle of highways, in-between the cars and busses. They are such crazy drivers; I don't know what I would have done without Cat guiding me. Thanks goodness also for my intensive biking lessons in Germany! I managed to stay in the up right position the whole time until the very end when I was trying to park it and ended up just stumbling over it, falling bicycle and all, to the ground in front of a bunch of elderly Thai men, who, of course, laughed at me.
Our train from Ayutthaya to Chiang Mai was about 2 hours late, but it didn't surprise me because someone had once told me that the trains in Thailand were almost always late if they even came at all.
We had a sleeper carriage with ac, so the ride was really not too bad at all and we could sleep for most of the time.
About 2 hours before we reached Chiang Mai, the conductor came to us and told us that we had to get off at the next stop because there was water over the tracks so they couldn't go any further, but it was ok, he told us, because they would take us for the rest of the way in an ac bus.
The busses finally came, we packed our bags inside and then all squished in. Apparently, the 'ac' was a few ceiling fans on the bus roof. The bus reminded me of a detasseling bus form back in the day. Bumping along, hot, overcrowded and a bit smelly.
When we were nearly there the bus just suddenly stopped and no one knew why. We sat there for about a 1/2 hour without an explanation. Someone finally went out to check what was going on and apparently it was time for our bus driver to eat lunch, so he'd stopped for a little lunch break.
When we finally got to Chiang Mai, we found a guest house that appears to be quite nice and signed up for what is supposed to be the best cultural trekking experience near Chiang Mai. It's a 2 night, 3 day trek through the jungle and different hill tribe communities where we will learn to cook their food and live their life style.

Tuk tuk? Tuk tuk? Ping-pong show?

I arrived at the Bangkok airport Monday morning where I was greeted by a swarm of lady-boys and met up with Cat. We took a taxi together to the guest house and then went for a wander around the city. Bangkok is a very interesting city. There is an overwhelming amount of temples and you can buy  nearly anything in the streets; from cheap food to knock off sunglasses to fake ID's.
The Thai people seam to be very friendly and funny. If you stop for one second, one will come up to you, ask you where you are from, tell you to come into the shade, welcome you to Thailand, tell you their life story, ask you where you are going, if you've got a ticket, tell you to go to the TAT, snatch  your map, write all over it, demand that you go to the TAT, hail a tuk tuk for you, tell the driver that you want to go to the TAT (weather you want to or not), say bye bye and then walk away. I can't even begin to count how many times we've had that happen to us so far and we've only been here for 3 days.
It's hot and humid, I guess to make up for the lack of summer in Germany, and everything is pretty cheap. We are staying at a guest house with a private room for about $5 per night and you can easily get good meals for $6 or less and decent ones for about $1 or 2.
One night we went for a 'massage' where you stick your feet into a big tank of tiny fish and they swim around them eating off all the dead skin. It tickled so bad that it took me about 5 times before I was able to actually hold my feet in there. I probably wouldn't do it again, but it was funny and my feet did feel a bit softer afterword.
I realized after about the first day that I'd packed way too much stuff and wouldn't even need about half the things that I had brought, so I took about 1/4 of my clothes and sold then for $2 to a man with a sign that said 'we buy anything'.
A random but funny story: I was walking down the street and a little boy about 11 or 12 came up to me and handed me a flyer. I took it and walked away. He came running after me saying 'sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry'. Confused, I asked him why. His reply was 'I just call you fat man. Sorry. I meant you are beautiful.'

Mann trifft sich immer zweimal im Leben

After a year of living in Germany, I have really come to love everything about it (maybe besides the crappy summer). I realize how lucky I've been to have had this great experience; With the job, the location, my host family, my friends and everything. I wouldn't want anything to be different. 
For my last night in Oldenburg,  my host family had a BBQ for me. A few friends came by and Dieter finally got back from Ecuador. It was a great evening. We sang. We danced. We rode the horse. A perfect way to end a perfect year. 
It was a bit hard to say goodbye to everyone, but I do know that I will be back someday and that I will see them again, if not in Germany, somewhere else in this world. It's a small world after all. As they say in German, Mann trifft sich immer zweimal im Leben (you always meet twice in life). I have come to believe, that if you want the saying to be true, it will be true. If you really want to see someone again, you will make an effort to do so and you will see them again, weather it be after a few months, a few years or even 50 years down the road. 

Time: in all it's beauty.

Time... how quickly it slips away. At 4 years old, 20 minutes can seem like a lifetime away. But then those 20 minutes pass, and then 20 hours, 20 days, 20 weeks, 20 months, and before you know it, 20 years have gone by.
A while back, I saw scribbled into a bathroom wall somewhere: 'maybe time is not so important.' The older I get, the more I believe this to be true.
It's been nearly 2 years since I boarded the plane for the first time to Europe, 1 year and 11 months since I left for Australia, and 11 months ago I came back to Germany.
Those past 2 years have been both the longest and shortest years of my life. In this time I've seen more than I could ever imagine, learned to think in ways I never knew existed, made amazing new friends, and spoke another language. I've had the highest of highs but also some lows; I've felt  lost, confused and homesick, been lost in translation, said goodbye to many people I care about, and found out what it was like, after being robbed, to have nothing but a few clothes, a notebook, a 1/2 jar of peanut butter, a 1/4 loaf of crusty bread, and a bendy tripod stuffed into a pillowcase.
As I pack up my room here in Oldenburg, I can't stop thinking about time and how fast it's gone. The new au pair is arriving on Monday and it brings me back to my first weeks here with Sam. I have yet to come to the realization that my time here is nearly up.
Though I've had an excellent time here in Germany and don't regret for a second the discussion to come here, I'm ready to move on and excited to see what Asia has in store for me. I'm on the last pages of this book, and now it's time to pass it onto someone else, leaving room for another to begin.
We focus so much on time; rushing around, planning, and trying to make every second count for something. but maybe time really isn't so important after all. Maybe it's not about how long you stay somewhere, or exactly how much time you spend with someone, but more the experiences you've had in this certain place and the memories you've created with these certain people that really matter. In the end, time will always abandon us, things will always change, and friends will always leave. But the memories... The memories will stick with us forever... Buried somewhere within our cluttered hearts; where every on-in-awhile, we can pull them out, dust them off, look at them and smile at the life we once had. As long as our memories remain, we'll never lose anything completely.