Ah....Bangkok Air.....cough, cough and post number 40!

Yes...Back in Bangkok. And I done saying phrases like 'last days' somewhere or 'back again'.
Too exhausting, I give up trying to keep track like that anymore...
Yesterday.. quite the day, sat outside the US Embassy in Bangkok for a couple of hours waiting for Kyi Kyi to come out of her interview...DENIED! What shit. Insufficient evidence to prove that she has strong enough ties here that see wouldn't go AWOL in the U.S. Hmmm...I'll show them! Craziness...and like none other I have known. Right now were staying in 'Little Arabia', which is a little pocket inside Bangkok where all the Arabs go to hang/live/hock...whatever. I thought I had seen diversity in Hong Kong, like for example at the tradition African bar, but nothing like this: fully blanketed black sheets with only the eyes showing are not the exception here, Muslim pray chants going off every so many hours, an arrow in our hotel room pointing the way to Mecca... Asians, Africans, Arabs, Europeans, Americans...maybe not so many South Americans to put it fairly, but nonetheless point made. Walking down the back alleys is quite a speckled culture.
Right now Kyi Kyi is meeting up with some Shan Burmese friends that she made yesterday in her Thai language class, and I took the opportunity to head over the Visa and Immigration services building to see if I couldn't find another way to get her over to the US. The US, quite an amazing response these two syllables can ilicite, and in such different ways for so many people...one thing about the US though is that there very hard lined, aren't they. There's no 'talking to them', like I suppose you may feel like you can do with other people/countries. Maybe there stubborn, or maybe just efficient...blah blah.
Anyways...things are completely upside down for me presently, and I've found myself in quite a pickle, and it appears that there will now be no safe escape or a quick get away back to the states for me. My luck held out for longer than maybe most people's, and I can't say I'm not fortunate enough for that...

In other news and in a lighter tone - been to Northern Laos for the last week with Kyi Kyi and what a place it is. Maybe it would be hard for you to believe me when I say that you can order a bag of opium, a happy pizza, or a mushroom shake off the special menu. Will leave my own specifics out of this for caution to younger readers but I can tell you that in Vang Vieng Laos there are loy of f-d up people. Some Canadian guy at the table next to us wouldn't stop standing where he was suppose to be sitting. A friend we made told him to sit down and that he was making him nervous. The Canadian guy looked at him very sincerely and tried to explain that he had drunk a mushroom shake and now was having difficultly sitting down because apparently he was going a little stir crazy with his cohorts..
Also in Vang Vieng and what most tourists all do there is to tube down the lazy muddy river and stop at the river bars along the way. Gigundo swings flinging you out in the murky depths, huge slides, food, music, and of course the ubiquitious staple Lao diet of BeerLao, probably the biggest industry in the Nation of Laos. (many pictures to come - facebook). Met a bunch of good folks, shared some tales, and hopped a bunch of buses.
oh, yeah almost forgot about the Slow Boat! When we first arrived in Laos we took a 2 day Slow boat trip over to the center of Laos at Luang Prabaung. Try to imagine 100 tourists in there 20's from all over stuck on a slow wooden boat for 8 hours a day on little wooden benches. And yes they had beerlao on the boat, and also some local produce to give 'praise to jah' with. Mayhem, uncomfortableness, drunken muddy river cruise. A must do really...
Anyway...yes pictures to come of this a well....

Hope all is well with everyone and everybody is doing there duty to suck the most out of summer! On my way back to Chiang Mai, or should I just say to chiang mai and try to discover what the next week or two will reveal. Quick stop off at the visa department to start the engagement visa process and then off from there. Oh yeah, didn't mention that...well got to go, don't want to give it all away.

God Bless America.