About a week ago I had an unsettling experience that haunts me even to this day. I was riding around when a massive and sudden thunderstorm broke through the sky. Initially, I tried to ride through it but the rain was just too oppressive and I could barely see the road more than a few feet ahead. To my left there were a bunch of Thai men standing under a gazebo like structure. Refuge.

I parked my bike and stood at the very end of the long structure waiting for the rain to stop, hoping that these guys didn’t mind the presence of a foreigner. Some of the men were huddled in a semi-circle around a pile of cash and playing cards. A lot of them had tattoos and hard looks on their faces. “These are probably not the kind of people you want to cross,” I thought. A couple of the guys were in uniform, soldiers of some sort. One of the guys comes up to me and starts talking to me in Thai, motioning that the weather is shit. I agreed. Then he grabs my arm and pulls me over to where the rest of the men are standing. He insists that I take a seat, then sits down right next to me. After a couple of minutes there are four guys sitting around me all trying to speak to me in a language I don’t understand. It was making me nervous with all of those people around me, asking me questions that I couldn’t answer. This was the countryside and if anything were to happen to me, I doubt anybody would ever know. A guy drunkenly walked up, looked at my cigarette, and motioned that he wanted a drag. Hmmmm… I handed him my cigarette and he proceeded to smoke the whole thing. This was starting to feel like a bad scene from a prison movie. The winds and rain got worse and one of the nearby trees had just come crashing down. When am I going to be able get out of here?

We were on the move again. The guys walked me over to another group of men and presented me in front of the eldest one. He looked quite disturbed and emotionally unstable. I assumed that it was just a traditional thing that I need to pay my respects to the eldest of the group. So I put my hands together in front of my heart and bowed my head deeply. The man just looked at me, no reaction at all. Okaaaaaaaay.

We’re sitting back down again and the rain is starting to settle a bit. A younger guy comes up to us with a rather jovial look on his face and starts speaking English to me. We’re chatting about this and that. He offers me some beer and says something to the effect of “your happiness is our happiness” and asks if I’m having a good time. His personality was so different from the rest of the people there that initially I didn’t trust it, I thought he might have been being sarcastic, but he wasn’t.

Then a man walked up and pointed over to the smoldering fire that people were starting to congregate around. “Yeah, I see that there’s a fire there.” “Do you want to take a picture?” he asks. Then grabs my arm to try to walk me over to the fire. As I stand up, the young man with the jovial face grabs my other arm, shakes his head, and pulls me to sit back down. His expression had changed. Like there was something that he couldn’t talk about, but was troubling him deeply. WTF. What situation did I just walk into. A few minutes later the guy tries to pull me over the fire again, this time my friend makes no attempt to stop him. So we walk. The men are trying to get the fire going again, rearranging bamboo sticks and pouring gasoline on the smoking pile. I put my hands out to absorb the heat and rub my arms to show my appreciation for him bring over to the fire. He points to a long object in the fire, then runs his finger down the middle of his back. Yep, I see the vertebrae in the fire and honestly wonder what they had been cooking. In my mind I start analyzing the bones. Way too small for a cow, yet way too big for a pig. The man points again and says “hips.” I’m starting to get the worst kind of feeling from looking at those bones. “It couldn’t be.” I was freaking out, pulled a pen and a notebook from my bag, and drew an image of a cow. Point to the drawing. Point to the bones. Point back to the drawing. Look at the man’s face. He shakes his head no. “Pork,” I ask in Thai. Then the young man with the jovial face walks up on my other side and says “No. It’s a man.”

The rain had been clearing up and no more than 60 seconds after learning that there was a man in the fire, I was back on my bike heading back home. At the time none of it made sense, but the more I thought about it the more I realized what had been going on, I had been at a cremation. The men weren’t criminals or thugs. They were just doing what people do when you lose a loved one, try to numb the pain. Perhaps the man in the fire liked to gamble and they were playing his favorite game. The “mentally unstable” old man was certainly the deceased person’s grief stricken father. Still, they were able to be concerned about my well-being and help me my pick up my bike when it had been blown over by the winds. I dunno. That night, thinking about it, it made me want to cry. The idea of this foreigner just walking into something so personal and sacred and warming his arms on the fire that’s taking your son’s body away from this earth.

Perhaps some people would criticize me for saying this and tell me that if I was bored that it’s my own damn fault, but those people are morons and it doesn’t change the fact that I’m still bored. This type of thing generally happens after you start getting settled into a place and start getting used to the day to day. In a lot of ways it’s a great thing. It means that we’re transitioning from tourists to bonafide locals. But still, I’m pretty fucking bored. Personally, I’m over all the night clubs and lonely bars, come-and-go tourists and dismissive nationals. So where do I go from here? Well, the good thing is that contrary to popular belief invention is actually the love child of both necessity and boredom.
We’ve done so many crazy and exciting things during our travels so far that I’m finding it hard to top what’s already been done. In a lot of ways I feel like we’re chasing the dragon. Each new day begs the question, “how do we top yesterday’s adventure?” It’s a vicious cycle.
The good thing is that boredom is a blank canvas. It often pushes people to create experiences far outside themselves, outside their comfort zones, often on the edge of the unknown. So instead of lamenting the feeling, today I am embracing it. Today, boredom is going to become the catalyst for change. I’m staring at the unpainted walls of the Sistine Chapel with a brush in my left hand, a palette in my right, and sea of inspiration swelling between my ears.

In the streets of Thailand, the motorbike is king. The pavement rumbles with the roar of a million of tiny engines. Two lane roads yield to the whim of hurried drivers and makes room for four to six lines of traffic. Stoplights are a weakly stated suggestion and lane dividers, although clearly visible, barely seem to exist at all.

When we first got to Bangkok I was enthralled by the massive groups of motorbikes that queued on the shores of every major intersection. “I’m totally joining a bike gang,” I mused.

After arriving in Chiang Mai the prospects of riding motorbikes greatly increased. The streets of Bangkok had been too chaotic and riding in them would have been an almost certain death wish. Plus, there really aren’t any places to rent bikes in Bangkok. In Chiang Mai there’s a bike rental place on every other block. Once outside the city center the roads unfold into long winding stretches and deep banking turns. And thus, in this place, a bike gang is born.
We call ourselves, The Chicken Legs. And in Chiang Mai, if anybody knows anything about anything, it’s that you DON’T mess with The Chicken Legs. Cause, ya know, we’re packin’ Macs an’ stuff. Well, Macbook Pro’s to be more accurate, and the 15” version instead of the 17” version because everybody knows that the 17” version is just TOO big to carry around in a backpack. Anyway, you get the gist, we’re obviously hella tough! Ride on brother! Ride on…

Today was the best day I’ve had in Thailand so far. Finally! Finally, I feel as if we’ve reached the true heart of this country. The place that people don’t see on vacations. The reason why Thailand IS the land of smiles.
11:42am, Get a late start on the day and drive 30 minutes outside of Chiang Mai to meet up with our buddy David, a karaoke loving expat slash Chiang Mai local who’s agreed to help with our house search. We left behind all the clueless tourist in the city square and rambled on through the countryside. This whole time in Chiang Mai we’d been wondering where all the Thai people were at, it seemed as if there were more foreigners on the city streets than local residents, and honestly there probably are.

Almost immediately after leaving Chiang Mai we started seeing hints of what I had been seeking this whole time. No more street vendors trying to hustle dumb tourists, no more fucking massage parlors, no more bullshit ass signs for guided tours or zip lining or adventure treks or monkey farms, no more old white men with young Thai girls on their arms, no more Goddamn bullshit. This was the real deal Holyfield; I’m talking about glistening rice paddies and impoverished locals with smiles on their faces, blasé cattle languidly lounging on the ragged street tops, and wayward cocks darting every which way. Sankampaeng has soul in places that the city couldn’t possibly conceive.

Before heading out on our search for housing we decided to sit down for a bite to eat. David took us to a place on a quiet side street near his house. Four or five elderly Thai women sat out front of the open air restaurant shooting the breeze, talking about this and that. A handful of chickens roamed the ground below our table, unaware that they would soon be on it instead of safely below it. The shop owner turned on a TV and the women gasped and chuckled lightly to the musing of the telecaster. I think we all took comfort in something that needed no translation or explanation to appreciate, just a group of old ladies enjoying each others company and an unusually pleasant day.

After having what was hands down the best meal I’ve had since being in Thailand we began the terribly long and arduous struggle that is house hunting in Thailand. 5 minutes later we’re standing in front of a beautiful unfurnished 3 bedroom house with a leafy green yard and a slithering creek. Well, I guess the search wasn’t that long or arduous after all.

I almost couldn’t imagine living in a more perfect place. A short walk from our front door at the end of the street an endless sea of kelly green rice fields crash against the smoky mountain tops of Doi Suket, farmers tend to their crops in the cool country air, and 4 American travelers stand idly by, searching deep within themselves for the space to take it all in. This is it. This is what we came here for. This is the place we’re going to cry about when it’s time to leave. This is home.

“Let’s go to Bangkok?”
“Ok, fuck it! LET’S GO TO BANGKOK,” and so we went to Bangkok.

Since day one in Thailand it’s been a mad rush. Hit the ground. Start looking for jobs. Start looking for apartments. Figure out how to use the transit system. Stock up on necessary supplies. Double check your account balance. Realize that your checking total only has four digits and two of them are decimals. Reconfigure the financial strategy. Start eating from street carts…exclusively.

We got chewed up and spit out of Bangkok with the quickness. Bangkok stuck it too us hard, gave us five dollars for a ten dollar cab ride home, and never had the courtesy to call back. The city itself was too much. Too much for our situation. Perhaps too much in general. Simply put, we weren’t adequately prepared for the BKK hustle.

To top the stress incurred by searching for work and housing, almost everyone in our crew had been faced with extreme financial crisis’s. As a group we were to the point financially where paying for an apartment was entirely impossible. After a late check out we sat down stairs in the hostel lobby with packed bags and nowhere to go. Ok, so what now? We entertained ridiculous options like vagabonding on the beaches of southern Thailand, banding to together to start our own food cart, or leaving the country entirely to go some place where the dollar goes a bit farther. By the end of the day, when everything was said and done, we were rushing to the BKK train station trying make the 7:35 train.

Could we have found a way to make it in the streets of Bangkok? Maybe. Maybe not. But that’s neither here nor there now. We’re already 10 hours away, sipping on 30 cent coconut smoothies in the shadow of Doi Inthanon, Chiang Mai’s highest mountain. Maybe this is where we should have been all along…

20:55 / Day 1. Bangkok’s taking a serious toll on us. Regardless of the reason everybody is starting to feel it at this point. For some it’s jet lag, for others it’s just sleep deprivation, and for myself it’s a particularly nasty hangover(the result of experimentation with the local spirits) The day has been an awfully brutal affair. We’ve cooled our heels in hospitals amongst the sick and ailing, mysterious birds have taken shits on our favorite shirts, and financial catastrophes seem to be exploding like landmines at our every step. But here’s the thing, chaos is starting to give birth to order.

As disaster befalls us, an instinctual sense of prioritization is taking shape. The honeymoon is already over. Not even 24 hours deep into Sukhumvit road’s cold bosom things are starting to become very real. This is it, we’re really here, on our own with no outside support, and Bangkok is already at our throats with a rusty screwdriver. Fight or flight, which is it going to be?

I’m about 36 hours away from hopping on a plane from Seoul to Bangkok. These are my final thoughts on South Korea and getting prepared for the journey ahead. Well, I’ll see you guys in the land of smiles. Later South Korea, it’s been real!

Check my tumblr for pictures of what I’ve been up during my stay here in South Korea. { http://pencilfingers.tumblr.com/ }

On Sunday I stumbled upon this Buddhist temple that’s literally carved into the side of a mountain. There’s a metal stair case that leads up to the entrance now a days, but I’m still trying to figure out how they initially built it there. This is just one of many reasons why I’m going to miss South Korea. Hmmmmmm…….I wonder how much Kimchi they’ll let me check in my luggage?

Ok, I get it now. I see how people can just leave home, head off to some far corner of the word, and just never come back. Shit just happens when you’re out here on the road. Opportunities present themselves and all of a sudden you’re canceling that upcoming plane ticket and booking a flight to someplace that you never really intended to go.

A couple of weeks ago I met up with some climbers from an internet forum and made friends with this Australian dude. Over what winded up being more than a few post-climb beers he told me all about what he really loved about Australia. It was real down to earth talk. Why the girls in Brisbane were better than the girls in Sydney, what the bars were like, and eventually drawing parallels between what’s happening to the Aborigines and what’s happening to the American Indians. This guy is probably going to be a friend for life, I can already tell. It was one of those chance encounters that you don’t come across too often. At some point, after the beers had loosened our bravado, we opened up a bit.

“Man, you would fit right in with my boys back home. I’m glad that we met,” I said.
“Snap brother!,”he replied.
“What? What does that mean?” I asked.
“Same. It just means same”
***in case you didn’t know. that’s how guys open up.**

Maybe a week later I’m sitting in a bar with him and his girlfriend, discussing what kind of job opportunities are available to foreigners in Sydney. He says that he can get me some work with his friend who does construction. “It’s good money,” he says. “And I also know a guy who runs a hostel. Ya know, friend rates.” A few days later we’re at a climbing gym and he’s telling me about various mountains in Australia and how long it’s going to take to drive there from Sydney, and I’m telling him about the cheap flights that I found from Thailand to Australia. I’m not even fucking there yet!

Who knows what’s really going to happen post Jet Set Zero season 8? Anything could happen! But it’s good to know that the world is continually opening doors for us. All it takes is one person or one moment to totally change the game. All of a sudden a three month trip can turn into a one year journey. Here’s to never looking back!