Cambodia Part III: Kampot: 'Chill Out'

At long last, almost exactly 1 month after The Trip, we have reached the 3^rd and final blog entry on my adventures in Cambodia. Admittedly, the last leg of my vacation was likely the least adventuresome/ancient, but also the most enjoyable, so I will try to convince you of the amazingness of Kampot, not with danger and intrigue, but with tales of recreation & relaxation and, of course, more pictures. Off we go…

With the beauty of Angkor Wat thoroughly recorded on my camera, it was time to get my relaxation on, Cambodia style. I was tipped off to the glory that is the Southeastern Cambodian town of Kampot by a close friend who will remain nameless for no particular reason (love the phrase “who will remain nameless”) and decided that I would spend 3 days experiencing what it had to offer before spending the last 1.5 days of my trip in Phnom Pehn, Cambodia’s capitol and my point of departure. So I organized an overnight “sleeper bus” from Siem Reap to the coastal town of Sihanoukville, where I would connect on to Kampot. I was promised a “bed” on the bus, but as I don’t usually consider buses a suitable place for a suitable bed, I was skeptical regarding the actual comfort level of the seating (or bedding) situation. My skepticism, as usual, was validated upon boarding the bus..

My cell for the evening...

Cambodia Part 2: Angkor Wat: The SUPERPIX

After the novel-length entry I posted about my first day in Cambodia, I promised that I would keep this one light on the text and heavy on the pix. I aims to please ya’ll, and pictures are my preferred technique of encouraging reading; it’s positive reinforcement! It worked when I was a kid, and I still prefer books with pictures…

Welcome to Angkor Wat

Bigger than it looks, if you believe that

A small portion of the innumerable elaborate stone carvings littered about these temples

Continue on after the jump for a little more background and a lot more of my favorite pictures.

Cambodia Part I: Siem Reap: The Good, the Bad, and the Flooded

Some of you may know that I recently took a trip to Cambodia for various reasons, primarily pertaining to matters of visa renewal, sightseeing, and relaxation. I accomplished all of my objectives as planned. This is the first of what will likely be another 2 or even 3 part tale of my travels, so you better read it so you’re not behind when the next one comes out! That is how I grow my readership: unintimidating threats, lightheartedly delivered! Let’s do this thing:

October brings with it a month long semester break for schools, similar to that which we call Winter Break at home. So, as a teacher, I also get some time off, and decided to take a trip to Cambodia, a bordering country which is very much on the South East Asia Backpacker Trail, and boasts some beautiful scenery, fascinating culture, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Angkor Wat. I decided to go check it all out, and while I was at it, I could fly back in to Bangkok on the return trip, renewing my visa for 30 days rather than the 15 you get by land (my visa situation is a very long, boring story, so just trust me that the trip was beneficial and let’s move on to excitement).

I left Chiang Mai on the over-night bus to Bangkok at 9pm on Monday, and after a series of buses and taxis, I was in Siem Reap by 4pm the next day.When I arrived in Siem Reap, I couldn’t get dropped off directly at my hostel because of flood water. Lots of it..

What Atlantis looked like, before things got bad...

(Find out if I eventually found my way or not after the jump)

Ooo a Food Blog?? Fun!

I thought it would be refreshing to once again take a break from the adventure/excitement posts for a moment and try something a little more domestic: Food Blogging. This is my latest in a long line of efforts to convince you to come to Thailand/make you hungry.

Yes, I feel it's time to try my hand at the food blogging thing. Not because of any sort of hobby/career aspirations, but just because I ate some really good food, and I happen to have a blog. And as the saying goes: if the shoe fits, write a cliché blog about it.

Just so you have some background into how this came about: I ate a hamburger.

When I ate the first burger, I knew it was special. When I ate the second one, it inspired me to write about it. When I went to write about it, I realized I needed to eat it 2 more times: once to notice the details of how everything is done and what the place is like, and once to write about it as I eat it or shortly afterward. Point is: I’ve eaten this burger a bunch of times, so you can trust that my research process has been thorough. I try to keep things professional around here.

Fits in the palm of your hand. Ergonomics are the hallmark of the Sandwich industry.

It all started when Will suggested we walk in the opposite direction from the restaurants we usually go to for dinner. There was the mention of some “Curry Place,” which is a perfectly normal and legitimate possibility in Thailand, but we never actually found it. Instead we happened across a little shop whose sign advertised a 25 Baht burger. Could be a tourist trap, or more of that bad imitation western food that plagues parts of the city… but it’s not in an area that sees many/any tourists… and the sign and banner is written completely in Thai… better check it out…

We walk over and ask what the best burger to get is, and the woman behind the counter says beef, which ended up being 27 Baht, and a short 5 minutes later Will and I were sharing the best burger I’ve eaten in Thailand. Allow me to elaborate.

Mae Hong Song Loop Pt 2: Mae Hong Son: Daytrip Masterpiece

Welcome back, and please enjoy the follow up to last week’s action-packed post on Part 1 of our first trip to Mae Hong Son Province (Pai withstanding), as promised. There is less action then we’ve come to expect from recent posts, but I will compensate with lots of pictures. Without further ado (fancy word right?):  Part 2

After a run-of-the-mill (yet comfortable) bus ride through the baffling scenery and terrain of the North-westernmost region of Thailand, we arrived at our destination of Mae Hong Son (the town) in the late afternoon. We took a tuk tuk from the bus station into the center of town, a journey that was easily walkable, showing our inexperience with the area, which we generally try to avoid. Embarassment quickly forgotten, we started walking around in order to get acclimated and find a guesthouse. We eventually settled on a cheap little number by the man-made lake at the center of town, and set off quickly to make the most of the remaining hour-ish of sunlight. We saw a temple on a hill at the edge of town, so we went there. Turns out it’s a fairly big deal. Also turns out you can drive up… no one told us, so we walked. Worth it though, I would say:

We headed back down the mountain, excited to get out and about the following day to explore the landscape we’d just lusted after. On the way back down, we happened upon a collection of very old monk statues that I think are funny enough to include at this point:
(pictures and further adventures after the jump)

Mae Hong Son Loop PT 1: Mae Sariang: We like a little danger in our sleepy river towns

A four day weekend had fallen upon the teaching community of Thailand, and that meant that it was time for my friends and I to get out of town for a few days. Nick was going down to Ko Chang, an island in the Southeast, Will and Elise were going to go to the relatively nearby towns of Mae Sariang and Mae Hong Son (in Mae Hong Son province just to the west of Chiang Mai province), and I was planning on visiting a Thai friend in Bangkok, then spending a few days in nearby Kanchanaburi, location of the legendary Bridge Over the River Kwai (note: “kwai” translates in English to “buffalo”, so it’s understandable why they didn’t translate it for the book/movie. “Bridge Over Buffalo River” sounds more like an episode of Dora the Explorer than an epic war story..) Lucky for Mae Hong Son, this plan fell through, and I was able to grace the province with my eminence, along with Will and Elise for 3.5 magical days.

We left Chiang Mai by bus on Thursday night, headed for Mae Sariang, the first of several towns along what is commonly referred to as The Mae Hong Son Loop. Observe:

We made it to the bus just as it was pulling away, and crammed ourselves into the remaining seats. When I say “crammed”, I mean we fit ourselves into a “3-seater” bench, with Will wedged up against the window, Elise nearly on top of him the whole ride, and me with half my butt on the bench and my left leg spread all the way across the aisle and into the foot space of the next seat over just so I could balance and stay upright. Fairly standard 4 hour bus ride for about $3 a pop. We pulled in to town around 1 AM, found our guesthouse, and promptly passed out, visions of sugar plums  day markets and Shan-style temples dancing in our heads.

After doing a bit of detective work the following morning, we decided it would be cool to head to a market village we’d heard about called Mae Sam Laep; it is about an hour outside of town, right on the Burmese border, and there is a great deal of trading (and smuggling) that passes through this remote market. It ended up being a far more eventful  ride than we expected.

Wake UP!: It's Like an Alarm Clock (Woo WOo!)

So last night I get woken up at 2:55 AM to the sound of: “EVERYBODY, WAKE UP. FIRE!! WAKE UP!!”

What.

I literally jumped out/off of my bed, hurled down the stairs and rounded the corner to find my roomates pouring any water they could find on top of our refrigerator, which was aflame. A truly foul smell filled the house and dark smoke was flowing steadily out of the kitchen. I had been dreaming literally seconds before seeing this, but it felt just as surreal as any dream I may have been having.

And then seconds later, the fire was out. At its highest, the fire was about a foot-and-a-half above the top of our chest-high fridge, and took 3 frantic people to put out. It was caused by an electric-kettle water-heater-upper thing, which had somehow stayed on for who knows how long, causing the heating element to melt the plastic kettle, then set it ablaze. The worsening destruction was slowed when the cord of the kettle was melted, causing the cable to short circuit and throw the breaker. While this did help prevent the element from continuing to melt/ignite everything in its path, a good deal of melting/igniting had been caused already. To make things worse, when the power is out in our house, so is the water; this meant that we were only able to get to the water that was already in the pipes and toilets, and any drinking water we had in our water jug. Luckily, that was enough to put out the flames, without even having to go in to toilet territory.

Lucky seems to be the theme of this fire. All we really lost was our hot plate and the strong-willed kettle itself; the fridge still works despite obvious aesthetic setbacks, and the mess/stench have been mostly dealt with. However, things could’ve gone WAY worse had a lot of things not worked out in our favor. The list is long, and ill spare you the minute details, but had things not gone just as they did, I don’t know if I’d be posting this right now.

It Begins Again: New Re-Beginnings

 Welcome Back!

I’ve missed you all dearly. Lucky for me, this blog thing is a bit of a one way street, so I get to just assume you missed me dearly too (which is so sweet of you to say). I’ve got all sorts of juicy tales for you guys, full of intrigue, excitement, and espionage.  Actually, there will be very little espionage involved, if any; I just really wanted to type the word, I’m pretty sure it’s the first time I’ve ever done it; give it a try, what a rush!

So somehow it’s been a full 3 months since my last post, and as you might imagine, a dizzying array of events have transpired in my Thai life, which has paradoxically been the cause of my inability to tell you all about said events. So let’s do a quick recap of this whole thing for any uninitiated folks, plus an update of the last 3 months for erbody to enjoy. After all, knowledge is power:

I left the cozy confines of the USA on February 6^th, 2011, squired by none other than my boon companion, Andrew Liebler. Lubber and I gallivanted around the country for a couple weeks, enjoying ourselves thoroughly, before he returned to The States, leaving me to be consumed by Bangkok. I quickly adapted though, and made this country my home; I stayed for a short time in The Kingdom’s smoggy, congested capital, before traveling briefly but eventfully down to Singapore, then heading due north on March 13^th to settle in what many will tell you is easily the most livable city in this fair land: Chiang Mai, The Rose of The North.
The next 2 months were spent living at a backpacker’s hostel known as Little Bird Guesthouse. During my time there, I lived, laughed, loved, and looked.. for a freaking job that, for a period of time, I was beginning to think didn’t even exist. But I remained optimistic, despite dwindling funds and growing debt to my loving and patient parents, and my optimism was rewarded with that job I was hoping for. Through this job, I met great friends that, on May 14^th, became great roommates. I waved goodbye to Little Bird, thanked it for giving me so many friends and beautiful experiences over our 2 month courtship, and became an honest-to-God resident of Chiang Mai, Thailand. I got an address and erything ya’ll.

That is essentially where my blogging took a little breather. As I began my job and my new life in my house, my writing time was strangled to death by 9+ hour work days and youthful exploits with my roommates and new friends. Since I last posted, I’ve been tearin’ it up over here. I’ve furnished my room and house, I’ve bought a motorbike of my very own, I’ve traveled all over Northern Thailand (including what will likely be some of the most remote places I’ll ever go in my life), I’ve become a real life Kindergarten teacher, and I’ve even added a new “hometown” soccer team to the growing list of teams I love to support. (stick with me here after the jump and we'll wrap this whole thing up for ya)

Loas: The River will make you or break you.

*This post was meant to go up about 2 weeks ago. A lack of convenient internet has caused a bit of a delay. But just pretend its not way behind*

I recently added another country’s stamp to my increasingly colorful passport: Laos. Here is the story of my brief first venture into the mountainous land of party-rivers, baguettes, and communism. It’s a bit of a long one, go ahead and grab a snack, settle in.

So the trip was inspired by my need to renew my visa. Long story short, I needed to get to a city in a neighboring country with a Thai Embassy/Consulate, and Vientiane, the capital of Laos, is the closest and least expensive to get to. My friend from work, Will, had plans to fly up there on the 30^th, a Saturday, and come back the following Saturday, as we had a week off of work. Now, Vientiane is a notoriously boring city, so he had decided to go to a city located about 3.5 hours north – a far cooler place called Vang Vieng – for the beginning of the trip, then sort out the visa stuff later that week. I talked to him about his plan on the Thursday before, and he encouraged me to come along. I had no plane ticket, but eventually decided that I would leave Sunday evening on an overnight bus and join him on Monday, then we would sort out our visa situation a few days later, and get back to Thailand before work began in earnest the following Monday.

By a lucky chance, I got a call on Saturday morning from my good friend Jack (who many of you probably feel like you know by now), and he told me he was seriously considering coming back to Chiang Mai for a night or two before heading on to his next destination which happened to be Laos. I told him he should just hop on a bus later that afternoon, spend the night here at the hostel, and then we could make the trip to Laos together on Sunday. He was immediately on board and in my arms once more a few short hours later.

Sunday morning Jack and I settled our tabs at the hostel and by evening we were on the first of many buses, this one from Chiang Mai to the Northeastern city of Udon Thani. The bus ride was pretty standard, and for brevity’s sake I’ll spare you the details. After an ok night’s sleep thanks to a bit of valium, we arrived in Udon at about 6:30 am, and groggily made our way over to a small bus that took us to the Thai border town of Nong Khai. After the short ride, we found ourselves at the Thai-Lao border, and had to take yet another bus across the bridge that spans the Mekong River, the natural barrier between the two countries. Once we passed through immigration, we took ANOTHER small bus to a market in Vientiane, where we randomly met a couple of good friends from the hostel in Chiang Mai. It was a lovely surprise, and we ate some lunch with them and caught up a bit before we had to leave to get on… that’s right… another bus… to take us the final leg from Vientiane to Vang Vieng. The first thing I noticed driving in Laos:

Don’t see anything particularly odd about this picture? That’s because there isn’t! In Laos, people drive on the right, or I should say, the CORRECT side of the road! It was a refreshing sight, and off we went into the Laotian countryside, which proved quite beautiful, and distinct from but similar to the scenery you might see in certain parts of Thailand, particularly the south.

As we neared our destination, the terrain got more and more mountainous, and more and more picturesque:

Finally we arrived in Vang Vieng, and as we didn’t have Will’s number (or phones that work in Laos), we simply had to find a guesthouse that suited us, then try to arrange meeting up with him via internet communication.  We went searching, along with 3 Thai guys from Lampang, a neighboring city of Chiang Mai, and a Korean guy we met on the bus. We eventually found a place in our price range (ie the cheapest place we could find…) and sent Will an email telling him where we had landed. By the time we had settled in and gotten our bearings, Will was knocking at our door. We talked a bit then headed out to see the town a bit. Eventually, we acknowledged the fact that really the only thing to do in the near vicinity was something affectionately dubbed “Tubing.” This activity warrants a bit more of a detailed description.

Tubing is a party sensation notoriously known to travellers the world over. The basic summary is this: there is a river running between the edge of the town and a large mountainous area. Along this river are several bars. Every one of these bars sells beer, buckets, and a few more illicit endeavors if you ask the right people (but I would, of course, not have the foggiest idea which people those would be). But in addition to the normal things you would find at any outdoor bar around the world, they utilize their proximity to the river by building all kinds of rope swings, zip lines, and water slides, all built for drunk adults and therefore more exciting than your average version. The whole thing gets its name from the tubes that you can pay to rent and use to float from bar to bar, stopping wherever you like to partake in the festivities.  It is like spring break meets waterpark meets nature, and it is insane at best, borderline suicidal at worst.

After quickly deciding that we should get to the river bars while the sun was still out and the party was still poppin, the 3 of us changed and hopped into a tuk-tuk that took us to the first bar. Here is a small collection of pictures that will allow you to get the general idea of what we were workin with:

So we partied (responsibly) till the sun went down, along with the 3 Thai guys from the bus, who we came across by chance at the second bar we went to, and by 6:30 we were all pretty exhausted and ready for dinner. We went back, changed, and ate some Laotian food (which I have to say is definitely not nearly as good as Thai food..) with our new friends, who were kind enough to bring a bottle of Smirnoff with them (which we emptied (responsibly) as a team). After dinner we headed out to one of the bars in town that is routinely packed with travelers, and had a great time into the wee hours of the night. You know how that goes.

The next day Jack and I got up, definitely feeling.. dehydrated. But we had a lunch of baguette sandwiches and a big bottle of water and all was right once more. (PAUSE: I’ve not mentioned this fact, but there is bread everywhere in Laos. There is a heavy French influence in the country, and so baguettes can be found any place you go. They are also almost always the cheapest option for food, so I ate a lot of sandwiches in Laos. It was a nice change, because both cheese and bread are expensive/not good in Thailand. But I tired of both quickly, and couldn’t wait to get back to the Thai food) Will came over to our guesthouse, and we decided it would be prudent to hit the river again, so off we went. And again, it was a blast. The drinking is fine and all, but drinking is drinking. Whatevs. But the river! Oh man, the river. You really feel that childish excitement, standing in line to go on these rides, loving every second, and just a little bit scared that you might die. Really fantastic. However, falling into the water from great heights and at rapid speeds certainly takes its toll; even a week later, my butt and back are still a little bruised. So worth it though. If you make it to Southeast Asia and are of the inclination to party, don’t miss Vang Vieng unless you really have no choice. I promise you won’t regret it.

After tubing we had some delusion that we would be able to go home, shower, eat dinner, and go out to the local bar for Round 2. It had been a fairly long Round 1… We did go home, and we did shower, then we did.. all fall asleep seemingly simultaneously before we could make it to dinner, and didn’t wake up until 11:30 pm… So after sleeping through a large chunk of our last night in town, we figured we should at least go eat something, so we got some sandwiches and watched the drunk people until about 1, then got another good night’s sleep before getting up for the van to Vientiane at 9 the next morning.

We paid a fairly expensive price for a van for the return trip to the capital, costing nearly double what I paid for the first bus up, so I was expecting a pretty comfortable experience. This was what showed up:

 

Ah, hell nah. Will and I were packed into the middle row of this somehow 9-seater minivan, and lucky for us, we have to fit 4 people in 3 seats! Neat! Even better, I end up crammed up next to this Laotian girl, who is concurrently crammed up next to a woman and her small child who was in and around her lap for the whole trip, all of whom paid probably a third (if not less) of what I paid. It is an unfortunate eventuality when traveling in and around Thailand, and a bit of a bummer, but we take the good with the bad.

We eventually get to Vientiane, and set off looking for the cheapest accommodation we could find. We were not in a great area for cheap accommodation… but we eventually found what we understood to be the least expensive place we were going to come across, threw our stuff in the room, and headed out to get something to eat. With a little somethin-somethin in our stomachs, we headed straight to the embassy to take care of the business end of our little journey.

So a quick summary of the sequence of events one goes through when getting a Visa from a Thai embassy: you get there during a certain window of the day (morning or afternoon), and fill out some paper work and hand in your passport. The following day, you go back during the other window of the day and get your passport back, complete with 60 day visa. We thought they took passports in the afternoon, 12-3. Turns out they take them in the morning, 9-12, and return them in the afternoon. We arrived at 12:30… well dammit.

 But its ok, its ok, that’s why we came on Wednesday, we had a day to spare just in case something went wrong and we ended up having to be there longer than we expected. Oh what’s that? You say Thursday is “Coronation Day,” a Thai national holiday? Is that so… and so, like, all government establishments are closed on Thursday? Even Embassies? Oh…

Welp, didn’t see that coming. Not that the information was unavailable; to the contrary, we’d not gone at the beginning of the week because we’d checked the calendar and seen that Monday was a national holiday, and the Embassy was closed. We simply failed to look slightly further down the list of holidays it seems…

Well no use crying over spilled milk as they say, and though it was definitely a big bummer given how easily avoidable it would’ve been had we done just a little bit more research, it was time to get over and figure out what we should do next.  We could turn our Passports in at the very next opportunity, but that of course wouldn’t come until Friday, and as the Embassy is closed on the weekends, that would mean we would have to wait until Monday afternoon to get our visas. Not an exciting prospect, given our first official day of work was that Monday, and condemning ourselves to another 4 days in this incredibly boring city (that is actually quite expensive by Thai standards) seemed a pretty unbearable solution. So unbearable in fact, that we decided we should just cut our losses and head directly home. And we did just that.

We headed back to the guesthouse, explained that we had to leave immediately and therefore would obviously not be staying in – or paying for – the room as we had originally planned. We got to the border, and rode the same chain of buses that had gotten us there in the first place, this time in reverse order, back to Chiang Mai. The prospect of going back to Thailand was instantly appealing, as I was already missing my new home after only 3 days away.

We were out of Laos by 1:30 pm.

We were home by 9:30 the next morning.

End of Laos Trip Post

So how was your day? (the new tag line; good way to end a correspondence?)

 ian

A Holiday Greeting

Just thought I’d take this opportunity to wish everyone, especially Cindy Dolinger, a happy mother’s day. It’s not the first mother’s day I’ve spend away from my mother, and probably not the last, but it’s certainly the first one I’ve spent on a different continent. As I have no bank account and therefore no way to buy and send flowers via the internet, and no idea yet how to mail a card or gift home, I figured this post could serve as my mother’s day effort (if you’re not my mother, you’re not required to read this):

Dearest mom,

You are the most fabulous person I’ve ever had the opportunity to be given birth to by (syntax?), and I would be nothing without your constant love and support. You’ve taught and given me more than anybody could ever know, and I am grateful beyond words for your massive influence on me and what I’ve been able to accomplish in my life. I am convinced that I am one of the luckiest people in the world, and being given the gift of having you as my mother is a huge part of why I believe that. I miss you very much, and am sending every bit of love I have to give from my side of the world to yours.

Here’s hoping that everyone else has as much to be grateful for as I do. If you get the chance to hug your mom today, do your best not to take it for granted. If you don’t get the chance, remember not to take it for granted the next time you DO get the chance.

Enjoy the day everyone, more to come from me soon, promise.

Dust in the Wind: You're my boy Blue

In a recent post discussing the Backpacking culture I am currently living in, I mentioned the word “Transient.” Today I’d like to expand on the concept of transience in my life, if only for my sake. I’ll try to keep it to a readable length.

Living in this hostel, new people come and go on a daily basis. Everybody is on a different schedule, some stay longer than others, but everyone is coming from somewhere and going somewhere else. It’s part of what makes living here so awesome and interesting. I meet tons of people from tons of different places. But the impermanence of the relationships I make is getting to be a bit of a bummer. I have made very good friends with an English guy named Jack, who regular readers will recognize from previous posts. Jack got here a few days after me, and for the past 5 weeks or so we’ve done pretty much everything together, aside from my job-search exploits. He became part of Chiang Mai for me; we frequent the same spots together, hang out with the same people, we even had created daily routines, as difficult as that is when not employed or on any type of schedule. Jack left a couple of days ago, heading to Laos, as it was time for him to get back on the traveling circuit. It was a sad day for me; I’d underestimated how much I would miss him when he left, and I was clearly a bit more attached than I’d realized. Jack is one of the first in a long chain of friends here at the hostel that has extended from when first got here until now; I’ve always had a “crew” of sorts, a standard group of people that I have done things with. This crew has changed and evolved as people come and go, but I’ve always had some group that I hang out with regularly, my homies. My last homey is leaving today, and it is a bit of a sad thing. It is the last “goodbye” in a long line of goodbyes, and the transience is starting to wear on me.

The transience of the backpacking world though is merely a model of the transient nature of life itself; we’re here living for only a short time, some stay longer than others, but moving on to the next destination is natural and inevitable. Some see the sights, some try to make a positive impact on their temporary home, some just party the days away, but no one lives forever.

I recently had a heavy reminder of this fact. About 3 weeks ago, my grandmother passed away. Her death was not necessarily unexpected, as she has been in poor health for some time, but seeing it coming doesn’t make it any easier. There are a lot of different emotions involved in the death of a loved one, but the question I keep coming back to is: why is it so hard? The emotions surrounding death are universally understood to be painful. But we all know it is going to happen, regardless. Why, in a world of impermanence, do we insist on attachment? What masochistic part of human instinct requires us to become so connected to people, places, things, when our eventual separation is not a question of if, but rather when?

I don’t have answers to these questions. Not to say that the answers don’t exist, I just don’t have them. However, no matter why we are made to endure this, I do believe one thing: it’s worth it. Our attachment is the product of what makes life incredible. These tightly-woven relationships, these places we grow to love, these are the things we live for. Every chance to love something is a chance to live, and the knowledge that one day you will be separated from that which you love is no justification for not loving in the first place.

So the lesson I’ve learned and we’ve all heard: love as much as you can, and take nothing for granted, because tomorrow it could be gone. Life is a gift, Love is a gift, and I plan to experience both as often as possible.

Thanks for reading, see you again when I do/think something I consider interesting enough to bore you with!

And this seems as appropriate a time as any to use the tag line my father suggested last week:

Living Life between Eternities,

Ian