1998-07-15 - 2:27 p.m.

new town: chiang rai (further north, smaller quaint town) 2.36pm

i've never had so much fun before. today i had a

*crash*

course in driving a motorcycle for the first time, while trying to remember to stay on the left side of the damn road. all of the sudden i will be jetting forward uncontrollable (becuz as i get more scared i grip the handle, which is where the acceleration is, so i speed up) just as a car is teeming towards me becuz i am on the wrong side of the road.

it's a blast. i had a 14 year old girl give me a five minute, broken english tutorial on how to drive the thing. i was thinking of myself like lavern and shiry, smameall smazoll...as i was bobbing down the small streets donnin my adorable helmut and making a damn fool of myself to all of the locals.

i arrived here deeply sad and lonesome. i left the last town cuz there were too many people and city bs, now this one is so small there are barely any tourists and no one for me to talk to! i also came here cuz i want to buy authentic hilltribal crafts from this region.

i pulled up to a jungle cottage, with several hollanders chatting. most europeans keep to their language and themselves, i've found. so it feels very isolating, cuz i haven't met an american yet. i felt like i was on a silencing sabatical this morning, particularly because i will be here for several days. i am planning a trek and can either fly back to the busy city and trek a night with several others and not risk feeling loneli, or i can stay here and trek a more authentic route for two nights alone with a guide. (more silent sabatical). what should i do??!!!!!!!!!!! it is this time that i wish i have a partner with me here.

after this morning, i perked up with the whole motorcycle business and thought of just tooling around where ever i want to go at sick speeds. lawless. absolutely lawless. i was riding jumps etc. now there isn't anything i can't ride, i flew a plane, motobike...

last night in the city i went out with a bluecolor english bloke from leeds. he was swimming in his own piss ass drunkedness. i told him i was allergic to booze. mostly we sat and talked about how much we both hated germans, but i only understood every 5th sentance he said. we went to a bizzare club, hottest one in town. there were nasty, fat, chalk colored, old german man throwing themselves all over the dance floor slobbering over young, thin paid thai women. everyone seemed to be for sale in the place. it was very irry. the club was like an amatuer night in LA. many thai boys dressed as tall model like women, too pretty to really be girls and too tight of an ass.

one short, thinish thai woman teamed me with her friend. she kept flirting and dancing by me and touching me and at that moment i felt like an akward old man, out of touch with all my moves. my dream manifesting of an asian women right at my hips and i froze. i got discombobulated on what she really wwanted....me? to rob me? to pay her for sex?

and yes i am sick, becuz i've thought of paying a thai woman, so that i can take pix of her. not in a perv way, for art of course. and maybe i'd kiss her too. but so far i've been too tir4ed or i've chickened out. or been sickened by the whole thing.

i just went to a day market, hidden under a warhouse labyrinth of stalls. i walked past easter pink eggs, babys underwear next to pools of blood on concrete flour from the meat butchered nearby. tons of plastic things, fish, waffles, piles high of small hot peppers that burned my nose the smell of curry as i walked by. all thai people.

tonight i got to a night market where there is supposed to be real hilltribe crafts. and i still can't decide on the trek, people or alone time??? am i isolating or am i afraid to be challenged in being alone?