Have you seen the movie Me, You, and Everyone We Know? If you haven't I suggest you go rent it tonight in order to make this funny for you. If you have seen it, then you know what this means: ))<>((
Now I swear on everything that is holy that I witnessed two dogs performing this act while visiting a hilltribe Friday in Northern Thailand. I believe that was after we stopped at a little market where we were most likely the first white people many of these children had seen. I was offered a glass of home-brewed whiskey by some of the patrons and farmers. At first I thought they were offering me water because it was clear and was being served from a reused beer bottle. I refused at first, not wanting to get a vicious spell of the backdoor blitz, but when I realized that the toothless man offering it to me reeked of alcohol, I couldn't refuse the offer anymore. It smelled like whiskey, but tasted like I imagine turpentine does.

The booze was a nice pick-me-up after our hike around the reservoir at Takhrai National Park. Reading the only available English pamphlet on the place, I informed Kate that native specimens included Deer, Gibbons and Tigers. Failing to see all three, we did run across a cattle grazer taking his dozen "water buffalo" out for a walk to drink the from the wetlands where the reservoir starts. On our trek past the him, his cattle and what I assume to be his concubine women gathering "water plant" from the banks of the river, we stumbled across his home after taking a wrong turn on the path. We eventually found a path that was obviously no longer in use, or hadn't had visitors on that section for over a year, and made it back to our perched pad where I took a nap and Kate schmoozed the caretaker who we were told "does not speak". Everyone Kate tried to talk to this weekend didn't speak Thai, but Lanna, which is a northern dialect. She could have fooled me though since she managed to get our spicy noodles for lunch from the elderly woman for a grand total of 50 cents.

Our goal today was to get home, but when we pulled over on our motorcycle to ask for directions (kate was driving), we slid out. I got pretty angry since Kate crashed and I was on the back, but when I realized that she had sustained most of the damage, I felt like justice had been served. It's pretty powerless to sit on the back and when you put your faith in someone's driving only to crash in a driveway at 5 miles an hour, you can get bitter.

Kate's nursing her wounds and I'm drinking chocolate milk. Everything is chill on the eastern front.

Happy New Year.