Tag Archives: thailand

Home again

Three days ago I arrived back home from my 6 week trip in Thailand. There is so much I haven’t shared about my experience that I may have to go back and tell more stories when I make the time. Or maybe I’ll keep them to myself.

It’s a bittersweet feeling. I love my home, but I could have easily spent several more months in SE Asia. It doesn’t help that I came home to the dark, dreary weather that helps to sustain my city’s high rate of depression and suicide.

My friend Miss. T said it best, “Being delivered back into chilly reality feels like being birthed from a warm womb into a cold delivery room.”

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I don’t mean to sound dramatic though. I’m incredibly grateful for the experience. Traveling is priceless: to be put into an entirely new place with no other responsibility but to explore it, meeting other travelers who are in such interesting, open ended points of their life, cultivating a deeper understanding of people and cultures that appear so vastly different from my own. Time both speeds up and slows down at the same time.

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One plus side of being back is a new found work motivation. I spent far more money than I planned to on this trip and I have several more destinations ahead in 2015. Fortunate for me I’ve had my two wealthiest and neediest clients waiting eagerly for my top quality, over-priced attention along with the rest of the faceless masses. There’s a long list of custom videos I need to attend to, and on top of that, I have my the company of my cherished industry friends to look forward to in Vegas for AVN. Yahtzee.

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Oh yeah, and if you happen to be in sin city during that time, you can find me signing at the clips4sale booth at AEE Saturday the 24th at 2pm.

 

Chiang Mai

Its 10:55am. I’ve been up for a couple hours. Just took a cold awkward shower in the hostel I just checked into and dried off with a hand towel. This isn’t exactly the luxury hotel I just shared with Shauna and Jasmine for the past week, but its dirt cheap, centrally located and makes for an easy way to meet other travelers.

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I meant to update this blog every few days but time is flying by fast. I just blinked and spent a week in Chiang Mai. Such a charming city full of temples and hand crafted goods. Ive packed in so much these past several days I may need to make a few blog entries just to sum it up.

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Out of sheer coincedence my trip aligned with Jasmine (aka @vancouverdomina) who had just spent the past several weeks training in a Muay Thai camp. We had met and filmed together one other time previously, but haven’t hung around much socially until now.

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I like Jasmine. Besides being easy on the eyes, she’s rather calm, reserved person at first impression. The more you get to know her the more you find out she’s a kinky little minx with a camera full of footage from her sexual escapades and pictures of penises she’s tortured with needles, chastity devices and too much viagra. Needless to say we got along well.

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During the day we visited the markets, took cooking classes, played with baby tigers, and hung out with elephants. You know, typical thailand tourist stuff that’s fun to do but not all that fun to read about. Here’s some obligitory pictures to skim through:

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In the evening we went to the clubs. Chiang Mai has a great night life scene with several small clubs in one area each playing a different type of music; rock, reggae, jazz, techno, etc. The bars serve cheap “buckets” of alcohol (which is exactly what it sounds like) and every few minutes someone is trying to sell you flowers or adoreable friendship bracelets. We frequented these clubs a few nights and danced into the wee hours.

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Yesterday the three of us parted ways. Jasmine flew to bangkok, her last stop before she goes home while Shauna went to Koh Tao (which I’ll head toward on Monday) As the two of them rode a tuk tuk to the airport, I threw on my backpack and walked 40 minutes to my hostel. It was the first time I really enjoyed the convience of having everything on my back. As I strolled through Chiang Mai I must have ran into at least a half dozen temples. There are several of them just intigraited within the city and each one is more breath taking then the last.

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2 nights in Bangkok

It’s about 4:30am and Im currently sitting in the common area of my hostel in Bangkok, jet lagged and wide awake. I arrived here a couple days ago and haven’t got my sleep schedule right.

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Shauna Ryanne is here with me, she seems to be having better success with sleep than me. On my arrival date I came in late at night and was in dire need of getting something in my stomach and before flopping to bed. A hostel worker pointed us towards what he described as a “lively area” that would be serving food. Turns out he pointed us to Soi Cowboy, a red light district

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No complaints there. Theres nothing like kicking off a travel experience by eating eating spicy papaya salad in a narrow, vegas-like strip while watching scandaly clad gogo dancers and lady boys aggressively drag western men into their bar. A coule of drunk backpackers crashed our party at one point and tried to make plans that would never happen. It was one of those moments I regret being honest when asked about my profession. “You’re like, a dominatrix? But you’re so pretty! Do you show your tits?” Yeah… Get out of my space.

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We went to bed at 2:30am that night and I woke up around 5am and couldnt go back to sleep. I killed some time socializng with other travelers in the hostel until waking up Shauna to join me for breakfast. We discovered we had a mutual goal to find a jack shack that serviced women. A “rub n’ rub” if you will. One of the hostel workers made the mission seem far fetched and guilted us with his vague understanding of sex trafficking. We ended up  getting a regular (& incredible) Thai massage but the dream is still alive.

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Afterward we went over to Theta State Float for some sensory deprivation (essentially, where you float in a inclosed tub of salt water in complete darkness and silence.) I was connected to the owners by a mutual friend and they were kind enough to treat us to an hour. I had only done it once before back home and didn’t get much out of it the first time. I thoroughly enjoyed it this time. Chilling in a pool of nothingness was exactly what my body needed after paying a thai man to contort my body in painfully blissful ways. The owner, Annile, drank wine and chatted with us for several hours afterwards. Truly a gem of the place with a kind, laid back staff. I think they’ll going to do well.

It’s 5:45am. Someone here at the hostel sat down next to me as I was writing this and started a conversation about traveling and finding meaning in his life and work. Typical conversations run pretty deep when you’re abroad. Can’t say I miss the small talk.

I’m going to try and get more sleep.