First few days

It's been quite a whirlwind since I touched down on Friday. The trip itself went well, 30 hours of waiting around, watching movies, eating airplane food, and feeling like a bum sleeping in the Singapore airport. As I flew over Thailand, I noticed how much forest this country still has, 30-40% is intact (compare to 1-2% in El Salvador). When I landed, I was delightfully surprised that my checked backpack had made it through, I had put the odds of ever seeing it again around 50-50. My old high school friend Mackenzie met me at the airport, it was great to see a familiar face in such a foreign place. As we got into his car, I realized that I would be riding as passenger on the left side! Mind blowing. I couldn't help but stifle a scream as we turned onto the left side of busy streets. Driving through Chiang Mai brought one word to mind: pleasant. The air was clean, it wasn't too crowded, and it seemed fairly developed. Definitely a far cry from Ghana and El Salvador. Mackenzie's house was a really nice open air-type house on stilts in a community nicknamed the Farang (foreigner) Farm, since the ten or so other houses were occupied by long term expats. Later that day, Mackenzie and I piled onto his small motorcycle to zip out to the the farm/school he works at. Weaving through traffic on that thing scared the bajeezus out of me, but Mackenzie reassured me that I would be driving one in a matter of weeks. Not so sure about that. The farm is run by an NGO called Need Burma that trains students from the troubled neighboring country in sustainable farming techniques. It is a great program but lacks funding, google it and donate if you want to help out a good cause.

After a couple of days at Mackenzie's house it was time to set off on my own in city center. The "old city" in Chiang Mai is a one square kilometer area in the middle of town that is surrounded by a moat and some reconstructed walls. Definitely has a medieval feel to it. After a night in a small guesthouse, it was time to look for some long term housing. I found some leads on the internet and started walking around town, asking at any place that had the word "monthly" written on it. After a few decent finds, I was about to call it a day when I decided to pop into one last place, a four story student housing block. I found a couple of guys my age who spoke about 5 words of English between them. Luckily they understood "one month" and showed me a room on the top floor. The room had a large picture window overlooking the mountains and the city, it's own bathroom, AC, and the rent, including utilities was $100 a month. Sold. I called up Mackenzie (who speaks what sounds to me like excellent Thai) to help me set it up, and moved right in. 

Ahhh... a permanent place to live. Or at least for a couple months. since then I have been researching language schools in the area and plotting my plan of attack. Some sources say finding work should be easy and others report a market saturated by teachers. The only way to find out is to try.