Cousin Gary

After arriving back in Chiang Mai after the trek, all four of us were tired, hungry and sore. Easily resolved with nice resort, fresh dinner and two hour massage. We all rolled into our comfortable beds early and Noel booked another 2 hour massage for the morning (he is addicted).

Our only real day in the city, we chose to lay at the pool, eat, do nothing of any effort until late afternoon. After enough sun, Cousin Gary came to the resort to pick us up for a tour of Chiang Mai. Cousin Gary is somebody’s cousin. On Darrel’s side of the family…..we have always referred to him as Cousin Gary, but really he is the son of Grandpa Bob’s cousin Burton Glazer. So maybe Cousin Gary is Darrel’s second cousin and maybe he is Zach and Molly’s third cousin…..I don’t know how that all works, but they have a few drips of the same blood line somewhere.

I hadn’t seen Cousin Gary for over 20 years. He has lived in Thailand for about that long and has been coming here and doing business for about 35 years. Ten years ago he married a Thai woman and now has two young children. This was the first time he had met his other “cousins”.
When I saw him, I said “Gary, you have gone gray!” and he said to me “are you still going by Mendelsohn?” and I said to him “nothing better has come up”. He is an easy going, smiling, happy, joking kind of guy and it felt easy to spend the rest of the day with him.

We all went and visited his home and remodel project (beautiful) and saw his factory where he employs 70 workers and makes gold jewelry, lots of rings for big companies……like class rings and bowling rings, and even rings that hold peoples cremated remains….I think I will have a few dozen made for when I die and all my friends can get one. He has five poodles. I know Darrel will die when he hears that, Gary just never seemed like a poodle kind of guy…..he loves them though….Anyways, he is very successful here and living a great life and is very content and settled. We may never see him back in Seattle.

He took us on a drive, for drinks at a Thai river bar and then dinner at an Italian restaurant on the river. Italian tasted pretty darn good after all the spicy Thai food……..we had a good visit and the kids enjoyed him. He drove fairly well for a white guy in Thailand, but did say at one point driving “ I am surrounded by assholes”……..and made us all laugh.

Pooh Eco-Trek, Chiang Mai, Thailand

Words can not describe the last three days spent in the mountains near the Burma border.

The pictures will have to tell the story here. In short, we hiked around 4 hours a day through jungle, rivers, valleys, bamboo and rice fields. We stayed with a hill tribal village called the Karen Tribe one night and in a bamboo hut on a river the second night. We ate frog, fresh produce, drank rice whisky, slept in mosquito netting, used primitive outhouses and bathed in the river.

For a girl who "loves not camping", I think I did pretty well, came out with only minor scrapes and bruises and went temporarily native. However, I was glad to come back to a massage, a soft and warm bed and western toilets.