I am beginning to feel more comfortable in Chiang Mai, sometimes I catch myself thinking it is home. I feel a sense of safety enveloping me, just as I did in Chicago and Urbana, an inner map directing me to places of beauty and comfort. I prefer this security of knowing to the sense of newness and fear which overwhelm me when embarking on a journey to a fresh place. While meeting a new place or person is exciting, and brings with it a riddling sense of fate, it is the middle ground of a developed relationship which I find to be most enlightening. Deciding to stay in Chiang Mai for 3 months was a good choice because that amount of time allowed me to become a small part of its existence, altering it in a tiny, yet meaningful way.
Leaving won't be easy, yet I am looking forward to striking out anew, and yesterday I decided upon a 3 weeks stay in Bali beginning May 4th. I will need to do a border run to Myanmar on April 21, extending my stay in Thailand for 15 days. On April 30 I will leave The Dome and take the train back to Bangkok, where I will stay in a nice hotel for a few days, and then board an Air Asia flight to Denpasar on the 4th. Three weeks later I will return to Bangkok and take a bus down to Ko Chang for a few weeks. After 3 months in a city, hanging out on some islands for a couple of months will be a nice change of pace.
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My training has been progressing steadily upward. This week I had some lackluster runs, probably due to the 90 minute slog I did at the beginning of the week, it took a few days to recover my energy and strength from the effort. On Thursday I went to the fitness park at noon, wanting to feel the intense heat, and with the idea of soaking myself in the sprinklers after each half mile loop. It was a lot of fun, but I had to stop after 30 minutes due to the heat sapping off my energy. Today I plan to go to the fitness park in the late afternoon, I feel I am ready to pop off a strong effort, looking forward to it!
