Monking Is Over. Soviet Living Has Begun

It seems like the nearly 4 weeks in Thailand lasted about 6 days.

There are some serious fires going on in northern Thailand. It's so bad that you can barely see through the haze caused by the smoke.

And sometimes small pieces of ash will float down and land next to you even though the fires are miles and miles away. The other day it rained and really cleared the sky of a lot of the haze, but the whole town smelled like smoke for a few days.

When I left the temple, I went down to Chiang Mai to stay at the Grand Napat again. Needless to say, it was quite a contrast in living.

But there are two things that my monk quarters had that The Grand Napat will never have.

1) A coffin...

2) And Chicken Killer.

He would just lay outside my doorstep waiting for me to come out. I miss that little guy.

But The Grand Napat did include a big tasty breakfast buffet each morning. After eating rice and eggs all day while being a monk, I was happy to eat some bacon!

Or should I say "bacons" and "hams".

The Grand Napat is the same place me and William stayed at for over a month last year. We used to play in their pool often. I think we were the reason that they now have official pool rules posted.

Those didn't used to be there... and neither did the signs about not getting into the fountains. We did that a lot last year.

And William's favorite pirated DVD rental store was no longer in business.

I also got to meet up with Ploy (who stayed with my family back in 2005) and her bother Nat. They took me out for some Japanese food.

After a few days of luxury living, I flew to Bangkok to begin a very long travel day to Ukraine.

In Bangkok, I had about 5 hours to kill so I just stayed in the airport and worked on web projects. They were playing strange "classical music" through the PA including "Here Comes The Bride".

That night I flew to New Delhi, India. I had a connecting flight the next day. Since I didn't have a visa for India, I couldn't go out and stay at a hotel overnight so I just stayed at the airport.

Miami has long been on the bottom of my list of airports for years now. Not once have I ever been to an airport that I have come to dislike more than Miami. Until I flew to New Delhi. By far the worst airport I've ever seen. And since I didn't have a visa, staying overnight meant being confined to a small room packed with other "connecting flight" people for nearly 10 hours.

I made friends with some Czech people and an Indian guy. We played cards and then I worked on web projects as long as my two laptop batteries lasted.

After waiting forever, I boarded a plane to Moscow. That 6 hour plane ride felt longer than my 14 hour plane ride from Atlanta to Korea for some reason.

I got to Moscow and then finally boarded a plane to my destination - Kiev, Ukraine.

When I arrived at the airport I got though customs without any problems (even though I don't have a return ticket leaving Ukraine which is technically an issue with customs). When I went to get my backpack, I found that somewhere along the way, one of the many airports I had traveled through zip tied all the zippers on my backpack. And one of them damaged my backpack by punching a hole in the top compartment.

I blame India.

I was picked up at the airport by someone from the apartment company I booked through. He took me to my temporary apartment since the one I'll be staying in for the next 2 months won't be ready until the end of next week.

I have always had this image of Ukraine as looking very "soviet" as far as archetecture. As we drove into Kiev, my suspicions were confirmed. When the soviets were in control here, they pooped their unique architecture all over this town. "Ugly-ass buildings" would be a good untactful way to describe it.

Here's the view from my 11th floor apartment.

Aside from that, Kiev is a pretty typical city from what I gather walking around a bit for the first time today. A smile is a rare thing to see. Except when they are laughing at your sad attempt to speak in Russian.

I've been learning TONS of Russian... well considering I didn't know any Russian at all before. But I'm pretty comfortable with the Cyrillic alphabet now which is really whack when you consider that all but 4 of the latin letters make a different sound than in English. For example, "P" makes the "R" sound and "H" makes an "N" sound and there are all these other interesting characters that make all kinds of neat little sounds.

And on top of that, this is Ukraine! Ukrainian is the official language... and so is Russian! So half the time stuff is written in Ukrainian which doesn't help me with my Russian phrase book.

The phrase book has been a life saver though (thanks Lonely Planet for the whole 2009 catalog BTW). So far in my 6 or so encounters with people in the city at restaurants and supermarkets and such, only one was able to respond in English when they saw me struggling with my phrase book.

But that's cool with me. I'm a big believer that if you go visit a country, you should be respectful to the culture by learning at least the basics of that country's language. This just means I really have to learn Russian to survive here. I'll just be taking on tips from my polyglot friend Benny.

And so far the Couch Surfing community seems strong. I posted a message asking for Russian lessons in exchange for dance or English lessons. Nine interested Ukrainians responded and offered to show me around the city too. Awesome!

So my next mission is to find a SIM card for my phone. A Couch Surfer guy is going to help me with that tomorrow. Saturday there is a big Couch Surfing get together that I will be attending. Should be full of good people and dancing. Dancing!? You don't have to ask me twice!