Here are a few short videos you may enjoy from our recent explorations around Chiang Mai, Thailand…
 

A waterfall this steep would normally be very slippery and nearly impossible to climb without advanced climbing skills and equipment. However, this was limestone which had a tendency to grip your feet.
 

Nok also climbed a part of the waterfall. She didn’t even use her hands for this one.
 

This sacred spring is where the water bubbled up to feed the waterfalls in the above videos. This place had a very powerful energy.
 

This floating village was an incredibly charming place to spend the weekend. We nicknamed it little Thai Venice.
 

Friends,

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Hey Everyone!  I haven’t posted on this personal blog much over the past several months because I was living in Oregon (in the woods) with a satellite internet connection and it was too slow to upload video.  Oddly enough, now that I’m back in Thailand, I have a high speed internet connection, and once again it becomes easy to share my experiences with you.

Here’s a fun silly video from my first week back in Thailand.  This is my girlfriend Nok, who was living in the US with me for last several months.  Her nickname for me is Panda…I think, because panda’s are adorable…or maybe it’s because I’m starting to get a panda-belly at the age of 40…LOL.

In this video, we were out celebrating the King’s Birthday.  They LOVE their King here.  He’s actually a really cool humanitarian guy… a true leader.

We were both delighted to find a Panda Lantern.  We’d never seen one of these before…

The other reason I haven’t posted here much lately is because I’ve been super focused on organizing the Social Entrepreneur Empowerment Series. Our mission is to inspire and empower at least 50,000 social entrepreneurs with the mindset shifts and tangible business skills needed to make a truly remarkable positive impact in the world.

If that’s a mission you can get behind, please join us.  If you’d like to help spread the word, please share this link widely:

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I flew back from Thailand last week and have been busy reconnecting with my good friends in Santa Cruz and recovering from a cold I picked up during the 24-hours of traveling.

Now I’m at my father’s in Oregon and will be here for a while. I love staying here. First, my father and I are great friends and we don’t see each other enough. Second, this place is like a healing retreat center. We’re in the forest, about 5 minutes outside of Eugene, but you can’t see a single home as we’re surrounded by trees. The home is on 4 acres of forest and meadow, with a big garden, fruit trees, a waterfall and coy pond my dad made. There are deer in the yard on a regular basis.

My dad first build an A-frame on this land when I was 6 years old. Do you know what an A-frame is? It’s a home shaped like a big A. Two of the walls lean together to form the roof. We had an “out-house” and we carried our water from the well, and heated it on the stove to take a bath. It was “Little House On The Prairie” style and I loved living like that as a child.

My parents divorced a couple of years into that venture, and my mom moved to northern California. I would go back and forth between the two homes a lot, but that is another story.

My dad remarried a woman who had two daughters, and it was like “The Brady Bunch” – my dad and his two sons (I have a younger brother) and his new wife and her two daughters.

Needless to say, the A-frame (which was basically one huge room) needed expanding. That’s when my dad built the first addition, and he’s been building additions, bedrooms, sun rooms, offices, garages, a sauna, and more, ever since.

I like to tease my dad that he has obsessive-compulsive-building-disorder. In any case, he does nice work and this home is a sanctuary. I’m fortunate because he loves having me come stay.

I might be going back to Thailand about 3-6 months from now, so it doesn’t make a lot of sense to find a home in Santa Cruz and get a lease, yet. So, this is where I’ll be for the time-being. It feels good to be here. I may be spending some time in Arcata with my mother and my brother as well.

I’m working on getting Nok a visa so she can come and experience the US and meet my friends and family. Unfortunately, it can be a challenge to get a visa for a Thai person coming to the US. Wish us luck!

I’m attaching a photo of my dad’s place. Can you see the original A-frame in the photo?

Enjoy the spring!

Ryan

My Father's Home

This video and picture are from my last trip to Thailand in February 2009.  Cuddling up to a big tiger was one of the highlights of my trip – and NO the tiger was not sedated.

This video was taken just moments after the photo.  I don’t think they’d be having that much fun if they were sedated.

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If you’ve been reading my blog then you know that somehow I’ve managed to include a lot of fun, travel, and adventure in my life. I’m not independently wealthy. My company doesn’t send me around the world on assignments. In fact, I’m self-employed. I’ve been self-employed my entire life. One of the reasons I get to travel so much is because I envisioned having this life, then I created a plan to make it happen, and I worked on transforming any limiting beliefs that might have held me back.

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After Bali, we returned to Thailand where my father, Don, and his friend Bonnie, joined us for several days of island hopping off the Andaman coast.

Our first stop was Phuket, which was a bit too busy for our taste, but the beach at Kata was perfect, and the ladyboy cabaret in the party-town of Patong was entertaining.

Nok had to leave unexpectedly to be with her family because her grandma passed away. Nok had wanted to go to the island of Railay, so we put it on our itinerary. Unfortunately, she missed this part of the journey.

We spent three days there. The beach was among the most beautiful I have ever seen, with breathtaking limestone cliffs that rise dramatically into the sky. It reminded me of Yosemite, but tropical, with Ocean instead of lakes and rivers.

Here is a video taken from a longtail boat. These longtail boats are one of the main ways to get between islands, as they can easily navigate shallow waters and dock right on the beach.

There are a lot of monkeys in Bali.  I had never been so up close and personal with a bunch of wild monkeys before.

These guys and gals were used to being around people, but they weren’t domesticated.  I trusted them enough to get close, but I didn’t want them climbing all over me.  Here’s a video of me feeding some monkeys we found on the side of the road.

In the next video, Nok has some wild monkeys climbing all over her.  She had told me she was scared of monkeys because her uncle in Thailand had some monkey pets who could sometimes be aggressive.  She doesn’t seem too afraid in this video.  Maybe the Balinese monkeys are a bit kinder for some reason.

By the way, right after I returned from Bali, we went and watched the movie, Avatar, while in Bangkok.  It was one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time and I highly recommend it.  The planet in Avatar reminded me a lot of the rain forest in Bali, so teaming with life, unknown creatures, both friendly spirits and dark dangerous creatures lurking in the shadows, the play of light and dark, the dance of good and evil, a spirit in everything, and everything connected.  The plants, animals, insects, and people forming a complex web of intelligent life.

Bats were a big part of our experience in Bali.  We stayed at this wonderful hotel in Manduk, a high altitude village where many people go for trekking.

The rain forest is teaming with life up there and, while our hotel was neat and clean, we liked to keep the windows open at night to let some cool fresh air in, and this unfortunately also invited in a number of guests from the rain forest to visit us each night.

One night an entire nest of flying ants decided our bed would be their new nest, while we were still sleeping in it!

There were the usual geckos and spiders, but the real excitement came when a bat decided to come in and circle around our heads for a while. We thought it had left, but when I awoke in the night to go to the bathroom and flipped on the light switch, there he was, hanging from the ceiling, yikes !

In this hilarious video, Nok accuses me of screaming like a little girl ! LOL

Later in our trip we made friends with a massive bat who had a hurt wing and therefore just hung around in a tree all day eating fruit that people brought him.  We thought he was so adorable that we would visit him every day in his tree.

Check out the video, I’m sure you’ll agree, bats can be kind of cute.

Trekking near Munduk was a blast! Not only were the waterfalls spectacular, but it was interesting to see how some people still live very simply, in small homes built alongside the trail, cultivating gardens in the forest, and sometimes raising a few livestock.

We decided not to hire a guide, even though it was recommended, and ended up being lost about half the time, but that was part of the adventure.  These videos capture a bit of our trekking experience.

The lodging in Bali was very affordable.  These videos will give you a couple examples.

We traveled around a lot for the first few weeks, then decided to stay up in a village near Ubud called Penestanan.  It has been known as an artist’s village since the 1930s.  Our villa was surrounded by beautiful rice paddies and forest.  This was our place to chill out.  We loved it!

We drove the bike up over the mountains to the other side of Bali.  It was incredibly scenic and the mountains, especially around the lakes, were one of our favorite places so far.

I didn’t bring a single piece of warm clothing to Bali – no pants, no jacket or sweater. I would have been fine if we hadn’t made a motorbike trip over the mountains at nightfall!

It got pretty cold toward the top, so I bought a fake leather jacket for $8. We ended up staying in the mountains for several nights, as it was just too [...] Continue Reading…

There are ancient temples, many of them still in use, everywhere in Bali.

Each one has a unique energy and sometimes that energy is very powerful. The location is sometimes as impressive as the temple itself.

Men are required to wear a sarong (a large cloth wrap) inside the temples. This may be your one chance to see me wearing what looks similar to a dress, so enjoy!  Hehehe

We’re currently staying on the mellow north shore of Bali in an area called Lovina.  We’ve spent several days not doing a whole lot – getting massages, exploring different restaurants, swimming in the pool, etc.

It’s very nice here, but we’ve found the local vendors quite aggressive and annoying. I’ve been all over the world, and I’ve experienced this before, but this is on another level!  I’m sure there are worse places,  but this is enough to really get on my nerves! Sometimes we take the motorbike just to go a couple of blocks, because we won’t get [...] Continue Reading…

Nok and I rented a motorcycle for $3.50 US per day for the remaining 19 days of our time in Bali.  Bali is small enough that we can drive ourselves anywhere we want to go.  That doesn’t mean it’s easy to get around.

There are no really good maps here. Most of them leave out many smaller streets and turns. So we’ve been lost as much as we’ve known where we were. But that’s part of the fun! It’s good to have an end in mind, but in the end, the journey is what matters.

We consolidated [...] Continue Reading…

Dance is an important part of the Balinese culture and religious ceremonies. You can find dance performances everywhere. The dancers and the live music that accompanies them, are really quite interesting. The costumes are elaborate and the stories, while confusing to the untrained eye, communicate an amusing sense of drama.

We especially enjoyed the female dancers, who sometimes isolate their heads from the rest of their bodies, while doing this captivating thing with their eyes.

We were fortunate to be in Ubud during the annual celebration of the main temple.  This entailed three days of performances and ceremonies.

The food in Bali is delicious and affordable.  However, Nok and I are totally spoiled coming from Thailand.  Food is to Thailand, like art is to Bali.  Plus, almost everybody eats out in Thailand, and the vendors make their profit from a large number of sales, rather than a big mark-up.  This makes food surprisingly cheap in Thailand.

We’re paying 2-3 times as much for food in Bali. However, we’re mostly eating in restaurants geared to tourists. Gusti and Gustu took us to one of the local eateries (not for tourists) and it was some of the tastiest [...] Continue Reading…

When we arrived from Thailand we went straight to Ubud and checked into Mandia Bungalows on Monkey Forest Road.

Ubud is the main center for art in Bali, and Bali is just oozing art everywhere you look – from the abundant dance performances that tell spiritual stories, to the unique music, paintings, stone carvings, and elegantly designed and decorated furniture, walls, ceilings, door frames, etc.

Ubud is quite friendly for tourists, yet still has a local feel and culture, unlike some of the beach areas that seem more “made for tourists”.

We liked Ubud.  It’s a little bit up in the mountains, [...] Continue Reading…

This 2.5 minute video was taken during our mini-vacation to the small town of Pai – about 3 hours from Chiang Mai by bus.  On the way up to the waterfall we stopped to say hello to a rather large buffalo cooling himself off in the mud.

Elephants like to get their back scratched.  Sometimes flies will lay eggs in their skin.  You can imagine how much that might itch.  They will destroy trees in order to get that itch scratched.  The trees in the Elephant Nature Park all had protective fences built around them.  See the video.