guest author- slingshot

And now I have a slingshot...

This would have likely helped me to scare off a killer monkey on routeup the 1,237 steps to a mountain top temple housing a huge golden Buddha sitting calmly in lotus position. However, there was no calm when, as the steepest section of the climb appeared, so appeared the renegade monkey, likely trained as an assassin, with teeth barred & ominously approaching. Staunch with confidence and poised to destroy us, he hissed & made his most "evilest" face possible while intermittently posturing each step that he took forward in attempts to try to make us flinch - and it worked at first as we let out howls of..."holy! we are being attacked by a 2 foot tall killer halfway up this steep mountain with no one else in sight" - not even a banana to hold him off!

And so, with no sling shot readily available to pull out of my utility belt and fire around to scare him off and save the day, I had to rely on my other skills- mostly that of being loud and moving my arms & legs in crazy ways to get attention. So I began. I took a deep breath to center myself, held my body upright, and began yelling out deep monkey sounds myself, brandshing my arms & legs in a way that could only be considered jive Kung Fu. All in attempts to meet the challenge of the killer monkey and counter his insidious plan to destroy us. He saw all of this and appeared completely baffled for a few moments before stepping up and performing some jive Kung Fu of his own. I parried with more. He responded. I countered. He replied,"touche" in his monkey language & finally came at me with all that he had - a finale of sorts. I felt humbled, but regrouped & unleashed the loudest, most ridiculous exhibition of jive Kung Fu that the world has ever seen. And with this, and only with all of this, he bowed hishead in retreat and scurried backwards into the trees & jungle sanctuary a defeated primate.

In the end, I believe it was a move I like to call the "noodle kick" that saved the day and freed us from imminent jungle destruction at the hands of this renegade assassin. Little was known before taking this journey up to the mountain top temple that it would entail a passport into insanity.

AND MY PASSPORT?

It just arrived from a one week vacation from my possession, subtly left behind in Southern Thailand beach town (Ao Nang) with host of our guesthouse bungalow- it was exchanged as collateral for a few days use of baby blue 100cc motorbike. Upon returning it, our host was not there & the day or so in between cast the passport's absence insignificant- and how could it not?!!

Zooming all around a peninsula jutting into the Gulf of Aden with random fruit stands, golden Buddhist temples pervasively dotting the landscape, and roadsigns completely written in beautiful Thai script-more an expression of art than a human collection of letters placed together for the simple task of forming words.

And so, with these beautiful scribbles on every sign we sped along not truly knowing where we were going but into an undiscovered piece of earth on this planet containing new vistas & visions of a world alwaysworth exploring. So as I lay in this hammock, now in Northern Thailand, swaying to the beat of the wind, surrounded by huge green bamboo extending 30 feet into the sky, and stretching out a newslingshot that was given to me by our friends in Chang Mai (N.Thailand) yesterday, I can't help but feel that this is truly that state in which I feel most at home- like I was just shot out of a slingshot. So slungshot up to Pai (small artist-type community in N.Thailand close to Laos boarder) after bouncing around the beaches and islands of Southern Thailand, including HUGE Full Moon party on an island inthe Gulf of Thailand (10,000 people dancing and celebrating life all up & down the beach to shake-your-body music until dawn) and a couple of stops in Bangkok's perpetual neon-light insanity; I am elated to have gotten my passport back (yesterday mailed to me in Chang Mai), a new slingshot (drenched in metaphors) and preparing to zoom up into Laos & board a 2 day slow boat on the Mekong River to take us to the interior of the country. First, however, we will board our motorbike & thoroughly explore Pai (pie), go to the surrounding mineral hotsprings, get an hour-long $5 dollar message, rock out to some live music tonight & MAYBE make it back to our $12 dollar/night huge,beautiful bungalow before the sky turns from starlight to crystal blue.

With ambitions also to play guitar on stage again like 2 nights ago in Chang Mai bar with dancing friends all around, rock climb some more challenging routes like on the beaches of S. Thailand, go surfing the perfect breaks in Indonesia in a few weeks, and hopefully not have to defend my life from ferocious jungle beasts intent on my utter destruction- although that could be brilliant as well; after all I do have a brand new slingshot (drenched in metaphors) to add to my utility belt now...

Yaaaaahooooooooo!!!

~Jefferson