We’ve been pollution-sick again, which has been inhibiting our enjoyment of this rich and colourful country.

Patrick and Woody have had it worse than Meg, but each of us have have struggled in our own way. Blackwood is also experiencing homesickness: “I miss our food, I miss my ball on a string, and I miss my friends at Forest & Free.”

When booking transport over the past 12 days in Thailand, we have found it best to stick with people on the ground and avoid the national railway or bus websites. While digital, cross-language communications might improve over time, it currently doesn’t match pointing, grunting, nodding, shaking, laughing or any combination of body gesturing to get on the right train, ending with a khawp khun kha/p!

What we’ve also found difficult about being in this beautiful country, apart from our own participation in what we dislike most about global tourism, is the homogenisation process that is creeping in everywhere there is development. An example of this is the Safety First signage that proliferates through the country.

We think the ‘Safety third’ ethos of the early Burning Man festivals is wiser. Without a little daily danger or risk, our bodies switch off, they lose an alertness, which we think pre-disposes people to becoming accident-prone and even compliant. We’d prefer to live in a world where sharp metal lugs stick out below bus seats,

and rusty metal blades come out of the footpaths,

and a billion or so unleashed dogs inherit the streets by day and night, than live under the cult of safetyism. We’ve loved beholding the autonomous culturing of dogs in Thailand. No one fears them here. When we think of life back home, walking with Zero around Lake Daylesford, there is always one, if not five people who recoil with horror that our little scruffy is off a lead. Oh, Zero! you would love it here!

How western imperialism appears to work as a global-machine-conglomerate is to covet all the major issues of ‘the global village’ into a set of preordained arguments. These arguments are never framed by independent, bioregional, democratic, or indigenous thought – although there’s a fair bit of theatre in places like the UN and in universities that purport heterodox or alternative voices are heard – instead, they are created to serve large global markets, which always have a homogenising effect. That’s why this Thai motorway looks like it could be in South Melbourne, sans the signage.

Because the human world is now so advanced in preordained, market thinking, solving problems is difficult. Climate change has been a theory in the orbit of scientists since the 1930s and yet the machinations that reportedly drive climate change have only steadily worsened over 85 years. To make things worse there’s now a very large industry that’s grown out of ‘Climate’, a kind of Jevon’s Effect industry, making those who are financially welded to it hard to trust. Big money has a way with decision making that the empire is perennially blind to. This is why it is so hard to trust the expert class.

By contrast Monks here live with little and ask for their food, which encourages acts of generosity in the culture. They are trusted and loved.

When we crossed the border into Thailand in this weird little space shuttle of a van,

we came to realise that our fellow passengers were Malay dopenauts who’d come to the only country marijuana is legalised in southeast Asia. When they alighted, we too got out of the van and stepped into light rain falling in the little city of Hat Yai.

We changed currencies,

and found a family-run establishment to buy lunch.

Across the road from where we were to stay that night was a friendly little family-run garage.

By day they service motors. By night they serve beer and pork, and punters cook a ‘set’ or two on little drop-in table BBQs.

As we’ve travelled we’ve tuned our eyes to seek out local tree crop fruits that come with their own thick-skinned packaging,

and have sought out local snacks such as grilled banana,

which are sold wrapped in banana leaves.

And, as everywhere, we like to buy direct from growers’ markets.

In Thailand we delighted not just in the dogs that are left to dance on their own accord, but the plants too;

and in the technologies that quieten the streets and produce no exhaust;

and in the vegetables cultivated locally and sold proudly by growers;

and in the overhead lanterns that mark such a street a night market;

and in all the little,

and big places of ritual, offering and worship;

and in all the kind gestures we’ve witnessed, such as this lady bus conductor eyeing an elderly man who had no hope of reaching the bus stop in time, request to the driver to stop, then urge him to back up, before helping the oldtimer up the steps and into a seat.

The driver was not in the least bit annoyed by this delay in his proceedings.

It took us a few goes to leave Hat Yai. We’d booked our tickets online, and so we thought this was our train,

but it was two days early according to the computations of our tickets. We managed to get on one later that night,

which took us to Surat Thani. We arrived just after midnight in a bit of a blur,

and were thankful for another kind lady, who waited up and let us into our tiny room.

While in Surat Thani we did some day tripping,

We took a local bus, then a truck,

to a market, where we ate Shrimp Pad Thai,

which came in this beautiful little leaf bowl,

and bought bananas with sticky rice.

Later in the day we went in search of a nearby agricultural cooperative, only to find the gates shut and no one around.

We reacquainted ourselves with an interesting weed on the walk there. Mimosa pudica, which we were first shown back in Timor Leste by Sebas, who called it, Shy Maria, is a herb that responds dramatically to being touched, going from upright to prostrate at the slightest feel.

Mimosa pudica is not the broad cut-leaf creeping plant that dominates around Meg’s feet in the photo above, but the small little fern-like leaf plant she is gently caressing. You might have to zoom in to see. We found this paper on the benefits of this sensitive medicinal plant, which states, “[i]t majorly possesses antibacterial, antivenom, antifertility, anticonvulsant, antidepressant, aphrodisiac, and various other pharmacological activities. The herb has been used traditionally for ages, in the treatment of urogenital disorders, piles, dysentery, sinus, and also applied on wounds.”

Plants offer us the possibility of rewiring our nervous systems,

and appropriate technologies offer the possibility of maintaining or recovering our health,

and humourous exchanges offer up the possibility of living with lightness.

Prachuap Khiri Khan is a town by the sea. We stopped there for a night, walked from the station via the food market,

dropped our bags, where we took this photo,

and walked down to the ocean.

Subsistence and local market fishing at the scale of these little boats will never dismantle biodiversity in the world’s oceans.

Only ‘feeding the world’ via the global-machine-conglomerate will do that, as Patrick’s teenage love, Karina, unpacked in her film Blue.

The next day we were back on the rails. An old rattler, hot, noisy and fumesy. We all started off well,

looking out to the rice fields and lyrical wirings,

but as the day continued, and it got hotter, and the dirty squalls coming into the carriage refused to bring comfort, we all started to fade.

By the time we reached the outskirts of Bangkok,

a city of 17 million people, we were fairly wasted.

Although, Meg still had a little spirit, and so we awarded her this watermelon for being the most resilient member of the band.

We’d booked online a little cheap room near the station,

but didn’t know it was right in the middle of a western tourist zone. You know: beer, pizza, cocktails, dope, all night revelling, maybe a dash of Pad Thai and Houellebecqian sleaze. The only picture we took here doesn’t really capture it, rather we were once again collecting photos of vines growing over powerlines.

Woody and Patrick pretty much slept for two days and nights. It was a low key anniversary of Patrick and Meg’s, and Zero’s 14th birthday. Happy birthday little fella! We miss you Zero. Thanks for loving him in your home Black Cockatoo!

The pollution in Bangkok was next level, and after we’d slept through it for a few days, we hightailed it out on another hot, old rattler.

This six hour ride was gruelling, especially for Patrick. It is the combination of heat and pollution that is so harsh for this fella who has spent most of his life in cool mountain fields and forests. Patrick hadn’t had asthma since he was in Hong Kong, 27 years earlier. In Bangkok and on this train he struggled to breathe,

and if he didn’t go to bed when we arrived at our hotel in Nakhon Ratchasima and do 4 rounds of Wim Hof breathing, he would have required a hospital ventilator. The breathing method opened up his air passages, which brought a few hours of peace and rest, before he started burning up. He then spent the next two nights and days in and out of fever. He fasted, drank water, dried his sheets over the oven-like balcony rail outside our room, and collapsed back into bed.

When we all surfaced from this time, which included having to change hotels for another night of convalescing, we walked straight out into a street festival the locals had put on to raise money for the monks.

In leaving Nakhon Ratchasima, we thought we’d mix up the transportation a little,

and jumped on a bus,

to Khon Kaen.

We loved the stick food on offer here, though trying to buy food naked has been a challenge in Thailand. Shopkeepers seem to need to close the deal by wrapping your purchase in plastic. It takes a watchfulness to arrest this urge.

The following day we headed to the Khon Kaen train station,

where we were met by this little remnant life force.

We waited to catch the last train we were going to board in Thailand,

and that afternoon travelled to Nong Khai on the border with Laos. Feeling better than we have for days, we had dinner with the locals who have a penchant for green chairs,

and red shrines.

To get into Laos the visa process is a little complicated. So we have had some days here to wait, and to look across the river to the path we have chosen to get to India. Myanmar is too dangerous to cross at this time, and there is no longer a ferry or boat option across the Bay of Bengal. Hence why we’re here, in the north of Thailand.

We’ve been on the road seven weeks now and we’ve just hit another sweet spot here in Nong Khai.

Wherever you are in the world, Dear Reader, we hope you too are experiencing a sweet spot in your life. Sending much love to you from us here, and thanks so much for following along on our journey.