Lime Shrimp - Waterfall

Monday Week 3

Over the last weekend, the ISDSI students and staff went on a “relaxing” retreat. To get our first peek at ecology (i.e. the jungle), and get to know eachother better, and get a rest from what can be an “exhausting experience” being with our host families all the time. (mine aren’t exhausting, but I can see how it could be tiering to be social, in a foreign language, constantly.)

The night before we left I was a bit confused, because my family told me I could sleep in, but we had to be at school early – at 7:00 AM. Finally, I realized my family was going to drop me off at the lake where we were all traveling to from school, because it is just a little bit down the road from my house.

The lake was amazing. Thai people, with an ideal of pale skin, think that the American “sun tanning” and “hanging at the beach” is nuts! Instead the lake (actually a resivour) was lined with lots of thatched roof sun houses, (not to mention rolling forested hills/”mountains”). The water was warm and pale brown, like watered down creamy coffee. We did our swim test, which was easy, (swimming 300 M and back and 15 minunits treding water) but very pleasant. Across the river was a giant golden statue of a Buddha. We sat in some of the hutched houses and had the best food I have had in Thailand so far.

For appetizers there were shrimp in a lime chili sauce. Tiny, grey, live, popping, jumping shrimp in a lime chili sauce. It was pretty hard to eat the first one, mostly because it was the most lively and kept popping out of the jar. Also because it was alive. I was reminded of a passage from the book about a girl who survived the Khomer Rougue in Cambodia. At one point her mum fed her a handful of live shrimp from the stream when no one was looking. It talked about them crunching in her mouth. It might also have mentioned the tickling, filamentous antennae.

We also had Tom Yum Guy (Chicken Tom Yum Soup), and lots of other great dishes, like spice papaya salad.

Cody and I took a kayak out in the water and did successful spot switching by crawling over one another in the boat like we practiced in water-safety at land sea. There was a huge black spire rising out of one end of the lake. On closer inspection is was the towering trunk of a dead tree – blacked and burned. With a colorful sash wrapped around it. In one reading, we heard about monks ordaining trees to protect them, by wrapping like such. It was a very spiritual tree, or skeleton of one. We also climbed up the bank of the resivour and peaked over into the meandering stream and meadows (and wild banana trees ) on the other side.

From the resivour we rode for an hour into the Pu How (mountinas) to a national park called “Mok Fah” (Mork Fah), or maybe Doi Sutep (not the temple). It was famous for its waterfall.

So there was this guy, Plato, who thought that everything had this perfect, unworly, ideal version that all the worldy version were trying to aspire to.

This was the perfect waterfall. I’ve seen a lot of waterfalls in my life. And somewhere deep in yy mind ther’s always this tiny feeling of disappointment, like there is something not quite right. It’s like I’ve been looking for this one.

I’ve never felt so much like a place needed a name – because of the living spirit of it. Not knowing what the waterfall was named, at the time, was like not knowing the name of a crush.

What can I tell you about it? Being there was like being in the most dramatic moments of a super-good movie. One of those times when the background noise, or the music stop, and there is just one huge rushing noise. Everything seemed to slow down, and time sort of warped around a bit. Detail blinked in and out. It was so bright, looking back I think there were echos.

< My heels sinking into the pillowed sand and gravel at the edge of the fall, the trees all lime against the light blue and white sky, Philip and his freckled shoulders, his eyes and mouth gasping, or was it laughing. Water droplets flew every which way, - gravity-less - like fairies. The wind roaring out from the falls, ripping agaistn my rashguard and thigh length shorts. Prying my fingers into the slippery, dark rock, behind the falls. >

The falls were split, two long drapes of water, jumping a few times on spurs of rock. There was an oval pool full of sand, drinfted so at times it was ancle deep, and in other places you had to swim. From within the pool you could barley look straight at the falls. The sprah ruhed out, flew against your face. The water came down so hard you could bare stand to come near it. First we explored the edges, got to know the water, the strength. Only a few (those with a thirst for adventure close to their heart), made it all the way under the torrential water. It hurt. It was religious. You could barely stand. It almost pushed one down. It smacked my arms and face, stinging, and cleansing.

For those of you who know me, I was so entranced I didn’t even get cold. Two hours there, the first in and the last out, and I didn’t get cold at all.

The best spot was just behind the right had falls. Although the two falls had pilled sand between them, so you could stand calf deep between the two, to get behind the right had fall you had to swim there. Erin and I rock climbed up the wall behind the falls, so only our ankles were in the water. The fall poured down in front of us, over us. It was a narrow space, I could reach out and touch the fall.– when you looked up, it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. The water lept out over the dark rock, the rocketing fairy droplets wizzed which and every which way. There was such a scale to it all, a grand scale and an intimacy. I want my whole life to be like that – grand and intimate. Breathing each moment, with a cool rush, powerful.

When we climbed up and stood there, the rock at our back, nothing but the fall and all that noise, and the wet stone we stood our backs against, toes and fingers wedged into handhold and fissures. The water was deep enough that when we slipped, while trying to climb up we just plunged into the cool rushing water. I got this feeling all inside, and knowing the depth and the character of the falls better after an afternoon there…We dived off the wall and under the falls. It was sooo fun. It doesn’t pound you down there – it’s just brown. And there is a light with a quality Alli once described as “shining from no where in particular but what feels like everywhere at once”. It was like passing through magic.

After that I helped my friends dive climb the wall and dive through. It was exciting to see them swoop into the tumultuous water. I went half a dozen times, sliding through the curtain of water. Of brown and noise that is silent and light.

Pi carrie arrived and said as program policy there was no diving, which was totally o.k. and fine. So we just hung on the wall and watched the water.

I liked to float away from the falls on my back and look up at them, the water jumping off the rocks high up, and the pounding mist. I can’t say it was more real than normal life, or as real, it wasn’t real. It was just wonderful.