Excerpts from Matt Pieknik’s Letters from Chiang Mai, Thailand:

Impressions of Thailand before leaving: I spent a lot of time reading about Thailand during the summer before I left the U.S. I read travel guides and accounts of people’s experiences in Thailand, and I tried to learn a lot about Buddhism, as over 90% of Thailand is Theravada Buddhist. I also spent time on the Internet finding pictures of Thailand. In retrospect, I think much of what I read was filtered, and I only retained the bits that painted a picture of Thailand as a beautiful, ancient country, and the most peaceful and benevolent of SE Asia.

First impressions upon arrival: Once I could see Bangkok from my airplane window, I started to feel wildly giddy in my stomach, and couldn’t help smiling. When we got off the plane in Chiang Mai I was wired, and then I passed through the gate, and a bunch of people were pointing at me and calling my name, and then there was a flower necklace put around my neck, and “Welcome to Thailand! Welcome to Thailand!” and for the next few weeks everything, everything was euphoric.

Everything I smelled was amazing – the air thick with heat, the sizzling chicken my sister bought for the dog, the lantern flowers scattered all over the ground at Wat Phra Singha, my house, the smell of my bed sheets, even the dog, even the odor of the exhaust from all the motorcycles and cars that floated through the windows of the rodang as we drove from place to place. I almost never knew what I was eating, but it was always delicious – nam prick noom, and fish sauce, and seafood soup full of squid and mussels and shrimp you had to peel the legs from, sticky rice, fried bananas, pumpkin, papaya, guava. Lots of spice, salt, mint, lime – the Thai palate, I’ve learned, greatly appreciates sourness as well as spice. Everything I saw was beautiful – the flowers the vendors sold, the vendors, the vendors’ children, their clothes, the mountains that you can see in every direction, the overgrowth of green things everywhere – my street looks almost like a jungle – and countless shades of green, more than I never knew existed, and so many on top of each other I couldn’t believe my eyes. The weather was so different, but even if it was uncomfortable, I loved it – even if it poured for hours every day, and even if it was always so hot I had a perpetual layer of sweat everywhere. So many new, different, and exciting things to see and do and taste – I was so proud of myself for having chosen such an “adventure” of a study abroad destination, and within a few days thought I could easily see myself living here. I had no time to miss my family or home. I would miss too much if I did. And everywhere I went, everyone was so friendly, so easy to befriend, that I wished the entire world were more Thai. Absolute euphoria. I was a slave to my perceptions.

Great moments: I’ve had too many wonderful experiences already to be able to narrow it down to a few of the best, but here are a few: hiking all morning through the jungle, climbing up hills and rocks and slipping down muddy slopes and tromping through streams, only to come upon the most gorgeous waterfall I’ve ever seen, and having a water fight underneath it with our new Thai friends; getting a Thai nickname from my family – Kampan; having a half-hour to build a bridge out of a few pieces of bamboo and some rope, and being the first one to test it and having it not break (so much pride in what we’d been able to accomplish as a group against the odds); chasing pigs from one sty to another with a bunch of Thai kids; making friends with a guy who has offered to take us on a tour of his home country – Cambodia; canoeing down the Maekok river and seeing mountains and farmers everywhere, and saying ‘Hi’ to the fishers on the bank; leading my group through a day at the fish pond, harvesting Talapia eggs; learning how to order food on my own; surprising my family with Thai they didn’t know I knew, and making them laugh. There is no underestimating the importance and beauty of the smile here.