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Ok, it was bound to happen... I extended my ticket until February 27th. Tomorrow morning early, several of us from the Burma pilgrimage are heading up to the Vipassana center in northern Thailand for a special 8-day Vipassana course. These courses are rare, so when opportunity arises, one has to seize it... ;)

After the course, a friend and I are hoping to head over to Cambodia to meet up with Sieburg for a couple weeks. But Thai/Cambodian relations are a bit tense right now, so that may not materialize. We'll see.

Be back online in 9 days!

Phew, I'm back in Bangkok from Burma. I think that's the longest I've been *offline* since I first went *online* about 9 years ago... But what a place, Burma! The pilgrimage was incredible- 500 meditators from all over the world attended, and we cruised around the country in a huge entourage of about 12 buses. There's way too much to say about it now, I'll post more (including pictures) once I get home. Goenkaji and Mataji were present for all of it, though they traveled separately (they're around 80 years old, understandably...). One of the highlights was visiting Mogok, a large city in Upper Burma that's currently closed to foreigners due to all the ruby mining happening there.

I'm 2 days late returning to Bangkok because I sat a 10-day Vipassana course in Yangon for, well, the past 10 days. ;)

More coming soon...

Happy New Year from Asia, everybody, one last post before we take off for Burma. Thanks to Sony Ericsson and T-Mobile, I turned on my mobile phone here in Bangkok and whatdyaknow, I've got service! Texting, voice mail, etc., no different than being back in the US (except it's $1.49/minute in Thailand). How is this possible? GSM. Here's the worldwide coverage list. Technology rocks.