On the back of an elephant, walking down the river.

Chiang Dao: July 24-28

After a day of furious cleaning, packing, shipping and sweating, I left my apartment in Japan for the last time. There was no time for fond reminiscence as I hastily repacked the two boxes rejected by the post office as being oversized. No tears were shed during my last-minute vacuuming of the tatami. And the only I regret I felt while lugging two giant suitcases in and out of taxis and trains was for every thing I had ever bought in Japan and then had to subsequently pack. Finally reaching Carol's apartment (where I would be spending the night) felt like crossing some kind of finish line. We would be leaving for Thailand in the morning.

Nuch and my dad.

In Chiang Mai we were met by my dad and my new stepmom, Nuch. I had seen my dad about six months before, when he was getting ready for his move to Thailand in the spring, but I had never met Nuch, whom he had married the year before. I knew we would get along fine when she immediately asked us if we were ready to eat some good Thai food. How did she know the way to my heart is most definitely through my stomach?

The view from my dad's house.

I had thought about culture shock before coming to Japan, and had prepared myself for the inevitable reverse culture shock when I returned to the U.S., but I hadn't really considered how Thailand might bridge that. Sitting in a restaurant in Chiang Mai that first night, I looked at the dogs wandering between the tables, the buzzing fluorescent lights, the sticky plastic chairs. I missed oshibori, the hot towel given to you at the beginning of a meal in Japan. I missed shiny wood tables and overly attentive waiters. But as the days passed in Thailand, so did that feeling. People smiled at me on the street and I remembered how to smile back. I watched Nuch bargain in the markets and loved the bluntness of it, the fearlessness, the lack of apology. It was like I had been wearing this latex suit I didn't even know I had put on, and now I was peeling it off, loving the sensation of direct contact with the world, dirty germs and all.

Kayaking on the reservoir.

The first days were lazy and wonderful, a chance to recuperate after the past several weeks of packing and farewell parties. My dad's new house is in a small town 70 km outside of Chiang Mai, surrounded by mountains, rice paddies and fields empty except for the occasional grazing cow. It's beautiful. We spent a day kayaking on a reservoir and took an overnight trip to Myanmar. Along the way, like elephants, we ate several times our weight in delicious Northern Thai food every day. Nuch turned out to not only share my fanatical love of som tam, the green papaya salad that is a Northern Thai specialty, she was also a great cook and a culinary expert eager to share her findings, always asking, "Do you want to try that?" whenever she saw a roadside food stall stocked with something Carol and I hadn't yet eaten. We never said no.

Lunch (sausages, som tam, sticky rice and greens).

During these first couple days, I also met my youngest step-brother for the first time, a fun, energetic, Spiderman-obsessed three-year-old named Cairo. As he knows about as much English as I do Thai ("hello" and "thank you" being about the extent of it, although he can also say "Peter Parker"), we mostly pretended to attack each other with his toy guns and swords. Ah, boys.

Cairo, striking some sort of deal with Carol.

After several days in the capable hands of my dad and Nuch, it was time for Carol and me to return to Chiang Mai to meet our friend Liz, who was arriving on the 28th. After locating our guesthouse, Nuch and my dad led the way to the front desk, Carol and me trailing behind and feeling very much like kids being dropped off at summer camp. Though newly equipped with bargaining skills and an insatiable hunger for, well, everything, we were at a loss. What to do next?

Next time: night bazaars, sexy suits and jungle fever.... It's actually not as exciting as that sounds.

This is a monster entry. I'm just warning you.

Chiang Mai and the surrounding jungle: July 28-August 2

Temple steps and monks' shoes.

After Liz's arrival, the three of us headed over to the Chiang Mai night bazaar for shopping and dinner. Lucky for us, it was a night with both a full moon and a good chance of rain, so those tourists who weren't on distant beaches dancing incoherently at the monthly Full Moon Party had mainly stayed in to avoid the bad weather and the market was less crowded, full of vendors ready to bargain.

"Whatever price they tell you, offer them half," my dad had advised Carol and me before our shopping trip to Myanmar. "Then go from there." Nuch's advice if the seller refused to go any lower: "Just walk away." Most of the time, they'd call you back. We had witnessed her expertly employ this technique when haggling the price of a mango -- a mango! -- and it had totally worked. She also said we should claim the seller around the corner had offered to sell it for whatever our asking price was. "What do you have to lose?"

Carol in a taxi.

In practice, it wasn't quite so easy, at least for me. Carol turned out to be an expert at bargaining. I watched in awe as she pulled the Guy Around the Corner Said and the Walkaway, nearly always getting the price she wanted. I, on the other hand, felt vaguely like I was insulting the vendor if I only offered half of the asking price and would instead counter with a little more than half, then go tentatively from there. If they said, "I can't go any lower, I'm sorry," I'd more often then not just agree to their price. Thinking about it now, I think a lot of it had to do with feeling guilty about being a rich American haggling over the equivalent of one or two dollars with someone whose yearly income is probably equal to what I paid for one class at the fancy private university I attended. (And I wonder if Carol, being Irish, isn't subject to that kind of guilt. Carol? Your thoughts?) I felt the same way when I bargained in India.

My luggage already stuffed with everything I needed to bring home from Japan, I wasn't in super-shopping mode, but I did have a good time talking and joking around with the vendors, including one Pakistani tailor who promised Liz he could make her the "sexy suit" of her dreams. For me he envisioned a "dinner dress" of red Chinese-print satin which I could wear during elegant meals with my boyfriend. Um, wow -- he totally had my number. Also of bizarre bazaar note: one of us (I won't divulge who) purchased two handbags which may or may not have been manufactured by the designer its fabric and hardware would lead you to believe, a brand which may or may not rhyme with "moochie." I can definitely tell you that in the store the unnamed buyer was led to a back wall which turned out to be a hidden door, and after passing through the hidden door, she had to push through a rack of clothing, ending up in a secret room full of secret handbags and shady dealings. The unnamed buyer reports it was worth it.

Chicken choppers.

The next day was Carol's last and we spent it walking around, exploring temples and looking for the food Thai people were eating. Highlights included lunch at a busy restaurant serving only khao mun gai and the fresh coconut ice cream sold out of a barrel half a block away. Later that night, after dropping Carol off at the airport, we would discover even more at the Sunday flea market held just a few blocks from our guesthouse, but sadly we were too full from dinner to try the freshly-made fish balls or omelets grilled in banana leaves. That day we had signed up for a three-night jungle trek, to depart the next morning, so we went to bed early and hoped for the best.

So now that I've told the most important parts of my Thailand tale, I feel like I can start talking about my present life finally.

Except there's not much to tell.

Culture shock is characterized by a euphoric high -- the excitement of every day holding something new and illuminating -- followed by a shocking crash, the realization of how difficult life can be in a society not your own. Reverse culture shock is different; it's much less fun. Where is the giddy joy that flooded through me when I successfully navigated two towns over by train, staring at the blank faces of the salarymen around me? It's somehow not the same, riding the bus from Koreatown to Beverly Hills. There's no triumph in ordering my coffee at the café. Buildings people signs slide by without the jagged hook of the unfamiliar to snag me.

But all is not terrible.

The faces on the bus aren't blank here; I stare and wonder about people's stories. I overhear conversations. I chat with the librarian as I check out yet another book I've been waiting two years to read. I translate billboards in Spanish (Mi cocina, mis reglas) and is it my imagination or does it seem easier than before, some sort of door opening to reveal those three years of high school study just sitting there waiting to be used? The new and unfamiliar, previously intimidating, are as weirdly enticing as the mango-saffron-hot pepper gelato I ate one boiling-hot day in early September.

And there is an apartment on the horizon, a huge event for one so homebody-ish, one who loves to craft and cook. My yarn is still floating across the sea. My kitchen is tucked in a storage container ten miles away. My hands are itching to organize and beautify, but it would be futile to do it in this temporary place.

You think you'll return to the life you left behind and it'll be like someone just snipped you out of the picture for two years, leaving a black you-shaped space, and when you slip back in, it will be almost exactly as it was before. But no matter how you prepare yourself to not fit in, it won't be any easier, this stitching of you back into your life. Thread through the eye of a needle through your arm and back up through this new-old life. The stitches are black and ugly. But soon the seams will close, the stitches will be pulled out. Where you and your life meet there will be a scar, but a thin one, pink and new. Maybe you'll look at it and think of newborn babies and Easter eggs. Fresh starts. Hope.