I seem to have some sort of head cold. At least, let's all hope it's a head cold, because when you haven't got Dr. Google on 24-hour standby, you're apt to start flicking through the "Illnesses and Diseases" section of the Lonely Planet Southeast Asia instead and finding that why yes, you do have a sore throat, body aches, and small itchy spots on the inside of your elbow, so quite obviously you have Japenese Encephalitis. And malaria. And dengue fever. And SARS.

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Today we finally roused ourselves from our cultural inertia long enough to decide that since we only had a few days left in Chiang Mai, we should probably Do Something. And I don’t know about you, but when I think about Doing Something, I usually think about going for an elephant ride. And then trekking barefoot through the jungle. And then white-water rafting. And then visiting several obscure hill tribes, who obviously aren’t that obscure, because even though they live in mud huts, they still have cable television—they do!

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I won't be posting for the next twelve days, since we're leaving for Burma this afternoon, and---prepare yourself---THEY DON'T HAVE THE INTERNET THERE.

(Pick yourself up off the floor. You look kind of weird like that.)

Actually, they do sort of have the Internet, it's just that you're not allowed to access it, just in case, you know, you accidentally find out some news or something and realize that not all countries are run by abominable military regimes.

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Burma, it seemed, was out to kill us. Towards the end of the trip, Sean turned to me on a particularly hellish bus ride and said "is it bad that I'm thinking 'I only have to stay alive in this country for four more days?'"

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At this point, you probably have a few questions for me. Like, when am I ever going to stop this traveling nonsense and go home? And why do I get to spend my days lolling around here while you're somewhere cold, gray, and rainy, putting on another sweater to avoid the chill and cursing the fact that you left your umbrella at the office, and wouldn't it be nice if something kind of awful could happen while I was enjoying the white sand and turquoise water of the Gulf of Thailand, so that then you'd feel a little bit better about the unjustness of it all?

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Sit down next to me in an Internet cafe and start grunting intermittently, quietly but worryingly. Remain unaware of the fact that I can actually feel you staring at me and/or reading my email over my shoulder every three minutes, such is the intensity with which you are doing it. After some time has passed, tap me on the shoulder and say "how are your eyes? Could I just borrow them a minute?

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For the past few days, I've had the same three songs on a constant loop in the private listening booth of my head: Bob Dylan's "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," "All These Things That I've Done" by The Killers, and "Sloop John B" by The Beach Boys, specifically the part in the chorus that goes "let me go home." No prizes, then, for guessing what's happening tomorrow.

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Since we've been back from our trip around Asia, we've been doing little more than sleeping and eating. You know how people say "oh, all we've been doing is sleeping and eating" and yet you know that actually, no, they've probably also been watching television and going to the grocery store and, you know, showering and stuff?

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