Some things shouldn't be cross compared

It's important not to cross compare and therefore inadvertantly judge some things, such as girlfriends, art forms, speech impediments and the differences in the culture of catching buses. But the human brain was originally designed for cooling the blood and not for thinking, and so, inanely, but frequently, it does attempt to compare incomparable things, which really, is just a silly thing to do.

Cross comparing catching buses in Ethiopia, which is where I was a year ago to this day, to catching buses in Thailand, which is where I am now today, is comparable to cross comparing consuming beef from a cow to consuming a crunchy apple from a tree. Correct, they're both food, but that's where the comparison ends. Yet, while I sat on the bus, which cruised up a mountain and showed me spectacular jungle views... well... I kept on hating the bus because it wasn't an Ethiopian bus, and then hating those Ethiopian buses because they weren't this one. I wanted there to be an ideal bus, the perfect bus, the bus I wanted most of all... But which bus is it?

In Ethiopia one needs to be at the bus station before the sun rises, at 6 in the morning, where one waits in a seething mass of black faces, wrapped in "gabi's" against the cold, and the gate to the large 'terminal' opens, where a sandy, dirty parking lot is full with buses, and the hundreds, nay thousands, nay millions of people surge forward pushing, yelling and fighting to get to their buses, as various bus drivers yell and scream the name of their destinations, but the noise is so overwhelming that it's impossible to hear what they're yelling, and you bump and push and struggle as if you're lost in the rapids of a river, until almost by fortuitous chance you encounter someone who happens to be yelling your destination and you send half your party to fight for seats, and the other half struggles through the crowd getting on to the bus to behind the bus, where you have to put your luggage on the top yourself or else be charged extra. On the bus ride the windows are all closed and it swelters. If you open one, all the Ethiopians look confused, and eventually someone will lean over and close it.

In Thailand you walk into the paved bus terminal, which has signs, where you can book tickets, and where uniformed officials ask in English in a worried manner if you know where to get tickets, and if you have tickets, if you know where your bus is departing from, and if you do, if you're having a good time. There are multiple buses here, and you can purchase tickets beforehand. When the bus arrives you sit in your official seat and the bus driver personally puts your luggage in the luggage space underneath the bus. We went on the non-airconditioned bus, which was over 100 Bhat cheaper, but not only were all the windows open, but so were the doors. It was cool in those mountains, and I can't imagine the virtue of air-conditioning at such an altitude.

The experience in Ethiopia was amazing, insane, and beautiful; the experience here was tame, easy, and beautiful. Eating beef involves the death of a cow, the cutting of meat, the cooking of meat, the eating of meet. Eating an apple involves plucking one off a tree. They're both food, but so fundamentally different, and obviously I'm allowed to enjoy both, just in different ways.

Pai is nice. Tiny. Huts. Bars. Westerners. Some Thai people. Just met some British people and got a bit drunk with them and then ate some Spicy Chicken Soup, Tom Kai Gun, I think, but perhaps I'm wrong.

Tomorrow I might ride on an elephant.