Nam Dtok Buatong: Sticky Waterfall Day Trip Near Chiang Mai

Nam Dtok Buatong, better known to travelers as Sticky waterfall, is a forest oasis very close to Chiang Mai, Thailand, with quite a unique story. Since I don't need to recite long winded mythology, I will give a very short version.

There was an attack on the Lanna kingdom, leaving the king and queen dead. One of their faithful leading soldiers fled with the two princesses before they too met their fate, and he took them to hide in the forest. They located an area that could house them, but it didn't have a water supply.

Pun by Pun: Chiang Mai's Best Business Name Puns

Chiang Mai is home to some pretty great business name puns. While there are Punspace coworking space and Pun Pun vegetarian restaurant at Wat Suan Dok, those aren't the puns that I am after. I want the humorous manipulation of vocabulary, not just the word in the name.

Maybe my affintiy for puns comes from having to deal with this surname my whole life. It only makes sense that the name "Crum" would produce an appreciation for the juxtaposition of words for humor. It's not everyday that you get to turn my last name into something laughable (as easy of a target as it may seem), so when the opportunity arises, it must be seized. For example, the name of this blog, The Crummy Life. I couldn't pass it up.

Crummy's Top 5 Free Language Learning Tools

I have been moonlighting as a foreign language speaker with one mantra in mind, "Fake it 'til you make it!" As I persist in this goal, to become conversationally fluent in a second language, I continue to try out language learning tools to find a good system. This is a compilation of my current top 5 free language buddies, and I hope that they can help you increase your proficiency, too. Now, the article's title says "language learning tools," but many of them are great tools for improving retention of anything you need or want to remember. Let's check 'em out!

7 Online Resources You Should Use for FREE Skill Building

Imagine many universities, top-tier universities, offering you free tuition, each willing to take you in with open arms to help you develop personally and professionally. Is it hard to imagine, or impossible to imagine? I know it's not easy, and I'm going to blame that on the broken higher education system in America.

I keep running into articles and opinions in the social media sphere attacking the dysfunction of the America higher education system. We may not have the perfect solution for how the US can stand up with the developed countries of the world that offer citizens free education, but MOOCs bring us a step closer.

My Multilingual Morning

"If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart." Nelson Mandela

It was morning in Vientiane, Laos and it was still raining relatively hard. I hadn't planned for such weather, so I decided not to get soaked walking down the street to Le Banneton, Vientiane's premier boulangerie, and instead take my laptop to the lobby, where the wifi signal is strong and time could be wasted while I waited for the deluge to break. I chose a seat next to a pair of West African gents deep in conversation.