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Published: March 12th 2009
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Hello from beautiful Chiang Mai in northern Thailand! We arrived here yesterday morning via the overnight train from Bangkok. That was very fun and I slept well in my upper bunk, although the guy across the aisle snored like a lumberjack! It was a 14 hour ride and we arrived at 8:00am. We dropped the stuff at the hotel and then Catherine, Tricia, and I set out for a day exploring the many wats (temples) in the historic district. It's somewhat cooler here and much less humid and it was nice not to have sweat just dripping off all day. We had breakfast of fresh pineapple pancakes with honey at a nice outdoor restaurant and then walked a circuitous route to see seven wats. They are all different and all beautiful in their own way. Many had elephant statues and those were our favorites. Photos to follow soon...
In the late afternoon, the entire group of 14 went to Wat Doi Suthep which is the most famous temple in Chiang Mai. It's located at 1,000 meters and it's a long and winding road up. The view of the entire valley would have been spectaular, but this is the season for
burning in the forest so it was very smoky and you couldn't see much. We walked around the temple and then got a blessing from a monk who chanted and then sprinkled water on us as we knelt. We also got string bracelets that he had knotted. He put them on the men, but he's not allowed to touch the women so he threw them to us (with amazingly good aim) and we tied them on each other. We listened to the monks evening chants for a while and then headed back to town.
We walked to the Night Market where you can literally but anything under the sun for cheap prices. Even the Rolexs cost almost nothing! I think we saw 4,000,000+ scarves and about that many t-shirts. The group split up for the wandering and we all agreed to meet at the Riverside Bar later on. The three people I was with got tired of shopping (although no one actually bought anything) after an hour so we headed to the bar to relax by the river. We stayed for over an hour listening to live music (all English versions of 80s pop music sung by young Thai
men) and no one else showed up so we tuk-tuked back to the hotel.
We're heading out for Chaing Kong at 1pm today. It's a five hour drive to the Laos boder which we will cross in the morning and then start a two day boat trip through the country. Catherine, Tricia, and I decided we were wat-ed out so we had a leisurely breakfast and are now spending time on the internet. There's a Fair Trade shop we want to look in and we need to find the post office before we head back to the hotel for a noon check out.
A few words about the GAP group... There are 14 of us with folks from Canada, England, Scotland, Denmark, Cypress, and the US (there are two of us). The tour leader is from New Zealand. We range in age from 23 to mid-70s. There are two couples and everyone else is just traveling alone or with a friend. There are "five ladies on the loose" so we are sharing three twin rooms and taking turns not having a roommate. We're going in age order for that so I'm last, but only be a few months.
The group is mixing well so far and without drama so I think we will have fun. About half of us are together for the full 29 days and then we'll lose some people, but meet up with others. There are two women from Canada who are both really nice and funny and the three of us have had a lot of fun together so far. Tricia and I are doing the entire trip while Catherine will leave us after Laos since she did the other parts of the trip last year.
Hope all is well there! More soon!
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