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Published: November 6th 2008
At the architectural museum
Having a rest (Pic by K; he takes photos of everything)Day Off
After two weeks of travelling I finally got my very first day off. I know what you think, I've heard it many times before "what do you need a day off for, you've got a really long vacation". At this point I'd like to stress again that travelling is not equal a vacation. Poor me doesn't even have weekends. Ok ok, I don't need you to feel sorry for me at this point 😉 But seriously, travelling is tiring because there are so many things to see and do and I think it's even more tiring for me than for K because everything's so different and new yet very interesting and exciting.
Anyway, having a day off means we've got nothing on our schedule. But we got a bit bored of just sitting at the home stay and therefore decided to walk around the beautiful old town of Chiang Mai. I very much enjoyed looking at the buildings and we ended up going to an architectural museum. It was very interesting to look at all the drawings of buildings. At this point it was just shortly after noon and not really the right time to do much
for it was extremely hot. Don't get me wrong, nothing against the hot weather, I love it! But all off a sudden I felt really tired and got dizzy. We were the only ones at the museum and therefore I decided to just lie down and have a rest while K had a look at the rest of the exposition. He then came to join me and suggested we go get drinks which should make me feel better.
We walked across the street and bought bottles of water. As we came out of the shop a guy came down the street selling ice cream. K suggested we buy some in order to cool down a bit. I could tell that the guy only sold one kind of ice cream and I asked K what flavour it was. He said coconut. I hesitated... I'm more the vanilla type of person and I can't even remember when I had coconut ice cream for the last time. K could tell I wasn't too happy with the flavour on offer but told me that this is different, that it's Thai style ice cream and very typical for the region and that I MUST
At the Tha Phae Gate
Entrance to the Chiang Mai Old Town (Pic by K) try some. I couldn't think of how Thai style ice cream would be different from what I'm accustomed to but I decided to give it a try. However, I became sceptical right away when the guy took a slice of toast, placed some sticky rice on it, added the coconut ice cream and then topped it with peanuts. Ice cream on toast with rice and peanuts? That can't be right!!! But believe me, it was the best ice cream I ever had. And from this moment on, every time someone walked past me selling coconut ice cream I just had to buy some (fortunately for my figure that didn't happen too often). Thanks for talking me into this K!
Me feeling better we had a look at the local market and both bought a pair of fisherman pants which are quite popular in Thailand and very comfortable.
After our stroll around town and unable to take the heat any longer (I had the impression K suffered more than I did) we decided to find an air conditioned coffee place where we could spend the afternoon and went back to the Daily Delight. We talked to the girl behind the bar again who we had become friends with and spent our time reading and me catching up on my travel diary.
In the evening we went to the Pizza place at our home stay. There was a couple at the table next to ours and after a few minutes a guy around our age came, looked at the couple, then at us and eventually sat at a table by himself. He was obviously a traveller who was probably travelling alone looking for some company for the evening. I realised that K and I could easily have looked like a couple and in his situation I wouldn't have joined a couple either. Therefore I asked K if it was ok to ask the guy to join us, got up and went to his table. I asked him whether he wanted to sit with us. He said "sure, but my English is not very good". Oh dear, that guy had the most Swiss accent anyone could have. I hate when people know at once that my mother tongue is German and more even, when they think that I actually am German. Therefore I ignored the fact I already knew, smiled at him and asked where he was from. He introduced himself as Raffael from Switzerland. I switched to Swiss German and told him not to worry about his English then.
When we got to the table the situation was for one the other way round. Raffael and I would speak Swiss and I'd translate for K. However, his English was not all that bad and we could master most of the conversation in a language that worked for all of us.
After dinner K wanted to go to bed straight away. I decided to go to the Internet shop first to check my e-mails and Raffael wanted to join me. Since he only just got here I showed him where to go. When we left the place he asked if I was still up for a drink and I definitely was. Though I did not miss speaking my own language at all, it was nice in a way to spend time with a landsman. But it was also nice to finally get to know someone new and talk to someone else how he experienced the country and the culture. That's not the kind of conversation I could have with K for this is his home.
When we got back to the backpacker we exchanged mobile phone numbers. He was heading east and I was to return to Bangkok soon not quite knowing what was going on from there. We had been in touch during our trip but never met again.
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Puthapoom Prapunwong
non-member comment
Cheers !
Viva the coconut ice cream !!! [-_-]/ K