Still in Chiang Mai

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Well we've spent the last week here, and we're ready to leave. It's a fun city, but we're here to explore. For the last few days we've takin in easy. We went to a brand new bowling alley a few times. It had ac and we needed to get out of the heat. Yesterday we took a taxi (it was just a pick up truck with two benches on the back). It's the main way to get around here, whenever we're walking down the street they honk at us and some stop and yell at us to try and get us in. So it's really not hard to find a ride here. Anyways we took one to a couple of wats, one was just old ruins. There were a couple of Monks studying there, and in the main building there were lots of huge paintings on the ceiling. It was kind of a dissapointment because the doors were locked so we only got to see through the windows. The other wat we went to was in a big forest, it was really beautiful, there were a lot of monks studying there. There was also a huge pond that was full with cat fish. They were all skimming the surface, and everywhere you looked their whiskers were poking out of the water. Today we went for a walk around the whole moat of the city, it took about an hour. Then we went for some curry, it was one of the best meals we've had. When we were done we ran into this lady who had all these tiny birds in straw cages. She was selling them 4 for 100 baht, and if you bought them you set them free and it was supposed to give you good luck. Well I felt really bad for the poor little guys, so we bought some and set them all free. If we had enough money I would have liked to set them all free. Well tomorrow morning we get on our mini bus that takes us to Huay Xai and then on the 25th we go on the gibbon experience. We're really looking forward to getting on the road again. The gibbon experience is 3 days, then after that we're getting on a slow boat that takes us to Luang Prabang, it's a 2 day boat trip, should be fun!!!

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