Lazy day

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When I posted yesterday's blog, I didn't mention that I had looked around the Sunday Walking Market after I'd got back from the rafting. This takes place every Sunday in one of the main streets of teh moated city and the stalls also extend to some of the side streets, the courtyards of the wats along the way and to a large island in the moat on the eastern side.

It was an interesting market to strol through, though I didn't buy anaything I saw tshirts offered for less than I had paid in the night market a few days ago. Buskers were entertaining the crowds and collecting money.

It was after I'd walked through the market that I started my circumnavigation of the city and it was dark by now. It was funny to see the tuk tuks, many of which had a lighted sign in their front saying "Taxi" in English - in the dark they looked like baby London taxis.

Talking of babies, I saw a baby elephant with an adult elephant as I rode yesterday and thought "There is a baby elephant with his mother". But when the large elephant turned its head, I saw that it had tusks, so gender assumptions were confounded. I wonder if there are new elephants, like there are new men.

When I finaly got back to the hotel, walking along the narrow soi or alley that leads to it, I heard a bird say something like "Cuckoo". I wonder if cuckoos live in Thailand.

This morning I slept late a bit and after breakfast went down to the pool for a swim amd a lie down on the couches there. It was very relaxing. I chatted for a few minutes with two English girls who had also done the trek and who were shortly going to Laos.

I'm a bit disappointed that I had to give up part of the trek. Dr Stephens, my cardiologist, had told me that I should be able to do it and had said that he'd done the trek himself, so I thought he would know. However, it turns out that there are several different treks with differing difficulty levels and that I'd chosen the hardest one. So maybe he didn't know how much climbing would be involved. Still by walking round the moat - a good four miles it shows I can walk. But thinkgs like putting on socks and taking them off can leave me out of breath.

From the dormitory at the hill tribe village you could see an odd tree. Its trunk grew normally for about five feet and then the bole bifurcated, which is not that unusual. But them a foot or so higher, the two parts of the trunk recombined leaving a hole in the middle of the tree.

I don't think I've seen anything like that before.

The Maltese lads, as we came back from rafting, told me about troubles between India and Nepal of which I had been unaware.

I'd told them that I'd be moving on the India after Thailand and they said that they had just come from Nepal and that the Nepalese did not like the Indians. Apparently Nepal has great hydro-electric resources but had not had the capital to develop them and had had to get India to do this for them. In return India now has monopoly control over Nepal's electricity and charges an impossibly high price for it, so much so that Kathmandu, the capital, only has six hours of electricty each day. Also, they said, India had taken Nepal's one seaport from it after being granted independance by Britain.

I don't know how much there is in this, but I'd not heard it before.

I've given some laundry to the hotel to do. I tried to was some socks that I'd got dirty on the trek and got nowhere. And it's only a few baht.

I've just had lunch now and am planning a relaxing day, maybe a massage later. Although I do think there's a Thai boxing match on . .

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