Blessed by a Monk

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Today started at about 2:30 in the morning when the hard bed pads got to be too hard for my pressure points. I know! Poor me, having to sleep on a hard bed in the loft of a kind Thai family after being feed a delicious home cooked meal. Really roughing it here - especially the blueberry cheesecake and iced coffee at Cafe de L'Amour in the middle of Chiang Mai listening to a little bossa nova in the air conditioning!



We did get going at 7:30 to make an offering to the monks at the local temple in the village. It's a tradition (I don't know if that adequately describes it) to take some of the food from the family meals and offer it to the monks, so we joined Aoi this morning and each received a blessing and a wish for a healthy and strong life. Something we can all do with a little of.



After breakfast - also home cooked - we got to take a bike ride around the country side. Again, the "bi-bed breeze" was quite wonderful! The area we are in is quite rural, with rice paddies, cows, and farms - and beautiful mist shrouded mountains in the distance. Images are fleeting, and it's almost impossible to keep yourself from stopping every two minutes to take another photo. We rode around the village for about three hours. In that three hours we visited yet another temple (surprise!) and stopped to visit a woman's farm where she showed us the traditional method for getting the husks off rice. After, we visited a mushroom farm - way cool! Especially being able to pick them and send them off to our homestay to become tempura for part of our lunch! Yep - the freshest mushrooms I've ever eaten! We were also able to visit a local sewing/crafts area where the local women sew bags and other items for sale in the local markets. We think they were at a significant discount since we bought straight from the source.



We are now in Chiang Mai proper, and taking a brief break in our busy schedule. Clothes are in the laundry for pick up tomorrow, I've gotten a bit of air conditioning and a good rest. Now - it's off to dinner and the market. (And I think there's a "lady boy cabaret" in the plans, too!)

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