Today we have a short half day guided tour, followed by an afternoon at leisure. WOW almost a vacation! Our wake up was early, 5:30 am, breakfast at 6, and off we were at 7 AM for the 45 minute drive to the ancient Buddha statue at Sukhothal. We arrived at the historic center at Sukhothal and boarded a tram for our ride around this ancient sacred site. These ruins were first built in 1245 and the construction was of a volcanic stone. I understood the stone was mined from volcanic lava tubes, but that was not actually correct. It seemed the mining was to find lava, which was then poured, hot, into specialized molds to make bricks, columns and arches for whatever was needed for the construction. The stone itself is too brittle to carve ... read more

Before I talk about today, I forgot a stop we made yesterday at the Cabbage and Condom Hotel and Resort! Yup, that's right Cabbage and Condoms. You see, there was an overpopulation problem beginning in Thailand and the king wanted to help slow things down, So he enlisted the help of a Physician who was a member of government. The physician came up with the idea to try to get his people to use condoms. They rebelled. He tried different slogans, TV advertizing, free condoms but nothing worked.. It turned out the Thai people didn't like the word CONDOM. So the physician got the idea to add cabbage to condoms and came up with the slogan, eating our food won't get you pregnant . How in the hell did he expect that to work I had ... read more

Today was all about the elephant. The Indian elephant to be exact. We were heading to the elephant sanctuary where nearly 100 elephants are trained, cared for and bred. There are only about 3000 wild elephants in Thailand and this sanctuary is trying to protect the few they have. There are a total of 1500 elephants in sanctuaries throughout Thailand so at least half are protected. We drove north for 90 minutes further up into the mountains where the elephants live in the wild. Elephants were a domesticated work horse through Thai history. Their massive strength, easy of domestication and real love for humans make them the perfect beast of burden. Elephants were used to move heavy logs during the early Thai history, allowing for construction of the country. They were also a mode of transportation. ... read more

This next section is not going to win me any friends, but I hope it will influence people. We are all adults here and sometime we forget who and where we are. Your not in Kansas anymore. We arrived in Chiang Mai a little tired and way too hot, making most people irratable, so that did set the stage for what happened next. The hotel is a resort type set up with many buildings and a very confusing layout. The reception is in building one, while our rooms were in building three. Not too bad until you consider we had no idea where building three was, let along how to get there. To further compound the problem the rooms were not numbered in a normal convention. For example room 3205, my room, is usually on the ... read more

This morning we had a bit of an early morning, for no other reason than I couldn't sleep. I was up at 5:00 am well rested and ready to go. Today we were going to the King's Residence and Temple area, but first a canal cruise on a small river skiff. After breakfast, another buffet feast, we headed to the hotel lobby to meet the crew and off we went out the back door to the pier. When we arrived for boarding, there was a very well appointed river boat at the dock. It looked clean, comfortable and the crew was in unifirm. We were looking good. As we prepared to board, the captain hit the throttle and pulled away leaving us all staring as right behind pulled in a long rickety boat with a huge ... read more