Sunny DaysSo I hear that it is rainy season, but I'm not really seeing it. It did rain really hard our 1st and 2nd days for just a couple hours, but I haven't seen another drop since. We woke up again to more sunshine and our first American breakfast. I ordered eggs and sausage, but their 'sausage' is really just a hot dog. Good thing, I like hot dogs. Pass the ketchup!
K & I wandered around town - looking at a wat here, a wat there, having Mango sticky rice time (yes, again!). At one wat, a Thai college student approached me to help her with an assignment to have a conversation with a native English speaker. We chatted for a while. I'm always amazed at how every country I travel to teaches English so well, yet I can barely remember my 4 years of Spanish.
Flight of the Gibbon
We booked a zipline tour way up in the mountains an hour from Chiang Mai. We went through 18 different platforms and lines with hilarious guides that would bounce us on the lines, push us back off the platform once we landed only to have to pull us in, and scare the junk out of us by creating a freefall scenario while lowering us down. Once while B was coming in for a landing, he forgot to break and slammed the guy into the tree. In B's words, "I murdered him. ha ha!" Hopefully he won't injure any more Thais while we're here.
Afterwards they took us to a waterfall with stairs to the top that took 15 minutes of hard laboring to get to. Here was my stairmaster workout for the month! When we came back down, they drove us to have a great green curry chicken meal with more vegetables than I normally eat in a month. (Chipotle doesn't offer a lot of options.) We ate with our group: 3 Aussies and 2 Swiss. Boston bonded with one of the Aussies, and he is going whitewater rafting with him tomorrow. (K & I wanted to do a cooking class instead like the dainty ladies we are.)
Sunday Night Walking Street Market
This huge market closes off several streets including ours for a fun Sunday night. All the regular suspects there: food, clothing, and trinket vendors, masseuses, along with blind singers and even a stage setup for some Thai Star Search (tell me you remember this show!). Each young singer even has an entourage of even younger backup dancers all with very colorful outfits.
We wandered around - found some fun items but a lot is the same stuff I've seen all over Thailand. For dinner I had papaya salad and fried bananas. It wasn't my favorite meal, but I can't say it was bad. After some light shopping it was time for....wait for it....massages!
Daily Massage Report
At the market there were many chairs just set up in the street for massages, so we thought we'd go for convenience and do those. I got a very nice older lady who gave me the softest massage ever - no good. Boston got a dude again - this time in sequins "Faaabulous!" who complained about having to hold his foot up and rub it. He brought in reinforcements to hold up the foot, so he wouldn't tire doing that job. Kavita's was pretty soft, too. She and I were disappointed, but this price was the lowest we've paid at 120 baht = $4. Guess we get what we pay for; next time we'll go a little more high end with a $6 one. (ha! I love it that $6 is high end!) I give Sunday Night Walking Street Market massage: 2 stars. weak.
After beers and a banana smoothie, we headed home. We're really liking Chiang Mai's great weather and relaxed atmosphere. It's a welcome relief from the crazy that was Bangkok.
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