Chiang Mai Zoo gets a panda baby!

HERE!

M: Well, thank goodness for here. Chiang Mai is as wonderful as I thought it was. We went to the flower festival parade this morning and it was hilarious. It was a wonderful parade but the Thai (and I believe many Chinese and Japanese) people would RUN into the middle of the parade and have people take their pictures with the parade walkers. It was almost impossible to get any decent pictures because there was always someone in front throwing up a peace sign with their fingers.

But Chiang Mai is unbelievable, the weather is temperate, strong sun during the day and cool at night. The people are SO NICE and have so much civic pride about their city. Many of the Thai who live here stopped us on our walk yesterday to make sure we knew all about the parade, what time and where to stand. We had a man who drew us a whole map of the city yesterday, and didn’t even pressure us about a tuk-tuk ride.

The food is DELICIOUS (aroy) and incredibly inexpensive.  No one has bugged us for money or tourist trips. The city is lovely with canals and remnants of the “old city” everywhere.

Tonight we’ll head to the night market and we’ve been warned by many thai that it is for farangs, but that’s okay, we are farangs.

Oh and we had our laundry done professionally, we’re going to smell like real people tonight.

Only Chiang Mai was worth that train trip.

M: Well, what we thought was going to be a romantic trip on a night train to Chiang Mai turned out to be a death wish trip to Chiang Mai. More later, but suffice it to say we didn’t sleep a wink and it was like trying to sleep on the rollercoaster at New York, New York in Vegas.

But at first walk around, it feels like Chiang Mai is worth every missed wink. It’s sunny as all get out but without the humidity. There is art everywhere and flowers everywhere for the flower festival tomorrow. The restaurants seem nicer and the people selling their wares not nearly as pushy.

Good to be here.

M: Feels like its been awhile since I posted. Did you all wonder if John sold me into the “middle-aged, white, frenchfry loving sex trade?” Well, he should have, that sounds like fun kinda.

We leave Bangkok tomorrow for Chiang Mai. It’s cooler in Chiang Mai, both by degree and by environment. Chiang Mai is more in the hills of Thailand and I always think of it as a more artistic center. It’s certainly not the beaches covered with tan 20 year olds, and its big, but not as big as Bangkok. They have an awesome night bazaar and the elephant conservatory. Hee.

We’re taking a train there, a sleeper train. I’m really looking forward to that. The trip is twelve hours total and you sleep through most of it.

It’s also my sweet husband’s birthday tomorrow. When I asked him what I could do to help celebrate (I keep forgetting, birthdays can get lost on the Khao San) he said “a train ride to Chiang Mai?” Done!

We’re in the second half of the trip now, not too far from going home. And of course, we’re really getting the hang of this now, we’re a bit tanner, we’ve lost some weight, we don’t sweat bullets just walking outside, we’ve figured out how to cross the street (it’s harder than it looks) and we’re more adventurous with our food consumption.

And although the days seem to be winding down, we’re doing a really great job at fitting in all we can. Today we both wanted to take a nap so badly and forced ourselves to get up, go see more, learn more, explore more.

We can sleep when we’re dead.