Holy Cow, the Holy Grail: Holy Cow!

At last. All yesterday Claudia and I were drooling over the shops in downtown Chiang Mai. Handicrafts, silk, clothes, lamps, you name it.

First rule of our next trip to Thailand: Bring more money. Lots more money.

Near the end of the day, we ducked into Gecko Bookshop, just off Tha Phae Road. We had just left another bookstore, and kinda peeved too. I had been writing down titles and authors in my little notebook, and the shopkeeper told me I wasn't allowed to write in the store. Er, right. Fine — I just won't spend any money there, either.

The Gecko is a great little store, full of new and used books from fiction to guidebooks. There was a large poetry section, as well as the classics, and they also had an entire shelf of Tolkien. Not that Claudia and I were interested in Lord of the Rings, mind you ;-) They also had some of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels — Claudia's not read any of those, and I think she's going to have to be indoctrinated.

And,above all, they had the holy grail: Holy Cow.

All through India, we could not find this book. We couldn't even find it in Bangkok, and short of Jim Thompson, Amelia Earhart and the definitive answer to who shot JFK, you can find anything in Bangkok!

Yet here, in a bookstore off a main road in Chiang Mai, we at least find it — trade paperback, for 180 baht.

At last. Please excuse me, I have reading to do.