After cooking, the drinking.

After gobbling up our culinary experiments at cooking school, a few of us decided to meet up for a drink later. Claudia and I headed over to the Irish Pub. That's the name, not just the description. We hung out with Yespa (Danish — and I hope I spelled your night right, mate!), Mark (English) and Nina (Spanish), drinking a few too many Singhas. Or at least, Claudia drank a couple too many... the poor dear's been hungover most of the day.

After getting her toast and water and juice, I headed out to see some of the wats she's been checking out while I've been ingesting far too much garlic. (Tis true; yesterday alone I think I ate about 20 cloves; Claudia can barely stand to be within 5 feet of me!) It was a nice midday walk through the Old City, and the wats, especially the earthquake-damaged Wat Chedi Luang, was stunning.

Over coffee at The Mint Coffee House, I also looked over our map of Thailand and tried to kick around our next moves. Tomorrow we're thinking of heading northeast to the not-too-visited city of Nan. It's a nice small place, and the surrounding country is supposed to be gorgeous. The tribes there are also reknowned for their textile work, so I'm sure we'll be haggling away.

I'm not sure what we're going to do next though. Time is ticking; I have less than a month to go, and I wish I had a year. I'm both trying to do as much as I can now, while also scheming to find ways to come back/ stay in Thailand. I like this country, and I like being in Asia — why leave if I don't have to? Besides, do I really want to go back to Oregon in cold, wet, gray, dreary January? Perhaps not.

So that leaves a few weeks, and a lot of country — and countries — to make decisions about. We've decided that we'll probably nix Laos. I wanted to go, but short of just nipping into Vientiane for a day or two, there's just not time. If we decide to go to Loei, a nearby province and town in the northeast, maybe we will nip over for a bit, but I'm doubting it.

There's also Cambodia, Ayuttaya, an island, and Erawan Falls to try to get in.

We shall see.

But dammit I want more time.

Maybe I'll just have to make that happen.