More Chiang Mai stuff…
Friday, January 25th, 2008Okay, so we didn’t do a ton in January. Possibly because we knew we were going to have to actually use our minds when we hit Argentina because, well, learning languages is not really our thing. Some people are just naturals at that sort of thing but our strengths lie in different areas. Or so we tell ourselves anyway…
Anyway, we did a couple of cool things – one of which was so cool that I am going to put it in another post since I’m sure to ramble on about it for too long…
Another anyway, we mostly just hung out, went to the gym, studied Spanish, caught up on movies, and started a new addiction for John…drinking coffee. Which, considering where we came from where there’s a Starbucks or Tullys or whatever like every 2 1/2 feet, is kind of funny. But, we were in a town where it was kind of chilly, and we liked to hang out in cafes and our drink of choice, the lemon shake (I am soooo going to miss the fruit shakes when we leave Thailand!!!), was, well, kind of cold – so we ended up getting coffee. Which, for some reason really appealed to John – especially since they make coffee FRESH – not out of the big jug thing – even the regular coffee.
We had met this couple, Simon and Louise, like a couple of times in this trip — once in Krabi (Southern Thailand), and again in Siem Reap (Cambodia) – and we met them again in Chiang Mai. Anyway, we all decided to go to see this strip of places where they make stuff. The first stop was umbrellas. Or parasols, I guess, technically. I mean, who would have thunk it took so much effort to make a parasol. I’m not even going to go there because I don’t have any idea what the heck I’m talking about but it took a heck of a lot more work than I would think was really worth it since it’s not like they’re even useful. But it was kind of cool because you can also get pretty much anything you want painted. So I got an elephant painted on my pants. I’ve yet to wash them so it might become a lovely blob after a washing but it was kind of cool. Anyway, other stops included laquered ware, jewelery in different forms and leather. The leather place kind of was disturbing since not only did they have leather from a cow but they also had it from elephant and those sting-ray things (the thing that killed that famous Australian nature guy). They say they don’t kill elephants in Thailand and only use the leather after it’s died…yeah, I’m sure that’s the case. For some reason, I’m sure it’s just because we don’t have elephants wandering around, the cow thing doesn’t bother me nearly as much as the elephant thing. Needless to say we didn’t buy anything there.
Another cool thing we did is we went to the Sunday walking market. I have to say this totally kicks markets like the Fremont market in the butt. They close down the streets in this one area of town and there are a ton of small little vendors with all these different kinds of things. Thailand really knows how to do a market. I guess when shopping is ingrained into your soul it’s natural for you to put on a good market. Tons of colors, tons of people…John bought a ton of CDs…it was totally cool.
JohnCin