North! No wait, south!
The best thing about travelling solo and with no return date or itinerary is that I can change my mind at the last minute. It doesn’t really matter to me where I go and it certainly doesn’t affect anyone else. So I decided that instead of the Chiang Rai –> Chiang Khong –> Laos route, I’ll head halfway back south, then turn left (East, whatever) and go into Laos that way (see previous entry for why). That’s the plan for now, anyway.
I went out to the train station this afternoon and bought a ticket for tomorrow morning to Phitsanulok, a centrally located city that is a little over half the size of Chiang Mai. Geographically, that will put me in a good position to make the next move (i.e. decide which border to cross to renew my visa, in case I change my mind about going to Vientiane).
And I get to ride a train! I’m excited about that. It’s a seven-hour trip and knowing me, I will remain excited for about one of those hours, then spend the next six wondering if we’re almost there yet.
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Writing Update
I woke up this morning at 4:30 and knew that the story was completely wrong. Not surprising, since Realizing That Things Are Completely Wrong has recently gone beyond a personal hobby and way over into the territory of vocation. The more important thing is that I realized not only specifically what was wrong with it, but exactly how to fix it. Over breakfast a five-page synopsis blurted out with almost no effort.
The good news is that I think it’s going to be about 200 million times better than the original idea. The bad news is that I need to start almost from scratch. Oh well. It’s not like I have anything better to do at the moment.
Tags: Chiang Mai, Thailand
sandra_101
Is there any way a concerned American friend could obtain the right malarial drug and ship it to you? Or would it require one of those pesky “prescriptions”?