Just stocking up and getting rejuvenated for the next round of travel.
Chiang Mai is not what we expected. Tourism rules here. The April water festival is coming up and even though this is the hot season, the tourists are starting to show up enmass. I see only two Asian faces from where I’m sitting at the Internet cafe. Derrell is convinced we have left Thailand.
We checked out some wats in town and have seen many a male Buddist monk in orange robes and a few women monks wearing white with their heads shaved. The Burmese and Lanna temples are colorful (in reds, greens and golds) and ornate, with shrines stuffed with Buddha statues ringed by offerings of incense and flowers. The huge dragons that make up the stairway railings are wonderfully detailed and have glittering scales that glint from the sunlight as you walk by them. Some of the artistry looked like it heralded from the drugs of the area, solid warped looking beasts. The stupas next to the temples are said to contain bits of bone from the Buddha; and whether they do or not, the white and gold bowl shapes spiking into the blue sky have a religious feel to them. It is not just the architecture that prevails at the wats. It is also the stepping away from traffic on the street and hearing the bells ringing in the wind from the top the temples that wallops the unsuspecting passerby over the head with a bit of serenity. Actually, an amazing feat in this town, given the crush of camera toting ‘farangs’ on the streets.
We just picked up a guidebook on Laos. We are thinking of testing the Internet connectivity in that country this next week. In the meantime, we’ve sampled German cuisine at one of the German ex-pat restaurants down the street. Who knew you could get saurkraut, potato salad and weiner schnitzels in Thailand, and have five restaurants to choose from all serving such fine delicacies? Yikes, Chiang Mai has gone ‘international’. We have had an equal choice of Italian restaurants, and Indian/Muslim is well represented here, too. McDonald’s and Starbucks, Pizza Hut and MailBoxes Etc…. no wonder Derrell is convinced we have left Thailand.
The night market here is a reminder that we are not home, though. The roads are lined with street stalls with walkways narrow enough for one person to pass each direction. Thai logo shirts abound. We have seen our favorite Red Bull and CocaCola Thai labeled shirts, but we have also seen bootleg versions of O’Neil’s Santa Cruz and Billabong shirts. And no collection is complete without a Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt. All good fashion to go with your new fake Rolex watch and flowery plastic flip-flops.
