Dec 24th Details

It's a beautiful sunny, not too warm morning, not quite the traditional Christmas weather, but I won't complain. We all got up after a nice nights rest and are getting ready to meet our driver. We have highered a driver to take us around Chaing Mai today (thursday), drive us to Udon Thani tomorrow morning (friday) which will take around 8 hours, and take us up to Laos saturday.

But enough about the future plans, now it's time to update everyone on yesterdays adventures. The day began bright an early, 7:30 Thai time. The girls had gone to bed way early, and were all rested up and awake, while Jeff and I went to bed way late (about 5AM, after watching fight club, which happened to be on TV!). But we figured better to get up and adjusted, then to try and fight the timezone changes, so we were off.

After an awesome breakfast, it was off to the heart of Chiang Mai, to see what we could find. Along the way, there were workers outside, students playing soccer on the playground, and just a genuine sense of happiness. Our adventure started when we saw a beautiful traditional Thai building.

It was open to the public to explore around, and explore we did. When we first walked in, we were greeted by a man named Noi, who spoke better english than most, and had one of those very personable personalities. He greeted us in english, and then turned to Jenny and spoke some quick Thai to her. She just laughed and told him that she was not Thai! This has been happening quite a bit in the first few days, and is pretty entertaining! He gave us his sales pitch, and offered to drive us around Chaing Mai to see the sights for 150 bhat a person (around $5 US). We were kind of split between walking through Chaing Mai today and driving to the sights tomorrow (as we would have our driver by then), so we told him we were going to walk around the traditional Thai temple and get back to him.

The temple was partially destroyed in an earthquake over 100 years ago, but was still facinating to view. And the day life around the temple was beautiful. There were many types of artwork on sale, and check the pictures on the side to see some examples. It was fun to talk to the artists and see first hand how some of the stuff was created.

While walking around, we also ran into some Monks in training. They were 13 or 14 years old and their teacher was having them practice English. She informed us that they were really shy, and asked if they could ask us a few question. We were more than happy to help, and suprised at how well the not so shy ones could communicate. They asked us simple questions like, whats your name, where are you from, where do you work. It was really fun to interact with them and be able to help them with their studies.

So while exploring around the old temple, we all decided that it would be really fun to ride with Noi and see the sights with a local. We went back to tell him this, and then were off to begin our first full day adventure of Chaing Mai.

Those adventures will continue in a future post, as it's breakfast time now. Hope everyone back home is enjoying the white Christminas (eve), as we are enjoying our warm Christmas here!

~Randall