Day 37 - Chilling in Chiang Mai

Chiang Mai has been great for relaxing and we've needed it as the past month and a half has been busy. Today was very chilled. We strolled around the streets and grabbed an ice coffee - our new favourite drink. We also needed to get some reading material for the 2 day slow boat trip in Laos. We went to a second hand book shop where we could exchange our books. I decided on the first of the Lord of the Rings series and Luisa (after much deliberating) went with a book called Papillion. When we arrived back at the guesthouse Luisa discovered that the book was a photocopy. Not only that but it was a photocopy of a retyped copy! So there were loads of errors and in some places it would just have [MISSING TEXT] instead of the story. This would drive Luisa's copy writing brain crazy.

After a awim in the chilly pool we decided to go for a walk and check out some of the temples. The first one we came across was Wat Chedi Luang - the remains of a temple that was toppled over by an earthquake in 1545. It had some beautiful sculptures of elephants and with the afternoon sun reflecting off the sandstone it made for an incredible sight.

Our next stop was Wat Phra Singh. A huge temple complex with monks strolling around the grounds.

For dinner we went to the local night market and I had an amazing noodle curry soup and Luisa had her usual sushi platter.


My only complaint about this part of Thailand is that at the time we were visiting the local farmers were burning their fields. This would be fine if it was just a couple of them but its thousands of fires which creates a constant haze. So in the couple days that we were here we didn't see blue sky once and the sun was orange rather than yellow. Tomorrow we're off to Chiang Rai.


Phil