It is 11:15pm on Friday night here. We took an overnight train to Chiang Mai and got in early this morning. On Wednesday I met up with my Intrepid Travel group and we stayed in Bangkok until yesterday night. Matt and I are the only Americans out of the 12 travelers! The rest are from London, Denmark, Australia, Austria, and more. It's great having such an international group but I think the English accent is rubbing off on me a little much... I absolutely love their accent and their vocabulary is so much more polite than American slang. Anyway, the group seems great so far!
Thursday we went on a boat tour of Bangkok and got to see the hot spots of the city followed by a tour of a nearby temple. It is incredible how large and grandiose the temples are built. It is stunning just to walk through them and see all the time and money the people put into their religion. It really is admirable how faithful they seem to appear. Our local tour guides have been very informative on the Thai faith and lifestyle. The food is pretty good, but having rich Thai meals 3 times a day gets to be a little much, so most restaurants have "Western food" selections for us tourists. The curry dishes are wonderful though- very spicy and "savory", as one Thai server explained to me.
Today we went trekking about an hour outside of Chiang Mai and followed that with some bamboo rafting down a small river. It was pretty simple rafting but they insisted we wear life jackets... The men taking us down the river were having a fun time splashing us and making us think there were snakes in the water. We visited another temple this afternoon called Wat Phrathat. The temple sits above the city with the most beautiful view of Chiang Mai. We got there in time to see the monks enter the temple for their nightly hour of prayer chants. This was an inspiring thing to see, even for non-Buddhists like myself. Their absolute devotion to their faith is quite apparent.
We are headed down the Mekong River for a 2-day boat ride on Sunday, where we will then cross over into Laos. Unfortunately I forgot the USB cable for my camera so I can't upload photos tonight. I will use Matt's camera soon and post some! I think it's time for me to leave because there was a fight between some foreigner and the Thai owner of the internet cafe where they started throwing coins at one another... Thank goodness an English guy stepped in and told the foreigner to leave. On that note, I miss you all and I will post again soon!
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2 comments:
So great to read about your adventures :) Enjoy your traveling!!!
Happy Thanksgiving, LIsa. We're all (James, Les, Kristi, Randy, Susan and Cousin Kristine) here at 171 NW Andrew Place. We're in training for the turkey eating by snacking on hors d'oevres. Also just toasted the day with Les' home made eggnog.
Love you tales of travel. Hope you don't have problems with the protests in Thailand.
Do they have turkeys in Viet Nam?
Take care,
Susan and others
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