Chiang Mai

Chiang Mai was going to be a good place. I figured this right after I saw the sign forbidding missionaries and pedophiles entry into the hotel I was staying at. To top it off my room was a large all wood, big bed sort of deal at 200 baht (7 dollars). Not bad.


The city is surrounded by a moat and a really, really old city wall. The guidebook tells me exactly how old but it's in my hotel room. At the bar downstairs I met two Maltese guys (a first) and a Sri Lankan. They made an odd trio. It was the Sri Lankan man's first time out of his homeland. He missed his wife so much that he had decided to leave that day to go back after only one week of travel. It was so sweet I almost cried. He showed me pictures of his house after the tsunami and told me stories of finding dogs eating babies and people rotting on the beach. That put a human face on the news event for me. The Maltese guys had shown up and were supposed to be in Sri Lanka for six weeks and ended up staying for a year at his guesthouse. My appetite for Ceylon has grown exponentially since meeting these guys. If people like that travel and live there then I want to go!

After breakfast with the trio it was time to look at some monasteries. There are loads of monasteries in this city. I walked out of town to a forest monastery called Wat U Monk. It was so nice to be in nature again after a mindboggling amount of traffic. The trees here seemed to be decorated with bands. And the lessons of the Buddha were illustrated with pictures of dogs gambling.

There were maybe eight of these pictures set up but the best one was the one of the dogs at a strip show. Seeing these led to some deep contemplation in brick tunnels that were built for a clairvoyant monk at the monastery a few hundred years ago. Once the sun set some more walking led to a rather beautiful two hour conversation with two Cambodian monks studying in Thailand.

Today I am in Pai. I haven't seen or done anything in this little mountain village except for nap and walk down the street to an internet cafe.