The 20 year plan?

Michelle and I are loving Chiang Mai and have both said that we could see ourselves living here. =)  I think it's a nice mix of things that are very foreign but also many things that are quite familiar.  It's a big city that feels like a small town to us.  Lots of tropical plants and flowers and birds so in some ways it reminds us of Hawaii.  Oh, and the food is delicious & cheap!

Ton and his family are amazing and have been taking VERY good care of us.  Their house is so beautiful and they have graciously taken us all over the place.  Today Ton's dad come home from Bangkok where he works during the week most and drove us up the mountain to Wat Phra That Doi Suthep.  The drive up the mountain was very curvy and both Ton and his dad have distinct memories of learning to drive on the mountain roads!  There is a cable car up to the temple or you can tough it out like we did and walk up the steps.  We counted the steps on the way down and although all of our numbers were a bit off the average was 303 (the guidebook says there are 306...we all thought counting those steps would be a good task for the Amazing Race!)  Oh, I forgot to mention that on our way out of Chiang Mai we passed the zoo and Ton and his dad decided we all needed to go see the pandas in person.  Have I mentioned the 24 hour live "panda tv" channel they have here?!  The mom and baby were sleeping so although they were cute they were kind of boring!  The dad was awake and literally sitting on a chair at a table and eating breakfast. =)

After the temple we stopped for lunch at this place that serves a special Chiang Mai dish that is a specific type of noodle in a red curry.  It was delicious and I'm very sad that we don't see it in the US!  But don't despair because tomorrow we're taking a Thai cooking class and that's one of the things we can make! (of course, who knows if we'll be able to find the ingredients in the US!)

This afternoon we decided to test out one of the Thai massage places we read about in the guide book.  It is staffed by former female prisoners who learned Thai massage as part of their re-training program.  It was a very nice facility and the massage was great as well.  We made the women giggle a lot because we kept messing things up!  First they give you a shirt and pants to change into and we couldn't figure out how to tie the pants to make them stay up! (turns out we put them on backwards too which cracked them up!)  If you've never had a Thai massage you should!  It's definitely different but was kind of a combination of stretching, massage and accupressure.  The women make very good use of their entire body often using their knees and feet even!  Oh, and the best part...our one hour massages cost $6 each!!  We're going to try to make time to go back on Sunday for the 2.5 hour combo package for 500baht or $15!!

After our massages we wandered around the old city for a bit and then walked back to Ton's house to meet up with them and head to dinner.  Tonight we went to Vietnamese and it was interesting to compare to the Vietnamese in Seattle.  It was definitely a little different, but some things were similar for sure.  As usual there was a ton of food and many different tastes.  We both felt like we were maybe losing a little weight in Africa and India but that trend is reversing here because Ton's family is so generous and is taking us to so many delicious restaurants!  And the food is soooo delicious that we can't stop eating!  Oh, speaking of delicious, I forgot to mention our stop at this dessert food cart in our quest to find these little coconut pancakes we had in Bangkok.  Ton and his dad said this place was the best and the owners were very cute and made a fresh batch just for us!  They told us that the name is ba bin but we can't find the right thing online so we're going to ask tomorrow at the cooking school.  We'd really like to get a recipe for these little bites of heaven. =)  We also tried like 4 other Thai desserts from the cart and our favorite was like a crispy little pancake in the shape of a taco with coconut cream and lemon zest in the middle.

Our plan for tonight when we got home was to do some planning for the rest of our time in Thailand, but blogging and putting captions on pictures has taken a lot longer than we thought and we need to get to bed so we're well rested for our big day tomorrow!  And we're going to try to get up and work out in the morning since we'll be eating all day at the cooking class and then going out to dinner again tomorrow night!

Here's a link to a picasa album with pics from Ethiopia, India and Thailand!  Photo Album2  More Thailand still to come!

I can't believe it's after midnight...time for me to go to bed. :)

-Mari