After a three hour bus ride through the mountains of northwestern Thailand, I made it to the small town of Pai. Though it has only around 3,000 people, it is a major tourist hangout. Even with all the tourists, it has somehow managed to keep it's small town feel, and would be another nice place to spend about a week. I'm going to try to limit my stay to only a few days. We'll see how that goes. Anyway, having spent a decent amount of time in Thailand, I've g...

After the trekking adventure, I rented a motorbike from my hotel and spent a good portion of the next day riding around the Chiang Mai area.  I'd ridden a dirtbike before, but it had been a long time and it took me a little while to get back into the swing of driving the thing.  The streets of Chiang Mai are not the place to learn to drive.  Once I got out of the city and on to the open country roads, I was fine, but within the city limits, the...

I keep telling myself I'm going to start eating. Hasn't happened yet. Apparently Thais eat around four or five meals a day, instead of the usual three (or one and a half, in my case). All the food here is so good, I want to try everything, and to do so, I'll have to start eating more meals. Unfortunately, I'm not very good at it. The latest non-eating incident occurred a few days ago when I went to Doi Pui National Park to do some hiking. I ...

I left Sukhothai on the 15th, and made the 6 hour bus ride north to Chiang Mai. I'm feeling much better about being on my own now, as about 20% of the people I pass on the street are white. Not that I feel uncomfortable around Asians or anything, but sometimes it's nice to know there are a few people out there who are in the same situation as I am (being alone in a foreign country). Anyway, Chiang Mai is a pretty darn nice city from what I can tell. I...

I finally made it to Thailand, and I just finished watching the hardest rain I've ever seen. While eating a late lunch at my hotel in Sukothai, I noticed that it had started to pour. 15 minutes later, the rain had stopped, but that was all it took to flood the streets and put everything under about 4 or 5 inches of water. Anyway, I think this is something like my third recap of Manila, and I promise that it will be the last. Last time I said I'd be in...