Week 2: Chiang Mai cont..

Welcome back to the city where meterology courses have been banned for their total lack of significance in a place where it is sunny and 34 degrees everyday. We are basically locals now, although my height still bears the reward of stares and sniggers from Thai girls.. not much I can do about that though. Another trend we have noticed here is that massive amount of old white guys with young Thai girlfriends. Last count I believe we were up to 10,568! Who says money is not the best aphrodisiac? Or perhaps we are just underestimating the pulling power of sweaty, overweight, 50-something men who’s' skin appears more suited to expensive leather luggage then just a mere wrapping of bones and organs? Another thing we have realised about this place is that a lot of Thai people like porn. No, not the type that immediately springs to mind, but they love having Porn in their name. Examples are names like Todsaporn, Siriyaporn, and Somporn (I'm serious). We came to the consensus not to explain to our Thai friends the western version of the component of their name. Well, let's get on to the actual categories..

FOOD:

The food here has continued to delight, whether it be dirt cheap market food or dressed up dirt cheap food in the restaurants, it is all good. We have subconsciously avoided most artery hardening food after last weeks effort, but this doesn't necessarily correlate with a lower standard. One highlight of the week being the blood curry I ate. I wouldn't go thinking about that name too much, as I'm unaware of the actual percentage of blood content (pretty sure it was less then 75%) and it still tasted great. One other thing I found very amusing was when I rode to the local market to buy some rice and curries to eat in our room as we were on the forget juice that night. There was around 10 or so different "curries" and when i pointed to the first one, the lady at the stall literally laughed out loud at me! I have no idea why, but i suspect that it had something to do with me asking for non-spicy dishes and the ones we ended up with burning us badly (at both ends of the digestive tract!). Thought the first few bites that we could taste, while we could still feel our faces, where really good.

Drinking:

We have been really busy this week (read: we actually had something on most mornings so didn't get on the juice, afternoons are a breeze) so there is really only one story to tell, albiet a goodie. It was the wednesday night before a thursday morning off and we started drinking with our curries as a mentioned previously. The hotness made us consume higher amounts and quicker, so we were off to a good start. We then headed out to a place specialising in a cocktail named the 'Mohito', which is basically a combination of white rum and a lot of green stuff which combined for a mint aftertaste. As we were waiting for our first (and last) Mohito we got given a Jenga set. Great game, enhanced even further by our state of semi-drunkeness. As you will see from the photos we are pretty much qualified architects (or structural engineers) as the game went on forever. Not surprisingly the losing result went to the person who was most drunk at the time, Linsey (by a long way actually). After our minty jenga fun we headed to a reggae bar (which seems to be massive here, Bob Marley unoffically owns Chaing Mai it seems). It was fun and we chatted to some canadians and Frenchies (some more talking then others) and things were going well, until little Linsey had to excuse herself.. accompanied by Giselle. I was given assurances that the girls would be back, but after an hour or so I had my doubts. Apperently Linsey almost made it home before re-tasting all that glorious curry. And she was even kind enough to share it with the pot plant near our front door!! Generous! A couple vomits later (some in the morning also) and a healthy dose of fat intake from Mike's original chilli dogs restaurant and all was good.

Activites:

Last weekend was fantastic. You already know about the karaoke and dancing on the friday, but on the saturday we travelled an hour or so to the Lampang elephant conservation center. Thai people LOVE their elephants and this place was a good example. We first saw a show in which the elephants gracefully maneuvered several large tree trunks into a pyramid. After that came my favourite part, the part where the elephants painted a picture and totally demoralised me! I mean, my art was never a treat, but these elephants were a Van Gogh to my preschool finger paintings, it was amazing. After lunch we headed to the hospital and saw some elephants who had dislocated hips or had stood on land mines. The elephant doctor (who the girls loved) told us about the treatments and so forth while we feed them. Feeding time was great fun, we just held the bananas in the air until they held open their mouth and we threw them in. Good times.
The next day we headed out to a buddhist temple in the hills known as Doi Suthep. To get up there we needed to climb 300 steps, which the Thai fighters do regurlarly for training. Due to the girls whorish dress sense (i.e. shorts and a singlet) they had to don special outfits to be admitted into the temple. Inside looked magnificent, most gold i have ever seen, much more than Mr. T ever had around his neck. There were a lot of people praying and it gave us a good insight into the religious beliefs and customs of the Thai people, very interesting. The 2nd year physio students then took us to the kings palace in the hills. Apparently he has around 10 or so different places around the country. This one was ridiculously huge! And don't let that fact that the king only stays there a maximum of 1 week a year get in the way of him having 100's of staff keeping it in pristine condition. It was good to see however, the Thai people LOVE their king.

Placement:

This week has been a little slow in terms of placement. We haven't really got to do great deal, although i did manage to find time to have an argument with a red-haired, hippy, New Zealander (we checked, she wasn't left handed to my disbelief). But the highlight came when we got to use the same ultrasound on us as they use to check on babies. Apparently, and this may come as a shock to readers, I didn't have much in the way of abdominal musculature!  No really. Linsey showed me up by being in the normal range, guess I have some work to do.

Becoming Better Friends:

Just to prove we are becoming better friends, Gizl dropped quote of the week.. "If we have a plane crash and I die, you guys can eat me" What a sweetheart!  Also, Mr Brown has been getting more than a few mentions lately, more so due to the lack of him knocking than anything else. The funniest part of the week was when I was trying to squeeze out a late one while the girls were in bed. Gizl was rudely awoken by the exodus of a large amount of gas which slipped out after I nearly ruptured several blood vessels. We ended up laughing about it for around 10 minutes. Oh and Gizl had another couple of screams this week, well more very loud talking than a scream, but still funny.

Ok, well enough for another week. We have an extra person joining the adventure next week, which personally I'm looking forward too. Also, we are going on a trek into the wilderness this weekend, so there are bound to be some good stories next week. Keep up the posting on the message board and sending emails our way, good to receive that stuff.

All the best.Lins + Gizl (photos), Daz (writing).