Week 4: Chiang Mai cont...

Welcome to our last update from the city and country of the future. The year here is 2549. You might think that in 2549 there would be flying cars or teleporters, but instead there are tuk tuk's and .... . It was actually the Lord Buddha's birth 543 years before our lord and saviour Jesus Christ was born that is the reason they are so far ahead. But being in the future has not hindered our time here and it has been a fantastic trip.

Food:

After four weeks of sampling the delights that is Chiang Mai food we have some recommendations for anyone that decides to travel here. Firstly, the diabetes inducing banana, chocolate, and condensed milk roti. So sugar-laden that you start hallucinating half way through, but it has fruit in it, so it must be good for you. Other highlights in no particular order are: Da's bakery pancakes, Daret's Fruit shakes, walking street marked food (especially sponge cakes and waffles), Good View club sandwiches, and the last thing we will be eating before we leave here, Black Canyon banana splits. This is a short list, and basically we love eating at the local markets here were you will always get good food for a very very small dent in the wallet.  Something to look forward to next week is the pictures of bugs that we will be consuming tonight!!

Drink:

As you will note from the photos we did have one quite big night on the forget juice (some a lot bigger then others). I am actually not the best person to be writing this because i basically have no memory of any events from about half way through the evening due in great part to a bucket of Thai rum and coke. But thankfully others around were sober and could fill me in on any antics that went on. Apparently throughout the evening I was propostioned for services (she/he offered to "smoke me") by a ladyboy which I politely declined stating what I thought was obvious, that she/he was a man. I also asked a street vendor (we call them crazy frog ladies because the sell little wooden frogs that make croaking noises) how many baht for the real baby on her back. There were a few other things, but further embarrassment is not helping anybody.

Activities:

This week saw the 79th birthday of the much loved Thai king. This saw thousands of people hit the streets in celebration. We got to see marching bands, floating lantern launches and a fireworks display which didn't appear to meet Australian safety standards as most of them seemed to explode about 50 metres above our heads. Just to further prove the king loving, Bec went to see a movie at the cinemas and before it starts everyone in the theatre is asked to stand and give thanks to the king while he is presented in photos on the screen. Another interesting aspect of the movie was the three forced intermissions due to projector breakdown, guess you can't expect much for $3.

Placement:

It has been a bit of a slow week placement wise with one standout. On wednesday morning we headed out to a geritric farm (in Thailand anyone over the age of 40 is considered a geriatric, ouch to all of you oldies at home) to administer some good old fashion exercise. The other girls we are with put together a fine aerobics class and the Thai oldies loved it!! We also loved it because most of them had the coordination of retarded baby giraffe so it was great fun to watch. We wrapped up our placement here today with a couple of presentations about our Chiang Mai experience which consisted of a lot of the same content as we have in this travel journal. The physios here were very sweet and gave us all some going away presents, of which the little pin with an elephant on it was our favourite.

Well we are finished in Chiang Mai, what a time we have had here. We don't feel like we have left anything here to do, we are Chaing Mai experts and will be for as long as our memory holds out. We are leaving for Cambodia tomorrow after a comfortable night spent in the Bangkok airport, looking forward to that! Also, it seems that only people from my family are leaving messages on our message board, that just isn't good enough, we want to hear from everybody. Hopefully we can still find computers over the next couple of weeks to update the journal, otherwise we apologise, we know this is probably the only thing keeping you all going.

Lins and Gizl (photos) + Daz (Writing) + Bec.