Our transition from traveling in relatively 'undiscovered' China to the tourist Mecca of Thailand hasn't necessarily been the smoothest. Several taxi-drivers and vendors seriously tried to 'take us for a ride'. I surprised myself with how quickly and firmly my guard went up. However, we are well aware that the Bangkok backpacker's ghetto (as our Lonely Planet described it) is NOT representative of the rest of Thailand or even the surrounding city. We fear the Western travelers who preceded us in Bangkok did not do us any favors because it felt that many of the Thai in this area generally regarded Westerners as having too much money and too little moral or fiscal restraint.

After visiting Bangkok's Temple of the Emerald Buddha which was quite spiritual, beautiful and golden ironically and the Royal Palace and riding the water taxi along the Mae Nam Chao Phraya River we promptly headed north. After a seven hour train ride (during which our windows were completely steamed by moisture trapped in the inner cavity of the double pained window), we arrived at a "typical" Thai city named Phitsanulok.

We took a very peaceful sunset walk along the Nan River and dined over the water on a restaurant barge. A little boy approached us selling roses and my newly hardened Bangkok instincts provided the conditioned yet tempered 'no thank you'. His timid, embarrassed and quick retreat out of the restaurant (as we were the only patrons) had me instantly regret my response. Ten minutes later Christina and I saw the boy and his mother through an open door in their very poor, elevated home over the river where the mother motioned the boy to wash up in the river before bed. As we walked from the restaurant we saw the boy bathing in the shallows. The ping of regret for rejecting the boy's flowers returned. It is for these experiences that we leave the backpacker hangouts and try to be more traveler than tourist.

We earned another traveler mark by walking to the bus terminal approximately 3 miles away from our hotel with our packs and with the mid-day sun at its zenith. We arrived at the terminal absolutely soaked in our own sweat only to promptly board a bus for the next 7 hours.Next time we will pay closer attention when the maps states -"Not drawn to scale".

I now write from the open air lobby of our Chiang Mai hotel, SK House. Tomorrow we will spend the day at a Thai farm learning to cook a host of Thai dishes which we look forward to cooking for any and all when we return.

Todd