Chaing Mai

We have moved north to Chaing Mai and it is noticeably cooler. It is still hot enough in the middle of the day if you are outside. This has been my brother's home town for quite a long time now. He knows lots of restaurants. We have continued to go to western restaurants for the kid's sake. Poor Alan was looking forward to Thai food. I find myself craving it a bit. Hopefully we will be able to sneak in a few good Thai meals soon.

We haven't really done much so far. We climbed up to Doi Sothep a few days ago. You take a local taxi up to the temple . The really devout walk up the hill for several kilometers but we took the easy route -- only 306 steps up after the car ride. http://thailandforvisitors.com/north/chiangmai/suthep/ . There are different kinds of taxis every where you go in Asia. In Chaing Mai, there are these red pickup trucks driving all over the place. They have two rows of seats in a covered section in the back of the truck. You stop them and see if the driver is willing to take you where you want to go. Sometimes they are going your way, sometimes they aren't. Most times the fair is 15 bt or 50 cents per person, but sometimes you have to pay more.

Today we went to the Royal Flora flower show in Chaing Mai www.royalfloraexpo.com/
We were there for about 5 hours and the kids liked the first 4 1/2... Amongst other things, there was a truly impressive pavillion devoted to orchids. The pavillion made it seem like growing orchids must be simple there were so many varieties and so many examples of each. Anyone who has read anything by Rex Stout knows this to be false...

Tomorrow we are going to learn how to make silver jewelry. On Wednesday we will be going on a tour that includes an elephant ride, an ox cart ride and a trip on a bamboo raft. Thursday it is off to Thai cooking school. On Friday we plan to tour a silk making factory. We will be in Chaing Mai for a couple of weeks and will be trying most things that are on offer for tourists while we are here. I will report on things if anything turns out to be worth noting.